Ronen #2
“No. So I tested him. I wanted to see how far he’d go. How deep his poison had spread. Seems our elite healer didn’t just steal my key and disobey my orders, but also took your blood and distributed it to the blood-witch in our dungeons.”
And how did he know all this? Did he watch it happen? Vanessa said Lucifer had used the servant passages, so it was plausible he had been spying.
But what motive could Sam have to betray us?
“I thought he was finding a damned cure.” I clenched my jaw.
“He fooled you. I fooled you. Seems to be a running pattern, General.”
Fooled me?
Lucifer grinned. “Strike a nerve, General? Weren’t you ever suspicious as to why I’d stop a study that would help my kingdom?”
I lifted a brow as if to say is that even a question?
Approval softened his cold expression.
He stood and prowled toward his bar, power and intention in each step. The crystal decanters that had been empty were now full and untouched. I pressed my tongue into my cheek when he picked up a glass.
“You found it suspicious and yet still believed I’d drink my duties away while my kingdom slowly perished and my cordistella lingered in my domain as a disembodied soul?
” Smugness and disappointment battled within his tone.
But no pain. His expression never changed when he mentioned Saraqael’s soul.
“Our entire deal has revolved around Saraqael from the very start. I assumed her death broke you,” I replied. “She was your cordistella.”
The hellion and I weren’t even fully bonded, yet I feared losing her would destroy me.
Did that make me a hypocrite? For the longest time, I believed Lucifer should be over his feelings since the Unmaking Ceremony had eliminated their bond.
He hadn’t seen her for twenty years, and before that, their hidden meetings had only happened once a year.
How did love withstand that? How could he yearn for that long? Those were the questions I used to ask.
Now, I knew better.
Lucifer returned to his desk and picked up Tsal-mawet. The black center stone glinted in the light as he twisted it.
“It did.” His tone was flippant. Uncaring. Like he was talking about a bad dinner he’d had last week. “But I believe I’ve almost found the answer to opening the gates.”
“Do you know how the gates closed?” I asked without a hint of inflection.
He snorted and shrugged. “Why would I know how the gates closed?”
Gooseflesh spiked along my spine and my shadows skimmed just beneath my skin. In all the time I’d been Lucifer’s general, working for him, doing his bidding, I’d never heard him snort. Whether others had was beyond me. But hearing it, then witnessing the nonchalant shrug on top of it…
“Do you know when they closed?”
He glanced up from the blade. “About twenty years ago. Is there a reason you’re testing my knowledge, General?”
“I thought jogging your memory could help. Maybe the timing is related to how we open them.”
He traced a finger down the jagged blade. “Opening the gates has nothing to do with time.”
“Then how do we?”
He grinned, his irises pulsing with a white that matched his bright hair. “Still figuring that out.”
I didn’t believe him. He knew more, and I wanted to know what, but something held my tongue. Eerie sunlight shot through his windows, hitting his back and spilling warm yellow light across the room. The sky, normally gray, appeared blue. I suppressed a shudder.
“Can you feel their rot?”
Lucifer followed my line of sight, staring at the snowless evergreens. “I can feel the demonic infection eating away at the Eternal Forest, seeping into the ground, corrupting Hell,” he said, a strange calm threading his tone.
“How much time do we have?”
“Not long.”
“How do we stop it?”
Lucifer’s hands clenched. They shook as he squeezed them. “His Glory,” he hissed through clenched teeth.
I froze, zeroing in on his reaction. His words. My shadows snaked around my fingers as the hair on my arms rose.
“Whose Glory?”
Lucifer relaxed, but a red flush spread up his pale neck. “No one specific. I mean to say, I believe Glory could stop them.”
“But then the souls will recycle to the circles. You said you wanted to prevent that if we could.”
Silence.
A chill filled the room, dropping the temperature.
“If I can get our gates open, then redeem all the souls before they recycle, they’ll go to Limbo. Then they’ll be Heaven’s problem.”
All of them at once? Like a flick of a switch?
I’d watched Lucifer meet and converse with every soul he judged. Sometimes he talked to them for minutes, most a little longer, others for hours. He took every soul seriously. Remembered every name. And now he’d just suggested sending hundreds, if not thousands, away like it was nothing.
I took a step back, reassessing, recounting every conversation, remembering his bellow during the attack. Then afterward, how he’d adjusted his collar.
Could he have been bitten?