The city had not yet gone to sleep, but at least its back was turned to them.
Neon bled into the night's fog, damp rain-runoff from corroded gutters. Cael led Elara down a labyrinth of streets until the aroma of the chapel's smoke was nothing.
When he was certain no wings beat above them, he stopped beneath the overhang of an deserted train station.
What neither of them had done was since the light had penetrated the walls of the church. The rain hissed around them, steady, almost soothing.
Elara crossed her arms over her chest. "We can't stay there," you said. "Are we safe here ?"
Cael searched the rooftops. "Safe enough for an hour," he said.
He shrugged off his coat and offered it. She paused before accepting it; the material was denser than she had anticipated, lined with something that shimmered faintly where light brushed it.
"What's this?"
He whispered, "What's left of a wing." "Feathers woven into cloth so I would not forget what they took."
She snuggled it closer. "You talk like forgetting would be mercy."
He smiled a little, humorlessly. "Sometimes it is."
They sat on the station, the step cold beneath them, silence expanding between them. The racket of the city seemed a long way off, muffled by the pattering of rain. For the first time, Elara can look on him without fear, only curious. The strange light in his eyes had dimmed; he now looked almost human.
"The other angel—Seraphine. She knew me."
"She knew what you used to be."
"And what was that?"
Cael reclined onto the wall, closing his eyes. "The reason I fell."
He didn't expand on it, and she didn't push. They just sat there breathing the same musty air, the rhythm of rain drowning out the little sounds of city life slowly returning.
After some time, she said, "You could have left me."
"I tried," he confessed. "I never get very far."
The rain subsided. Neon signs stirred to life on the other side of the street, splashing red and blue over puddles on the ground. Cael opened his eyes and looked at her again; there was a unspoken meaning in his looks — a fear, a loyalty, a strange yearning he could not identify.
A faint noise interrupted the silence: a dull metallic ringing, like a bell submerged in static. He cocked his head, listening.
"They're looking," he said softly. "We can't stay much longer."
Elara stood. "Then where do we go?"
Cael pushed off the wall and looked east as the clouds began to part. "Somewhere the light can't get us."
////////////////////////////////////////////////////
They had been in motion when the first faint glow of dawn broke through the cloud cover. The rain had lightened into a drizzle, cloaking the city streets in soft grey. Silently, Cael was at the front as they made their way down narrow back streets like someone who had long since memorized a city map from above before it was ever concretized in the world.
Elara stayed close, the borrowed coat coming down to her knees.
You said there's a light that can't find us. What are you talking about?"
He said every "city lies upon something older." "Places that remember even before angels and men ceased speaking. The shadows have them's own sanctuaries."
"Underground, is that what you're saying ?"
"Under the river. There is a vault there, established while the Early Watchers still walked the earth. It's sealed with a mark Heaven forgot to read."
She frowned. "Are you able to open it?"
I helped close it."
The response came too easily. For a moment, she glimpsed what it had taken for him to say it; the tightening of his jaw, the slight quiver in his hand.
They turned down toward the river; there the skyline fell away and the rush of water percussion against stone took its place. The door was concealed by an ancient subway tunnel, partially crumbled, graffitied with tags that morphed in the flicker of lights.
Cael's hands drifted over one of the symbols. The paint flashed iridescent and then sloughed off, exposing the light shape of a sigil etched into the concrete.
"Still here," he said under his breath.
Elara watched as he drew. The air grew thick; dust rose off the earth, light curling in on itself until the tunnel looked deeper than it should have been.
"This will hide us?" she wanted to know.
"For a while," he said. "Just long enough to think. Just long enough for me to figure out how to sever the tether that Heaven still clings to you by."
She hesitated. "You can do that?"
"If I sever the link, they can't come after you via me."
"And what becomes of you?"
He gave her a small smile that didn't reach his eyes. "You'd be free."
He did not say what the price would be for him, but she saw it anyway — the burden behind his words, the silent resignation.
Elara reached out, touching his arm. "There has to be another way."
"There's always another way," he said softly. "I suppose it's just never the one we want. "
The sigil pulsed once, bright enough to throw their shadows across the tunnel wall, and the door opened—a thin strip of light descending to.
Cael glanced back at her. "After this, the world above will cease to notice us. But so will Heaven. After we go, we will be ghosts to both."
She nodded. "Then lead the way."
Turned they stepped out together. The light folded up behind them, enclosing the world out.