Chapter Thirty-One
Wrath such that Hell had never seen before filled Skye.
The murderous rage was a forest fire inside her, bursting through the frozen void of emptiness that she’d encased her hellfire within.
It’d been the only way. The only way to step into the demoness’s mask she needed to don in order to get Remi to hate her—to hate her so much that he’d move on from her when her wings were clipped and she never returned to Earth.
Skye knew Remi—knew all the cruel words she’d need to say to make him break, and she’d learned from their first bargain that Remi had a limit. When she pushed too hard—pushed him over the edge—instead of giving in, the rebel in him balked.
The Devil couldn’t force Remi into a bargain, and if Skye reminded him of what he truly wanted—not fame and fortune and love—but to feel as though he’d earned and deserved those things, she thought he’d turn down the bargain.
The Devil would have been pissed, and he’d have taken Skye’s wings as punishment, but Remi would have been safe.
Skye wouldn’t have been able to live with herself if Remi ended up like her mother, and she knew if she’d told Remi the truth, he would have sacrificed himself for her.
Making him believe she’d been playing him had been the only way, and reminding Remi of his brother was the key to igniting his fury and inducing him to decline the bargain. She’d found that out the first time she’d tried to make a bargain with him.
But she hadn’t expected the Devil to offer to erase his memories. And she definitely hadn’t expected Zara and Laurie to play along either, but she didn’t have time to decipher their intentions. She didn’t have high hopes for those as Laurie’s hold around her waist tightened.
“You can’t save him, Skye,” he said.
“Get off me!” She tried to summon her hellfire to sift, but her magic was thwarted as a heavy barrier fell upon her, the Devil activating the throne room’s magical ward.
Skye’s vision blinked in and out of focus as the sight of Remi being thrown into the fire flickered on top of a flashback of her mother doing the same. She was here. She was there. She was now. She was then.
“No!” she screamed, thrashing in Laurie’s arms. “No. No. No.” A torrential outpouring of emotion that she’d kept locked up and contained for years unleashed itself.
Zara grabbed her face. “Skye, you have to stop,” she said, her voice soft, concerned, but that only pissed Skye off, only made everything inside of her rail against Laurie harder. She tried to tug loose, tried to call upon her fire to fight them off, but everything was blunted.
She didn’t care. She’d rip her own arms off to get to him. She’d run into the flames. Lose her wings. Lose her life. She’d do anything to drag Remi out of the hellfire.
Remi yelled, but the sound was cut off as his body disappeared into the flames.
“Let. Me. Go!” Her voice was not her own. A deep, thundering darkness detonated from inside her, and the explosion threw her, Laurie, and Zara apart.
Glass shards sliced through her as she tumbled, rolling over and over. She slammed into the wall.
A full-body ache spread through her as she pushed to standing and tried to get her bearings. She ripped out the piece of glass lodged in her thigh. She wouldn’t be able to heal herself until she had access to her magic again.
Or rather, she shouldn’t be able to, but shadows condensed and flooded her wound, knitting the skin together, healing her just as they’d done when the necklace had burned her.
Skye’s eyes widened as the shadows dissipated from her leg and curled up in her necklace, which laid at her feet. She glanced at the Devil, but he was focused with psychopathic glee at the flames in the middle of the room.
Skye scooped up the necklace and sprinted toward the hellfire just as it whooshed away. She landed on her knees next to Remi’s blackened and charred body.
“Remi,” Skye said, voice breaking. She lifted his face onto her lap and wiped away the top layer of burns.
Remi cringed and gasped a breath, coughing. Skye knew he wouldn’t die. The flames weren’t meant to kill him, only to burn away his shadows, but that didn’t stop her heart from thudding painfully at seeing him hurt.
With her help, he sat up and brushed off the charred bits of his skin, revealing healed pink skin underneath.
“I’m okay,” he said. “I’m okay. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”
She wiped away the burnt remnants of his shadow powers from his face and searched his eyes for the lie, but his blue eyes focused on her. None of the anger or hostility that she knew she deserved was reflected in them.
“Skye,” Remi said, the backs of his knuckles stroking across her cheek. “I’d never want you to give up your wings for me. Or your life. Never.”
Desperate emotion racked her body and convulsed in her chest. Her voice shook as she said, “I’m so sorry, Remi.
Everything I said before, I didn’t mean it.
I didn’t mean any of it. I was trying to protect you.
I didn’t want this.” There was no mask, no trying to reconcile the parts of her in order to deliver the apology.
This sorry—this sorrow—though new and foreign, was true and more heartfelt than anything she’d felt in her entire existence.
“I know,” he said, smiling softly. He wrapped a hand around the back of her neck and pressed their foreheads together. A pressure inflated a balloon in her chest, further and further, until it popped as Remi declared, “I love you, Skye.”
The explosion wasn’t as catastrophic as she’d thought it’d be.
Love. Warmth replaced the pressure as the word swelled within her.
Was this feeling love? A concoction of desire and need and obsession and envy and warmth.
It had movement within her; a truth brought to light.
Remi had seeped into her, his soul, his shadows, his essence interwoven as part of her being.
She’d sacrifice her wings, her magic, her happiness, for Remi.
Maybe she didn’t experience love the way humans did, but this was the closest approximation.
A demon’s selfishness had met the edge of something more, a threshold, a door.
The pressure had expanded to collapse the outer casing and revealed an open space filled with a warmth that she thought might be labeled as affection.
“I love you too,” she said, her tongue lingering over the way the word rolled through her mouth.
A brilliant joy erupted across Remi’s face.
He kissed her, and for a dazzling moment, the horror around them fell away.
There was only Remi, his lips on hers, his arms wrapped around her, his love made tangible through their kiss.
She gave in to it. Their kiss became a nonverbal communication.
She opened up to him, apologized, and he responded in kind with so much love and forgiveness and acceptance that Skye almost couldn’t handle it.
“It’s okay,” Remi murmured against her lips. “Everything’s okay now.”
Skye shook her head and pulled back. “Remi, you don’t understand. My mother. She got her wings clipped. The Devil took her powers, and it ruined her. She killed herself. This isn’t just like you getting your wisdom teeth out or something. It will change who you are.”
Skye gathered the ashes that surrounded them on the ground, and she could have sworn they vibrated against her hand. Remi’s power was still alive, and it magnetized against her skin just like his shadows had.
Remi furrowed his brow. “I don’t feel any different—”
The Devil’s booming laughter filled the room. “Your mother didn’t kill herself,” he said. “Why don’t you tell her the truth, Lawrence?”
Laurie struggled to stand from his position on the opposite side of the room.
His clothes were a mess; blood from a large wound in his torso sputtered out.
Zara was no better, lying beside him. She crawled to a seated position, propped her back up against the wall, and yanked a hunk of glass from her chest, pressing her palm to stop the wound as it bled out.
“What did you do to my mother?” Skye shouted. Cold dread hollowed out her stomach, leaving her numb.
Laurie limped forward, his palms raised. “Listen. Just listen, okay? I can explain.”
Skye stood as emotions pulsated through her. “What did you do!”
Laurie crossed the room, and Remi pushed himself up, stepping in front of Skye, blocking her, protecting her from Laurie getting any closer.
Laurie’s face scrunched up, his eyes closing as he halted in front of them. “It’s not what you think.”
“Then tell me.”
“I was there. That night. Your mother didn’t kill herself, Skye.” Laurie’s eyebrows pulled together. “She was killed.”
Skye clutched the scraps that remained of Remi’s shirt. He wrapped an arm around her from behind. It was only by leaning on Remi that she could keep herself from buckling.
“Who?” she whispered.
“A fucking angel bastard,” Laurie said and clenched his jaw. “My father.”
“You’re an angel?” Remi asked. “There’s no fucking way you are an angel.”
“Half angel,” Laurie grumbled.
Skye’s shoulders dropped. “My mother’s journals. Your research…” she said. “You haven’t been trying to fuck an angel.”
Laurie pressed his lips together and shook his head once.
“I’ve been trying to find my father. He killed my mother.
He tried to kill me too, but your mother sacrificed herself to save me.
That’s why I took her journals. Our mothers were friends.
I thought there might be clues as to who he was or where I could find him. ”
Skye wrapped her arms around her torso. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Laurie didn’t say anything. His eyes flicked from his feet to the Devil and back again.
“He threatened your wings if you told anyone the truth,” Skye said.
“Both of your mothers were destined for destruction,” the Devil said. “One fell for a human. The other, an angel. They were infected with a disgusting disease that I wouldn’t allow to spread through my domain.”
The Devil had them all at his mercy, threatening their wings and turning them against one another.
“Now, this is all getting rather Orphean,” the Devil said with a sigh. “And I don’t see a lyre anywhere to put us into a trance, so let’s move this along. I want my power. Either hand it over, or I’ll take Skye’s wings.”
The ashes of Remi’s powers swirled in the air and then were swept into a jar. The jar hummed as the ashes transformed into inky black shadows, alive with an essence that was wholly Remi. The blue, glittering orb of Remi’s soul floated beside them.
Remi looked at the jar and the physical manifestation of his soul. “The deal isn’t done?”
“He can take his shadows back?” Skye asked, hope pitching her voice higher.
“The deal isn’t done. Remi has to be the one to transfer his powers,” Laurie said. “He isn’t a demon. His powers aren’t under the Devil’s control. The hellfire stripped them from his body, but Remi has to willingly give them over, just like his soul.”
Remi swallowed. He looked at the jar, then at Skye.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said. “We don’t know what will happen. How you’ll react. If there are consequences—”
Remi gave her a rueful smile. “Have you ever known me to be worried about consequences?”
Skye’s laugh was a pained groan. “Remi… What about the band? What about West and Liam and Ollie. They mean more than me. They deserve—”
Remi kissed her forehead. “They deserve a kick-ass band manager who is one hundred percent dedicated to them. We don’t need demon or devil magic to make an impact. I don’t need these shadows or my soul, but I do need you.”
He clutched the glass jar and held it in the air, but kept his gaze centered on Skye as he declared, “I want to complete the bargain. I’ll trade my shadows and my soul for Skye’s freedom and safety.”
The glass jar flew toward the Devil, and Skye’s wrist burned. She turned her hand over and watched as her birthmark faded away and released her from the Devil’s control.
Power returned to her—the fiery heat of her own demon magic intertwined with the dark energy of something else, something that had been working its way inside of her this whole time.
Remi smiled as Skye looked up at him. He curled a piece of her hair around her ear. “You were right, you know. From the first night you entered my dreams, I knew I’d trade my heart and soul for you.”
A strange lightness filled her as something that she’d never known she’d been holding lifted. Tears sprang to her eyes from an effervescent joy like she’d never experienced.
“I love you,” Skye said to Remi.
“I thought demons didn’t love,” Remi teased.
“They aren’t supposed to cry either.” She said through a teary laugh.
Remi just smiled, and he kissed her cheeks until they were dry.