To Hell and Back by L.B. Gilbert
Chapter Forty-Two
Valeria woke to a damp cloth being rubbed over her face. She opened her eyes, expecting to smell and see Slank, but it was Michael. He was touching her, concern stamped on those perfect features.
She froze, wanting more than anything to fold in on herself like origami. Anything to get away. But she didn’t have any control of her larger motor functions.
Her tongue felt like sandpaper. She had never been so thirsty in her life. Valeria licked her lips, but it didn’t help. “Are we back?”
“No,” he said shortly. “It didn’t work.”
“Oh.” She was disappointed, but that was her selfishness speaking. Valeria wanted to be back on Earth, breathing the crisp pine-scented air. She wanted to walk in the woods with Rhys, and she wanted to touch him without worrying that she was going to ensnare him as she had succeeded with Michael.
He was tied to her now. She could feel the connections, but they felt weird. Sticky and fragile, they stretched between them like insidious silly string. If Michael became aware, he could brush them off or break them effortlessly. But he didn’t know they were there, which was why he was wiping the dried blood from her face instead of killing her.
To the naked eye, the archangel looked the same, but she could feel his tiredness. “I’m sorry I failed you,” she said and meant it. “Once I recover, we can try again.”
Michael was silent long enough that she expected him to leave. But he didn’t.
“If it didn’t work with you,” he said. “then it was never going to work. And that was my mistake.”
Her head drew back. “I don’t understand.”
The spell they’d cast had boosted Michael’s already awesome power to unimaginable levels. It was the most intricate piece of magic she’d ever seen or heard of. “It should have. No spell could have been crafted better.”
Valeria wasn’t trying to flatter his vanity now. It was a simple truth.
“No.” His mouth twitched in bitter amusement. “Apparently, strength is not the key. I believed that if I could apply more force, I could punch a hole into the next world, but the more I battered at the barrier, the more it thickened. It was too well designed.”
Valeria had no idea what to say to that. “Then we try a different approach. Start over from scratch.”
He turned away, considering that. “It will take time,” he said, lifting a golden eyebrow. “Perhaps the rest of your life.”
She lifted a shoulder, tears she didn’t think she had enough moisture for stinging her eyes. “What else am I going to do with it?”
Michael’s laugh was short, like beautiful sharp little blades against her skin.
He stopped, tilting his head in that slow and slightly alien way that reminded her of a praying mantis. “At least I won’t be in this endeavor alone this time.”
It was the kind of line that would have prompted the old Valeria to make promises, to stay here, to be his partner. Her old self had needed something to hold onto. An angel trapped in hell would have been a good place to start.
But she’d had a glimpse of another life, another person she wanted to be. By some miracle, that woman had a partner, and it was a badass dragon, not a megalomaniac archangel.