Chapter Ten - Lucifer
CHAPTER TEN
Lucifer
THE LIGHT FLARED. And the dream shattered.
I woke with a sharp inhale, chest heaving, strips of sheets clenched in my hands, ripped from the bed, like I’d been fighting something that followed me out of sleep. The room was dark and quiet.
But the echo of her voice screaming my name was still in my bones. And as I lay there staring at the ceiling, my pulse racing, one truth settled heavy and undeniable in my chest. He wanted me to try. He wanted me to know, maybe both of us, exactly how far He was willing to go.
The room was dark except for the spill of neon through the glass.
One sock had made it off. The other was still on, half hanging from my foot.
For a while, I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, trying to shake the dream, but it wouldn’t leave me.
She was still under my skin. The fear of not reaching her sat in my chest like something eating me alive.
So I got up.
The penthouse was quiet, that deep late-night quiet that only exists in expensive places and graveyards. Somewhere below us, the casino still throbbed on, all light and noise and bad decisions, but up here it felt muffled and distant.
When I walked into the living room, Tavik had been as efficient as Topher always was. The wreckage from earlier had finally been cleared. The broken glass table was gone. The couch had been replaced. The shattered sculptures had disappeared as if nothing had happened.
Only the window still gave it away. The damage had been removed and replaced with a sheet of plywood.
I went to the door, let the room service cart in, and parked it by the sitting area. Silver domes. There was crystal and linen, and way too much food for two people who’d spent centuries learning how to ignore hunger.
Then I poured myself a glass of whiskey and dropped onto the couch, one arm flung over the back, the tumbler loose in my hand. I told myself I was only sitting there to wake up properly. To think. To plan. To shake that dream away.
From down the hall, a door opened.
Azazael came out shirtless, wings drooping, and his hair still mussed from sleep, looking halfway between feral and offended to be alive. He crossed to the cart without asking permission, lifted the lid off one plate, and popped a grape into his mouth like he’d been here for years.
Then he looked at me. His gaze narrowed just slightly, taking in whatever that dream had left on my face.
“Is she worth it?” Azazael asked.
The words landed wrong in my chest. I didn’t bare my teeth, but I fucking wanted to. I just sat there for a beat, letting the irritation settle into something colder and heavier.
“Because this is going to be more than a battle,” Az said quietly. “It’s going to change… everything. Is that what you want?”
I stood up without answering and stalked back to the bar. Back to control. I poured another finger of whiskey into my glass and knocked it back without tasting it, then I poured another before the glass had even touched the counter.
Az kept his eyes on me, so I held the bottle up.
“Want some?”
He held up his hand in surrender and shook his head. “I’m good.”
I finished my drink and poured myself a fourth, then dropped back onto the couch and gestured for him to sit across from me. He did, his posture still half-braced, like the world might suddenly decide to come apart.
I rolled the glass between my fingers, watching the light bend through amber.
“You were still healing. Down in Patagonia. You don’t know. He was going to kill me,” I said.
The words came out flat. Certain.
“I knew it. I was already halfway there. And I would have let it happen. I would have died for her without hesitation.”
My throat tightened as I looked up at him.
“But she stepped forward,” I went on, breath catching just slightly. “While I was on my knees. While I was bleeding out. She told Him to stop.” I swallowed. “Told Him she’d go with Him. Willingly.”
He didn’t interrupt. Just listened.
I shook my head once, like it might dislodge the image.
“No one has ever—” I broke off, a short, rough sound leaving my chest. “No one has ever chosen me like that.”
I was still holding the empty glass when it happened. I felt… contact, but it wasn’t her. Something reached into my chest and pulled.
I jerked upright, the glass cracking in my grip as a cold, precise tug hooked behind my ribs. It wasn’t pain. It was a violation, like fingers closing around a thread that didn’t belong to the hand that found it.
The bond snapped taut in an instant. Fuck.
My breath punched out of me. “No.”
Az’s head came up. “Luce?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Every part of me was turned inward, braced against the pull as something tested the line between us. It was curious and clinical.
He found it.
Rage followed on its heels, white-hot and feral. Evie’s.
I surged to my feet, throwing the glass against the wall as the room shuddered. The air around me buckled under the force of it.
“Get out of her,” I snarled, the words torn from somewhere ancient and animal.
The tug deepened for a heartbeat, a slow, deliberate draw, like He was trying to see what would come loose if He pulled hard enough. And I threw myself against it on instinct alone, not knowing how, only that I would break before I let the tether snap.
Power flared under my skin, my wings threatening to tear free as I shoved back through the bond, a silent, violent refusal. Not yours, motherfucker.
The pressure vanished. It didn’t fade slowly. It was just… gone, like a hand yanked away from a flame. I staggered, catching myself on the back of the couch, my breath ragged and my heart hammering against my sternum.
Az was on his feet. “What the hell was that?”
“He… touched her,” I said hoarsely. The words tasted like blood. “He tried to take our bond.”
Silence dropped between us, thick and charged. My hands were shaking, but it wasn’t fear. It was fury held too tight in my muscles, looking for somewhere to go. I wanted to kill Him.
I closed my eyes and reached down the line, desperate and raw, searching for her.
But there was… nothing. The absence carved a hollow straight through me. I went still, not because I wanted to, but because moving felt like it might shatter whatever was keeping me upright.
I didn’t reach again. I couldn’t. I opened my eyes and met Az’s gaze. I didn’t explain. I didn’t say a word. I just let him see the warning in my eyes, the flat, lethal edge that said don’t follow me. Then I turned and walked out.
Each step was measured and controlled to the point of cruelty.
I kept my shoulders loose, my hands steady, my breath even, like none of this had touched me at all.
I didn’t stop until I was out on the terrace, and the door was shut behind me.
Only then did I feel a cold rush under my skin as the silence where she should’ve been expanded and pressed and pressed—
I swallowed it down and kept moving. Because if Az saw that part, if he saw how close I was to tearing this world open with my bare hands, he might try to stop me. And I didn’t have time for that.
I only made it three more steps. Then my body betrayed me.
The panic finally caught up, fast and vicious, my lungs locking as if someone had reached inside and twisted.
I folded forward, one hand bracing hard against the cool stone, the other pressed to my chest like I could physically hold myself together.
Air scraped in and out of me, shallow and wrong. My vision tunneled. The hollow where she should’ve been roared, vast and echoing, like the world had suddenly dropped out beneath my feet.
A sound tore loose from my throat before I could stop it. A single, broken sob. I clamped my jaw down hard, the noise cutting off sharply. I sucked in a breath through my nose, then another, forcing it slow, forcing it steady, counting without numbers until my pulse stopped trying to outrun itself.
Just a minute. One minute. I let myself feel it for just that long. The fear. The loss. The unbearable not-knowing. The image of her reaching for me and finding nothing.
My eyes burned. I swallowed hard, jaw aching with the effort of keeping myself silent. Then I forced myself to lock it all back down.
I straightened, my spine clicking into place like armor sealing. The mask of the Devil slid back into position, smooth and unbreakable, the part of me that survived by not falling apart where anyone could see.
I crossed the rest of the terrace and leaned over the railing, the city sprawled beneath me in neon and noise, Vegas bright and glittering like it didn’t give a damn who was bleeding.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a cigarette.
Lit it. Drew in slow, deliberate smoke until my lungs burned just enough to anchor me.
I held it and let it out in a controlled stream.
Then, I did it again and again. The ritual steadied me, something familiar and small I could control when everything else had gone sideways.
A few minutes passed, maybe more, but I wasn’t counting or caring.
I heard the terrace door swing open behind me, but I didn’t look.
Az joined me at the railing, leaning back against it, arms crossed, gaze tilted up toward the sky like he wasn’t sure what he was looking for. He waited and didn’t ask.
After a beat, he glanced at the cigarette between my fingers. “Mind if I—”
I held it out without looking at him. He took it, inhaled and coughed once, then handed it back, the exchange silent, practiced, almost reverent in its restraint. We stood like that for a while, smoke drifting between us, the city humming below.
Finally, I spoke. “She secretly hates coffee,” I said quietly. My voice sounded steady. It wasn’t. “Says it tastes like regret and reminds her of bad decisions. But she drinks it anyway when she’s tired.”
He didn’t move. Didn’t say a word. I took another drag.