Chapter Seventeen #2
“Alright,” she said with a deep sigh. “I know you have questions. Let’s hear them.”
That qualified as her coming to me, right?
I crossed my arms. “What was all that back there?”
She didn’t immediately answer. Guess I could ask my questions. But no one said she had to answer them.
I pressed a little harder, careful to keep my tone calm and level.
“You’ve been showing a lot of new tricks lately.
The wings, your new sword, the dragon. Now this.
” I flung a hand toward the closed door.
“I’ve seen your shadow powers, Lily. Whatever that was back there, that wasn’t them.
That was something else entirely. Please talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”
She looked up at me then, just long enough for me to catch the flicker in her eyes. Not fear. Resignation. After a deep sigh, her shoulders slumped.
“It all began when I raised them,” she said at last.
Them. Her army.
I crossed the floor and sat beside her on the stone bed.
She scrubbed her hands down her face. “Levi told me to go deeper into my magic. So I did. I went deeper than I’ve ever gone before. Past the fire, past the shadows, until I found it.”
“Found what?”
“I don’t really know. The source of my magic? Levi told me it was like a well. But to me, it looks like a forest. Endless and alive. At first, it was beautiful. And then…”
I folded my hands in my lap when she didn’t immediately continue speaking. Anything to keep me from reaching out to her.
“I found my essence,” she said. “My soul. It was this wondrous light. So bright. I was staring at it and thought, what if I could use it to fuse my people’s souls to their bodies?
What if I could do this without having to harm you or Calyx?
What if I was strong enough to be the creator and the source of their lives?
But when I touched it…” She shuddered. “I awoke something in me. This blackness that rose from the deepest part of me. It tainted all that light. Then it came after me. And—” She took another deep breath.
“It did something. Possessed me, invaded me, I don’t even know.
But it poured itself into me like tar down my throat. ”
Every muscle in my body went rigid.
She’d told me she was fine. So, she’d lied. Or maybe she’d just wanted to believe her own lie. Either way, the truth was worse than anything I’d imagined. While I wanted to shake the foolishness out of her, I held still, remembering Eliza’s words about remaining calm and not showing judgment.
She ran a thumb absently over her knuckles as she spoke.
“I didn’t say anything about it because when I woke, everything was fine.
And I started to wonder if I’d imagined it.
If I was losing my mind. Then we fought the dragon, and those wings just appeared on my back, as though my shadows knew exactly what they needed to do. I assumed my power was growing.”
I thought back to that day, recalling the sight of her soaring high above the dragon before punching down and slamming her blade right through its skull. That wasn’t an image that I would forget anytime soon.
“And when you merged your soldiers’ souls with their bodies?”
“It was almost…easy,” she whispered. “But that night—” She swallowed. “I had the nightmare.”
Slowly, the puzzle pieces all started to come together. I remembered the sound of her cries, the way she thrashed in our bedroll, how she’d shoved me away after waking.
“The darkness came after me there too. It trapped me, held me down, and…” She sighed.
“You woke me from the nightmare, but that night, I threw up. I’ve never done that before, but I know what it is.
I’ve been around sick humans. Except, it wasn’t like what humans do.
What came out of me was black tar. Thick as oil. ”
I jerked back and stared at her. God, there was so much she’d kept from me. “Nothing came out of you,” I said, grateful my tone came out reassuring and not angry. Inside, though, I was vibrating with it.
She winced. “Yes, it did. You just didn’t see it. At first, I thought my mind was playing tricks on me again. That I’d exhausted myself and was imagining things. But it happened. I know it did. It has something to do with the darkness spreading through me.”
Well, that sounded ominous. I needed more information before I could figure this out.
“Since then, everything’s been easier. Almost frightfully easy,” she said.
“Calling my shadows, wielding fire, shaping Hell’s resources to whatever I need, stopping the pestilence.
Those corpses out there—I can feel them.
Calling to me to resurrect them. And I feel…
I feel…” She fell quiet and closed her eyes.
I leaned in, steadying my voice so she wouldn’t hear the dread clawing through me. “What do you feel?”
“Powerful. Angry. Conflicted.” Her eyes—thankfully once again her sharp and celestial blues—locked on mine. “When I was staring at all the dead hellspawn, I couldn’t help but think how easy it would be to bring them back, to force them to fight for me. If they refused, I would just…kill them.”
That stopped me cold. Lily was never that heartless. She would never force anyone—hellspawn or human—to fight for her, and killing simply because someone told her no? That sounded more like Lucifer’s way of thinking.
“The power is exhausting but intoxicating, Rath,” she whispered. Her words made my blood run cold. “It feels good when I use it. Makes me think I can do anything. Like I can make anyone do what I want.”
I tried not to let the horror show on my face. It terrified me that she was starting to sound less like the celestial I loved and more like the devil we were trying to kill.
Desperation ripped at my chest as I wondered how close we were to the nearest gate. I wanted to take her away from here, hide her somewhere on Earth, far from this cursed realm and her father. Anything to protect her. Anything to keep the darkness from spreading further.
But I couldn’t overreact. Couldn’t let her see how afraid I was. I had to stay calm and support her through this. Then I had to find a way to save her—because I refused to lose her to this disease.
I cleared my throat. “Why didn’t you tell me about any of this?”
“Because I didn’t want to scare you. And I didn’t want anyone to look at me the way you’re looking at me right now.”
Shit. So my expression had betrayed me. I wiped it clean, smothering every flicker of emotion before she could read more.
“Do you know what it is?” I asked.
Her tongue darted across her lips, and she leaned back, eyes drifting toward the broken ceiling. “I think it’s the darkness that Levi always said lived within me. The part that came from Lucifer. And my essence—the light—comes from Sofiel. From my mother. They’re at war inside me.”
She didn’t need to finish that sentence for me to know what she would have said. The darkness was winning. Because darkness was a tempting, evil thing.
“It’s strong. And it’s mine,” she continued.
Not an encouraging thing to hear her say. I took a moment to process all this.
“Say something,” she begged. “Promise me this won’t break us.”
Nothing would ever break us. I caught her hand, brought it to my lips, and kissed her knuckles before lowering both our hands to my lap.
“You can’t hide this from me anymore. If we’re going to do this, then we do it together.
That means I need to know when something like this happens.
I told you I’m not scared of your darkness. I meant it.”
Relief smoothed her expression.
“But we also need to keep this between us, alright?” I said.
Her relief turned to a deep frown.
“The last thing I need is Eliza plotting a dozen ways to bury a dagger in your side because she thinks you’ve gone dark. Right now, she thinks you’re suffering from PTSD.”
Lily’s eyes widened.
“Let her keep thinking that,” I said flatly. It was safer. “You love her, and I would hate to have to kill her to protect you. Promise me.”
She hesitated but finally nodded.
“You need to rest,” I said. “You’re spent.”
Fear instantly flashed across her face. “What if—”
“I’ll be here,” I said, my voice steel. “If the darkness comes, I’ll drag you back. I’ll always drag you back.”
A weak smile crossed her face before she leaned in and kissed me—slow, tender, a ghost of her usual heat. I cupped the back of her head and pulled her toward me, kissing her forehead.
“Sleep. I’m not going anywhere.”
She eased down onto the stone bed. I found a thin blanket crumpled in the corner—compliments of the last resident—and draped it over her. Her eyes had already started to close by the time I brushed a stray lock of hair from her face.
I sat there and listened as her breathing evened out while contemplating everything she’d said and done.
She’d taken control of Miriel’s pestilence and shoved it into the ground like it was nothing.
She was stronger now than I had ever known her to be, and yet more vulnerable than ever.
All I could think about was the darkness poisoning her from the inside out. The part of her I couldn’t fight.
She was mine to protect, but this was one instance where I didn’t know how. I couldn’t show her that fear, though. If she saw how worried I was, it would undo her.
So, I did the only thing I could. I sat and kept watch. All the while knowing the darkness that lived within her hadn’t finished with her yet.