Chapter Twelve #2
Every single strand he fondled and shampooed was hacked off, and then shaved away with a lady’s razor.
I wanted to say I followed my act of defiance by glaring and cursing him out—telling him where to shove that spicy tofu—but I had long since flopped back on the sheets, quietly crying into the pillows.
How could it all end like this? I’d done the impossible and bargained my way into hell. I disguised as a man, scaled cliffs, tangled with imps, survived being burned at the stake, and when I finally had Dora back—when there finally looked to be a way out for both of us, it was all taken away.
It was true. Lucifer’s calls after Dora was gone, did nothing to prop up his cool, always-in-control act. How he knew what happened only an hour after, I didn’t bother to ask, but there wasn’t a single word of consolation, grief, or sorrow.
He shouted through the speakers at a wailing me that nothing had changed. That if I wanted out of hell, I’d better get him the power of the All Hallows, or I’d regret it. On and on he went as the splinter that lodged in my heart buried deeper.
Lucifer put paid to the idea that wisdom came with age. He was thousands of years old, but was too stupid to realize that his threats had no effect on me. I stopped caring about what happened to me when the dagger pierced my sister’s chest.
Or maybe wisdom had reached him by now. That’s why he stopped calling. Lucifer had finally realized that if I wasn’t getting out of hell, neither was he.
I slid down under the covers, hiding my face and blocking out Ronin and his shocked expression.
Through the covers I heard him snap his fingers, and then the clinking of the tray. The bed dipped when he set it down on the dresser beside me.
“It’s alright,” he said. “I understand why you did it.”
A weight settled on my thigh and I burned, itching to peel off the skin where he touched me, even though it was only through the sheet.
“But when’s all this going to end, Hunter? I mean, look at you. Your hair is in a pile on the bathroom floor, and you can barely get out of bed,” he said. “What’s the point of a sister—”
I went deathly still.
“—if they cause you this much pain when they’re gone.” He patted the frozen lump that was me. “If anything, you should be happy. I told you that the pure soul spell assures you’ll go to heaven when you die, so right now, she’s in a much better place. Adora is—”
“Don’t you dare!” I roared up, tossing the blanket and him off. “Don’t you dare say her name, you evil bastard!”
If I thought that would startle him, I was disappointed. “Good, you’re up,” he said mildly. “Have something to eat now.”
Ronin picked up the tray and fork and turned to me.
I snatched the plate from him and smashed it against the headboard, showering the bed in shards and tofu.
“What is wrong with you? I know you’re not like this because you’re a demon.
I know you feel all the same emotions mortals do,” I flung.
“You’re an empty, dead-inside shitstain because you choose to be! ”
Ronin was expressionless. “I’m just looking out for you, Charlotte. I’m protecting you like you asked me to.”
“I never asked for this!” I was trying to scream, but my throat was wrecked from weeks of crying and my voice was half gone from the same weeks of disuse.
All I could manage was a raspy croak, but even so, everything that had been pushed down by my grief and depression was finally bubbling to the surface.
“You know that I did all of this for Dora. I risked everything to protect her! And you took her away from me because you were jealous!”
I scoffed, shaking my head. “All your bullshit about love being poison and getting in the way is just that.” My lips burned with every word I spat at him.
“You saw my love for Dora was real, and you hated it... because you wanted me to love you and only you. You wanted to be the person I put first above everyone else.”
Ronin stared at me, teeth clenching as a tsunami of emotions warred in his eyes. “I did you a favor—”
“Stop saying that! You did what you wanted, and nothing else!”
“She’s in heaven now—”
“But she should’ve been in Johns Hopkins!” A river ran down my face. “She’s supposed to be at college with her friends! She’s supposed to be drinking all night, and then rolling into class with bed head and a hangover the next morning.
“She’s supposed to be doing her residency in a hospital in New York so that we could meet up on her lunch break.
She’s supposed to live in an apartment with too many roommates with too little closet space.
She should’ve been saying she’s too busy to date while flirting and dropping hints to the hot doc in her hospital!
Dora had her whole life ahead of her, and you took it away! ”
“I didn’t take it away, she was already dead!” Ronin exploded, his calm mask in tatters.
“Lucifer was going to give her her soul back—”
“No, he wasn’t!” Ronin grabbed me shoulders, his eyes huge and beseeching.
“Dammit, Charlotte, he was lying! Why do you think human souls are so precious? So valuable? Because you can’t get them fucking back after you’ve lost it!
” All the emotions he was tamping down and hiding over the last weeks bubbled to the surface as Ronin grew more ragged and haggard before my eyes. “He. Was. Lying.
“He was saying whatever you wanted to hear to get you to make him the All Hallows, because not even a god can resurrect a mortal soul! And once he’s a god, why would he fucking care?
” His words were bullets shot from his lips, shredding me open.
“Why would he hold himself to a piddling little contractless deal he made with a powerless mortal?
“He was never going to bring her back, Charlotte.” His fingers dug into my shoulder. “I didn’t take your sister from you. I just stopped you clinging to her corpse!”
“Agh!” I screamed, shoving him away. I didn’t want to hear this. Ronin didn’t get to do this. He didn’t get to keep justifying himself. He didn’t get to keep believing he did me a favor! “Just get out! I never want to see you again. I want nothing to do with you!”
“Why are you being like this!” Ronin flung himself back. “Just because you don’t want to accept that doing things your way would’ve ended in both of you fucking dead, doesn’t mean I’m an evil bastard for not playing along with your delusions!”
“I didn’t ask you to play along! I asked—hic hic,” I cried. “I asked you to protect my sister.”
His eyes were hard. “I never cared about your sister,” Ronin dropped on my head like a brick. “I only ever wanted to protect you.”
“Why!”
“Because!” he bellowed back. “Because I— Because you—” His eyes bugged, face reddening as he stumbled over the words.
“Because it’s you! Because when you laugh, sirens cut and bash themselves against the rocks just to get closer to the sound.
And when you smile, your eyes light up like oblivion gemstones—perilous to the sight but impossible to resist. Your cheeks dimple and your nose wrinkles so cutely, so perfectly, that whenever I see it, I know I’m a fraud because the most beautiful creature in all existence with the power to make men fall to their knees with a mere look in her eyes... is you.”
I could only gape at him. “What the hell are you blathering about!”
“Your smile,” Ronin hissed, reaching for me. “It’s unlike any other. The first time I saw it I knew, I wanted it—and you—for myself.”
A niggle of something broke through the pain and grief.
Rage.
“Are you kidding me?” My voice was low—dangerous. “So everything you’ve done... lying to me, siccing those demons on me, tricking me into the sub bond, drugging me, forcing yourself on me, and ordering me to murder my sister! All of that was because you were obsessed with seeing me smile?!”
“Why not?” Ronin dared to shrug. “You were obsessed with that sister of yours because you were spat out of the same woman. Why is my reason for loving you worth less than yours?”
I rocked back, truly stunned. “L-love? Have you gone mad?” My voice shook. “You don’t love me.”
“I do. I put you first. That’s what you said love was.” He stroked my cheek. “I saved you.”
I slapped his hand away, and agony swelled in mine. I doubled over, biting back screams as I collapsed on the bed of silk, tofu, and shards.
“I know it’s hard for you right now.” Ronin’s words, his voice, his awfulness, his obsessive psychosis clung to every inch of me—suffocating me. “But you’ll see that everything I did was for you. It was all to make you smile again.”
Loud, hiccupping sobs slowed. “N-no, Ronin,” I rasped, my hand closing on a jagged shard of bone china. “It’s you who doesn’t see”—I shoved up, pressing the shard against his throat—“that you’ve ruined everything.
“It’s over now,” I whispered. “I can never love you now.”
“Charlotte, put that down. Even if you wanted to kill me, the sub bond wouldn’t let you, but it will punish you horribly for trying!”
I barely heard him. “You did this,” I choked out, strangled by the terrible things he’d done in the name of loving me. “Because of you, I’ll never smile again.”
“Hunter! Put it—!”
Grabbing my lips, I swung.
“Nooo! Charlotte!”
I shook—body spasming as I stared uncomprehendingly at the two pieces of me lying on my palm. It was strange, but I didn’t feel pain as rivers of blood ran down my chin, neck, and soaked my dress.
I didn’t feel anything.
“Charlotte!”
I couldn’t do that anymore.
I DON’T REMEMBER WHAT happened after I passed out. I just know that when I woke up, Ronin wasn’t there.
I lay on the bed, slowly taking stock. Someone had changed the sheets, and me. Gone were the blood-soaked slip and duvet.
Blood-soaked? My hand flew up, probing my mouth. Two full, dry lips pressed back.
They’re still there. Did I imagine that? Was it all an awful hallucination?
“Yeah, you got your lips back, you psycho.”
I jumped, nearly falling out of bed as Raven rose from the armchair. It was then I noticed the chains and shackles were gone.