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The tribunal doesn’t even fucking twitch.
Sentinel’s Grace bursts beneath his skin, white-gold veins lighting his throat, his arms, his face as his own power fights whatever Heaven is forcing into him.
For half a second, the black stops when I rush to his side. “Come on, brother,” I growl. “Fight it!”
Sentinel lifts his head, gold blazes in his eyes. Then something dark moves through the center. His pupils blow wide, and black surges through them.
Then every remaining white feather changes at once.
Sentinel screams again. The sound breaks halfway through, and his wings slam against the floor, black from root to tip now, his white-gold sparks turning silver, snapping between feathers that used to glow with Heaven’s Grace.
The smell of scorched feathers hits me, and something deep inside my chest fucking snaps. I drop to my knees beside him.
But I don’t care.
The tribunal wants to judge him? Fine.
They want to take him back upstairs and put him on trial for saving my life? We can fucking discuss it.
But they are hurting my brother.
That conversation is over.
Hellfire erupts beneath my skin as I wrap my arm around Sentinel. My hand closes around his shoulders the same instant the last of the gold burns out of him, and the ground drops out from beneath both of us. We hit the concrete together hard enough to crack it, his wings splayed out, broken and blackened beneath him, feathers falling away like ash caught in a dying wind. Above us, the tribunal folds back into the light and disappears, taking the cold with it, leaving behind nothing but the acrid stink of scorched feathers and Sentinel’s ragged breathing beneath my arm.
“Hey?” My voice cracks straight down the middle. “Hey, l-look at m-me.”
His eyes open, but they are gray.
The gold is gone.
Sentinel stares at me for a second before his gaze drops to his hands. “I can’t f-feel it.”
“Feel what?”
His fingers curl against the concrete. “Heaven.”
Fuck!
His breathing starts coming faster. He looks over his shoulder, and the second his eyes land on those black wings, his whole face changes.
“Sentinel?”
He doesn’t answer.
One shaking hand reaches back and catches the edge of a feather. He drags it forward far enough to see. Black.
Whatever blood he has left in his face disappears. “They actually did it.”
I get an arm beneath his shoulders when he starts to sag. “Did what?”
His eyes lift to mine. For a second, he looks fucking lost. Then the word leaves him barely above a whisper. “Fallen.”
My grip tightens around him. “What?”
“I’m Fallen.”
There’s the horror.
