Lucille
Chapter
Forty-Three
Pain pierced through my fuzzy head. Then I slipped back into blissful darkness.
Sometime later, I woke to the mid-afternoon sun shining on a dark head resting beside my bed.
Ronen had changed out of his uniform and into a dark sweater and slacks. His head rested against his crossed arms at the edge of my mattress. The unusual sunlight struck the unruly strands falling across his forehead, bringing out hints of blue.
Warmed by the sight, I reached down and brushed his hair back. His golden eyes immediately blinked open.
“Hellion?” He sat up, scanning my face and body.
I felt fine—more than fine. Sam, or more likely Bree, had healed me.
“I…”
A heaviness descended as I remembered everything from the fight. It sank into my bones, settling there permanently. Valarus. Enora. Oliver’s foot. Rune’s.
“Is everyone okay?” I asked.
Ronen closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath before sitting back and opening them. “Yes, Hellion. Everyone is on the mend. Oliver had the worst of it. He might limp for a few days. Rune is healed. The rest of your squad and the Dreads had varying wounds, but nothing too serious.”
The rest of my squad. I picked at the blanket covering my chest. “Except Valarus and Enora.”
I decided to take them. And I got Valarus recycled, and I killed Enora.
“Casualties are part of war, Hellion.”
“And that makes it better?” I shifted to the edge of the healer’s bed.
His shadows skimmed his hands like a tempestuous second skin. “No. It makes it real. It makes every choice, down to the last detail, matter. It makes you question, reconsider, change”—he leaned forward, clasped hands brushing my knees—“rage.”
It did. Did I make the right calls? If I could go back and change Valarus’s or Enora’s fate, would I? Valarus’s, yes. Enora’s… I wasn’t sure. Her fear turned her. Ridigar’s words seduced her. I might’ve pulled the trigger, but she pointed the weapon.
Despite it all, the mission was a success. I was sorry Valarus recycled, that Zera most likely grieved, that the weight of her death felt more like guilt than sorrow, and… his fear.
I gently curled my hands around Ronen’s, feeling his anxiety as much as his rage. Tingles shot across my skin, stronger than before.
“I’m sorry for making you worry beyond all reason again,” I whispered.
He dropped his head forward, exposing the back of his tattooed neck. He battled with himself, his anger fluctuating before finally giving way to defeat.
“That was too close, Lucille,” he murmured against our joined hands.
“I know. But we did it.” I brushed his stubbled jaw. “Will you come back to me now?”
Will you let me see my favorite color? Get lost in their depths? Ground me as the world becomes more unsettling, more weighty, more impossible?
After a moment, Ronen lifted his golden gaze. One look. A soft, breathtaking sigh. Then he pulled me off the bed and onto his lap, clutching me close to his heart.
“We didn’t do it…” He paused, coming to terms with something. “You did, gorgeous.”
“Hell’s princess saved the day.” I huffed a weak laugh.
“Too close. Too fucking close,” Ronen whispered, almost to himself. “I won’t lose you. Not like that.”
I turned my face into his neck and stayed there for a moment, inhaling him. The addictive scent that had guided me in battle, that had kept me going.
“There’s a different way you plan to lose me?”
He held me tighter, and I felt… I froze. Everything. The incessant poking of his worry, his suffocating fear, an almost feral determination, and his utterly consuming, warm, radiant—
Tears stung my eyes.
“There’s no more block,” I breathed, saying it aloud as if the words would somehow change whatever reason he’d had for bringing it down.
“No,” he replied, just as soft and unsure.
I should let it go. Marvel at it. Pick apart every emotion, match it to every gesture, every facial twitch, every heartbeat. But…
“Lucille, I need to tell you something,” he said over my, “What changed? Why now?”
Alexei opened the patient room door, cutting off any response. “Did you tell her?”
“I told you to stay with Aspen and Oliver,” Ronen barked.
“Yeah, I know. I left MJ, Rune, and Hadrian with them. They’re protected.”
That answer pleased Ronen even less. I thought it’d prompt a response from the guardian bond. Instead, it opened one eye and then fell back asleep in its dark hole.
“Tell me what?” I pressed, removing myself from Ronen’s lap and cinching together the patient gown. Ronen snagged the front of the fabric, keeping me close as if he couldn’t help himself. I ignored what that did to my heart.
Alexei shut the door, and Ronen coated the walls in thick, black, undulating masses—an ominous but necessary soundproofing.
“We had Vanessa, one of the kitchen staff, watching your father.” He glanced at Ronen. “She seems better, by the way. That is, until she recounted her story about Sam. Then she became all confused and sweaty.”
Whoa. Hold up.
“Someone was spying on my father?”
“Yes.” Alexei paused and shot Ronen a solemn look, something silent passing between them.
“Just tell me!”
“There was a reason we were late to the battle,” Ronen admitted, his voice dark and grim. He explained what the spy told him and his conversation with my father. “Then he attacked me.”
“He attacked you?”
“We would’ve been there sooner if he hadn’t.” Ronen took my free hand. “I think your father’s been bitten.”
Sudden nausea hit my gut. Blood rushed from my head and away from my face.
“I knew it.”
“What?” Alexei demanded. “You knew he was bitten?”
“No.” I tugged my hand from Ronen and sank onto the bed. “I didn’t know. But I saw the blond male attack at my mother’s funeral. I never saw him sink his teeth into my father’s neck. I assumed. Then I confronted my father and he…”
My throat tightened.
“He essentially called me ignorant and blamed me for my mother’s death.”
“Beautiful.” Alexei sat beside me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders.
“I wasn’t sure,” I said weakly. “I didn’t know.”
First my mother, now my father? What did I ever do to the universe to deserve this?
“It’s okay,” Alexei assured me.
But it didn’t feel okay. My stomach churned, and I fought the urge to puke.
“Do we think he’s in league with Anya and Sam?”
Ronen dragged a hand down his face. “We don’t know. And Lucifer is no longer in the castle.”
If only I could find Anya, speak with her, figure out—
Heavenly Shit. It was like someone had cracked me over the head with a rock engraved with the word stupid.
Where do you go when you seek information?
She knew what I was capable of. She knew I’d come to her.
“Before we do anything, let me dream-walk to Anya.”
Ronen released a heavy breath. My resolve was unquestionable.
Alexei frowned. “The weird mind thing you do? Don’t you both need to be sleeping?”
I lay back on the scratchy bed and closed my eyes.
“No. Only she does, and I hope to hell she is.”
I squinted at my surroundings, holding up my hand to the sun. I was back at the park. The same city glinted through the trees in the distance, and the same light posts lined the cement path. Only this time, I wasn’t in my mom’s body.
“I could tone down the intensity. But being cooped up in a dungeon for years makes one miss the beating rays.” Anya’s voice came from behind me.
“So you were the one who gave my mother my amulet,” I said, turning.
“Yep. It was some of my best work.”
“And let me guess, you’re Lilith’s daughter and the blood-witch taking over Hell.”
Her long black hair, the way she held herself tall and proud, even her facial features resembled Lilith. I remembered thinking it the day of my mother’s funeral, but I chalked it up to grief and trauma. The second time, I’d been too focused on… jealousy.
Anya stepped forward, shoulders squared beneath her maroon designer trench coat. “Yes, I am Lilith’s daughter. No, I’m not the one trying to take over Hell.”
I refrained from digging my nails into my skin and showing her how distressed my next question made me. “You expect me to believe you escaped prison, had blood vials and a pentagram in your cell, and you’re not trying to take over Hell with Sam?”
She laughed. “The cute healer? Damn, she’s good. When I saw her plant the blood and draw our sigil, I saw my time was up. But I had been curious as to how she’d spin it.”
She?
“You’re lying. No other female of note entered the dungeons.
” At least not one with a key intent on planting evidence.
“You’re a blood-witch who knew of my powers, and you somehow knew I’d come to you, fabricating this story in advance.
” Although I wished with every fiber of my being there was some other she we could blame.
“I’ve seen whispers of your powers. Images and hints led me to an assumption. I had hoped I was right and that my note would pan out. I fabricated nothing.”
Seen whispers? Images?
“You’re a seer.”
“All blood-witches are to varying degrees.”
“Like your coven,” I accused.
She quirked a perfectly manicured brow. “If you’re insinuating that I’m a liar because I want to avenge my coven like my mother, then you’re wrong.
I left my coven a lifetime ago. I planned a coup to stop Lilith, even asked your mother for help, but she was carrying you and refused to allow Miriam’s prophecy to come true. ”
That lined up with my dream-walk to them. Unless…
She scrutinized me. “You believed me for a moment. What changed?”
I saw no consequences in lying to her. “I dream-walked to the moment you’re talking about. But if you’re a seer, you could know that and use it against me.”
Anya’s face scrunched in confusion. “Dream-walking and seeing are incompatible for us. They reject each other.”
“Miriam—”
She held up a hand, cutting me off. “I’m not talking about the Seraphim seer.
Angels are different. I’m talking about blood-witches.
After Lilith stole the Thrones’ powers, she struggled to use either.
That’s why she was so desperate to siphon angelic power and retrieve my sister Melanie from the angels. That’s what makes you dangerous.”
My stomach sank. My skin itched. Answers I needed but no longer wanted pierced the too-hot air, ramming into my eardrums.
“What did you just say?”
“Blood-witches can’t—”
“Her name.”
“Melanie.” Anya pursed her lips, tilting her head as she reconsidered me. “You figured it out too, then?”
My mind screamed at me not to ask. “Figured what out?”
Her expression softened with something close to sympathy. “Why the bite Lucifer received at Saraqael’s funeral didn’t affect him with the demonic strain?”
A pit of dread grew in my stomach. Because she didn’t look like someone about to take pleasure in her next reveal the way Lilith would. Instead, she appeared regretful.
“Why?” I whispered.
“Because he was infected with my sister’s soul.”
“What does that mean? Infected with your sister’s soul? Like the voice that talks through them?”
Anya slowly shook her head. “No. Like my sister’s soul is inside your father’s body and has been feeding on his essence since the moment he was bitten.”
It clicked into place then. That was who the Doors of Moirai showed—Lilith and her two daughters. Oliver’s adopted sister, the one he’d spent ninety-five years searching for since she’d been stolen, was eating my father from the inside out.
I ran to a patch of grass and heaved up my guts.
“After I had the vision of your father being bitten, I put together the pieces. Melanie figured out I knew. She’s always been a step ahead of me.
Her abilities make her the next best thing to Miriam.
So when I saw my death, I morphed into a mouse and hid in the dungeons until you all came to find me. Been hiding ever since.”
The mouse with the red streak.
The she Anya said planted the evidence. The person who had access to the dungeons. It wasn’t Sam. It was Melanie in my father’s body.
I puked again, sinking to my knees.
“Lucille?” Anya touched my shoulder.
“Is he dead?”
Anya hesitated, something heavy passing across her face. “If he’s not already, then he will be soon. There is no way to stop an anima feeding.”
I stared at the ground. The grass was so green, the sun so bright. I didn’t know what to do, say, or feel.
I was losing another parent. Oliver was losing his adopted sister again.
“Lucille.” Anya gripped my shoulders. “I understand this is a lot to take in. But Melanie is four steps ahead, and if we have any hope of beating her, we all need to work together—and not out there, in here. She can’t see us coming in a dream-walk.”
“Just give me some time.”
I had to clear Sam before Ronen and Alexei tortured him. I had to tell them what was really going on with my father. We still needed to talk about the Spinewalkers. I had to tell Oliver…
How did I manage all of this?
“I’ll be here tomorrow night. Oh, and I don’t know what it means, but I keep seeing symbols about a guide related to you. Maybe someone in your life who’s been helping you? They have an answer you need to help us stop Melanie.”
Her smug, self-assured words rang in my ear. Let’s call me your guide.
The only answer she had was about Praetervado. Was that how we stopped everything? Changing the past?
“Okay,” I said with fake vibrato. “Tomorrow night then.”
I pulled out of the dream-walk and gave myself a moment to rest inside my own head.
I couldn’t face Oliver yet. I needed time to process everything.
But how could I? Before the ground beneath me had even begun to stabilize, someone else ripped it away.
There was no chance to catch my breath, no space to heal before the next stab.
My father was dying—if not already dead. Another parent. Another loss.
I grieved the possibility of what he might’ve been, the version of him I’d only glimpsed a handful of times, when he’d shown something like care.
A sickening twist rolled through my stomach as I thought about what Melanie had done to his soul.
We might’ve had a rocky relationship, but he didn’t deserve that.
I didn’t want that for him. Nor did I want to prepare to tell my best friend a truth that might very well ruin him.
Oliver wasn’t losing Sam. He was losing Melanie all over again.