*Chiara

Chiara couldn't breathe. Nothing made sense. Was this a long-game? A way for Logan to gain his place among the lords of Hell? Using her as bait to bring Zeigfel here so he could issue a challenge?

Was there truly nothing between them?

Even now, filled with doubt and anguish, her skin shivered at the heat of his nearness. In only a few seconds of being next to him, her breaths matched his, her ears strained to hear his voice.

"This was your plan? To manipulate me to this point," she said.

He shook his head.

"Then let me fight with you," she said.

"When I start fighting Zeigfel, you will have only a few seconds to get out of here. The demons will be watching us, but they won't let you get far if you don't fly hard."

"Meet me in the Midlands," she said.

Again, he shook his head. "There is no where we can be together and you not be in danger."

He was sending her away. This was the end. She needed one last answer to her questions.

"Why did you play the game?" she breathed. "To distract them from me, when I couldn't take it anymore? Why take my torture for yourself and help me through the dark nights?"

"My angel. My light, my only." He cupped her cheek. "It was never a game to me. I have fought all of hell to get you here. Do you think I'm going to stop now? There is only one thing you can do for me."

She leaned forward, instinctively. Every cell of her body crying out for his touch. To feel his lips on hers like a promise he would come after her and they could figure out a way to be together.

His lips brushed the shell of her ear instead of her lips. "Fly."

Zeigfel charged and all Chiara could do was scramble out of Logan's way. Swords clanged, metal on metal, but it felt like the ends pierced her chest.

The two fighters hacked at each other with mindless fury. The other demons crept from the shadows, hissing, cheering, placing bets, and howling.

Electric warning shocked her nerves. The demons in the hall were shifting.

Her angelii seethed in response, hissing in her mind to be let out. Chiara forced it down as she edged away from the fight and closer to the arched opening.

There was a great ledge that extended from the hall, out on the side of the mountain. This was the overlap of Hell with the Midlands, one of the two places that the different realms crossed. There would be secret rifts cutting through the realms and she would have to find one, then cross all of the Midlands to find the next overlap—where Heaven came in contact with the human world, at the Fountain.

Turning away from the heart-rending fight, she inched under the archway and looked out on the edge of Hell.

There was a bridge extending upwards from the side of the balcony. A new, arched stone bridge with freshly cut stones pierced a hug portal, and through the portal....

The Fountain. She could see the ruined Garden and smashed temple to the Fountain.

The demons had established a portal there for an attack on Heaven, just as Daviid had feared they might if they ever took the Fountain. There was going to be an invasion any day now.

She had to warn the angels. She spread her wings.

A cry dragged her eyes back to the dark hole of Hell.

Logan forced Zeigfel to his knees with a repeated battery of blows. Zeigfel knelt, sword above his head to block, and with a final great swing, Logan broke the other demon's sword. Without a single word or second's pause, Logan whipped his sword around, taking Zeigfel's head from his shoulders.

Zeigfel was dead. She was free.

She gasped, but there was not enough air.

Gutteral shouts swelled to a deafening crescendo and poured from the opening. Chiara's courage faltered once again at the power of Hell washing over her.

Logan turned. His eyes found her. He was trembling with pent up power. Sweat covered his skin and his chest heaved for air. He pointed his sword at her, a warning.

"Go!" he shouted.

Then the shift took him. His daemonium broke free, but that was not the only change. He was assuming his new form as a demon lord—Irrinuum. Budding wings formed, grotesque on his back. She didn't dare stay any longer.

The demon hordes filled the hall, coming through Lust.

The invasion, it was beginning now. Zeigfel had massed the demon armies there in Lust on purpose, thinking Logan would betray her and join him, she realized. With the Dark Flame at his side, Zeigfel would have led an unstoppable attack on Heaven.

She stumbled backwards, ready to fly, but unable to go yet.

Other Irrinuum filled the hall, spinning near the ceiling. More and more demons noticed her standing on the ledge.

But now, the daemonium that used to be Logan was at the head of this army.

At the same time as she had this thought, Logan came out, leading the hordes behind him. He faced her.

With a hard beat of her wings, she lifted from the stone. He had a new daemonium form with wings stuck to his back, curling horns on his head, but she recognized him from before—jeweled blues and purples, scaled skin and deformed mouth filled with teeth. But there was something wrong with him, a dark blotch spread over his chest from the center outwards, crawling along his veins. She'd never seen such a mark on a daemonium. For a moment suspended from time, they locked eyes. Her heart pounded thunderous in her ears.

Was anything left of Logan in this monster?

He raised his sword again in salute.

"Go," he mouthed at her. Then he turned to strike down the nearest demons.

She flew.

This was how he fought all of Hell for her.

***

Her wings, marked grey with the stain of sin, carried her into the sunlight, true sunlight, that could warm as it could scorch and burn.

Her wings—the angels would know. They would refuse to accept her in their ranks again.

Her heart faltered.

Daviid's voice echoed in her ears, Sin is not a reason for being cast away. And her own voice replying with a question, Then what is?"

If they could not cast her out for sin, the kind of sin that turned her wings from glowing white to rainbow grey, then why would they cast her out? Because her gut told her they would.

Logan screamed in rage far below, bellowing a battle cry to draw the demons to him.

And she was flying away. Understanding sparking to life, sending a jolt of electric euphoria from toes to scalp to wingtips. She shuddered.

Love.

Refusing to love was what Daviid was going to answer before they were interrupted. The human man who was recruited to fight for them had refused to love his entire life until the end, and that was why he was given a chance to make things right.

She refused love no longer. With a rippling shudder, her wings shook themselves free of the grey and rainbow shimmering, and returned to their gleaming white. Yes, Logan was a murderer of her kind. Yes, he was a demon who could not love her in return and there was no place for them to be together in this world, Hell, or the Heavens.

But she would refuse her heart no longer.

She loved him. Utterly.

Hovering, she glanced down.

He was going to battle against an army, legions and legions of demon kind. He would stand in their way for the precious seconds it would give her to escape, and he didn't flinch or hesitate to do it.

Sacrifice.

Even shrouded by the hideousness of his daemonium, he protected her. Swarms of demons poured from every door and crevice of the side of the Mountain Nede. From this distance, they were like dark colored hornets in red, blue, black, and purple. Their screams reached her ears and drowned out Logan's voice.

Then, four riders appeared on monstrous steeds, and fetid, cold air, like death breathing, gusted from Hell.

No...

The Four Horsemen rode across the wide balcony. She didn't have to see them up close. They were wraiths, gaunt and decaying, covered in tattered rags and riding skeletal horses, and could spread death, disease, and despair with a glance. Their touch was the end.

Pestilence, the lord of the nasty Pestilences that infected the Pit and who nearly pulled her to their nests when she first escaped the dungeon. Only Logan's intervention had saved her.

Famine, the lord that lurked beneath Gluttony, the dark, nasty side of plenty. The very thought of him filled her with endless, aching emptiness, a preview of the void that was her future without Logan in it.

Beasts, the lord of monsters that dwelled in the hidden depths of hell that she had not even seen since Logan led her through the only possible path of escape.

Lastly, War, the lord of Blade and Wrath, who filled human hearts with cruelty and spurred murder and misery throughout the Midlands. Logan was destined to fall to his blade for standing against them.

A feral thing threw itself against her ribs in her chest, flailing to break free. But her heart—that fragile, soft thing—housed something else that was anything but weak. Logan unfurled his new, still wet bat-wings, and clapped them once to rise above the ground. He lifted his sword, the one she had thrown to him in the arena.

At the sight of the hordes streaming from hell, Logan in full, hideous daemonium ready to fight them alone, her angelii refused to stay put in the cage of Chiara's heart.

Let me fight, it whispered.

Who was she if she didn't fight for what she loved? How could she leave him there to die alone?

I say I am an angel, a warrior, a fighter for Heaven and the Sleeping King there, but if I do not stand for love, then I am nothing.

Her angelii hooked sharp claws in her mind, pulling itself through the cracks of its cage.

Yes, Chiara answered, surrendering her tight hold on her angelii. Come out.

Come out and fight!

Her angelii form roared to the surface. She was no longer Chiara. She was Light Bearer. She was the dawning sun in winter, she was the ice, she was the sting of frost, she was retribution and justice.

*** Chiara has shifted - given in to her fighting angelii for the first time in the story. She won't abandon Logan .... Hit the star and have an amazing day!!!! ***