Chapter Seven - Evie #3
The realization landed with sickening clarity.
Of course, He’d forced Himself on her. He didn’t need consent.
He didn’t recognize it. He took what He wanted and called it devotion, called it worship, called it love.
He forced Himself on everyone here, if not with His hands then with His presence, His voice, His light.
He pressed Himself into bodies and minds alike, into breath and muscle and memory, until resistance felt like a personal failure instead of a violation.
There was no version of this place where Mara had been spared.
I curled my fingers into the sheets, my jaw tightening until it ached.
The hatred came fast and sharp, a hot, living thing in my chest. It flared brighter every time I thought of who He was beneath the gentleness He wore so carefully.
Every time I remembered the way the halls softened for Him, the way bodies, even my own, leaned toward Him against their will.
I hated Him for touching her. For taking me.
I hated Him for dragging me into this place and stitching rules into the floor so my own feet couldn’t disobey.
For trapping me here and calling it love.
For pressing control into my body until it responded before I could stop it.
For separating me from Luc, like distance was just another leash He could tighten whenever He got bored.
I hated Him for every horrible sound that drifted down these halls, for every breathy lie that tried to pretend surrender was pleasure. For what He did to Mara, to the Beloved, to anyone unlucky enough to fall into the radius of His want and hunger.
And every time I thought I’d reached the edge of my hatred, I found another reason. Another layer. Another cruelty dressed up as gentleness. The anger didn’t burn out. It didn’t explode. It sharpened.
And somewhere beneath all the rage and hatred, deeper than fear and louder than despair, I felt it again.
Not rising or surging. It was just… there.
Like an eye opening in the dark. Like something ancient turning its attention toward me at last. It didn’t feel like my rage, but it also didn’t feel like comfort.
It felt aware. The same cold-bright presence that had risen that first night, the same force that had made Him hesitate, that had fractured the weight in the air for one terrible heartbeat.
Maybe it was Ediphiel, but something told me it was older, and I didn’t understand that at all.
I went very still, my breath even, because I was afraid that if I lunged for it, it would retreat again. I didn’t try to summon it. I didn’t command it to come. I just tried to listen inward. And… there. There it was.
A quiet presence at the base of my spine. A pressure behind my ribs. The sense of something watching from inside me, finally paying attention.
I whispered, “Who are you?”
But now… I wasn’t questioning if it existed. I wanted to know what I had done to reach it, back in Hell and here that one time. Both times, I hadn’t planned anything. I hadn’t known what to call. I’d only felt it, sudden and absolute, like my body remembered a truth my mind knew nothing about.
I tried to replay the moments, not the fear or the humiliation, but the second before the shift, the instant when something in me decided no so completely the universe had to obey.
My mind whirled. What had I been thinking?
What had I been remembering? When Lilith tried to kill us, not when I was screaming or terrified of dying, but in that split second where there was no room left for fear at all.
No plea. No reaching. Just a clean, brutal refusal to let what was happening continue.
But every time after that, when I tried to call it with Liora in the desert, with my own desperation, with my hands shaking and my chest aching, there was nothing. No answer. No surge. Just the quiet humiliation of wanting it too badly.
That was what didn’t make sense. It didn’t listen to fear or anger.
It didn’t respond to begging. It didn’t come when I was breaking.
That first night here, when panic tore through me so fast I didn’t have time to pray or beg or hope.
It had come like a reflex, something ancient snapping awake before I could name what was happening.
A realization lodged in my chest, cold and sharp, because it meant the moments it answered hadn’t been about how much I wanted to be saved.
And what about Him? He was a god. He wasn’t supposed to fear anything. That was the entire premise of Him. Nothing could touch Him, nothing could threaten Him, nothing existed beyond His reach. Fear was for everyone and everything else.
And yet… I had seen it. It had lasted a single heartbeat and changed the temperature of the room.
A microscopic pause. A tightening in His stillness.
The way the light around Him had drawn in on itself.
He had smoothed it over instantly, folding it back into the warmth and patience of His light, like reality itself could be edited if He decided it hadn’t happened.
But I noticed.
And if whatever lived inside me could make Him hesitate, even for a heartbeat, then it wasn’t a trick or a fluke or something He could simply unmake at His leisure.
I lay there in the white quiet, hatred cooling into purpose, listening inward, trying to map my own body like it was a door.
If I could remember, I could find the seam. And if I found the seam, I would not stay His pretty thing forever.