Cruel Is the Light

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

C hill tendrils brushed Selene’s naked limbs as she woke. The clock tower had a thousand cracks for draughts to slip through, and cold air twined among the gears overhead with a low whistle. She pulled Jules’s jacket tighter to herself and sought him out with a hand. His place beside her was empty. A loose thread of worry tugged free. She sat up, reaching for her dress, and a glint of light on steel caught her eye. The twin D’Alessandro blades were propped by the door with her own.

No . Her heart plummeted. He’s gone .

In a fugue state, she pulled on her dress then stumbled down the spiral stairs with the D’Alessandro blades clutched in a hand.

He was gone .

She’d told herself that this would be goodbye, but … that was meant to be her choice. Now that Jules had made the choice for her, she wasn’t okay with it. The stairs were achingly cold beneath her bare feet and her sword pressed painfully against the ridges of her spine.

She could catch him. She had to tell him not to go. Please —not a word she usually used, but she’d say it a thousand times if it made him stay. He was a demon and still she chose to sleep with him. Just once to say goodbye . The gossamer lie she’d told herself.

And now it was clearer than ever one night wasn’t enough. She wanted him every day, forever. Demon or not.

Unshed tears burned in her eyes as she ran through the cold halls, feet frozen as she checked one corridor. Then the next.

They were dark. They were empty.

And Selene was alone again.

How had she been so stupid ? She should have told him how she felt.

Far ahead of her strode a tall, familiar form.

‘Jules …!’ Her voice caught in her throat. The heat prickling behind her eyes broke free, sliding down her face. She broke into a run, picking up her pace as he turned a corner out of her sight.

Then another figure stepped into the corridor from a different hall.

Selene slipped behind a pillar, choking on her breath as she held a hand to her mouth to muffle her gasps—or her sobs? Was she crying?—so that Cesare wouldn’t hear her. As she pressed her shoulders to the chill marble, part of her wondered why she’d hidden. Why was that her first reaction upon seeing him? But as her mind caught up to her body, she didn’t move.

His footsteps brought him closer.

Cesare glanced both ways then silently descended into the Vatican necropolis.

Jules hammered his fist against Sparrow’s door, his heart thundering. He’d jogged here—cold sleet slashing against his face as he put as much distance as he could between himself and St Peter’s—so he wouldn’t lose his resolve and go back.

Selene might be awake now. He took one step toward the Vatican. If he ran, he could lie down beside her and pretend he’d never left …

‘You’re here—’ Sparrow .

‘ Jules! ’ Kian crashed against him, half climbing his body to smack kisses against his hair, hugging his head.

Jules squeezed him numbly. ‘Thank you,’ he told Sparrow, throat tight around the words.

Sparrow smirked. ‘I do what I can for our own.’

Jules’s shoulders tensed. ‘What?’

Kian slid down, backing up a step as he straightened his shirt cuffs. Beneath that mop of red hair, he looked shame-faced.

‘He’s like us. But … different,’ Sparrow explained.

Kian looked away. ‘I promise I didn’t know, Jules. I was just meant to protect you.’

Jules leaned his back against the wall and slid to sit on the slick cobbles, not caring that he was soaked through.

Sparrow crouched before him, placing a hand on his knee. ‘Come inside,’ he urged. ‘Get dry.’

Jules ignored him, looking past him to Kian. ‘How are you—’

Sparrow cut him off, pulling him to his feet and giving him little choice but to move. ‘Come inside.’

This time, Sparrow led them straight past the spiral stairs and took them deeper into the establishment. They passed smoke-filled rooms lit by low-burning gas lanterns. Felted card tables were occupied by hunched figures, not a face to be seen below drawn hoods. Jules raised an incredulous brow when he saw a stack of notes in the centre of a table, a set of keys, and what looked like a Vatican-stamped blade. What a pot.

They went up a short flight of stairs to a bar. Only one barman remained, polishing glasses with fastidious care, but a single look from Sparrow had him wiping his hands and disappearing out the back.

‘How?’ Jules asked Kian again. ‘I thought you were dead. I could’ve sworn …’

Kian bunched his own shirt and shook it. ‘This is a stolen body. I wasn’t born into it like you.’

Jules stared at Kian, emotions raw on his face. They’d grown up together. They were basically brothers. How was such a thing even possible?

Jules dragged both hands through his hair and turned his back on Kian.

Returning from the bar, Sparrow set down a trifecta of drinks.

‘Start from the beginning,’ he commanded Kian.

Eyes widening with something like alarm, Kian snapped his jaw shut.

Sparrow nodded seriously. ‘The beginning. If you don’t, I will.’

Kian sat heavily and suddenly he looked a lot older than his eighteen years. It was something in his eyes …

Jules swallowed, reaching for his drink. ‘Go on. I’m listening.’

‘All right …’ Kian gripped his glass between his palms. ‘Jules, I knew your father years ago. Long before you were born. More than knew him—we were friends. Like you and I are friends.’

‘Basically brothers,’ Jules said quietly.

There was a foreign solemnity to Kian, who smiled slightly at that. ‘Brothers in every way that counts.’

When Jules took a sip of his drink, his hand was trembling. ‘So you’re a demon?’

Kian glanced through lowered lashes at Jules. ‘Yes. Elysian, like your father.’

Expression carefully neutral, Jules turned his glass beneath his fingers. ‘So …’

Even though tension tightened Kian’s jaw, his eyes softened as he waited for Jules’s question—serious in a way Jules had rarely seen from his childhood friend.

Jules released a breath. ‘If you’re some old demon, why were you such a dumbass our whole lives?’ His face split into a grin.

Kian groaned, scraping fingers through his hair. ‘Oh, I should’ve fuckin’ known …’

Sparrow’s rich laughter washed over them and the tension fled the room. Jules grinned as he took a sip of his drink.

‘If you must know,’ Kian said, tone measured, ‘I didn’t know. I began to lose myself sometime during childhood. By the time we were ten, I was your Kian through and through.’ He rubbed fingers against his heart, smothering a fleeting expression of intense pain. ‘I still don’t remember everything. Most things.’

‘You said you were Elysian, like my father. What does that mean?’

As though sensing his cascade of emotions, Sparrow smoothed a thumb over Jules’s cheek. ‘I can explain that.’ Sparrow held his eyes as he explained in that low, reassuring way of his. ‘Kairos and Elysian have been fighting a long while, but we’re the same people. Ultimately we’re the same.’ He smiled. ‘And despite all the things driving us apart, you are a child of both. Remarkable really.’

A child of both ? ‘But how?’

Sparrow and Kian shared a look. ‘You mean, how did you come to be?’ Sparrow asked.

Jules nodded. ‘Given my father has been trapped inside the Vatican for … for I don’t even know how long.’

‘Your mother was pregnant with you before he was crucified. She didn’t know about you—neither of them did.’ Kian chose his words carefully. ‘When she was cast out of this world, her essence was ripped out of her human body. And so it remained in perfect equilibrium. Neither dead nor alive.’

‘Like the Deathless God,’ Jules murmured, sensing it was only a fraction of the story.

Kian nodded. ‘As were you. Not yet born. Like an unspoken promise. Only once she clawed her way back here to her body, after living in it for a while, did she become aware of your existence at all. Until then, you were unknown to her. To your father. To any of us.’ Kian’s eyes were fathomless and Jules could only see a stranger.

He rubbed his chest as if to ease a stab of pain.

Sparrow’s eyes were on his collar. ‘Your buttons are all mismatched. Don’t tell me we interrupted something?’

Following Sparrow’s gaze, Kian was unable to hide a smirk. ‘You crawled out of that exorcist’s bed to come here and see me? I’m flattered.’ And there was Kian, again. His Kian. His silence must’ve been confirmation enough, because Kian tried, and failed, not to laugh. ‘Are you fucking stupid? I always knew you were an idiot, but this, this is irrefutable proof.’

Whistling low, Kian flicked up Jules’s collar, showing Sparrow a lipstick stain.

Jules slapped his hand away.

Undeterred, Kian said grandly, ‘I hereby declare Jules Lacroix the dumbest bloody—’

‘Shut up.’

Jules trailed his eyes over Kian’s familiar features as he howled with laughter. He was still the same, even if he was a demon. Clamping a hand over his mouth, Jules pulled him in, planting a kiss on the crown of his head. ‘I’m glad you’re alive, boyo.’

Kian had a teasing grin on his face. ‘Charm won’t work. I still think you’re goddamn stupid.’

He pushed the dripping hair back from his face. The decision to leave Selene was a chasm in his chest and he couldn’t joke about it. Not even with Kian. ‘It’s better this way. She can never know what I am … She’d hate me.’

Sparrow tipped his head back, sighing heavily. ‘She already knows.’

‘What?’

‘She knows.’ Sparrow straightened Jules’s collar for him and then gave him a shake. ‘I spoke to her at the ball and she knows .’ He looked Jules up and down, his good eye taking in his mussed hair, the lipstick stain and the mismatched buttons. ‘And apparently she doesn’t care.’

‘ Dieu ,’ Jules swore.

‘Yep.’ Kian still sounded amused.

‘She’s going to kill me.’

Sparrow nodded. ‘Probably.’

Jules stood. ‘I have to go …’ The part of him that had wanted to know his story forever screamed at him to stay. Kian knew his father. Kian could tell him everything. And yet he silenced that voice. ‘I have to go back.’ He spun on his heel and ran, leaping down the stairs.

As he burst out onto the street, the shutters on a window flung open and Sparrow and Kian leaned out. Jules skidded on the slippery stones but righted himself. Jogging backwards, he cupped a hand around his mouth to yell up at Sparrow. ‘Look after Kian.’

Sparrow raised a hand in silent acknowledgement, wincing as Jules cracked his skull against a lamp post. Rubbing the back of his head, Jules pivoted and sprinted for the Vatican, a stupid grin on his face.

Selene knew and she wanted him anyway.

And he’d left her naked on the floor of a dusty old clock tower.

Kian was right—he really was fucking stupid.

The ironwork gate at the bottom of the stairs was unlocked and Selene silently made her way through, walking down a handful more steps until her bare foot landed in an inch of freezing water. She moved more carefully after that, not wanting to alert Cesare to her presence.

She inhabited the shadows, tailing her uncle deeper into the Vatican necropolis. As she did, she lambasted herself for her suspicious nature. What had happened to her? Taking a demon to her bed and now, what? Investigating the Imperium Bellum himself? He was a Prince of the Church … But why was he down here, when the rest of the Vatican were at Carnival?

The soft sound of voices reached her, though she couldn’t make out the words. Her uncle, she knew. But when she recognized the other speaker, her heart slowed as though frozen over.

She moved painstakingly closer. It couldn’t be.

‘I didn’t expect your progress with the wards to be so slow.’

‘Humans, always in such a hurry.’ His voice resonated through her bones, playing along her ribs like a xylophone.

Baliel .

The Duke of Briars spoke in a softly amused tone that sang of years and years of waiting to get what he wanted. Patience such as this was chilling.

‘And you wonder why we have so little respect for your lives.’ Baliel walked around the statue of a winged lion in the centre of the space, water rippling around his every footstep, though it made no sound. ‘No sooner do you slip, squalling, into life than you rush back out again, as though you can’t even pause to breathe—’ He inhaled deeply, mocking her uncle. ‘Unfortunately your arrangement with our watered-down offspring has caused some difficulty.’ Watered-down offspring. Could he mean Sparrow and the half-demons? ‘Even so, I’m almost done with the wards.’

So it was Baliel destroying the wards. And even though she had warned her uncle that Baliel would be coming here, Cesare had diverted dozens of exorcists out of Rome—ostensibly to hunt for him.

She’d only been wrong about one thing: Baliel was already here .

Here, at the very heart of St Peter’s Basilica.

And Cesare had known.

Her uncle’s voice broke into her thoughts. ‘When you came to me with this proposal, you sold it as mutually beneficial. So far all I have is a headache. I want this done. Fast.’

‘Fast?’ Baliel drew out the word, making it sound especially languorous. ‘You are in no position to be making demands. I’m not as disposed to help you as I might otherwise be.’

‘Why?’ Her uncle’s voice was tight, his patience barely intact.

‘After you sent your little lapdog after me in Nice.’

‘Perhaps if you had come when I called, I wouldn’t have had to—’

Baliel laughed. The sound chilled her blood. ‘When you called? Such a genteel way of putting it, Cesare.’ He almost purred the name, no more cowed by Cesare’s position than a panther might be. ‘When you hooked your magic into my essence and dragged me here, you mean?’

Cesare’s jaw ticked.

Baliel was suddenly standing nose to nose with him. His blue eyes burned brighter than any other light in the necropolis. ‘Such statecraft. I do admire how effectively you talk around the sordid truth, but for once I would like your candour.’

Cesare raised his chin slightly, his lips curling. ‘Very well. When I used my vast ability to drag you, the greatest of the dukes, into this world against your will. When I imposed my power on you and won . Is that what you want to hear?’

Baliel’s expression didn’t flicker, but Selene felt as though the room chilled by degrees. The dripping of water seemed to slow, as though it were becoming ice. Then he smiled. A beautiful smile that belied his profane nature.

‘Exactly so. I am actually rather grateful to your niece. Without her intervention, I wouldn’t have been able to break your hold. She’s quite something. Her power …’ He hesitated meaningfully, reaching for Cesare to slide a hand over his cheek, and where he touched, a cut appeared on his skin, seeping blood.

Baliel caught it and brought it to his lips, licking his thumb. ‘Her power tastes quite different to your own.’

Cesare didn’t move to wipe the blood, merely tipped a brow. ‘If you’re done, I have work to do.’

Without waiting for Baliel’s response, Selene started her quiet retreat. Her movements felt mechanical, as though she’d been wound up like a pocket watch, her mind still turning over what she’d overheard.

Even as she moved out of earshot, she could hear her uncle’s deep timbre. Could picture the touch of affectionate amusement that infused his voice—but only with her.

A stone sat heavy in her chest, crushing her lungs, replacing her heart.

Cesare Alleva was the Imperium Bellum. A Prince of the Church.

And a traitor.