The box exploded in my path, wood shards flying everywhere. He’d broken through. I gaped as I saw the bottom of the box was still glued to the ground. The glue held, just not the rest of the box.

“Cute magic trick, but the time for games is over,” he told me.

He whirled an air spell like a lasso, wrapping it around me. A band of cold air pinned my arms to my sides. I couldn’t even wiggle my little finger. Fire pours down the magic ropes, igniting the air spell. As it burned through my skin, I screamed out in agony. Osiris swung his hand across my face, hitting me hard. Pain bloomed up beneath my raw, wind-cut, fire-blistered skin.

Time bled away. Osiris’s spell squeezed harder, sucking the air out of my lungs. Delirious, I started to see things, thing that weren’t there.

A red-haired angel putting on the silver armor. She lifted the shield. She slashed out with the sword, warming up her arm. Instead of air, her blade met flesh. A monster, lured into the city from the wilds. Its jaws snapped at her. She cut across its body, ending it swiftly. It was not the enemy. The enemy lay further on. They had invaded her city.

The cries and calls of the battlefield melted into me, mixing inside my mind, pulling me under.

I snapped out of the memory to find I was fighting Osiris again. Or was that still fighting him? Time was bleeding together here too. I didn’t know which was worse: the memory that always had the same inevitable end, playing out over and over again—or the real torture right now, tearing through my body with unbearable pain. My throat was so cracked that I couldn’t even scream anymore.

“Move past the final battle,” Osiris commanded me. “I need you to go deeper.”

I didn’t want to go deeper. I no longer had the strength to keep him out of my mind, so I was screaming profanities at him inside my head, looping those curses again and again.

He looked into my eyes and said cooly, “You really are stubborn.”

“I did warn you about that,” I rasped.

The magic holding me up dissipated, leaving me with burns and cuts and bruises and broken things. My feet slipped on the gold coins that covered the ground, and I fell. Osiris stood back, watching me pretend that it didn’t hurt as much as we both knew it did.

He’d left the doorway open. I could make a run for it. I knew he was baiting me, that he would throw me back. Not that he needed to bait me to do that. I needed a plan, some way to counter him, but the only way to hurt an angel was to overwhelm him with sheer numbers or with the super weapon behind the gold-framed door. I didn’t have sheer numbers, and even if I could open that door, he would plow me down long before I made it to the weapon, assuming it was even in there.

“Wardbreaker,” one of the angels comrades said as they entered the chamber.

“Just a moment, precious. I’ll be right back,” he told me with a sick smile, then looked at the men. “I told you never to bother me while I’m working.”

“You promised progress. We don’t see progress.”

“Unlocking imprinted memories take time. Patience,” Osiris said.

“You should just kill her.”

“She is the only one who has any memory of how to open that door,” the angel explained with cold patience. “The rest of them have been dead for a long time. So unless either of you knows how to raise the dead, leave me be.”

“Raising the dead would be faster,” one of the men quipped.

“How do you even know that she’s the one?”

“The spell doesn’t lie. It showed us the one the Guardians entrusted these memories to,” said Osiris.

“What spell?” I asked.

Osiris turned to give me a smile. “The one I cast the first time you came to the Lost City, the one that unlocked the treasure trove of memories inside that precious little head of yours.”

Who were these Guardians, and why did they give me memories that were not my own? What did they want? How did they give me memories from so long ago if they’ve been dead for so long? And did this have anything to do with my strange reaction to the Nectar?

As I watched the angel and his companion, these thoughts buzzing in my head, an odd flicker danced in front of my eyes. Osiris’s face blurred. I blinks to clear my vision, but it was still there. I recognized that effect. Someone with glamour.

“You aren’t who you appear to be,” I said, laughing at the angel. “Where is the real Osiris Wardbreaker?”

He snapped his hand to the side, hitting me with a hot lash of magic. The pain catapulted me back into my own mind, what should have been be a sanctuary but was nothing short of a nightmare.

I didn’t see the battle this time. I saw a wedding, a union bound in secrecy. The doors of the temple burst open, and Legion soldiers stormed inside. A different battle in a different time and place—and yet it played out the same. They always began and ended the same. With death.

I saw a pale-haired angel walk across the Black Plains, her wings drooped, her wingtips drawing a trail of blood across the ruins of the Lost City. She set her hands on the angel symbol to open the gateway, passing through it. Then she went to the gold-framed door. Her head bowed, she leaned against the door. A tear of pure despair fell from her eye, splashing against the panel of symbols. They pulsed once, and the door opened. The symbols weren’t a puzzle; they were a poem, written in a dead language. And it was tears that opened the door.

Wiping her wet face, she put on the armor. They fit to her body, adjusting to her like magic, sliding over every dip and curve until they were like a second skin. She clasped her locket, kissing it. Then she tucked the necklace into her armor, over her heart, and prepared to meet her end.