Chapter Thirty-Four
DEVLIN
The acrid smoke hangs in a gray haze before me when Finn steps into my throne room, rolling his eyes and sighing as if I’ve unleashed a plague upon the world of men.
Again.
“Did you seriously just smite Azazel?” he demands.
“Azazel touched my belongings without permission. You know how I feel about that.”
“Over a coffee mug?” He reaches for the mug clutched in my hands, but I snatch it away before he can mar the glaze with his filthy fingerprints.
“It’s a tea mug, you daft bastard. And don’t get any ideas unless you’d like to join Azazel in Oblivion.”
He raises his hands in surrender and backs away, his judgmental green eyes boring right through my bloody skull. Unable to withstand the scrutiny, I gaze out across the polished obsidian expanse of the throne room, waiting for the inevitable lecture.
But for the first time in our long, long friendship, Finn remains silent.
“Was there something you needed,” I snap, “or are you just going to stand there and gloat about my millennium’s worth of poor life choices?”
“Not sure you need me for that, Dev. Doing just fine on your own.”
Still not taking the hint, he helps himself to a drink from my bar and saunters over to the balcony, taking in the view of the Fire Rivers of Eshtock.
He doesn’t say anything else, and soon the only sounds are an occasional fiery explosion from the rivers and the constant din of tortured souls.
One drink, he finishes. Back to the bar for another. Finishes that one too. Pours a third and returns to watch the rivers.
Then, finally, when I swear we’ve been ignoring each other for so long the rivers have changed course four times over, he says, “Are we talking about this, or—”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” I rise from the throne, fix myself a drink in my mushroom tea mug. Head to the balcony. Contemplate jumping, for all the good it would do me.
“Your girlfriend is—”
“What in the seventeenth bowel of Hell makes you think she’s my girlfriend?” I snap.
“Oh, I don’t know. The pining, for one. The brooding. Not to mention all the shagging before that and the—”
I glare at him, horns out, full-terror mode engaged.
Finn laughs. “I’m just saying you seemed to really like this one, mate.”
“Like her? Like her?” I scoff. “Violet Pepperdine is the least likable woman I’ve ever met. She’s stubborn as a two-headed demonic mule, refuses to listen to reason, has no idea how self-righteous she is… Bloody nuisance, if you really want to know.”
“Stubborn and self-righteous, right.” Finn sighs, sarcasm dripping from his tone. “I can only imagine how difficult that must be for you.”
“Fuck off,” I say, but the fight in me fizzles right out. “She’s just… she’s gone, Finn. And it’s my own fault.”
There’s no ire in my words. Just the deep resignation that comes with knowing you’ve lost something precious. A thing you never even knew you wanted, never believed you deserved, and when you finally got it, you cocked it all up anyway.
It’s been an eternity since she sent me away. An eternity since I returned to Hell, not even bothering with a stopover in L.A.
And I’ve never before felt so utterly lost.
My family was not here to greet me. My father was not waiting with open arms, ready to admit he was wrong. There was no red-carpet welcome, no tearful reunion. No redemption for the Prince of Darkness and his band of loyal demons.
Only a cold and empty throne, crumbling from centuries of disuse, and a destiny I’m no longer sure I understand, if I ever understood it at all.
A single hour on the mortal plane feels like a lifetime in Hell's unending sameness, and no matter how many nights pass, no matter how much I try to distract myself with the underworld reunion tour, with the simple pleasures of torture and ruin, nothing has dimmed the memory of her touch from my skin. The taste of her kiss from my lips. The pain of her parting words from my ears.
Gods be damned, how did it even come to this? From the very instant she summoned me to Wayward Bay with her ridiculous drunken spreadsheet magic, all I wanted to do was find a way to escape.
Until one day, I didn’t.
Now, it hurts to envision a future—any future—without her. Without that snorting laugh serving as the soundtrack of my morning and her soft sighs as the soundtrack of my nights. Without her bottomless blue eyes shining from behind those enormous glasses. Without the tea and the grilled cheese and our beloved Ambrosia Divine. Without Grumpy and Sunshine, the feline friends I never knew I needed.
It’s not just Violet, either. Thinking of Wayward Bay fills me with a fierce longing too. The aunts. The sisters. The Mayor. The pottery-painting woman. The fae and demon couple who own the liquor store. The kids in their silly goblin masks. The apple-scented air and the autumn leaves and the stately trees and the silver-blue bay glittering in the distance.
It was my home, for a time. A place where I felt welcomed. A place where even the Devil was allowed to belong.
A new ache blooms in my chest for all the things that could have been. All the things I held in my hands, in my heart, and then swiftly lost.
Now, as I look out across the vast rivers of molten fire that cut through the black landscape in gleaming ribbons of orange and gold, all I can think about is how much—for the first time in my immortal existence—this place feels like my own version of Hell. An inescapable torture of my own making.
“I’d forgotten how beautiful they are,” Finn says beside me, and it takes me a moment to realize he’s talking about the rivers. “This place… it’s deceptive, isn’t it? Endless torment for the ones who sell their souls. A supposed paradise for those who broker the deal.” He sips his drink, his tone uncharacteristically melancholy. “Ever since your father banished us, all you wanted was to come back home. It’s what you—what we worked for all these long centuries. Days, years, all of it blurring together in a mind-numbing replay of sex and drugs and parties and… ugh, the people. The desperate, depraved people.”
“That’s all over now, Finn. We did it. Achieved our impossible ends. Corrupted a million souls, earned our way back, and here we are.”
“And yet?”
“Yet I can’t for the life of me remember why it ever even mattered.”
Finn sighs. We’ve been friends for so long, he can read my thoughts almost as well as Violet could read my emotions. “If you leave now—for a mortal witch, besides—your father will never let you return. You’ll be forfeiting your position, your power, your throne. Your immortality. All of it, gone. No more impossible tasks, no more deals. Just gone. You know that, right?”
“For fuck’s sake, Finn. What good is an immortal life when the woman you love is bound to the mortal realm? When all you’ve got in front of you is an eternity of misery and loneliness and a broken heart that will never heal because the only one who can mend it has cast you away?”
His eyes widen, and I mirror the shocked gaze. It’s the first I’ve ever admitted it to anyone but the witch herself.
“Yes, I’m bloody well in love with her. Is that what you needed to hear? The kind of love that makes you do crazy things. Take big risks and fail even bigger. Now she’s in the Bay and I’m here and I’ve got everything I’m supposed to want—everything I sacrificed and killed and deceived and danced and fucked for—and I’ve never felt so bloody hollow. So utterly dead inside. So you know what? I’m done. Done with this existence. With this place that feels like a stranger’s home. I want something better, Finn, and I’m daring to say it out loud. I want a quiet life. A good life. One where I can make the same woman laugh every single night, over and over and over until we collapse in our bed, tired and happy. I want to grow old with her, as ridiculous as that sounds, watching her brew her magic teas and joke with her sisters and take care of her aunts and maybe have a few adventures together along the way.”
“It sounds like a nice dream,” he says, no mocking in his tone. “But what about your family?”
“Family.” I scoff. “The so-called family who continues to reject me even after I’ve spent centuries trying to make amends for a crime I didn’t even commit? The so-called family who will continue to punish me for eternity simply because they all got together one day and decided I was the prized fuck-up of the bunch? And remind me again what terrible crime I committed? Loving the wrong woman? I was practically a child.”
Finn puts a hand on my shoulder, his eyes full of a sincerity and understanding I’ve never seen before. Or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention.
“Love isn’t a crime, mate,” he says softly. “Even when you fall for the wrong person.” He tips back the last of his drink. Stares back out at the rivers. Sighs. Turns back to me. And then, at long last, the old smile slides back into place. “But now that you’ve fallen for the right person, I assume you’ve got a plan to get her back? Preferably one that doesn’t require me listening to any more of your weepy blathering? Devil’s balls, mate. You really did step right out of a Hallmark movie on this one. I tried to warn you, didn’t I? As a matter of fact, do you still have your balls? Or did you let your witch boil them up in a tea for the good neighbors?”
I cast him a deadly glare. “Don’t make me smite you. I’m still in a mood and you’re pressing your luck, demon.”
“I’m touched, Devlin. I can feel the love. Should I fetch us some tissues? I sense a good cry coming on. But not a sappy one. A manly cry. Very becoming. Now, about that plan? What do I need to pack, and who do I need to kill along the way?”