Chapter Thirty-Two
DEVLIN
The Devil is evil incarnate. That’s what they say, isn’t it? A fallen angel cast out of Heaven and sent to the fiery pits, forced to rule over the reprobates and degenerates, the worst of men and monsters alike. Sentenced to an immortal eternity of torture, depravity, the kind of unimaginable loneliness that hollows you out inside. No escape, no rest for the wicked.
Tainted.
I’m not supposed to remember what Heaven feels like. I’m not supposed to want that paradise for myself because I don’t deserve it and even if I did, I could never earn my way back anyway.
And yet…
Somehow, despite all my missteps and misdeeds, I’ve found my paradise. In Violet’s arms, I’m home. The only home that’s ever really mattered.
Her kiss is my Heaven. Her embrace is my eternity. And when I carry her upstairs, lay her on the bed, and sink deep inside her as I have on so many nights before, I find the salvation I’ve been chasing for centuries. Understanding, not rejection. Love, not cruelty. It cracks me wide open, shatters me, and puts me back together again with nothing more than her gentle touch. A look. A cry of unbridled ecstasy sealed with a kiss that offers me a gift as rare as love itself.
Hope.
“I love you, Violet Pepperdine,” I whisper. “Gods be damned, I love you so much it makes me ache to see your tears, even when they’re happy ones.” I kiss her cheeks, the salt coating my lips, tethering me to her. To this moment. To us.
Whatever the spell that bound us, please don’t let it be broken…
She threads her fingers into my hair, gazing up at me with those impossibly blue eyes, a smile curving her lips. “I fell in love with you too, Devlin Pierce,” she whispers. “Accidentally and completely. And I’m sorry, but I’m not letting you go.”
I claim her mouth in another kiss, arching against her body, taking her deeper, harder, making her writhe for me, making her gasp and moan until she shatters around me like the brightest star, and I come inside her, claiming her as mine, marking her, wanting nothing more than to make our fairytale fantasy real.
When I finally draw back and break the kiss, I meet her hooded gaze and she smiles again, and something between us shifts, the air in the room expanding, then contracting, the sugar-sweet scent of her magic saturating every molecule.
Then, all at once, I feel it. A loosening in my chest, like the shedding of a too-tight jacket. The cutting of a rope.
The breaking—I realize with a start—of a witch’s binding spell.
“Devlin?” she whispers beneath me, and I watch the same realization sweep over her face, her blue eyes widening.
“The spell,” I whisper. Amazed, awestricken. Terrified. “It’s… it’s broken.”
My portal magic—dormant since my fated arrival—rushes back through my veins, a long-dead battery fully recharged. And thanks to the deal I made with Remington, the last soul in the collection plate, the pathway to Hell is free and clear.
Centuries. Millennia. I’ve been waiting for this moment for longer than I remember living my old life. Ruling upon that throne. Cowering before a father who never saw me as anything but a failure.
I did it. Bested him. Broke the spell trapping me in Wayward Bay, too.
Yet somehow the victory rings hollow. Like winning the championship tournament only to realize the gleaming golden trophies you once admired from the other side of the glass are no more than plastic trinkets.
“So I’m not dreaming about the grant.” Violet wriggles out from under me and sits up in bed. “We really did it, Devlin. We unlocked my heart’s desire and saved the café, and now the spell is broken.”
She smiles, her eyes full of conflicting emotions. Wondering, undoubtedly, what this means for us now that we’re no longer magically bound.
“We did it,” I confirm, trying to keep my own emotions neutral. My own secrets intact.
The space between her brows creases, and she reaches for her glasses on the nightstand, pushing them onto her face. The haze of our lust is fading, the tide of pleasure and love finally receding.
Her logical mind clicks back into gear.
“I still don’t understand what happened,” she says, and I know what she’s thinking about, know where those thoughts will lead her, know that the tender, all-consuming moment between us is already unraveling.
I’m losing her. Fucking Hell, I’m losing her, and all I can do is sit here in pained silence and wait for her to come to the natural conclusion.
“With the grant, I mean. What changed?” Violet pulls the sheet up, tucks it under her arms, covering herself. “They turned me down, then suddenly I’m in the winner’s circle? They said it was some kind of glitch, but come on. Every person on that committee knows me. Knows everyone who applied. This was no glitch.”
“Does it matter?” I sit up beside her and kiss her shoulder. “You’ve earned the grant, that’s the main thing.”
“Have I, though?” She peers at me, her eyes narrowing. Filling with questions. Confusion. A flicker of hurt.
An unfamiliar heat simmers in my chest, spreading outward like living fire.
It takes me a beat to realize what it is, for it’s been far too long since I’ve felt it.
Guilt.
A hot, sticky ache that quickly gives way to anger. Why should I feel guilty for helping her? That’s why I was summoned here, after all. She needed me. Not her sisters, not her own magic, not the gods or goddesses or even the worst of Hell’s demons.
For this task, only the Devil himself would do.
Only me.
“Devlin?” she asks, her voice cracking.
Too late, I realize my mistake. The most recent one, anyway.
Violet can feel my emotions—the stronger they are, the easier it is for her to interpret them.
In the case of my flaming-hot guilt, I may as well be wearing a neon sign around my neck.
“Did you… have something to do with this?” Her eyes fill with tears—most assuredly not happy ones this time—and her mouth parts in an unspoken accusation.
“I didn’t… I mean, it’s not what you think. It… it was merely a conversation. A long overdue one, at that.”
She doesn’t respond. Just stares at me with that wounded look. Sadness, at first. Then shock. Then rage, all of it flickering through her eyes in a heartbeat.
I fold my arms across my chest. “He’s not a good person, Mushroom. You must realize that.”
“What did you do?” she demands.
“Nothing too horrifying, I assure you. Brandt and I merely had a conversation about some of his recent indiscretions, of which there are a great many. Actually, I was hoping we could talk about that later. With Olivy’s help, I discovered—”
“Olivy? You dragged my sister into this, too?” She reaches for her phone, presumably to call the spooky witch, but I stay her hand.
“Your sister merely did some digging into Remington’s business dealings. She has nothing to do with my meeting with him.”
“Business dealings?”
“As it turns out, Remington’s been singing off on all manner of shell loans for companies headed by his college cohorts. The realtor is involved as well. Nathan? Oh, yes. They’re thick as thieves, that bunch. Literal thieves. And they’ve been stealing from Wayward Bay for years, Violet.”
She gapes at me, an incredulous fire in her eyes, not giving me an inch.
“There’s a folder!” I exclaim, as if this can somehow redeem me, can somehow bring her back to me. “It’s down in the café. All the evidence of his wheeling and dealing, leading this town to ruin. Remington is at the helm of a—”
“Tell me exactly what you said to him.”
“Just… let me get the files, Mushroom. You—”
“Don’t call me that.
She’s so upset she’s shaking, her curls trembling, her eyes wild.
I reach out to take her hand, and she recoils.
The guilt and fear roiling inside me shifts into righteous indignation. No, blackmailing her ex wasn’t the most heroic deed of the century, but my heart was in the right place. Can’t she see that?
“I showed him,” I say, my voice rising, “what an eternity of being roasted alive in Hell looks like, and I should think you of all people would be pleased to know he accepted my terms without—”
“Pleased. Right.” A bitter laugh. A deadly glare. “And what were these so-called terms you set forth, undoubtedly out of the kindness of your bottomless, selfless heart?”
“I… ” Damn it. I can’t admit it. Don’t have to, anyway. She already knows the answer. It’s written all over her face. “Violet, please let me explain. I thought—”
“You knew I wasn’t comfortable applying for the grant, Devlin. Not just because I didn’t want to deal with Brandt, but because I didn’t think I had a chance—not with all the other great businesses and eager entrepreneurs in the Bay.”
“But you did apply!”
“Yeah, you know why? Because of you. You thought I had a chance. You thought I could win. That’s how you made me feel. Like you truly believed in me at a time when I didn’t quite believe in myself, and that’s all I needed.”
“I did believe in you. I still believe in you. You deserve this grant more than—”
“No, I don’t. And you just proved it. If I did deserve it, I would’ve been able to earn it on my own merits.”
“But—”
“They turned me down, Devlin. With the same stupid form letter they sent to all the other rejects, mere hours after my presentation. Because Brandt and the other committee members know the one thing you can’t seem to get into your stubborn, impulsive, devil-horned head. The one thing I haven’t been able to admit to myself, either.” She shakes her head, tears welling. “Kettle and Cauldron is not a viable investment, and neither am I.”
The tears shimmering in her eyes finally spill, each one carving a tortured path through my heart. Never before have I wanted so badly to smash something, set it on fire, and piss on the ashes.
That something being Brandt Remington, third of his name, first on the reservations list for a demonic hot-stone torture session, use your imagination.
“They turned you down, Violet, because your ex is a lying, scheming, conniving—”
“You’re right. He’s all those things. Worse, even—I’m not surprised Olivy found all that dirt on him. But you know what? He’s not the one who resorted to fear tactics and blackmail when he thought the woman he claimed to love couldn’t hack it on her own. That was all you.”
“I was trying to right a wrong!”
“The committee made their decision, and I didn’t make the cut.”
“Precisely the wrong in question. Remington denied your application out of spite and because he’d already awarded the money to out-of-state businesses as part of a complex scheme to—”
“Really? What about the other committee members, then? The school librarian? The retired police commissioner? Are they all in on this conspiracy?”
“One corrupt man can be very persuasive, and perhaps—”
“Perhaps nothing. It doesn’t matter. There’s no way I can take the money now.”
“Yes, you can. You got the confirmation. Fill out the tax papers, and the grant is yours.”
“You don’t get it. I thought you were different. I thought…” She rises from the bed, sheet wrapped around her trembling body.
“Violet?”
Nothing.
“Violet, please. Please look at me, love.”
When she finally meets my gaze again, all the fights drains out of her in an instant, shoulders slumping, glasses sliding down her nose, hard-won confidence evaporating.
“Can we just—”
She cuts me off with a shake of her dark head and points to the door. In a soft, broken voice that damn near breaks me, she says only, “Leave.”
“The bond—”
“Is broken, remember? We unlocked my heart’s desire. A pointless endeavor, as it turns out, but we fulfilled the conditions of the spell, so you’re free to go.”
I cross the room, hunting for the clothing I discarded on the way in. “I’ll give you space if that’s what you want. We’ll talk more later, after you’re—”
“No. No more talking.” She sighs and climbs back into her bed alone, turning away from me. “You got what you wanted, right? Corrupted your final soul, broke the binding spell, paved the way back to the throne.”
“It’s not like that, Violet. Please. Let me—”
“You’re not tied to me anymore, so that’s it. Go.”
“But… This isn’t… Where do you want me to go?”
She turns toward me with one last glare, cheeks flushed, eyes on fire, the very last look she ever intends to give me. “I want you to go to Hell, Devlin Pierce. I never want to see you again.”