Torment (fallen, #2)

The second installment in Lauren Kate's Fallen series picks up shortly after the first book, in which Luce Price, a teenage girl reincarnated hundreds of times, discovered that Daniel Grigori, the boy she fell in love with at the reform school Sword & Cross, is a fallen angel. Their love is cursed: Each time they find each other across lifetimes, Luce dies in a burst of flames, only to be reborn with no memory of her past. In this lifetime, however, something is different. If Luce dies now, she will not be reincarnated.

The novel opens with Daniel and Cam, a demon and Daniel's longtime enemy, disposing of a body on Angel Island near San Francisco. A starshot, a rare silver arrow, reveals that the Outcasts are hunting Luce. The Outcasts are angels who sided with Lucifer during the heavenly revolt but refused to enter Hell and were rejected when they tried to return to Heaven; God struck them blind, though they can sense the burning of a soul. Daniel and Cam agree to an 18-day truce, a sacred angelic tradition during which all angels and demons will set aside their enmity to protect Luce. They plan to hide her at the Shoreline School near Fort Bragg, California, where the collective presence of Nephilim, beings with angel DNA, will camouflage her soul from detection. The truce's cardinal rule: Neither Daniel nor Cam may visit Luce, so she can discover the truth about her past on her own.

Luce flies from Georgia to San Francisco, where Daniel picks her up and drives her north along the coast. He tells her she will attend Shoreline alone because his presence draws enemies to her. Luce is hurt and furious. When she presses him about their origins, Daniel reveals he was once a high-ranking angel who fell in love with her, a mortal, when such love was forbidden. His love caused his fall. He flies Luce to Shoreline under cover of darkness, where a teacher named Francesca meets her at the door.

At Shoreline, Luce is paired with Shelby Sterris, a blunt Nephilim roommate. She meets Dawn and Jasmine, two Nephilim who already know the legendary story of Luce and Daniel's love, and befriends Miles Fisher, a warm Nephilim who becomes a steady presence. The Nephilim class is team-taught by Francesca, an angel, and Steven Filmore, a demon. During a demonstration, Steven summons an Announcer, a shadow carrying echoes of past events, and the teachers stretch it into a screen revealing the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Despite warnings, Luce ventures into the forest and catches an Announcer on her own, beginning a secret practice. Roland Sparks, a fallen angel from Sword & Cross, arrives at Shoreline and cryptically encourages her experiments.

Daniel breaks the truce almost immediately, appearing at a beach bonfire to dance with Luce on his wings. When he notices the blond dye she adopted as a disguise and learns she left campus, he turns cold and orders her to stay on school grounds. Their pattern of passionate reunion and bitter argument repeats across several visits: Luce accuses him of treating her like a child, while Daniel insists he is protecting her. Meanwhile, dangers multiply. On a school yacht trip, Dawn is dragged underwater by invisible hands. A typewritten letter, supposedly from Daniel, lures Luce off campus to Noyo Point, where she finds Cam instead. An Outcast girl attacks with a silver bow, and Cam kills her with her own starshot. He warns Luce she has more than one kind of enemy.

With Shelby's help, Luce begins glimpsing Announcers showing her previous lives. They find an elderly couple who were her parents in a past incarnation and drive to their retirement community, but Luce cannot bring herself to knock, fearing the shock could devastate them. Steven later explains the Allegory of the Cave from Plato's Republic: The Announcers contain truth but also dangerous distortions.

Alone in the forest, Luce glimpses a past self with Daniel moments before that version of her dies in flames. In anguish, she punches through the Announcer's surface, trying to enter the past, but Shelby and Miles drag her back. That same night, Dawn vanishes from Shoreline and is returned the next morning unharmed. Luce realizes Dawn, who resembles her before the hair dye, was taken by mistake. The Outcasts have been targeting Luce all along.

Using a stolen book on Announcer travel, Luce, Miles, and Shelby step through a shadow to Las Vegas, where Luce finds Vera, a blackjack dealer who was her older sister in a past life. Their touch triggers a flood of memories ending with Luce erupting in flames while Daniel watched. Arriane, a fierce angel from Sword & Cross, rescues the group, fights off a pursuing Outcast, and explains the cosmic stakes: The millennia-long stalemate between Heaven and Hell will break when one powerful angel chooses a side, and that angel is Daniel.

Back at Shoreline, Luce confronts Daniel. She says that if it were her the universe was waiting on, she would simply choose good. Daniel repeats the words in a voice both numb and desperately sad, and Luce cannot understand his anguish. After being grounded for the Vegas trip, Luce glimpses an Announcer showing the scene from the Prologue: Daniel and Cam working together over a dead body. She is shattered to discover that the two longtime enemies are collaborating under the truce.

At the Harvest Fest, Miles visits Luce on her window ledge, tells her he likes her, and kisses her. The kiss is gentle, and Luce does not burst into flames. She looks up to see Daniel crouched behind a nearby chimney, his face showing agony, before he flies away.

Mr. Cole, Luce's handler at Sword & Cross, arranges for her to travel home to Thunderbolt, Georgia, for Thanksgiving. Miles, Shelby, Roland, and Arriane escort her. At Sword & Cross, Luce visits the grave of Penn, her close friend who was killed in the first book, then dyes her hair back to black, shedding her disguise. At the Price family home, Daniel, Cam, and several other angels arrive for dinner alongside Luce's best friend Callie. The meal is chaotic but warm.

After dinner, Phil, Shelby's ex-boyfriend, reveals himself as an Outcast agent who has been using Shelby for information. He arrives with an army of Outcasts demanding Luce surrender. A massive battle erupts as all the angels and demons fight. When an Outcast corners Miles, Luce steps forward and offers herself. The Outcast lowers her bow and reveals their true purpose: They do not want to kill Luce but want her as their entrance back into Heaven.

Miles uses his mirror-reflection power to project a duplicate of Luce, which the Outcasts seize. Cam destroys the reflection with a starshot, and the Outcasts retreat. Daniel, believing Cam killed the real Luce, attacks him before collapsing in grief. Luce, alive and hidden in her father's shed, summons an Announcer and shapes it into a door. She steps through into her own past. In the Epilogue, Daniel sees her vanish, summons his own Announcer, and plunges after her, driven by the certainty that his heart will lead him to her.