Chapter Three Azrael
Chapter Three
Azrael
I return Charlotte to the penthouse a short while later, gently depositing her onto Lucifer’s bed, where she clings to me. She stays like that for a long time, curled up beneath the sheets, crying, as I lazily stroke my fingers through her hair.
That monster she calls a father never deserved to die with any kind of dignity.
Unfortunately, the decision wasn’t up to me.
I pull her closer, holding her head in my lap, and the crying eventually stops. I don’t have any illusion that it’s because the trauma she’s relived has passed or because she’s no longer raw from the feeling. I just don’t think she has the energy to shed any more tears.
But then she does, and it guts me.
Like fucking magic.
I’ve seen plenty of humans cry before, but none whose emotions ever hurt me the way hers do. Like her pain’s become a part of me.
No matter how I’ve tried to resist it.
I leave her sometime later, returning with a warm cup of tea. I press it into her upturned palms, where she now sits at the edge of the bed, staring out at the snow that falls idly over the city. But she doesn’t look at me.
Fuck. Seeing that bastard didn’t do her any damn good.
I feared as much.
When she finally manages to speak, her voice is barely above a whisper, laced with concern. “Do you think this time Lucifer will be able to—”
“We’ll find her, Charlotte.”
Her friend’s safety is a constant weight on us all.
Me, most especially.
With the second seal now open, it won’t be long until the next battle inevitably hits.
Michael needs us, even with one of Lucifer’s siblings gone rogue.
And when he does, we’ll be ready for him.
“He wasn’t always like that, you know. My father, I mean.”
I give a curt nod, not wanting to break the spell she and her warmth and the sight of the falling snow have cast over me.
In a few short weeks, she’s grown more willing to confide in me than Lucifer ever could, and now there’s a level of trust and intimacy between us that’s so . . . unexplainable. She means more to me than I ever imagined possible.
I’ve always had a soft spot for beautiful broken things.
And I’d do pretty much anything if it would heal the pain she’s feeling.
“When my mother was alive, he used to be kind, in between the . . .” Charlotte’s voice trails off like she’s caught in some distant memory.
The falling snow outside dampens the surrounding sounds of the city until the quiet is so penetrating, I’m certain we both feel it in our bones.
“Did you . . . ? Did you reap her?” she asks unexpectedly. “My mother?”
I tense.
I am Death. Both beginning and end.
But that doesn’t mean I always want to be.
I swallow thickly. “I reap everyone, Charlotte.”
“Even me?” She gives me a watery smile, like she’s remembering when I first held her in Limbo.
Another tear slides down her cheek.
I brush it away almost instinctually before I can stop myself.
I’ve tried hard to keep my distance. To remember this is just supposed to be for our shared pleasure, even if I agreed to be the choice she needs. She belongs to Lucifer, and sooner or later she’ll return to him. I swore to myself long ago I’d never put myself in that position again.
Where it felt as if my entire universe began and ended with one person.
Until the love I felt was used as a weapon against me.
I shake my head. “I hope not, little siren.”
“Not now that I’m immortal, you mean?”
“Immortality is—”
“Just a different kind of fragility, I know.” Charlotte lifts the mug of tea to her face, inhaling. “Now you sound like Lucifer.”
I stiffen, the mention of my ex making me uneasy.
Lucifer and I have more shared history than Charlotte could ever know. Enough that I’m certain he could never truly love anybody, despite all appearances to the contrary.
On the surface, he and Charlotte are so fucking perfect that sometimes I can’t help but fear what’ll happen if we go where I know this feeling could lead.
The guilt is fucking eating me alive.
I didn’t have any idea where this was headed when Lucifer offered his deal to me, the finer details of which Charlotte is still unaware.
I expected the shame, but I never expected the jealousy.
Toward him, the fucking bastard.
He has everything I want and more.
His heart. The one thing he always refused to give me.
And now . . .
The one woman I don’t think I can bring myself to forget.
Charlotte wears her heart on her sleeve. All I’d have to do to make her mine would be to reach out and take it.
And yet . . . even I don’t hate my ex that fucking badly.
My goal is to protect her from him. Nothing more.
But I can’t seem to ignore the way she calls to me.
She’s offered me more of her heart than that fucking narcissist I call my ex ever could.
I don’t want to come between them, to be what ruins that, even if I have no doubt Lucifer will poison it eventually.
But I can’t help but feel that if she’s so perfect for him, that maybe she’s also . . .
A little perfect for me.
Like he was, before he went and fucked up everything.
“Azrael, will you tell me what happened between the two of you?” Charlotte asks, like she can read the thoughts playing out on my face.
But I’ve never had my ex’s way with words.
I cross the room toward the window. “It’s a long story, little siren.”
She’s curious about us, but there’s no use dredging up old history.
Lucifer and I are never going to be what we once were.
“I did reap her. Your mother,” I say, returning to a subject that seems more manageable to me. “I remember every soul I’ve ever taken.”
“All of them?” Her brows lift.
“Not their names, but their faces. I remember them all. She looked a lot like you.”
An uncomfortable silence follows, and Charlotte glances at her hands before a fresh round of tears starts to quietly slide over her face.
“Fuck, I shouldn’t have—”
“No. No, it’s okay.” She quickly swipes them away. “I asked you.”
But her reassurance doesn’t change what I’m feeling.
That’s all I’ll ever be to anyone. Even her, eventually.
The unknown they fear.
Charlotte takes a slow sip of her tea. “You know, when I was little, I used to wonder why she stayed with him and if that meant she didn’t love me, but now that I’m older, I understand that”—she lets out a long sigh—“change isn’t easy.”
“Of course she loved you.” My expression likely reveals more than I want it to. “But sometimes the people we love aren’t capable of loving themselves enough to be what we need.”
She looks toward me, and somehow, we both understand who I mean.
There’s a strange bond that comes from loving the same man.
Even if mine and Lucifer’s relationship ended differently.
Charlotte inhales, gripping her tea like it might lend her strength.
“I’m trying to be different from her, trying not to fear change, to stand on my own two feet, but sometimes when I’m with Lucifer, I feel like I .
. . disappear a little. Like I’m slipping into an old pattern that was never mine to begin with, and I worry that I’m . . .”
“Too much like her?” I finish.
She nods. “I’ve put that part of me on hold.
The part that used to kneel for him without question.
But I miss it. It isn’t about power—it’s about losing myself.
I don’t regret taking it off. But sometimes I wonder if I did it for the right reasons—or if I was just running.
I need to know the answer to that, to who I am, before I can offer that again. ”
“You’re so much stronger than you believe, little siren.”
A blush burns through her cheeks.
“Azrael.” She glances down at her hands. “Azrael, I’m . . . not sure I want to keep waiting to heal to allow myself to be happy.”
I lift my scarred brow as something deep inside me stirs.
Old, eternal, unknowable.
Never-ending.
“You, me, Lucifer. The apocalypse, all of it. I . . .”
My chest tightens.
“Every day I wake up wondering if this is the day I snap, the day the pressure cracks me in two. And then I look around at the world, at how poorly humanity is steering itself, and it’s just .
. . There’s so much pain, and I can’t possibly prevent it all.
I know I’m not helpless—not anymore—but it still feels like I’m drowning under it all because the whole world is counting on us, on me, to fix this, and sometimes it’s all so much that I .
. .” Her voice catches. “I can’t . . . breathe.
” Her eyes glitter with unshed tears. “This pressure, it’s . . .”
Killing me.
She doesn’t need to say the words out loud for me to see it.
Everything she’s carrying.
It’s the weariness of people who see me as a welcome relief.
“You don’t have to bear the weight of the whole world alone, little siren. Lucifer, he—”
“Azrael,” she says, her expression pleading.
It’s not Lucifer she wants right now.
It’s me.
I swallow.
My ex has never been good at carrying anyone’s pain but his own. At least, not until his Mother created the new immortal sitting in front of me. But even as . . . unexpected as he’s been with her, I would never trust him to be there for her.
Not in the way she needs. In a way that lets her breathe.
Not without asking for anything in return.
So, what’s stopping me?
“Azrael,” she whispers again.
Like a siren, her voice calls to me.
And with those damn magic tears in her eyes, I’m suddenly as powerless as my ex is.
I’ll be for her whatever he can’t be.
I cross the room in two quick strides and crouch in front of her.
I cup her face, and she leans into my hand, into me, her eyes fluttering closed like she’s relaxing into the peace only I can bring her, until—Fuck, baby girl, what are you doing to me?
—she looks a lot like she did the first time I held her.
My throat closes.
She opens her eyes, those long lashes flicking up to me. Her mouth parts on an intake of breath, and her gaze falls to my lips, my wings.
Unexpectedly, she reaches out. “May I?”
I give a quick nod.
But the moment I feel her touch there, I regret it instantly.
Something ignites in me, my whole existence on fire, and the growl that tears from my throat is inhuman. Something a lot like need, and dangerously close to—
I don’t even allow myself to think it.
She’s in love with my ex.
That much is obvious to me.
I start to pull back.
“Azrael.” Her hand catches mine.
Like everything I’m feeling is being mirrored at me and more.
All our shared vulnerability reflected in her face.
Fuck, baby girl, I can’t.
But then she brushes my wings again, and I . . . shiver. Fucking shiver.
I feel it all the way down to my cock, to the pull of my balls tightening, making my voice thick with need.
“What do you want, little siren?”
I asked her the same thing when she first looked to me in Lucifer’s playroom.
This time, there’s no hesitation when she answers me.
“Everything.”
That single word heals some broken part of me.
“I want you to wreck me, Azrael. I want you to make me forget, long enough to remember who I am underneath.”
I tug her closer, our foreheads pressing together as we share breath. “You and me both, sweet girl.”