Midnight
I wake in the medical ward. The heady concoction of herbs, frazzled magic and neurotic nurses fills my nose. My mind is foggy, like I dreamt all night and should remember, but I don’t. My thoughts are thick and glued to the inside of my skull, no longer pliable or malleable.
It’s clean and bright in here. A sharp contrast to the perpetual heaviness outside. Through the window, the campus is shrouded in a dingy mist. Even the bricks shaded by dark ivy on the next building are hard to see from here.
This room is startling with its fluorescent lighting and white walls. I wince against the glare and roll over in bed.
Lucy.
A sharp lance stabs at my ribs.
Now the Veil is closed, the fact she’s gone hits me so hard, I curl my knees into my chest and roar.
My cries come so thick and fast I drown in them and soak my pillow.
The sadness melts and reforms hotter and angrier.
I writhe and kick in the sheets, my fists balled.
Nails cut into my palms. The pain doesn’t bring her back and it doesn’t erase what she did.
I kick the bed railing but all it does is make a shooting pain blaze up my foot.
Nothing stops the squeezing in my chest, the suffocation.
Can’t breathe.
There’s no oxygen in here. I frantically pluck and yank at my nightgown. It rips in several places. I must look like a crazed woman half cut on a cocktail of magical drugs.
I don’t care.
My body burns with a deep, bone-aching devastation.
Feet pad into the room. “She’s awake,” Bastien says. “Oh… oh shit, Lex…?”
She appears at his side. They both stand there, soft eyes and downward smiles.
“She m—made me reap her,” I say.
Bastien glances at Lex and then strides over to the bed, climbing in at my back and tugging me to his chest. Lex climbs in the other side and snuggles into my front.
There’s nothing either of them can say. They hold me and let me cry and seethe and rant and whimper and curse until there’s nothing left but the ruins of my heart and an exhaustion that wracks my entire body.
What am I supposed to feel? I was in love with her, and she made me take her life when I would have laid mine down for her.
How could she do that to me?
“She gave me her magic—that only happens when a demon loves a mortal,” I breath into Lex’s braids.
Bastien’s fingers stroke down my arm in a soothing motion, so I continue.
“But if she loved me, why would she make me do that to her?” My lids grow heavy, my blinks longer.
“She had to have a reason,” Lex says, snuggling closer to me.
“It must have been the only way,” Bastien says.
“I don’t believe that. She gave up. They always give up,” I say, my tone hardening, even as sleep sneaks up on me and tugs me under.
“Not all of them,” Bastien says.
“All the ones I pick do. Maybe it’s fate telling me to quit on love.”
“I don’t believe that,” Lex says.
But I don’t hear what they say next because I slip into dreams.
When I wake, my bed is empty. Lex and Bastien must have gone back to the apartment or to help clean up campus. I have to find Ignatius, he owes me answers. Though that thought stops me because I also owe Ignatius a debt… one that I haven’t paid.
Maybe I should just leave. Run and hope he is too preoccupied to find me.
He might let me go for a while, maybe even let me have a few happy weeks. But he’ll come eventually and any time I manage to steal will be a lie.
No, I’m staying. If for no other reason than to find out why Lucy forced me to kill her.
What did Ignatius say? Interitus will have more to deal with than she realises. She’ll be… she can handle herself, I assure you…
I stand ready to demand—politely—answers from him, but I collapse on the floor.
Shit, my mind is clearly more ready than my magic-drained body. Blood erupts from my nose, gushing over the floor. Thick metallic liquid fills my throat and clogs my airway. I cough, and it pools in my mouth, lining my teeth with a tang that I’m sure serves to make me look more deranged.
I try and fail to stand, so I sigh and crawl along the floor, through the claret, smearing it with my knees. My body wants to work but now that I’m not in the midst of a battle and pumped with adrenaline, it’s struggling. It feels heavier than before—the demon magic, maybe?
“LET ME IN THERE.” Ignatius’s voice booms from the corridor.
I hesitate and glance at the doorway to the medical wing.
There’s a window and through it I can make out the figure of a nurse.
The voices rise but he doesn’t come in. I’m assuming the nurse must be taking her life in her hands and refusing to let him pass.
We’re long past my reaping, so is he coming for me even after I helped him in the battle?
“If you don’t let me in—” he shifts into a sickening, sweet tone, “Arcadius, Chancellor. Good evening.”
Ignatius’s shadow slithers back as Chancellor Arcadius’s enormous frame swings into view.
I retreat, moving faster than before despite the spasms in my muscles.
I am not getting caught, so I draw on every ounce of strength I have left and haul myself back into bed and under the covers as the door swings open.
It slams against the wall, making me jump.
I close my eyes, pretend to be asleep or unconscious or whatever I need to, to not call attention to myself.
I open my lids a millimetre.
“OUT,” Arcadius booms at the nurse.
“Sir, I implore you. Please move to an alternate room, we have a patient in here that needs to sleep in order to recover.”
I don’t know what Arcadius does, but the room goes icy cold. I tug the duvet up under my chin, praying no one hears the rustle of fabric. The door clicks shut. I assume the nurse valued her life more than her patient’s and left.
Honestly? Same, hun. Same. If I could have run, I would have.
“You’re going to explain,” Arcadius says. It is not a question. His words are cold and potent with a fury that makes me shiver. I clench my teeth to stop myself trembling.
Ignatius clears his throat, feigning an innocence even I don’t buy. “Explain what, Chancellor?”
Arcadius’s laughter is a dark and violent blanket smothering the room. A hollow thud like the crash of a body against a wall echoes out. Metal clatters, and tools skitter to the floor. My blood chills to the same icy temperature as the room. What is going on?
Arcadius practically growls. “Don’t try my patience.
You better have an explanation, Ignatius.
She sent the biggest swarm of moths the city has seen into the heart of Ora.
In one fucking vision, she erased the last forty years of vilification.
Your failure made her a fucking pariah. You better have a decent explanation. ”
Ignatius groans. Fabric slides against itself as he stands. I roll as quietly as I can onto my side to get a view of the pair of them and slowly open my eyes another millimetre. If I keep them shut tight enough to appear like I’m asleep, hopefully they won’t know I’m watching.
Arcadius looms over Ignatius. It takes everything I have not to gasp. Ignatius has always been this imposing presence in my life, terrifying and vicious. But watching him cower under Arcadius changes that. He seems small.
“I lied, Chancellor. For that, I’m sorry.”
“Why?” Arcadius spits through gritted teeth.
“The same reason you would have. Power and status. After the angels left, I saw an opportunity. Especially given the Architecti massacre. But she, erm… she was meant to stay trapped, and we were meant to rule the mortal plain.”
“Well, clearly, she didn’t stay trapped, did she.”
“It appears not.”
Bad move. Read the room Ignatius, Arcadius is not in the mood for sarcasm. He grips Ignatius’s neck and slams him into the wall.
Ignatius’s expression morphs. There’s only so much a demon with an ego that big will tolerate. Lines of darkness etch into his features. He’s either about to switch this up and steal the power from Arcadius or he’s about to get murdered.
Not to be a douche, but I am hoping for the latter.
“Don’t fuck with me, Ignatius. I want to know how she got out.”
“L-Lucy,” Ignatius chokes, his face turning a delightful shade of purple. And I get that I shouldn’t like it, but… I’m a pitiful human and revenge is always a delight.
“What use would it be telling the city that I trapped Architecti? We’d live on edge. In a state of always waiting for her to escape. That is not how you control a population.”
“How about giving the archdevil the heads up? At least that way I could protect us from a homicidal fallen angel hell-bent on trying to take over celestial and demonic kind.”
“She’s a homicidal psychopath? No. That’s not… Did you not see the vision? It was Interitus all along.”
“I don’t give a fuck which angel it was. I want our dominion over this realm and the underworld secured.”
Ignatius scoffs. “You don’t give a shit about the demons or the humans. You started this eons ago when you waged war against the angels. Hundreds of humans and demons alike died while you were busy war-mongering in the name of contract law.”
There’s a growling, hissing sound and the room grows colder still. I have to ram my teeth against each other to stop myself shivering.
“And you’d prefer what? A celestial leader? A whimsical city with no contract rule and no order? Filthy humans running around deciding their own fates? No way to bind them into contracts? How the hell do you think that’s going to go for demonkind, hmm?”
“I…” Ignatius starts but Arcadius cuts him off.
“Under this grand regime, how do you propose we get magic?”
Ignatius remains silent, the best move he’s made all day.
Arcadius doesn’t wait for him to formulate a thought. He continues his tirade. “We’d be cut off. You would be responsible for the destruction of our entire species. Or do a few measly human souls lost in a war mean more to you than the survival of our race?”
Ignatius shoves Arcadius off him. “Of course not.”
“As I thought. Now where is she? Do we have soldiers hunting her?” Arcadius says.