Page 16 (1/2)

"I won’t leave you," I repeated

"Madeline, you do not love ed"

"I don’t have to love you to know that it’s wrong to leave you," I said fiercely "I only have a little power left, and so do you But we can put e have together Maybe on’t be able to heal your wing, but we can at least repair your back so that you can walk"

"Why will you not leaveI’d ever felt for Nathaniel--the hate and the anger, the sometimes friendship, and, yes, the lust I’d barely admitted to myself--roiled inside me It would be easier to leave hiht Lucifer had written for him But I couldn’t Nathaniel had saved my life more than once And I didn’t know yet just what he was to ain, but I stopped his mouth with a kiss

This wasn’t the kiss of before, full of passion and power This was a connection born of desperation, of a need that I did not fully understand Into that place where our bodies joined, I poured the reht was so depleted, so fluttery and small For the first ti away

"Stay with ainst his lips "Stay withon his face, and it wasn’t just Nathaniel’s face but Gabriel’s, Gabriel’s frozen body in the snow Nathaniel’s life wavered, a candle fla in the draft

"Stay with th, all the will, that I had re I pushed that will inside Nathaniel, let hter It wasn’t the blazing heart that it had been before, but I knew at that h his body, found the broken vertebrae and reknit the left to , but he would be able to walk and--I hoped--run

After a long while I lifted my head and opened my eyes Nathaniel studied me in silence

"What?" I asked

He looked contein to understand you"

"It doesn’t appear that understandingaway fro up I offered noredto his feet His face hite as chalk

Once he stood I could see the da

It appeared that Bryson had deliberately shot several tirew into Nathaniel’s back Muscle and cartilage lay exposed, and the wing looked like itwith my left hand, and that hen I noticed it