Snowflakes were falling onto my face.

The chill of each minute crystal felt good on my skin, like dancing in a brief, downpour of rain after enduring the sticky heat of a scorching summers day. I tilted my head back, so I could catch more of the snow on my face, eyes closed and smiling as it caressed my lids with the gentlest of icy kisses.

'You feel better now?' Mr. Tumnus said, close by.

I nodded, my eyes still closed. 'Yes. Thank you, Mr. Tumnus. I feel much better indeed. There's something so wonderful about the snowfall, don't you think?'

Mr. Tumnus said nothing for a moment, and when he did, there was such a sad inflection to his tone, that it made me open my eyes and search him out, because I hated to think of Tumnus feeling sad.

'I have grown accustomed to the harsh bite of winter, daughter of Eve,' he said. 'But I do so long for the summer. I think I would very much like to feel the softness of grass under my hooves, and dance in the warm glow of the sun. And besides,' he went on, as he saw me frowning at him, 'it would be nice not to have to wear this blasted scarf.'

He pulled on the red woolly scarf wrapped around his neck and made a funny face, as if it was strangling him. I laughed and stepped closer, grinning as I arranged the scarf to sit perfectly, making sure the ends were level.

'Do you think we will ever dance in the sunlight, Mr. Tumnus?' I asked.

His smile faltered a little then, a small crease appearing on his brow. His faun ears twitched and settled back into place as he sighed, the smile returning.

'I think you will, Casey Brogan.'

My face fell. 'But, what about you, Mr. Tumnus?' I said. 'Won't you dance with me there?'

He playfully prodded my nose with one fingertip.

'Some of us weren't made to dance in the sunlight, daughter of Eve. That, I'm afraid, is just how the story is written.'

I scowled, my bottom lip poking out in a sullen pout. 'Well, I think that's a stupid story,' I replied, with a little stamp of my foot on the snowy ground. 'I don't want to dance there if you can't.'

He grasped my small hands in his and squeezed firmly. 'Don't ever say that!' he said, his eyes wide. Was he angry? I couldn't tell, but he didn't let go of my hands. 'You must never say that, do you hear? You must never be afraid to step into the sunlight on your own, because if that is the path of your story, then that is where you must go. Remember though, I will always be here if you need me. You will remember that, won't you?'

'Yes,' I said, nodding my head fervently. My tangled hair fell over one side of my face and he pushed it back with his hand.

'Have you ever caught snowflakes on your tongue?' he said, suddenly, turning away and poking out his tongue to catch the tiny flurries of snow that drifted down in the light of the streetlamp.

He looked so comical then, this strange faun-like creature with his scarf wrapped around his neck and tongue poking out, that I couldn't help but giggle.

'You are funny, Mr, Tumnus,' I said, but I stood next to him, still holding his hand as I poked my tongue out too, still giggling as the snowflakes landed and melted instantly.

I'm not sure how long we stood there, Mr. Tumnus and I, catching snowflakes on our tongue, but I realised something then: while Tumnus did yearn for the sun and for the soft touch of grass under his hooved feet, I was happy to stay there, dancing in the snow, in the winter that would never end.

Sometimes forever could be good thing.

*

There was darkness and then there was him.

The two blended together perfectly, edges blurring, and when I awoke, roused from the dark place by the low hum of a song I remembered him singing before, it was a seamless transition, almost as if the darkness and Ethan were the same entity.

I was laying on my side, no longer suspended in the air, with my knees pulled up into my chest. My hands still felt cold, however, and I saw that they were clasped in front of me, barely visible inside a shimmering web of air that held them tight. Next to me, Ethan was sitting, with his legs in front of him, his body leant forward slightly, and his hands still bound behind his back. I'd been right about him humming a tune. As he stared at a spot just in front of his feet, he was mouthing words I couldn't make out, a pleasant thrum of noise that sounded almost like a lullaby. I watched him for a moment, giving no indication that I was awake, but of course, he inevitably knew I was, because after a few seconds he stopped, his gaze shifting to my face.

'My mother used to sing it,' he said, his voice soft. 'When I was very young, she used to sing it to help me sleep, because being so close to humans kept me awake. She would sing it to distract me from their pain, and she also sang it to me when she was dying, to ease my own. To the Ancient Egyptians, it was a spell, sung by mothers to protect their children against spirits that would try to harm them while they slept. From the moment I was born, she spent her whole life protecting me. Even as she died, she thought only of me and of my pain, never her own.'

I stared hard at him, before shifting onto my back, turning my head to face the other way. My eyes grew hot with tears and one spilled over, falling down my cheek. One stupid, pointless tear that wasn't going to help. One stupid, pathetic tear that I couldn't even wipe away.

Every last bit of my shame had been served up as their entertainment. But of course, I knew Ethan had already seen it. Every rotten, grubby act. Every disgusting minute of my life at the hands of Maggie and her friends. He'd seen it all. How did he think it was going to help, telling me how bloody wonderful his mum had been?

'Lucky you,' I hissed, bitterly.

'Casey...'

'What do you want me to say?' My head snapped back, my stare biting into him. 'That I'm happy you had a mum who cared for you more than she cared for herself? That I'm ecstatic your mum sang you lullabies, instead of whoring you out so she could score? Okay, I'm happy for you, Ethan. I'm fucking thrilled for you.'

He said nothing in return, his eyes breaking from mine.

'What?' I said. 'No witty comeback? No words from the Gospel According to Helel?'

When he looked back at me, his gaze was steady and strong.

'And what would you want me to say?' he replied. 'That I'm sorry it happened to you? Would my sympathy help, Casey? My pity?'

'You can fuck off with your pity. I never needed it from anyone before, I don't need it now.'

'I know.' He leant towards me a little. 'I know. That's why I would never offer it. My pity wouldn't change a thing and besides, you're strong enough not to need it.'

I laughed, and the cold sound echoed up to the high ceiling. 'Strong? There's that word again. Always that fucking word. You so strong, Casey. You're the strongest person I know, Casey. You know, what? I don't want to be strong. Do you know what I want right now, more than anything? I want a hit. I want a hit of something really fucking good. I want to take as many pills as I can. I want to shove as much coke up my nose as it's possible for one person to take. I want to get off my face and more wasted than I've ever been in my life. That's not being strong, Ethan. That's running away and let me tell you, that's the one thing in life I am actually good at.'

I bit my lip and turned my face away again, hating myself, hating him a little, feeling the shame burn deep. That's what was strong. My shame. Always my shame. Not me. Never me.

The silence hung between us and I really wanted to look at him. I wanted to see his face, the tiny scar on his nose, the way he chewed on his lower lip. Instead, I stayed facing the other way, my eyes locked to the wall on the far side, looking at nothing, but thinking about everything.

'You're good at more things than you give yourself credit for,' he said, and I turned to look at him sharply then, detecting something in his tone, a foreboding hint of sadness that unsettled me.

Seeing me watching him, he smiled brashly and shrugged.

'You can defend and attack people who piss you off simultaneously, for a start. That's definitely quite a skill you have there. And anyway, who said it's not being strong to run away?' Ethan said. 'We all do what we need to do to survive, Casey. We all do what we can to get through another day. Surviving is what makes us strong. Waking up every day and thinking, I'm going to do whatever I have to do to get through it, until it's time to sleep and then wake up the next day and survive another one of these shit shows. Fuck, it doesn't matter how you do it.'

'When my parents died, I ran away and kept running. I'm still running,' he said, his voice low. 'Not running would have been the easy thing to do. I could have joined Blake. I could have accepted what I was always destined to be. I could have fought for my own kind, given them something to fight for. You have no idea how easy that would have been. I wouldn't have been on my own, for a start. I've spent centuries running away from what they want me to be. I've spent centuries alone, feeling the loss of my parents every single fucking day, because they were my whole world and they were ripped from me, because of what I am. Do you have any idea what that's like? To know that the people you loved the most were killed because of you?'

I thought of Davey and Leon and the others then. I hadn't loved them, not even Davey, but I hadn't ever wished them dead and certainly not the death they were given. Swallowing my guilt, I closed my eyes and saw the faces of the Cherubim and Maggie's dealer, like they were one and the same.

'Casey, look at me.'

I didn't. Couldn't. It was too hard. Too fucking hard to look in his eyes and see the pity he said he wasn't going to give me. Too hard to look in his eyes and see my shame mirrored there.

I heard him shifting behind me, making small exhales of breath as he moved closer. I flinched as he hooked a leg over mine, wedging his foot underneath me and trying to force my body to flip towards him.

'Ethan, what the fu...' I said, wriggling, but he just held on tighter.

'Then look at me,' he replied, gruffly, and I reluctantly turned onto my side, only to find him also on his side, his face just a few inches from mine.

There was no pity there, just a steady calmness in his expression and a touch of tiredness around his eyes. I broke from his gaze, pressing my face into the floor.

'Casey,' he chided again, gently. 'Come on, don't do that. Look at me.'

I did then, raising my eyes to meet his.

'I didn't tell you about my mother to shame you about yours or boast or brag about my childhood when yours was a living nightmare. I wouldn't do that,' he said. 'You got dealt a shit hand, okay? But her total fucking failure as a human being and as a mother doesn't reflect on you and it doesn't make you like her. And don't bother saying you don't think you are, because I see it, you understand? I see it. You're not anything like her.'

'I'm an addict,' I said. 'She's an addict. Like mother, like daughter.'

He scowled. 'No,' he said. 'No. She's a piece of shit. You're not.'

'Do you even know what I did once the abuse stopped?' I said, glaring at him. 'I pimped myself out, Ethan. I slept with any bloke who would buy me a bottle of cheap booze from the corner shop. I would sleep with any guy who would buy me drugs. Hell, I would sleep with any guy just because I could. I wasn't even that fussy about it. I got involved with a dealer, just to keep my supply going and I never thought once about who was buying those drugs and whether it was fucking up their lives, just as it was mine. I didn't care. I'm not even sure that I do now. And if you were to put something in front of me right this instant, a bag of pills, a wrap, whatever, I'm pretty sure I'd take it as soon as your back was turned. I'm Maggie Brogan's daughter, a right chip off the old block and I am a piece of shit.'

'Well, if you're a piece of shit, then god know what that makes me.' He chuckled, but his laughter died quickly, as he stared into my eyes. 'I've killed people, Casey. Countless people. I've lived a long time. That's a lot of years, a lot of deaths. More than I could even list for you right now. And I didn't just kill them. I slaughtered them. Even the quick deaths would have been torture for them. I've done whatever I've had to do to keep surviving and to keep from having to face what I am, and you know what the sickening thing is about it all? I always knew I could never escape it, I knew I would end up here eventually, but I still killed them all anyway. Because I could. Because I wanted to. Because, if truth be told, I got a little kick out of it each time. A big kick, actually.'

He took a deep breath, his face darkening.

'I killed the maledicti, Casey. The one that helped me get into the Vaults.'

'I know,' I whispered. 'Juliette told me. She said the maledicti betrayed you, so you shoved her into the walls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.'

'Good ol' Juliette.' He snorted softly. 'Knew I could rely on her to be brutal with the truth.'

'So, it is true?'

He studied my face warily. 'Yeah, it's true. They tried to hide her betrayal, of course. Almost succeeded, I'll give them that. Blake used old Grigori magic to try and cloak the stain on her soul, but, as he said, he only sees, he doesn't feel, and he didn't bank on the fact that I could feel what she had done. I felt her guilt and her excitement, and her fear and I just knew. So, I played along. I let her help me get into the Vaults and once it was done, and we were in New York, I took her sightseeing and showed her a hell of a lot more than she expected to see inside the Museum. I pushed her into the brick, right beside The Death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David and I did it slow. So, what does that make me, Casey? A piece of shit, do you think? Or something worse maybe?'

'What did she want?' I asked, purposely ignoring his question. 'Juliette said Blake looked into her soul and gave her what she desired most. What was that?'

Ethan wrinkled his nose, as if the memory had conjured up a bitter taste on his tongue. 'Money. She wanted money. She came from a dirt-poor family and grew up in a rural town in Romania. They had nothing. Literally nothing. She claimed she wanted the money to send to them, you know, help them escape the shit-stinking poverty they lived in.'

I frowned. 'But, that's a good thing, surely? I mean, I'm not excusing her for betraying you like that, but if she wanted to help them...'

He laughed, the grin widening. 'It was a lie. She had no intention of helping them. They freaked out when they found out she was a maledicti and accused her of being in league with the Devil. Old Romania was steeped in a superstitious fear of witchcraft and spirits back then, it still is in a lot of places. She couldn't actually do all the things they thought a witch could do, but she still burnt her family home down anyway before running away. She killed her grandmother, her aunt and her baby brother that night. Do you really think a whole heap of money was going to make up for that? She wanted to be a rich woman. Live the life she'd always dreamt of when she was a kid. And she was willing to destroy everything my parents ever did to try and protect me. She was willing to sell me to Blake so that she could live the life of luxury she wanted.'

'But, I don't understand,' I said. 'Why didn't you see any of this? Surely before Blake used the old magic on her, you would have seen what she really was underneath?'

Ethan looked away then, the exhaustion showing on his face more than ever. I wished my hands were free, so I could touch his skin, smooth out the lines on his forehead and around his eyes.

'I was a fool, that's why,' he said, with a sigh. 'By the time I met her, I'd spent most of my life suppressing it, controlling it, blocking it out. I didn't want to go back to how it used to be. If you want the truth, I was fucking scared to. Besides, I was lonely. I wanted to believe in her. How pathetic is that?'

I shuffled slightly closer, so my bound hands were pressed against his chest. 'Not pathetic at all. It's not pathetic to not want to be alone, no matter who you might choose to be with. We all need someone.'

He relaxed a little then, warmness creeping back into his features. 'Even you, Casey Brogan?'

I said nothing for a moment, scraping my teeth over the corner of my lower lip as I looked at him. 'Tell me,' I said, finally. 'How does it work? This feeling thing you can do.'

'Think of it like an old-fashioned tape-recorder, if you're even old enough to remember those.' He raised a brow and shot me a wry smile. 'Everything you do, everything you've ever experienced gets recorded. You might even forget these things, but they never leave you, not really. Things that you have done. Things that you have felt. Things that have been done to you. It's like tattoos on your soul. I see... snapshots, I guess. Not everything. But enough. More than enough actually.'

'And you've always had this... power?'

He rolled his eyes, exhaling long and deep. 'I don't know that I'd call it a power as such. It's pretty much felt like a curse my whole life. When I was young, it was unbearable. Everywhere I went, everyone I met, it was like I would see them, their face, their body, but what I could see inside of them overshadowed everything. I was a whirlwind of emotion because I saw so much that I didn't want to see. Pain. Suffering. Torment. Joy. Grief. Disappointment. Elation. You name it, it was there, pressing down upon my shoulders everywhere I went until I felt like I was being ground into the dirt under the weight of it all. Put me in a crowded square in old Constantinople or the market streets of Cairo and I was practically paralysed under the pressure of it all.'

'My parents spent years searching everywhere they could to try and find a way to help me. They spoke to rogue demons, the eldest among us who had endured the Fall with my father. They scoured the Council's Vaults to find ancient scrolls that might hold the key. Eventually, they found the answer from an old Endorian living in the mountains of Tibet. Three years we stayed there with her, learning her secrets, and it was she that helped me learn how to control it, suppress it, summon it only when I wanted to see. She died not long after, leaving my mother to believe she was the last of the Endorians.'

I stared at him, my mouth open in awe. In my head, I could picture him as a child, his dark hair a mess of uncontrollable curls, living in the Tibetan mountains, wrapped up warm to shelter him from the biting cold, but I couldn't imagine his pain, his suffering. I couldn't imagine how one child could bear so heavy a burden and not come out the other side without a heavy coke addiction and a need to destroy themselves. I guessed Ethan's addictions had played out in other ways – in his need to destroy others, his desire to hurt others.

'Is that why you decided not to suppress it with me? Because of what the other maledicti did?'

He nodded, his brow creasing into a deep frown, his cheeks spotting red.

'That's how you knew about the birds,' I said. 'I couldn't work out how you knew, because nobody did, not even Claire. I never told anyone about the birds.'

'I wasn't prying, you know that, right?' he said, his eyes beseeching. 'I swear, I didn't intentionally set out to see anything. I don't even know what it was, but with you, I struggled to control it. It was almost as if something was forcing me to see it.'

My chest hurt. My throat burned. 'How much did you see?'

His jaw tensed. 'Enough to feel angrier than I'd ever felt in my entire life. Enough to hate more than I'd ever hated. Enough to know that the Casey you let everyone see wasn't the Casey inside. And enough to know that when I get free – and I will get free – I'm going to peel Blake's skin off while he's still alive and I'm going to keep him alive, and in agony, for as long as I can.'

I gasped. 'I don't want you to do that.'

Ethan's eyes widened. 'Casey, he hurt you. He did the worst thing to you that he could ever have possibly done.'

'No,' I said, firmly. 'The worst has already happened to me. Nothing he could ever do would be worse than that. He could make me relive it, over and over again for the rest of my days, and it still wouldn't be anywhere close to what they did to me.'

Ethan's lip curled back, and he stared at me in disbelief.

'Please, Ethan...' I said with a small smile, but the stupid tear fell again, trickling down my cheekbone. 'What did he do that I haven't already been doing to myself every single day? Don't you understand? I live with those memories - those ghosts – every single second of my existence. They don't ever go away, and I don't ever forget. I just numb the pain with whatever the Hell I can get my hands on, but it doesn't stop it. You can't stop the ghosts. You just learn to live with them the best way you can. By destroying him like that, you would only be destroying yourself. Listen to someone who knows. I've been trying to destroy myself my whole life.'

He chewed on his bottom lip, his cheek muscles twitching as the anger raged through him, only dissipating when he closed his eyes.

'Hey, look at me.' When he didn't, I smiled. 'Helel... look at me.'

Opening his eyes, he raised a brow. 'Oh, cheap shot, Brogan. Nicely played.'

'That's another thing I'm good at then,' I said. 'Pushing your buttons.'

'Well, if your hands weren't tied, you'd be welcome to push a few more.'

'Ethan...' I laughed.

'You know, you can call me Helel if it turns you on. I don't mind.'

'For fucks sake.' Lifting my arms up, I motioned for him to move closer. 'Come here.'

He did, angling his head so I could link my arms around his neck. Settling against me, he lifted his leg and pushed it between mine, and I instinctively squeezed my thighs together, a delicious heat radiating upwards into the base of my stomach. His body was firm and warm pressed against my own, his mouth ready and yielding as I brushed my lips over his. I kissed him hard. He tasted good on my tongue, like I was kissing him for the first time all over again.

When he pulled back, he exhaled, his breath tickling my face and I saw it there in his eyes then, not pity, but something else, something that bordered on defeat. My heart flipped to see it, an ominous pounding that scared me a little, because if he really did feel beaten, what hope did we have?

'What is it?' I whispered. 'Why do I get the feeling something else is bothering you, besides what Blake did?'

'It's not just what he did, it's what else he's going to do.'

'Ethan, I told you, he can make me relive it as much as he wants, but...'

He uttered a curse. 'It's not that. I mean, he could still use that against you, but I don't think he's going to regress you again. He doesn't need to.'

'I don't understand?' I said.

'I'm sorry, Casey, I'm so sorry...' He looked tortured, desperate.

'Ethan, just tell me!'

'When he took you back there, when he made you relive the worst parts of it and when I had to see it all again, you have to understand, I can't deal with it. I can't deal with you being in pain, I can't cope with watching you suffer. You have no idea how much it fucking hurts.'

'What happened?' I said, my voice barely a strangled croak. Fear struck a chord deep in my chest.

He swallowed visibly. 'You remember what I told you about how my mother explained what it was to be an Endorian? Half of it is instinctual and that includes your instinct to protect a Shedim. You can't help it, you're not always aware you're doing it or how you're doing it. That's what you did at the Vaults and that's what you did when Blake regressed you. Despite everything you were having to endure, despite all your suffering, all your pain, it was my pain that you heard, my pain that you felt. Your powers kicked in. I've never seen anything like it. You brought them to their knees. All of them.'

He leant his forehead against mine and then I finally understood. I understood why he looked so defeated, why he looked so tortured.

'They know, Casey. They know that you're an Endorian and that means they don't need me to agree to help them anymore. Blake is going to force you to control me and there's not a bloody thing either of us can do to stop him.'

Just as the words left his mouth, the great doors to the hall rumbled ominously as they began to open, and my heart jolted in my chest, fear sparking over my skin. We moved instantly, both struggling to try and sit up, as Blake appeared in the opening between the doors, waiting for enough of a gap to stride through, flanked by two of his Demons.

'This fucking Shedim,' Ethan muttered, small tendrils of oil-slick blackness snaking down his cheekbones as if his eyes couldn't contain the dark fury that had suddenly welled in them.

The Demon crossed the large room towards us, his boots pounding a drumbeat against the tiled floor that sounded more like the Death March the closer he got. He stopped just a few metres away, his hands clasped behind his back as he looked down at Ethan, their eyes locked together, but while Ethan stared nothing but an incandescent rage, Blake was characteristically calm. He broke the deadlock, only to let his gaze sweep over me. I thought about what Ethan had said then, about how he'd wanted to peel off his skin and I wondered how it would feel to make Blake suffer. The sudden desire seemed monstrous, but good, like a wanton fire in my veins.

'You look well, Miss Brogan,' he said. 'I'm glad. At least this means you can walk the short journey ahead.'

'Where are you taking her?' Ethan demanded.

I flinched. This meant wherever I was going, Ethan wasn't coming with us.

'I'm doing what she asked, Helel,' Blake replied. 'I'm taking her to see her friend. I keep my word, as you know.'

Addi!

The two Demons with Blake marched up to me and, grabbing hold of each arm, they lifted me to my feet with very little effort, forcing me to start walking in between them.

'You better not touch her, Azazel,' Ethan shouted out, his anger feeling like a swelling thunderstorm behind me. 'I swear on Lucifer's ashes I will kill you!'

'Goodbye, Helel,' Blake called out dismissively, without even looking back, but I did.

I glanced over my shoulder at Ethan as the great doors began to close, his stricken face imprinted on my mind as they shut with a resounding bang that seemed to make the very walls shudder.

Trying to steady my breathing, I turned to face the corridor ahead which was drenched in shadow, a foreboding darkness that looked ready to swallow me up whole.

Blake smiled at me, inclining his head in what looked strangely like a respectful nod.

'Come along, Miss Brogan,' he said. 'I'd hate to keep your friend waiting. He's very much looking forward to seeing you again.'