Chapter Fifty-Four Azrael
Chapter Fifty-Four
Azrael
I split myself in two, becoming noncorporeal and then reforming on the spot in front of the beast, just as Charlotte starts to—
“Run!” I shout, distracting the Creature.
Charlotte’s eyes are wide in fear like she’s considering coming after me, but then she and my ex barrel toward the door labeled You Chose This.
I don’t want to consider what that might mean, and I’m too busy to do anything but exist in the moment right now anyway.
Eyes upon eyes stare down at me.
Fucking thousands of them.
“Come at me, motherfucker,” I growl to the beast, and it lunges.
I become Nothing again, reforming a second later and plunging one of my blades into its side.
It rears up on its hind legs, its four jagged maws screeching.
The raw force of it rattles my bones, the echo vibrating through the cathedral ceiling so hard that parts of it start to fall.
Like its cry can shake creation at its seams.
But that’s all the distraction I need.
I’m through the door and slamming it shut on the other side a moment later.
The choice we’ve made begins to unravel it, the door slowly disappearing.
We’re back in the Vestibule again.
“Do you think it can come through?” Charlotte nods toward the door shape as it slowly fades away.
“I don’t know.” And I don’t want to stick around long enough to find out.
My eyes fall to Charlotte’s friend, where Lucifer’s now knelt on the floor, laying her out in front of him. I feel that familiar tug inside me, which must mean . . .
Charlotte exchanges a horrified glance with me, and I know she must feel it too.
“No,” she whispers. “No, she can’t . . .”
Time seems to slow to a crawl as Charlotte runs to her friend. She falls to her knees in front of her, pulling the other woman into her arms. The cry that rakes through her body nearly rends me in two, my worst nightmare come to fruition.
“Azrael!” I vaguely hear her screaming, her voice like a distant echo. “Azrael, you have to—”
“He won’t,” Lucifer says.
Time seems to collapse in on itself again, catching up to normal speed.
“He won’t.” Lucifer faces me, his jaw set and a bitter look in his eye. “Will you?”
I feel the resentment in his words like a knife in my chest.
Know without a doubt what this is going to be.
The end of her and me.
“Because of the deal you made with God? Because of the seal?” Charlotte glances desperately toward me. “But you can break it, can’t you? You can—”
“He won’t, Charlotte,” Lucifer repeats, the sharp hurt in his eyes nearly driving me to my knees. “You accused me of wanting to play games with her heart? But you still haven’t told her, have you?”
He’s right.
I didn’t.
I avoided it.
Like a coward.
Because I knew what the truth would lead to.
Because it already led there once before.
“Tell me what? Azrael, what didn’t you—”
Lucifer’s voice turns cold, his expression sour. “Ask him about the promise he made with my Father, darling.”
“Your Father?” Charlotte looks so lost, so confused, that the sight of her pain feels like its own kind of death to me.
The death of everything she thought I was previously.
She turns to me. “What is he talking about, Azrael? What have you—”
“I made a promise to God.” I swallow. “That I would . . . be there, at the ending.”
“That you would . . .” Charlotte’s voice trails off as she glances between her friend and Lucifer. “But she said . . . she said everything was going to be okay. In her prophecy. She said you’d be able to save her. I don’t understand why you—”
“He’s known how this would end from the very beginning,” Lucifer says. “Haven’t you, Azrael? But you were bound by His word to let it happen.”
“To let it happen,” Charlotte repeats, like the words hold some greater meaning for her, her features contorting as she realizes what he . . .
“You knew she would die?” She looks down at her friend. The prophet’s still breathing, but just barely. “You knew she would die and yet you . . .”
I shake my head. “I didn’t know it would be her for certain, but I—”
“But a prophet all the same,” Lucifer suggests, his voice taking on a hard edge.
“You knew the broad strokes of bloody all of it. Of this. Of my Father’s plans.
Whether Charlotte and I live or die in the end.
It doesn’t take a genius to infer the prophet who would die would be her”—he nods toward Jax—“which means you suspected it right from when you put the blade into play, didn’t you?
Just like you knew He was going to lock me away, knew He was going to make a monster out of me, take my powers away, and yet you said nothing, whispered promises of loyalty to me while the whole time you were stabbing me in the back. ”
“I did it for you,” I growl, the anger and hurt at how he’s refused to trust me for the last several millennia shaking me to my core. “I did it for you, even if you still can’t see it yet.”
I turn toward Charlotte.
But the way she looks at me then is everything I feared.
A mix of horror, hurt, and a deep understanding.
An understanding of what it means to love me.
The end of all things.
And regret.
The regret that inevitably comes anytime someone gets too close to me.
Because I’m more than just the unknown they fear.
I’m the reason this ends the way it always had to.
“I trusted you,” she whispers. “I trusted you, and you lied to me.”
“I couldn’t tell you how it ends even if I wanted to, Charlotte. Not without changing His plans. And even if I could, it wouldn’t have made a—”
“Why?” she breathes, the tears falling down her face cutting into me like knives.
“Because you already made your choice back when I first held you in Grand Central.” I nod toward her collar. “So, I never really had a chance to begin with.”