See How She Falls (The Chronicles of Izzy #3)(56)

Chapter Twenty Eight


The volume was turned up, the world came crashing back in, stealing away the blissful oblivion. Screams and shouts exchanged all around me. I struggled to open my eyes. I inhaled slowly trying to remember where I was, what had happened. Then reality came crashing back in on me. Kennan was gone. Forever.

“No. No. NO!” I shouted as a sob racked my body once more. Any numbness I might have felt during the battle had worn off. I shouldn’t be alive. He’d stepped in to save me, when I could have saved him all along. It was my fault that he’d died. He could have been here with me. We could have had our one more day. We could’ve had so many more. I’d failed him.

“His death guided you to your destiny," my aunt’s voice said, only I knew it was Uriel speaking.

“His death was a waste. I was the sacrifice. Me! Not him. Never him. Why was he taken?” Anger bellowed inside of me. I struggled to contain it, afraid that I may hurt someone if I let loose.

“His death was necessary. Without his death, you would have remained in your mortal shell, unable to send the demon back from whence





[N2] it came," Uriel stated as if Kennan’s death was no more than an item on a checklist to be marked off.

“But it doesn’t matter, in the end. It will just come back. All of this death, this life, it is a pointless exercise in futility. You should have let me die.” I stared at my aunt, seeing Uriel through her eyes. It was pointless, this life, this never ending cycle of war.

“You do not yet know? He has not told you?”

“Stop speaking in riddles. For once, just speak the truth," I shouted.

“You are no longer a mortal, Izzy.” Uriel’s words sank into me, awakening fears I’d been repressing. Somehow I knew this was coming.

“Then what am I?”

“You are what you are. I told you that there was a cost for the gifts that had been given. The cost is that you live to serve.” Uriel seemed to think that I’d wanted this life, whatever it may be. I hadn’t asked for these supposed “gifts.”

“To what end? There is nothing to keep me here. Nothing to even tempt me to do as you ask. You could’ve found another way. Some way to intercede so that he could live.” In a world without Kennan, there was nothing that I wanted to defend. Nothing that would even tempt me to do the bidding of the heavens. Everything had been taken from me, and now I was going to spend an eternity trapped.

“If he had lived, you would not have been able to defeat the darkness. If he had lived, even if you did somehow succeed, you would still have to watch him die. Life is not an eternal gift, Izzy. Life comes in brief bursts of light that are ended at a precise moment for a precise reason.”

“What was the reason for his death? This is a war that has no end. His sacrifice was pointless. He could’ve lived. He could have thrived!” I spat.

“He died, so that countless others could live. He knew before the battle that this would be his fate. He faced it with honor. Do not do him the disservice of taking that away.” Uriel’s words sank into me, throwing my thoughts back to the memory of Aberto and Kennan talking.

“He didn’t know. He thought I would die. He didn’t know.” I shook my head, fighting back the tears. Nothing made sense. I wondered if it ever would again.

“Izzy, he did know.” Aberto’s voice pulled my attention away from my aunt.

“What do you know, Aberto? What aren’t you telling me?” I begged.

“I saw it, from the day I tattooed your back, I knew what would come.”

I got up from where I lay, beating against him. Raging against the man that was supposed to protect me. The man that had sworn he loved me, yet he let Kennan die. Had he done it for selfish reasons? Had he hoped that this end may turn me towards him in my mourning?

“How could you let him die? You swore to protect me. You swore to keep me safe. How can I ever be safe again if he isn’t here?” I raged against him, refusing to suppress anything.

“I had no other course of action.” Aberto grabbed my arms pinning them to his chest. “Do you not think that this has weighed on me every day? Do you not know how many times I’ve longed to warn you? The most I was permitted to do was tell him. He took it honorably, he lived his last days with you knowing that they would soon end. Izzy, he died so that you may live.”

“But I’m not alive, not really. Am I?” It was a waste, his death. It had done nothing to save me. I was broken.

“You exist between planes.” Aberto’s soft voice broke through anger.

“So you made me like you.” I slid to my knees, wishing for the oblivion of the darkness. I wanted to surround myself in it.

“I had no idea when I breathed my soul into you that this would be the consequence.”

“But you said you saw!” I shouted, growing more hysterical by the moment. “You said that you saw him die. Which means that you must’ve seen me.”

“I saw you die as well. Today. But everything changed when you marked the Seers. You weren’t meant to die then. Not back there. Since then, since I did everything I could to keep you alive, I have been unable to see your future clearly.”

“Better I had died that day than live a thousand more days without him. You should have let me go.” I curled in on myself, trying to hold what remained of me together.