Chapter 14 #2
“Adam mistakenly thought a woman created from a piece of him would be less willful, more subservient. After casting Lilith aside, he soon learned that he wasn’t destined to find obedience.”
“Eve ate the apple,” Kingston whispered to Lilith, who glared at him.
“She was starving! I did her a kindness!” Lucifer flung up his hands in frustration and then took a long breath. “I took Lilith in, gave her a place with me and the rest of the outcasts. I loved her in the best way I knew how at the time.”
Lilith snorted.
“What? It’s true,” he insisted.
“According to you.”
“Well, it’s my truth. I did offer to let you do the talking, Lilith, but you refused, so now you’ll sit there and let me tell my story.”
Merri squirmed in her seat. “This is so fucking uncomfortable.”
For a second I thought she meant the chair, but then I realized she was basically getting a debrief of her new mate’s first love . . . who just happened to be her relative. Awkwaaard.
“What Lucifer is leaving out is his philandering ways. He did the same thing as Adam. Tossed me aside for the new shiny toy. He seduced her into eating the fruit from the precious tree of knowledge of good and evil.”
“So many ofs in that sentence,” Remi muttered.
“I did do that. She deserved to know what life would be like out from under Adam’s thumb. I am a feminist. The first, in fact.”
“You are so full of shit,” Lilith huffed.
“Be that as it may, the facts are the facts. Eve was hungry, I provided her with a solution.”
“And your cock.”
“Yes, well. We all make mistakes.”
Lilith shook her head while Merri looked like she was two seconds from running out of the room. Catching Chaos’s eye, I gestured with my head for him to go to her. She needed caring for, stat.
“Just get on with it, Lucifer,” Lilith said, inspecting her nails. “No one cares about the postmortem of our travesty of a relationship.”
“Not true. If there was popcorn, I’d be gobbling it down,” Remi muttered.
“Lilith was so incensed, so thrown into a rage, she stole every piece of fruit and every branch from the tree. I’m surprised she didn’t burn it to the ground, honestly.”
“It wasn’t the tree I wanted to punish.”
Lucifer snorted. “No, that was solely supposed to be me. Only things didn’t go quite according to plan, did they?”
Lilith refused to meet his gaze as she gritted out, “Not quite.”
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” Hades said under his breath. “The expression had to come from somewhere.”
Lucifer cocked a brow at Lilith. “Well, love. We’re waiting.”
Lilith’s lips were pressed into a tight line, but she lifted her face and stared at a point on the wall behind me as she spoke.
“I took in every piece of knowledge as I ate the fruit, leaving nothing behind. It was all that has been and all that will be. Every ounce of truth in existence. An owner’s manual for all of creation, if you will. ”
“That . . . you shouldn’t have survived,” Michael said.
“I almost didn’t. If Lucifer hadn’t made me a demon, I wouldn’t have.”
“How did you . . . The book.” Gabriel’s voice was filled with awe as the truth of what happened dawned on him.
“I made paper from the tree’s branches, knowing that it was the only way to safely restore the knowledge I’d taken and to keep it out of Lucifer’s clutches.”
“That’s why he never went after you. It was your leverage,” Merri blurted.
“I never knew what she did with the information she’d taken, only that it was at her disposal. I couldn’t risk her wrath,” he admitted.
“I lost most of the information to the pages. Only bits and pieces remain for me to use.”
Pan spoke up for the first time, his voice edged with realization. “That’s why you’re so much stronger than the rest of demonkind.”
“It explains so much,” Moira said with an excited giggle. “Those fancy rooms of yours at Iniquity, how you’re able to create and contain a realm like this one . . .”
“And why you weren’t able to simply provide us with all the answers from the start,” Caleb added, interest sharpening his gaze as he studied her.
Lilith nodded. “I did everything I could.”
“I have a question,” Remi interjected.
“Of course he does,” Thorne said.
“How is it we can read the Book of Lilith without it being too much for our puny human brains?”
“Because we aren’t trying to download it all directly into our brains like Lilith did,” Asher explained. “The pages keep it safely stored. Sort of like a firewall.”
Remi waved a hand. “You lost me at firewall, but the rest of it made sense.”
“You know how you used to be able to download porn, but your computer kept crashing when you tried to do too much at once?”
“Ah, yeah, the good old days.”
“This book is the website. It keeps everything safe so it doesn’t crash your brain.”
Chaos stroked Merri’s knuckles as he cleared his throat. “This book, it has information on unmaking our kind?”
Gavin looked down at the book in question. “It only said immortals, but perhaps that is applicable.”
“Has it been fully translated?” Asher asked.
“Not yet, it hasn’t been a priority until now, but we can work on that. With Lilith’s help, it shouldn’t take long.”
Grim let out a soft grunt, and I followed his gaze to where Chaos continued to cuddle our girl. Before anyone noticed, he teleported himself to her side and shoved Chaos out of the way, then scooped her up, claimed her seat, and plopped her on his lap.
Merri laughed as she twisted her head to look up at him. “What are you doing?”
His hand settled on her lower belly, and the gentle smile that was on his lips at her nearness faded.
“Grim? What’s wrong?”
Addressing the room, Grim halted all possibility of further discussion when he said, “We have a much bigger problem than the horsewomen.” His gaze darted to Merri. “You’re pregnant.”