I Just Come Here For the View

Radiance #7: Someone protect me from the one I love...

Radiance is a lighthearted fiction serial about one of Earth’s darker timelines. It takes place around 2014 in a world where atypical abilities have become increasingly common, with the storyline following a group of minor-league superheroes based in Washington, DC. Our protagonist is Lady Radiance, former teen sensation, aka Christabel Jones, professional ray of sunshine—or, at least, she’s trying her best.

Previously, Hades’ sister Leila warned Lady Radiance about the power of his master, Archangel. This time, Christabel responds to a run-in with Hades’ secret identity by going looking for trouble.

<#6 // To #6.5 || Directory || To #7.5 // #8 coming soon…>

It had been very late indeed by the time Lady Radiance met up with Clarevoyante, Silver Lance, and Featherweight last night, and even later when Lord Hades arrived to interrupt her efforts at turning the Cephalomancer’s squid-minions into calamari. (“Squidions,” you might call them, if your sense of humor was as questionably punny as Silver Lance’s.) She’d never been so relieved and yet so frustrated to see her Lord.

Yes, she’d been rather short, but she couldn’t just say ‘how dare you make me worry’, so she had to settle for ‘how dare you foil my plans’. If he and his dark master didn’t like her going off to fight other villains, then they needed to step in before she committed herself. And ideally, also, not keep her out into the wee hours on a Monday. Featherweight had said casually that he’d pull an all-nighter and sleep it off in study hall—no big deal—to horrified stares from everyone else…had life really been like that so recently? Nothing made her feel as old as the maternal lecture she’d wanted to give him, except maybe that she’d suddenly felt too tired to do it. Then she’d badly overslept this morning and had to put all her hopes in an extra-large coffee that, in the aftermath of a misguided sprint through traffic, she never got to drink.

Christa never made it to work, either. She called in sick and told Michelle to present the project, put her own name on it, whatever. Work was irrelevant. She pulled herself together enough to drop that little care package by the courier agency, and then spent the rest of the morning sitting on a wall in Stead Park, staring at the snowcapped playground swings in a state of shock and dejection.

Liam was real. He was cute—no, he was very cute. The most precious man. And she—she—oh, she’d hecked up everything. Leave it to Lady Radiance to barrel right into her nemesis incognito. Leave it to mild-mannered Christabel Jones to second-guess herself and let him slip right out of her arms. Her arms! What was she good for? Her chest hurt so badly that she was having to breathe shallowly just to be sure she didn’t slump over, and she would have cried if she wasn’t half afraid the tears would freeze on her skin. There was no inner warmth bubbling up today. For three hours, all was lost. At about the three-hour mark, though, Christa realized she had never eaten breakfast, and that knocked a little bit of sense back into her.

She found the nearest place with vegetable soup on the menu and buried herself in the curve of a vinyl bench to readjust her outlook. As of last week, her mission was to make Liam fall for Lady Radiance so thoroughly that he came to trust her more than he did Archangel. Perhaps that wasn’t going so well, but at least he hadn’t acted as if he hated her. There had been a look of surprise—once again, she supposed, he hadn’t expected her—but not a sneer.

He didn’t have to love Christabel, anyway. That wasn’t what that petty, lonely child was there for. If impulsively revealing herself had allowed him to recast the whole thing in the light of her alter-ego, then that was enough. What she really had to concern herself with was whether he had enough control of his own actions to take up Lady Radiance’s suggestion of Thursday shenanigans. Taken all together, the clues she’d uncovered suggested that Archangel had begun as far as six months ago to take a firmer and firmer hand with Lord Hades. It might be only in order to make him more powerful, so he could keep up with the Lady, but that wouldn’t explain the cold presence on their calls. Leila had said Liam didn’t take naturally to villainy; maybe he didn’t even want to be her nemesis…

There you go again. She swallowed some soup and consciously refocused her thoughts on the moments she’d been able to hold him. Despite the faint glow behind his dark glasses and the trace of a familiar power, her Lord had never felt so thoroughly human and warm. Liam was there somewhere, and he got to spend at least some time off his master’s leash. He had her invitation. There was nothing she could do but wait to see what he would do with it.

She checked her messages on the way to text Leila, shivered unhappily despite the warmth, and spent a long time deciding on her response.

iMessage: Jacob Jones

Jacob: oh hey. there is some good news! 🙂
Jacob forwarded an image.
Jacob: third negative test in a row for superpowers means I get knocked down to monthly testing. after six months negative without ongoing treatment, dr. M wants yearly testing for the chart but there’d be no basis to consider me atypical anymore. there’s only a couple other people responding this well so it’s kind of a big deal.
Jacob: I mean, I guess you’re probably not thrilled. sorry. you know I suck at this! I just wish we could get along like we used to. tell me what I did wrong and maybe I can fix it?
Jacob: you’re doing a GREAT job and it doesn’t bother me that you don’t need me anymore. you’re so much better at this than I could ever be. I’m honestly really proud of you.
Jacob: if you don’t want to text about it maybe we could get lunch.
Christa: Hey. Sorry, I have a lot going on today! I’m happy for you. I know it’s what you wanted.
Christa: I don’t think things will ever be like they used to, but I thought that was the whole point?
Christa: Maybe some other time.
Jacob: oh. ok.
Jacob: you know I love you, Chris?
Christa: Yeah. Love you too.

✨✨✨

On Thursday, Christa came home from work to find a note sitting on her unmade bed. It was out of place, but the handwriting looked like Lord Hades’. Or—was it? The hand seemed lighter than usual.

Lady Radiance,

Oh, my dear, foolish Lady,

I will brook no chiding from you. What do you have? Your spirit? You condescend to the Lord of the Damned. I have thousands at my disposal.

Meet me in Arlington Cemetery at dark, and we will settle this properly.

~Your Lord.

She looked up to the window and groaned. The clocks wouldn’t change for another couple of weeks yet, and the grey winter light was fading already. There might be twenty minutes left before sunset, if that. She picked up her bag again, sprinted the few blocks to a blind spot where she could emerge somewhat-safely as Lady Radiance, and took off into the gathering darkness on the horizon.

Lady Radiance was flying over the river in a streak of gold when she spotted him—not at the cemetery, as he’d written, but skulking beneath a bridge along the parkway nearby. She looped past the spot to disguise her path from the rush-hour traffic, leaving a long blaze through the woods before she dropped to the rocky shoreline. As she picked her way closer, the dark figure ahead of her made no move to come and meet her. It was certainly Hades…but if it were completely Liam, she wondered suddenly what he might be expecting from her. She hadn’t considered before now how seriously Monday’s encounter might have changed things.

The only dry path to him led between two of the piles holding up the bridge above her. As Lady stepped between them, he idly raised a gloved hand, and a hot wind blasted her back. The concrete splintered around her, spitting out chips that cut her across the face as the cracks in the piles raced each other towards the busy road above them. There was no other way to shore it up before it collapsed: Lady Radiance leapt up and shot out solid light in a lattice from her hands and feet, weaving a wall around her body. The drivers above were safe for now—but if she tried to go anywhere, the bridge would come down after her. This was different. After all these months of cowed respect and showy vulnerability, Lord Hades had trapped her with one flick of his wrist.

“You’ll forgive the change of plans, Lady Radiance,” he said, raising his voice to carry above the traffic noise. “I thought it best if ve veren’t followed.”

“I came alone,” she said coldly. “What about you?”

Hades approached now, levitating at his leisure just above the surface of the icy water until he floated a few inches beyond where she might have reached. “Oh, yes. I vouldn’t vant to vaste your time,” he said.

How literally did he mean that? He seemed more like the old Hades she’d first met, but Lady Radiance couldn’t be sure from this distance. She played it off archly. “Well, my Lord, you have me. What do you want?”

He exhaled softly, setting the loose edge of his hood to flutter. “I think you’ve become entirely too comfortable and superior with me, my Lady. I’m no vone’s idle plaything. I vant the same from you as from the rest of the vorld: to know the torment of the helpless and forgotten dead.”

“So you just want to hurt people? At least be honest about it.” She turned her head in disapproval, the most motion she could manage. “Here I’ve been thinking that you wanted me to stop you. Or show you some sympathy, at least.”

“I don’t need your sympathy, or your pity, or anything else, Radiant Vone,” Hades said, his face tightening as flames sprung up under his feet. “It’s darkness that is natural, not light. You are the aberration, not me. You vill see that very shortly. I have other vork to do, and you—you vill decide vhat is most important to you. Stay here and comfort yourself that everyvone can see you’ve been a hero, or come along and try to stop me from doing something vorse. Either way, somevone loses. You can’t save them all.”

The light flickered around Lady Radiance; it was suddenly hard to focus. “I know. I just want to do what I can.”

“…you disappoint me. I thought you vould at least have tried.” He turned his back on her and stretched out a hand; the flames beneath him flowed up into a portal, its edges drawing up steam from the water below.

“Hades!” she called, fighting the panic trying to force itself up through her throat. Everything about this felt wrong. She had ruined it all. “Don’t go. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

He turned his head just enough to show that creeping smirk—but this one seemed hollow. “Spare me the condescension. This is exactly as it should be…I’m simply setting things straight.”

Flailing internally, she landed on the only weapon she had. “That’s not what Siren said.”

Hades paused, his expression slackening, and then his hand dropped. The portal closed. “That’s quite the bluff,” he said, the rest of Hades’ presence intact but his stage accent faltering. “If—no. Surely if you had spoken to Siren, Lady Radiance, you would be more careful about bringing up such a thing.”

“I thought I was being careful,” she said, still tense. “You said you came alone, didn’t you?”

He half turned. She could see a matching tension in the slant of his red eyes, and a sadness in the set of his thin mouth. “You can’t trust me, my Lady,” he said. “Whatever you think you know, don’t you ever trust me.”

Lady Radiance pushed that plummeting sense of horror aside to press her luck a little further. “What about Liam? Can’t I trust him?”

“That depends.” Hades’ face twisted into a grimace. “What do you want with that fool?”

“Nothing, personally,” she said, restraining her eagerness. Her own mask had slipped a little there. “It’s—a friend of mine. You remember. She thought he was charming, and she’d like to see him again. That’s all.”

For a moment, Lord Hades regarded her in silent surprise. Then, he had crossed the space between them in a flash of swirling cloak and red light. Lady tried reflexively to pull back, but there was nowhere to go. He curled around her like a cat, too close for her to see him. Her strong senses felt his heart beating behind the hot cheek pressing against hers. “It occurs to me,” he whispered, suddenly back in character, “that I may never again have the good Lady Radiance at my mercy. These tricks von’t vork tvice on a clever girl like you. Any token of victory, I must take vhile I can.”

“You haven’t won yet,” she breathed. Lies and bravado: all she had. He was holding onto her nearly by the scruff of the neck.

He laughed and pressed his lips against her cheekbone. Then, without letting go, he was gone.

Motion from the edge of her vision answered why. “Heyo,” Featherweight called cheerfully, swinging upside-down from the edge of the bridge like the exasperating little ragamuffin he was. High schoolers could be ragamuffins, couldn’t they? “Lady! Was that your boyfriend?”

Lady Radiance’s face was burning. “Does it look like that was my boyfriend?”

“Ummm…yeah. Is that a trick question?” He kicked off from his perch and turned a slow somersault in midair under the drag of a large chunk of concrete. Above her, the road groaned ominously. “So, I’m pretty sure this bridge is done for with or without you now. How ’bout I stop traffic and you make a break for it?”

“Sure,” she said, trying to be grateful. Look at that, disaster averted. Day saved. Heroes of the city, etc., etc., etc. Meanwhile, her skin still stung from her Lord’s touch, and the unanswered matter of his secret identity clouded her thoughts.

Christabel found later that it was not entirely unanswered. As she changed out of her costume, an itching under her collar revealed itself as a piece of paper that must have been conjured quietly—hopefully quietly enough to escape the notice of anyone who might look back through Hades’ mind. The address burned into it returned a map entry for a bar or such, dim, a bit dingy, tucked into the back corner of an unlikely neighborhood. Z Street Lounge, atypicals only.

There was no time, no date, no other information on the paper at all. Either it was a challenge, or he would be very hard to miss.

Christa worked flex hours on Fridays, so this time she went in early and made sure she got home while Jacob was out on one of his afternoon walks. She changed quickly into something nice but not too flashy—relative to what she usually wore, anyway—and sent her brother a text message. Probably won’t see you tonight. I’m going out with some girls from work. Have a good one. Before she left, just in case, she wrote down the directions and dropped her silenced phone into a dresser drawer.

The lounge was loud and hot with the evening crowd, and Christa felt immediately out of place on seeing how much older and more casual the clientele skewed. She was standing inside the door, glancing around nervously, when a gentle tug at her attention drew it further in. A middle-aged woman smiled at her from behind the bar, dark hair rioting behind a brightly colored headscarf. Christa wove between tables to hopefully make it there as unobtrusively as possible.

“Hi. Sorry, I’m just…looking for somebody,” she said.

“Oh, yes. I’ve heard a lot about you.” She pulled down a bottle to start mixing a drink. “Over there, sweetheart—before he spooks himself again and breaks another glass, please. I’m Marla, if you want anything.”

“Of course. Thank you.” Christa loosened her scarf and looked down the bar towards the back corner, where a couple of men chatted by a large, age-worn jukebox. One of them was Liam.

She stood where she was for a minute, fidgeting with the fabric and watching him talk. He had a sharpness about him that Lady Radiance must suppress, for she’d never seen it before. His motions were loose but quick, his dimpled face all self-deprecating smiles as he jotted down a few lines and handed them back for what looked like approval. Hades liked to run his mouth like that, too, and the thought came unwanted that Liam might be much easier to dazzle into silence. He’d been so anxious last time they met. Without the masks, did she have a chance of even making what normally passed for conversation between them?

“Hey, does anyone have a request before I put a playlist on?” Liam said, raising his voice slightly above the din.

Christa came around towards him, and her mouth opened by itself as she caught his eye from a few yards away. “Yeah, can you play “Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover”?”

Liam caught himself on the edge of the bar, but it had been close. Her awareness narrowed down to the two of them as he struggled to recover, his flaring eyes casting a crimson glow even behind his dark glasses. “Okay, so, power move,” he said, regaining enough focus to reach over and start turning dials. “I fold. Yeah, I can—I can—hi.”

“Hi.” She slid onto an empty stool, a grin stretching across her face. The machine offered a muffled th-clunk and then settled down into a sequence of moody synth chords. That old dog has chained you up alright. Give you everything you need to live inside a twisted cage, sleep beside an empty rage. I had a dream I was your hero…

“I’m Christabel,” she said, tucking her legs back a little to give him room to sit down again.

“Christabel,” he repeated. “I’m beautiful. I mean that’s Liam. I mean…” He groaned, picked up the empty glass next to him too quickly, and then set it down again. “It’s nice to meet you properly. Really.”

She tried not to laugh. “It’s nice to meet you, too, beautiful. Can I buy you a drink?”

“You already did,” he said, looking sideways. “But, uh, I wouldn’t say no to another.”

“You didn’t get that helmet, did you?” she said.

Liam twisted in his seat in an uneasy way that probably meant ‘no’. “You can’t take one day off from bossing me around, can you?”

“Guilty as charged.” Christa rested her chin on her hand. “Am I supposed to apologize for that?”

“No, I like you this way—” He blushed heavily again. “Sorry. I just can’t believe you actually showed up tonight.”

“I meant it. I wanted to see you,” she said, smiling softly. When had it been so easy to talk to anyone? In spite of the strangeness of it all, he felt comfortably familiar up close. “I’m curious, though,” she added. “Why here?”

“Oh…well, I’m here a lot, so…” Liam’s eyebrows jumped in understanding. “That’s not what you meant. Um—interference. That’s why.”

“Interference?”

“Yeah. Marla has surface-level telepathy and a little future sight, and there’s usually at least one or two lower-grade psychics around,” he said, gesturing to the full house. “That gets in the way of deeper reads and suggestions. It’s like white noise. He hates it, but there’s not a lot he can do.”

Christa’s hand curled up in her lap. “Archangel?” she asked quietly.

Liam stilled, paling. It took a moment for him to speak. “You did talk to her.”

“I—”

“Don’t. Don’t, don’t, don’t—don’t tell me anything.” He turned stiffly away, back to the music machine to adjust his queue. “Talk about anything else, Christabel. She’s dead to me.”

She leaned over and set a tentative hand on his shoulder. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”

He shook his head. “This was stupid. I thought—I can’t keep my mouth shut. I should have known you’re trouble.”

“I don’t mean to be.” Christa caught his hand and wrapped her fingers around his, terrified he would bolt if she didn’t have a hold on him. “Liam, forget all that, please. It’s not why I’m here. I was just so worried, and I missed you, the old you. You don’t have to explain anything. Please, let me see you for once.”

He looked down at their hands. “You…noticed?”

“Yes.”

“It’s really gotten so bad that you noticed?”

“Yes.” She searched the uncertainty on his face for any hint that might help. “I don’t know how to describe it, exactly. It was like you just stopped trying. Of course I noticed. Maybe no one else did, but I couldn’t help it.”

Liam breathed out slowly, running his thumb across each of her fingers like he was trying to find something. Then he nodded once and turned back without a word to her. “She’s buying,” he told Marla, who had appeared at some unspoken summons, as Christa suspected she often did. They both remained quiet, her thoughts covered by the surrounding conversations and suddenly-grating pop hits in the background, until the distant, furrowed expression on his face shifted and she noticed that two drinks and some unappealingly greasy bar food had put in an appearance next to her elbow.

He took a long drink before he turned back to look at Christa. “I guess you believe in love at first sight,” he said.

“Of course,” she said.

“Yeah. You seem like a romantic.” Liam hadn’t let go of her hand, but he pulled it up so he could press it against his cheek. “You’ve been tearing me up since I met you, you know.”

Christa sipped from the pinkish glass to cover for what would otherwise have been inarticulate blushing. “I didn’t know,” she managed.

He chuckled, a little darkly. “Well, you have, and it’s put me in a fine mess. This was supposed to be my chance to start building up a name for myself. I’m supposed to be wicked and terrifying in the face of your blazing and innocent glory, not…clingy.” He paused. “He said if I really couldn’t hack it myself, he would help. You probably know well enough what I mean by that. And I thought that’s all it was, for a while.”

If Archangel had ever intended to make Lord Hades less clingy, it had been an utter failure. She didn’t say that, though, only squeezed Liam’s hand gently in hopes that it would be more encouraging than distracting. He did love her. She had a chance.

“I don’t understand what he’s been asking me for,” Liam said. “That is—well, what do you mean, I stopped trying?”

“You don’t remember?” she asked, hoping to sidestep the topic.

“Not really,” he said ruefully. “I don’t get to keep many memories of what I get up to in public, these days.”

“Well…” She toyed uncomfortably with the glass still in her other hand. “I really didn’t expect to be giving feedback to my sworn nemesis, but honestly, you used to be a better one. I mean, you seemed like a real threat, with minions and motives and so on. Lately you’re just trying to get my attention and, um, flirt with me.” Christa felt herself blushing. “Everybody calls you my boyfriend.”

Liam snorted. “Oh, that’s great. I get to be jealous of myself.”

“Don’t be,” she said. “I like this side of you, too.”

He half-returned her smile and raised her hand again to kiss the back of it. Christa leaned heavily on the bar, unsure what the small motions of his lips had done to her hard-won core strength. “Ah, that must be why you went into this business. Poor judgment,” he said.

“As if you’re much better,” she said, sheepish. “Where’d you get that aesthetic from?”

“Heh…maybe I’m a vampire.”

Christa leveled a skeptical look at his grin. “You’re not a vampire.”

“No. Luckily for you.” Liam ran a finger along a vein in her wrist to prove the point, making her shiver. “I am mostly dead, though.”

“No kidding?” she said. “How does that work?”

He frowned slightly in confusion. “Okay, first of all, you took that a lot better than I thought you would.”

“You don’t scare me,” Christa said with a shrug.

“It’d be polite to pretend.” She giggled, and Liam shook his head, struggling not to smile. “Stop that. I’m supposed to be an unlovable monster.”

She’d untangled their hands so that she could play with his fingers, and she tapped his palm severely. “Well, that’s too bad. You’re not.”

“Christabel…” He withdrew his hand, seeming to be upset again, and it shattered the glass-bubble joy of hearing him say her name. “I mean that, whether you see what’s wrong with me or not. I wouldn’t be alive at all if it weren’t for my father. He’s the only one who’s ever wanted me.”

Christa had to bite back arguments, knowing it would only lead them further off-topic. She could bring him back around slowly after he finished explaining himself. “Tell me about it,” she said.

Liam picked at the food and looked around at the other patrons, people she’d momentarily forgotten even existed. “The story changes a little,” he said, like he was just realizing that. “I guess it’s complicated to explain. But I was a baby, and I told you nobody wanted me. He channeled some of his power through me so that I could live. That’s why…” He made a small gesture towards his eyes. “There was never another way for me. You see? I’ve always been Lord of the Dead. It’s the only thing that keeps me alive.”

Christabel took a slow drink and breathed through the emotional whiplash of the moment. It didn’t seem like it could be true, if what she wanted to believe about good and evil held fast. She couldn’t see how the man—or whatever he was—who’d killed her mother could turn around and save an abandoned child, even if he somehow had the power to do so. And she certainly couldn’t accept Liam’s assumption that his nature required him to play the villain, when he so clearly didn’t want to. If it were true, what could be done? But, then, the evidence…and considering too that as she had always believed that her nature required her to be a hero, perhaps she had more in common with Lord Hades than with some of his opponents…

She blinked away the surfacing feelings and reached for him again, running her hand up his arm to hold him by the shoulder when he tried to pull back. “Liam, I don’t care about any of that,” she said. “Talking to you is the happiest I’ve been in so long. I’ll fight you, if I have to, but only if I have to. I’d rather be…”

‘Friends’ was the wrong word. He didn’t look at her, but the mocking smile creeping back onto his face seemed to show he knew that as well as she did. “What?” he said, daring under his breath. “Shameful secrets, my Lady?”

Christa had never hated Lady Radiance before, or hated Lord Hades as much as she did now. Now, suddenly, she found herself fighting a fierce and unfamiliar rage against her fate. She’d agreed with herself to sacrifice whatever she had to for the greater good, but this wasn’t fair. “Again,” she said levelly, closing her eyes against the anger, “only if I have to. But, for you…I would be.”

She felt Liam take her hand from his shoulder and then gently pick up the other as well. “Forgive me,” he said, pressing her hands together between his. “Speak of the devil, and he appears. I have to go.”

“Don’t,” Christa said, her eyes flying open. There was a strained look about his otherwise sincere sadness, his face taut with nausea or perhaps pain. “Liam, put him off. Don’t leave me.”

He shook his head. “I have to go. I think he sus…agh.” He pulled one hand back and pressed it into his forehead. “This…may well be the last time we meet, precious Christabel. I did appreciate it.”

“Liam!” She kept her grip on his other hand, jumping up and staying close as he skirted a knot of patrons on their way up to the bar. “No, stay. Please. There has to be something I can do.”

He pulled her aside at the door and looked down to hold her face in his hands. “Don’t follow me,” he said quietly. “Stay here for a while. I don’t know what’s going to happen now.”

Christa shook her head, not trusting words anymore. If she’d brought her phone, she could at least have called Leila, but she was on her own. She couldn’t let him out of her sight.

“Stay,” Liam said, his voice firm, and she felt her legs suddenly stiffen in the grip of an invisible heat, her feet stuck fast to the floor. As she struggled against his hold, he leaned down and pulled her chin up slightly to kiss her forehead, then her temple. “Goodbye,” he breathed. “I love you.”

After he was gone, the spell began to weaken. Christabel fought it until she could move again and then pushed her way out to the street, her feet skidding on a thin layer of fresh snow. His back was just visible as he made the corner of the building, and she ran.

“I told you not to follow me,” Liam said sharply as she caught up. He was still limping slightly, so that wasn’t as hard to do as he’d obviously hoped.

“Yes, well, I’m not very good at listening,” Christa said. “Nor do I appreciate you doing something like that and then just—running off!”

“It’s called a dramatic exit. I’m doing the best I can without the costume.”

“Be serious,” she snapped.

He stopped, turning. “I was before, but you didn’t seem to care for it.”

They were around back now, in the parking lot that ran behind the building strip, and aside from the distant glow of a cluster of smokers at the other end, they were alone. Christa felt confident now in letting loose. “Really? Was that when you said you love me, or when you said you were leaving anyway?”

“You are trouble,” Liam said, but whatever else he’d wanted to say was cut off by a low gasp as he leaned against the wall above her. She raised a hand to his chest, now inches from her face, but he batted it away. “What—what’s it going to take for you to go?”

“I’m not leaving you,” she said. “You didn’t let me say it, but I love you, too.”

He drew in a shuddering breath, the rest of his body beginning to shake now. “I don’t want to hurt you, Christabel.”

“I don’t believe you will.” She reached out to the rough fabric of his jacket again, unimpeded this time as it seemed to be taking all his strength now to hold himself up. “Listen to me, Liam. You don’t have to let Archangel push you around anymore. You’re strong enough to stand on your own.”

“You don’t understand,” he whispered. “You need to go, now. Run.”

Christa looked up boldly into his face. “No. I’m not scared of you—I meant that.”

Liam’s expression was shifting, the fear and discomfort receding. As his arms stilled, he lowered one of them and ran his fingers carefully through the ends of her hair. “It would be the easiest way,” he said, almost to himself, as he lowered his face to press it close to hers. His breath was cool against her mouth, so close. So very, very close. “Yes. Maybe so. Then you’d see for sure.”

“See what?” she asked, shivering.

“I—” He jerked away from her to half-collapse into a pile of dirty slush beside the back steps. At first, she thought his nose was bleeding. Then she saw even through the shadows that the liquid running onto his lip wasn’t red, but black. “Run,” he choked, starting to shake again.

She hadn’t thought she had much of a self-preservation instinct left, but what was there pulled her back a couple of steps. “Liam…?”

He got to his feet all at once, his limbs knocking against each other like a puppet being hauled up by the strings. Something about the halting quality of the motion tripped a switch deep in the back of her brain, sending her stumbling through a wall of flames as she lost her footing on the melting ice. That wasn’t Liam. Not really. Not anymore. She kicked off the ground, but the fire pursued her.

It was hard to navigate with her vision blurring like this and her lungs trying to sob instead of breathe. Tree branches and roof tiles spiraled past her in a blur, and she dodged them only as best as she could while tongues of screaming hellfire sought to cut her off. There was only one place Christa could think of that Hades—and, hopefully, anyone along for the ride—couldn’t follow her, but could she make it home fast enough? She finally found a landmark and corrected her course. When the boundary line of her wards came into view, she fell to the ground just over it, exhausted, like a shot bird.

For a few minutes, Christa lay sprawled in the dirt, unable to find her breath. Then she heard footsteps, barely, over the pounding blood in her ears.

Liam’s body stood on the other side of her invisible line, feet wreathed in flames. He held the clones’ crooked marionette posture as he looked at her, red eyes unblinking, thin mouth slack.

“Don’t come—any closer,” she gasped.

His mouth opened. “And I thought things were going so well, my Lady.”

The voice was right. It sounded very like Hades, she thought. Trying to make straight sense of it all was stomach-turning.

She sat up a little on her elbows. “Who are you?”

“Later, Daughter of Dawn, later. You must remind me to apologize for some necessary deceptions,” he said. “But I’ll talk with the boy. He’ll make it up to you.”

“Some necessary…” Christa trailed off. He had stepped easily over the boundary and was standing above her, hands outstretched. The wards didn’t work?—but this whole time, they must both have been letting her think so—then her back hit a wall as she tried to drag herself out of reach, and her legs felt suddenly too weak to stand.

Cold arms encircled her and pulled her to her feet up against him. The flames circled them both, spiraling up from the ground, and then the ground beneath her feet dropped away.

As they fell through the portal, Christabel’s consciousness slipped also into darkness.

<#6 // To #6.5 || Directory || To #7.5 // #8 coming soon…>

Thanks so much for reading! Radiance #8, The Devil In Me, is scheduled to go up on December 26. Next week, we step away from Lady Radiance’s cliffhanger for a moment to get another perspective with #7.5, Something Between Us…which is actually Science! Girl & Chained Lightning #7. Its placement in the plot isn’t ominous at all. What are you so worried about?

If you enjoyed this installment of Radiance, you can show it by leaving a like or comment, sharing this post, or just continuing to read. :) Everyone’s welcome in the fan club!