“Did the angels tell you that it is your destiny to die? Perhaps, but you died once already today, didn’t you? Miranda, what they won’t tell you is that humans are not only permitted but encouraged to change destiny.”

He moved his thumb gently along her scraped chin and rested it below the curve of her bloodied lower lip. The half-clotted blood sparked in mute, instinctive reaction to his touch. He did not dare smile before the angels—he could not hope for triumph from such a fragile sign—but he let light tendrils of deepest blue leak forth from his fingers to tease and stir the sparks to a stronger kindling. He continued to speak idly, communicating with and without words.

“You said yes to Patience, but I must warn you: when we say yes to her, we agree to more than we realize. Look at yourself. You are human . . . and more. We began on opposite banks, and here we meet.”

A tiny drop of fluid coalesced from the traces on her blood-smeared skin, and stretched thin and translucent like vapor. Chance gazed at it in delight as it moved toward him in vague, curious yearning, but he quickly hid it under the shadow of his hand. Patience had left no careless debris, no accidental trace to seed a new undying. She would always follow the rules. This was a new awakening. Perhaps it was a virtue of the flesh, that same stardust from which Patience had first gathered her sentience, but it was neither a subordinate nor a distributary of the Eldest. It was entirely its own . . . and yet was it not inevitable to expect some powerful effect when one considered how often humans became irrevocably dream-touched by the mere shadow-borrowing of a junior undying?

“Say yes again. If you choose to live, I choose to be with you in life and in death. What that means for such as us, what dangerous precedents will be set, only Patience and the angels can guess.”

He could think of nothing more to say or do, so he withdrew his hand and turned to face the angels again. The walls and ceiling of the room had vanished, and both stood to their full height, swords ready and faces inscrutable, regarding the rise and fall of Miranda’s shallow breathing.

“It is finished,” declared Uriel once more.

“Indeed?” the other questioned, fixing Chance with a stare that was as dangerous as any flame-edged blade. “We will see.”

They both departed with a speed and power that twisted perception and reality. Chance struggled reflexively against the current of their wake, but he eventually caught himself and relaxed into the flow, letting it pull him from Miranda’s side. He had done all that he could in that place and time, and the present—the bright, alive, solid present, now certain as any completed duty—was waiting for him to return.