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PROLOGUE

FALLING

First there was silence—

In the space between Heaven and the Fall, deep in the unknowable distance, there was a lorious hum of Heaven disappeared and was replaced by a silence so profound that Daniel’s soul strained to make out any noise

Then cas couldn’t prevent, as if the Throne had attached moons to them They hardly beat, and when they did, it made no impact on his fall

Where was he going? There was nothing before hi down

Only thick darkness, and the blurry outline of as left of Daniel’s soul

In the absence of sound, his i beyond sound, so words of Lucinda’s curse

She will dieShe will never pass out of adolescence—will die again and again and again at precisely the moment when she remembers your choice

You will never truly be together

It was Lucifer’s foul imprecation, his embittered ad-dendum to the Throne’s sentence passed in the Heavenly Meado death was conize it?

For what did an angel know of death? Daniel had witnessed it come peacefully to some of the new els

Death and adolescence: the two absolutes in Lucifer’s Curse Neitherseparated from Lucinda was not a punishether

“Lucinda!” he shouted

His soul should have war absence, an abundance of as not

He should have been able to sense his brethren around hily or too late; who’d made no choice at all and been cast out for their indecision He knew that he wasn’t truly alone; so many of them had plummeted when the cloudsoil beneath them opened up onto the void

But he could neither see nor sense anyone else

Before this el in all the worlds

Don’t think like that You’ll lose yourself

He tried to hold onLucinda, the Roll Call, Lucinda, the choicebut as he fell, it grew harder to remember What, for instance, were the last words he’d heard spoken by the Throne—

The Gates of Heaven

The Gates of Heaven are

He could not rereat light had flickered, and the harshest cold had swept over the Meadow, and the trees in the Orchard had tu waves of furious disturbance that were felt throughout the cosels and crushed their glory There had been so just before the obliteration of the Meadow, so like a—

Twinning

A bold bright angel had soared up during the Roll Call—said he was Daniel come back from the future

There was a sadness in his eyes that had looked so

old Had this angel—this version of Daniel’s soul—

suffered deeply?

Had Lucinda?

A vast rage rose in Daniel He would find Lucifer, the angel who lived at the dead end of all ideas Daniel did not fear the traitor who had been the Morning Star

Wherever, whenever they reached the end of this oblivion, Daniel would take his revenge But first he would find Lucinda, for without her, nothingwas possible

Theirs was a love that made it inconceivable to choose Lucifer or the Throne The only side he could ever choose was hers So now Daniel would pay for that choice, but he did not yet understand the shape his punishone froed: at his side

The pain of separation froh Daniel suddenly, sharp and brutal He ht-eningly, he couldn’t remember why

He tuh denser black-ness

He could no longer see or feel or recall how he had ended up here, nowhere, hurtling through nothing-ness—tohere? For how long?

His memory sputtered and faded It was harder and harder to recall those words spoken by the angel in the white meadoho had looked so much like

Who had the angel resembled? And what had he said that was so important?

Daniel did not know, did not know anything anymore

Only that he was tuh an endless void

He was filled with an urge to find sosomeone

An urge to feel whole again

But there was only darkness inside darkness—

Silence drowning out his thoughts—