20. Midnight
Midnight
We fuck until our lips are swollen and our tongues sore. We fuck until moonlight turns to watery gold and the morning mist greets the dawn birds. We fuck until our throats ache from moans and our fingers cramp from thrusting.
Despite the anger, the resentment and the hurt, my arms find their way around her waist, and I tug her to me.
That’s where, satiated, we fall asleep.
A tangle of fingers and bodies and hot, sweaty limbs. It might just be the most peaceful sleep I’ve ever had.
Maybe it’s her magic feeling like its owner has returned. Maybe it’s the fact that I saved her. She’s alive and with me, and no matter how furious I am with her for what she did to me, I still want her.
I need her warm caress to wake me every morning for the rest of my life.
Her brilliant mind filled with intricate facts about contracts and demon lore or bloody moths. I want my life filled with her smile and her laugh, and more than anything, her love.
Which is why I dread what today will bring. It won’t be long before Ignatius realises we’re back and comes to collect his debt.
I’m exhausted this morning, wearier than I’ve ever felt. It’s more than just tiredness, it’s like I’m sick, only I don’t have a runny nose, I’m not coughing and I can’t identify a source, as such. But it’s there.
It must be guilt.
I bury my face in the pillow, furious for making the deal in the first place. Lucy’s dark locks are strewn over her shoulders and face.
So peaceful.
So beautiful.
So mine.
I roll closer, squeezing our bodies together, inhaling the scent of her and thanking the seven devils for a few more moments of blissful ignorance.
She’s the kind of warm filled with winter fires and cosy blankets, hot chocolate and mittens and lazy Sunday mornings. A warmth I want to drown in.
I watch her for a while and find myself smiling the entire time. I need to get a grip, it’s just that most people are ugly when they sleep. Mouths hanging loose like a drunk wraith, garbled snores like they’re trying to tear the Veil themselves.
Despite my glorious view, an ever-present weight sits at the back of my mind. A persistent drum beat reminder of the shitty fucking choices I’ve made.
I run my thumb over the inside of her elbow. It’s not that I want to wake her, but I need to tell her what I’ve done before Ignatius discovers we’re back. And then pray that she understands the choice I made. But more than anything, that it’s not permanent. That I will find a way out of this.
She yawns and squirms at the soft touch, nuzzling her backside closer into me.
“I could stay here for the rest of my life,” I whisper into her neck.
“Then do.”
But I can’t.
She doesn’t know that yet, but I do. Ignatius didn’t give me a choice, not really. If I’d refused him, I’d be dead by now and she would have been lost to me. At least this way, I have a chance and the time to find a way out of this.
Because that’s the truth, isn’t it? The thing I can’t say out loud is that I was furious. Lucy had broken me and he offered me a way out and I took it. I told myself I’d find a way to undo this, but the truth is that in the moment, I didn’t really care what happened to her.
The bedroom door slams against the wall and I about shit my pants.
“Fucksake, Lex, I nearly pissed myself,” I whine, pulling the cover higher over my head.
“Oh, do stop moaning. I brought you two love birds tea up from our apartment.”
She drops two mugs on the bedside table but makes no move to leave.
“Can I help you?” I ask as she sits on the end of the bed and makes herself comfortable.
She shrugs. “I was just wondering whether we should make a plan.”
Lucy stirs and reaches for her mug of tea.
“Architecti said she’s going to help me control my magic.
But aside from that, I’m assuming I need to leave campus.
Not least because of Interitus, but then there’s my father, who will eventually find out I’m here and I’m not sure I’m ready to deal with that. ”
Lex freezes, her eyes slide from Lucy to me. I have to suppress the urge to scream. I give her the subtlest shake of my head.
Not now.
The front door bangs three times and I leap out of my skin, my blood turning to ice. I know it’s him.
Lucy’s expression falls, a slow frown drifting across her features.
I’m going to be sick. I haven’t told her. I was about to tell her.
“I’ll go,” Lex says and I hear her muffled warnings to Bastien.
“Fuck,” I hiss, panic dripping into my fingers, making my extremities tingle like pins and needles.
“Do you trust me?” I ask.
“Of course,” she says.
“That trust is going to be pushed to the extreme. But I promise you, it’s not what it seems.”
There’s no time to explain what I did. Nor the fact I have no intention of leaving her to her father. Lex must unlock the door on her way out, because it swings open, clatters against the wall with a thud and reverberates through my entire body.
“What’s going on?” Lucy says, her eyes wide as she gathers her clothes.
“I can explain,” I say, my fists opening and clamping at my sides. I yank my boxers and a tee on to cover my modesty. Her expression narrows as she pulls on her last item of clothing.
The bedroom door slams open, knocking a bottle of perfume perched on a chest of drawers onto the floor.
She glances from the cracked bottle spilling potent liquid into the air to the towering figure in the doorway.
“Father,” she says and visibly recoils, shuffling away from him.
“Time’s up, Midnight.”
I shift, my entire body uncomfortable and aching to explain. Confusion draws Lucy’s eyes tight. It sweeps like a wave down her face, washing all the warmth away, eroding it like the ocean does the shore. Almost as if it were never really there at all.
Oh gods, I can’t do this. Not again. As Lucy drags her gaze from Ignatius to me, my heart stutters.
“What have you done, Midnight?” she says, her words breathy and rapid.
I can’t bring myself to look at her. Anything I say isn’t going to be a good enough explanation in the heat of the moment. It’s why I wanted to explain before. I need more time to explain.
“You’re not reaping her,” Lucy says, pinning her shoulders back and taking a bold step forward.
Oh gods, she’s defending me. My shoulders sag. Bile claws up my throat, my stomach twisting into a vicious knot.
I want to be sick. A carnal urge to scour my skin from my body itches through my fingers.
“Reap Midnight?” Ignatius scoffs.
Lucy hesitates, glancing between the two of us. Her head tilts, the furrow in her brow deepening.
I can’t look. I can’t breathe.
“What’s… What’s he talking about? If he’s not here because your time is up, what’s he talking about…”
She stumbles her way through her question. Confusion etched into the rhythm of her sentence.
Her head shakes, as if she’s trying to clear her thoughts. Ignatius slinks across the room towards her.
She scrambles away, putting the bed between her and ignatius.
“Midnight…” she breathes, her chest rising and falling fast. “What is going on?”
But what can I say? I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
Not the explanation that I made the deal to save myself because I was furious with her, that she broke my heart and I had nothing left, nor the fact Ignatius gave me no choice.
The truth is right there, nestled against the back of my teeth.
I can feel it.
The deal as well as the panic and my angry agreement.
And the slow realisation that I’d made a mistake but convinced myself I had time to fix this.
Something shifts.
A door slams shut somewhere deep in my chest.
I can’t tell her.
At least, not with him standing there.
If I tell her the truth, that I made the deal when I was at my most vulnerable and furious with her and hated myself after, then Ignatius will realise I never meant it. He’ll know I was always going to betray him. And if he knows that, I have nothing. No leverage, no time, no plan.
Another slam.
Another shift.
Another door closes and this one hurts. My hand moves to rub my sternum. It doesn’t dissipate the pain.
The only way to buy us insurance is if he believes I sold her willingly.
I have to use what she did to me, the devastation she wrought when she forced me to my knees and put my scythe in my hand.
I need to use it all and let it come out of my mouth like I mean it.
The worst part? There’s a piece of me that does.
My tongue sours and my chest clamps so tight I fear I’ll never draw another breath. I don’t want to do this. I’d rather scrub sandpaper over my arms and erase the thought from my head.
But as the silence stretches across the room, it wraps me like a straitjacket. Suffocating me with the awful realisation.
I have to break her heart the way she broke mine, and I have to make it convincing so that Ignatius believes me too.
Ignatius’s eyes land on me. Scanning. Assessing.
Evaluating. That devil has known me a decade, he can smell a play.
What comes out next has to be real enough to convince him even more than Lucy.
Or this is over. If there’s one thing I know about Ignatius, it’s that he betrayed his daughter for his own means.
I am meaningless to him. If he’s willing to buy her soul, he’ll reap me right here if he smells foul play, regardless of the deal we made.
But if he believes me, I get to live, and that buys me time to fight for Lucy.
So I stop trying to build a lie and let myself feel everything she did to me.
The cobbles beneath my knees.
The bony scythe against my fingers.
The tug and pull of her soul freeing from her body.
I remember the way she looked me in my eyes and forced my hand.
And she never once asked me if I was going to be okay.
Rage and heat and a trembling furnace slam into me so fast I stagger back.
I fix my eyes somewhere beyond her shoulders. I can’t look at her directly. I’m too mad, too broken.
I shrug at her.
One small movement that topples the last year and costs me everything.
It’s like tearing my heart in two as I level my gaze on Lucy. “The woman I loved made me reap her soul. If you think a quick fuck could fix that, mend the devastation you caused, you’re sorely mistaken.”
Ignatius’s sneer burns its way into my heart. My chest sears like the heat of a barren valley; dry, hot and utterly bereft of anything.
I want to rip my ribs open and hand her stupid fucking demon magic back so she can save herself. But I can’t do any of those things, because if Ignatius doesn’t free me, I can’t do anything to free her.
Her expression falters.
It hurts.
I bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself falling to my knees and begging for forgiveness. I bite so hard I taste iron.
Despite my eyes stinging, I keep them fixed on the point beyond her body. I have to or my features will melt. I need them icy enough I can suppress the hurt, until all that remains is cold, hard rage.
Lucy staggers back and hits the wall. “No,” she says, but it’s more of a plea. A desperate prayer for this to be a lie.
In the end, it’s not me who falls to my knees, it’s her.
And that is so much worse.
It’s only now I realise nothing Ignatius could do to me would be worse than this.
There is no greater torture than watching devastation I wrought tear the woman I love apart.
My fists ball at my sides, my nails digging half-moons into my palms.
“Oh, Midnight didn’t tell you?” Ignatius drawls.
And this is it.
The moment Ignatius destroys any chance of winning her back.
He smiles, flicks dust off his jacket. “She sold you to save her soul.”
She shakes her head once.
A movement that shatters my heart.
She sucks a tiny breath in that feels like a stiletto between my ribs. It destroys everything that happened just hours ago.
Every promise and kiss and whisper of love.
All of it crumbles before me.
And I know as she stares at me, two tears sliding down each of her cheeks, that there’s no coming back from this.
I cannot win her back, even if I free her.
Because for each millimetre her tears fall, her expression morphs.
The devastation twists and buckles. It gnarls and bloats into something ugly and sinister.
Her features grow darker, angrier and far more wrathful.
Slowly, she turns to me and the expression she gives me makes me want to die.
The light dims in her eyes, and in the space of one blink…
One beat.
One breath.
Our connection severs.
She’s no longer looking at me, but through me.
And I know—in the same way that I know this will all end with Ignatius reaping me—that Lucy will never forgive me.