World After

My phantom body sways as it loses its boundaries, making me feel totally disoriented. Raffe’s experience is so intense, my own thoughts and sensations are overwhelmed by his.

His ragged breathing is all I can hear. It’s all he can hear.

Hands and knees hold him down but blood makes their hands slip over his skin. Raffe is drenched in his own blood.

Pain radiates from his back through his entire body. Crushing his bones. Stabbing his eyes. Pummeling his lungs.

Blood spreads over asphalt.

Large hands move something white into the corner of his vision. He desperately doesn’t want to look but can’t help himself.

Wings.

Snow-white wings.

Severed and lying on the dirty road.

His breathing becomes harsher, and all he can see are those white feathers lying limp on the black asphalt.

A drop of blood from someone’s hand drips onto a feather. Beliel the demon stands over Raffe’s wings like he owns them.

It dimly registers with Raffe that someone yells, “Hey!”

He forces himself to look up.

His vision is blurred through the pain and sweat. He blinks several times to try to focus beyond the screaming pain in his back.

It’s a ski

That’s me. Do I really look that insignificant beside an angel?

She throws something at him with all her little might.

His sword? Could it be?

He doesn’t have time to marvel. His sword would do anything for him, even let a human bond with her to help him.

A surge of fury lends him a shot of strength. He bursts out of his attackers’ hold and raises his hand. His arm trembles with the effort.

His world shrinks down to his sword, Beliel, and the angels before him.

He catches the sword and in the same motion slices the demon Beliel in the stomach. Raffe almost loses his balance in the process.

He then manages to use his momentum to cut into the angel beside him.

The scene doesn’t slow down like the other fights. It doesn’t have to. I feel every trembling muscle, every staggering step, every struggling breath.

He’s dizzy and barely managing to stay upright. As the attackers fly off, he sees the warrior with the burnt-orange wings smack the girl. She slams against the road, and Raffe thinks she must be dead.

Through the haze of agony, he wonders who she is and why a Daughter of Man would sacrifice herself to help him.

He forces himself to stay on his feet. It takes everything he has to hold his sword ready as Burnt assesses him. Raffe’s legs tremble violently and he’s losing consciousness, but he stays up out of sheer stubbor

Burnt, obviously too cowardly to face him alone, gives up and flies off. Raffe collapses onto the asphalt as soon as Burnt leaves.

Lying on the road, the world blackens with only occasional splotches of color. His breath fills his ears, but he concentrates to hear sounds in the surrounding area.

Feet scuffle behind closed doors. Inside the buildings, humans whisper and argue about whether it’s safe to come out. They talk about how much Raffe would be worth if they tore him to pieces.

But they’re not the ones who worry him. There are more subtle scuffling, slithering noises. Soft clicking, like cockroaches in the walls.

They’re coming for him. The hellions have found him. They always do eventually.

But this time, they’re in luck. This time, he’s utterly helpless. They’ll be able to drag him down into hell and slowly torture him over the ages while he lies hopeless and wingless.

He desperately tries to stay alert, but the world melts into darkness.

Someone is calling out for her mother. The voice is strong and determined.

It must be a fever dream because no one would be that stupid in a place full of human gangs. But the footsteps in the building stairwells quiet. The human rats whisper, sure that the girl who calls out for her mom must have her gang nearby. What else would make a girl that bold?

The hellions stop their slithering too. They’re not smart enough to figure out much, otherwise they would have gotten to him ages ago by coordinating a real attack rather than just diving at random opportunities. They’re confused. Attack or run?

He tries to pull himself away from the exposed road, but black spots bloom across his vision and he fades out again.

Someone flips him over. Pain screams and claws into his back.

A small hand slaps him.

He opens his eyes for a moment.

Against the glow of the sky, dark hair flutters in the breeze. Intense eyes fringed with long lashes. Lips so red the girl must have been biting them.

It takes him a moment to realize she’s the Daughter of Man who risked herself to help him. She’s asking him something. Her voice is insistent but melodic. It’s a good sound to die to.

He fades in and out as she moves him. He keeps expecting her to cut him up or for the hellions to leap on her. Instead, she bandages him and lifts him into a wheelchair that’s too small.

When the girl grunts and overacts to indicate that he must be heavy—probably to show how strong she is—he can’t help but be amused, even through the haze of pain. She’s a terrible actress. Daughters of Men are notoriously dense and heavy compared to angels, and there’s something deliriously fu

Maybe his Watchers married their wives because they found them entertaining. Not much of a reason to be condemned to the Pit but it’s the first one he’s thought of.

Shoes slap on the sidewalk as human rats run toward Raffe. Emboldened by the rats, the hellions slither toward him too.

He tries to warn the girl.

But there’s no need. She’s already ru

His last thought before he blacks out is that his Watchers would have liked this girl.

THE SHADOWS through the windows are long by the time I jerk awake. I’m still shaking from Raffe’s experience. I didn’t just know what he was thinking; I actually felt what he felt, thought what he thought.

Was the sword really that close to Raffe? Maybe only in extremely intense times. The whole experience was bizarrely freaky at every level.

I run my trembling hand over the warm blade, telling my body that it’s okay.

I’m starting to put some pieces together. Some of Raffe’s actions make more sense now.

He couldn’t jump in to help me during my public fights at the last Resistance camp without rumors spreading about us. The hellions always tracked him down eventually, and it was probably a combination of luck, tracking, and listening to human gossip. A story about a fight like that would definitely be talked about. He bet against me to a

And he hunted down the low demons in the forest even after they ran because they seemed like they came from hell, didn’t they? If any of them lived to tell about how he’d come to the rescue of a Daughter of Man, it’d just be a matter of time before they got to me.

But did he have to go as far as telling me he didn’t even like me after our kiss? That was totally u