Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
RUE
Lucifer led us down a stone corridor, boots clipping against marble. Her sword sat in its holster across her back—an epic weapon with a jeweled hilt that seemed to exude power.
The air smelled of incense, a smoky, woodsy scent that was pleasant and should have been soothing, but the moths in my belly refused to calm.
We were here. Physically in Lucifer’s fortress. We’d made it. So why did I feel so on edge?
It was the adrenaline of the past few hours still rushing through my veins, leaving me hyperalert and focused. Everything looked sharper and brighter. Even the gray light that filtered in through the windows glittered with motes of dust.
The walls were gray stone and hung with patterned tapestries, and despite the misty chill visible through the windows, it was warm and cozy inside.
“You made good time,” Lucifer said, rounding a corner to take us up a flight of worn stone steps. “I was worried you’d be felled in the outer circles. The eighth is especially brutal.”
“We entered through the seventh,” Gabriel said.
“The circle of souls. Thanatos’s domain.”
“We met him. He helped us.”
“He’s a decent sort. Visits from time to time but keeps his cards close to his chest.” She shoved open the door at the top, and we were in the room from my dream. She moved quickly away from me as I entered, as if she was afraid I’d accidently touch her.
My scalp prickled. Something wasn’t right here—more than her sudden aversion. Wait… “Why haven’t you asked me for the relics?”
“I assume you have them.” She drew her sword from its holster and propped it against a chair. “Why else would you be here?” She unbuckled the holster, shrugged it off, and rolled her shoulders.
“You assume? You can’t feel them?”
Her mouth tightened. “Do you have them or not?”
Unease filtered through my veins. “Why can’t you feel them?”
She made a sound of exasperation. “Because they were shielded from me by him. To prevent me from calling them to me and breaking our deal.”
“God hid them from you?”
“Yes. He promised I would be made whole when I’d proven myself here.”
“But he didn’t tell you how, did he?” Gabriel said. “You don’t know how to reforge the Morningstar, do you?”
“Reforge? I don’t want to reforge it. I need to destroy it. I need to be whole. That’s the only way I can help you. The only way I’ll have the power to fight off the Dominion and reopen the gates to heaven. We must figure out how to destroy the pieces.”
This couldn’t be happening. “You don’t know…”
She growled softly. “No. I do not know.”
“But you told me…you…”
“I told you to bring them to me, which you have. Thank you. And now we will figure out how to release the power and make me whole.”
Silence fell, thick and pregnant with disappointment. We’d come all this way…all this fucking way.
“And how long will it take to figure it out?” Gabriel asked.
She pressed her lips together and shrugged. “I…I don’t know.”
My limbs were suddenly heavy. My people were in danger. My world dying. I’d risked my life, and the life of the watchers to get the relics to her, and she didn’t know how to use them?
I swallowed against the bitter tang in my throat and locked gazes with her.
“I’m done here. I brought you the relics.
You figure out what to do with them. We have to go back to our world…
our people need us. Jilyana has a relic shard inside her.
Draw it out and we can go.” I held out my relic piece, and she shrank from it. “Why aren’t you taking it?”
Her dark eyes gleamed with sorrow. “I can’t. I can’t touch it. Another condition. Another obstacle. He created a watcher to connect to the relic. One who was bound to it so that I would not be able to take it.”
Shemyaza…
“It sounds like a punishment,” Kabiel said. “Not a test.”
Her left eye twitched. “His tests were always vicious,” she said without bitterness.
“It was his way.” She turned her gaze on me.
“But if that watcher is dead, then you are the only living connection to the Morningstar relic. You can help find a way to make me whole. I can’t let you go.
Not until we figure this out. But I swear to you, once I’m whole, I will use Soul Reaper to open a door back into your world.
” She indicated the sword propped up against the chair.
“We’ll leave together and stop the Dominion. ”
She’d withheld the truth, but she was still our only hope. What could we do but agree to—
“I’m sorry.” Jilyana snatched the relic from me and stepped closer to Lucifer.
“Jilyana, what are you doing?” Asbeel demanded.
Her eyes were misty, but her jaw was set. “I don’t have a choice. They have her. They have her, and I need to save her.”
“What? Who?”
She grabbed Lucifer’s arm, and the world behind her tore open, bleeding amber light that blinded us for a moment.
When it died, both Lucifer and Jilyana were gone.
And with them, the relics.
“What just happened?” Kokabel demanded. “What the fuck just happened?”
“Jilyana betrayed us,” Asbeel said, his voice flat. “She lied to us. She was…” His voice cracked with emotion.
I closed my eyes for a beat. Focus. Do not lose your shit. Think. “The Dominion planned this. They must have let her go. They knew we were after the relics. They sent her to retrieve them.”
“And to find Lucifer,” Gabriel said. “Erelim was right. It was Lucifer they were searching for.”
And they’d used Jilyana to do their dirty work. She’d said she had to save someone. “I think they must have leverage on Jilyana.”
“That doesn’t make it right,” Asbeel said.
“No, it doesn’t, but I don’t think she wanted to betray us.” The woman I’d come to know the past few days wasn’t a traitor. “I don’t understand how she got Lucifer out of here.”
“The Dominion have access to a power called the Word,” Gabriel said. “It was something employed by the higher echelon. A way to extract celestial soldiers from danger. Some of us were given the power of a word. When uttered, it would pull us from wherever we were to a safe zone.”
“So Jilyana has taken Lucifer and the relics straight to the Golden City?”
“No,” Gabriel said. “I think they’ve taken her to their secret stronghold. They’ll lock her down, lock away the relics.”
“We have to stop them. We have to break her out.”
“The location should be on the flash drive I gave to Bastian,” Gabriel said.
“We can’t do anything if we’re stuck in Gehenna,” Kabiel growled. “The portal we came through is gone. And even if we find one, could we even use it without a relic?”
But something that Lucifer had said rang in my mind. “Lucifer said she couldn’t leave here. Not without being whole, which meant having the relic power back inside her body, right?”
“Right…”
“And she said once that was done, she’d use her sword to open a doorway back to our world.”
“Where are you going with this?” Kabiel asked.
“What if the part of her that allows her to create doorways, any doorways, lies in the specific power of the Morningstar? Think about it. The Morningstar kept the fabric of worlds intact. It allowed us to walk through the conjunction, and its fracture caused doorways to open so…what if all we need to make a doorway is a connection to that power?”
“Which you still have!” Gabriel’s chest heaved with pride. “Genius. It could work. Try it. Use the sword.”
“Wait!” Kabiel grabbed my wrist before I could touch the sword. “What if it hurts you?”
“What if it doesn’t? At this point, we’ve got to take the risk.”
“Agreed,” Gabriel said. “But I believe you’re right, Rue. I believe this is our way out.”
I took a deep breath and grabbed Soul Reaper by the hilt.