Chapter Eighteen - Lucifer
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Lucifer
I HADN’T SLEPT over the past couple of nights.
I lay there long enough to know it wasn’t happening, staring at the ceiling while my body pretended it could rest without her.
Every time I drifted, the same memory surfaced.
The way her pain had felt inside my own chest, like something had torn and I’d been bleeding ever since.
So I ended up on the rooftop.
The night air cut sharply against my skin. Vegas burned below me, bright and loud, a city that had never learned the decency of stillness. I leaned against the stone railing and lit a cigarette I didn’t want and inhaled anyway.
I kept thinking about the way she’d cried in Patagonia, the way her grief was trying to drown itself under running water.
The way it lodged under my ribs and refused to leave.
The way it cracked something in me I hadn’t realized could be cracked.
The way I’d felt useless standing there, knowing I couldn’t fix it, knowing all I could do was be there and hoping that would be enough.
Holding her after, the way she’d sagged into me like she’d finally run out of ways to stay upright. The way she’d fit against my chest like I was her safe place, just arms and breath and the quiet understanding that sometimes surviving was enough.
I wanted that again so badly it made my eyes burn.
But underneath all of it, hotter than the memory itself, was the rage.
Because none of it should’ve existed. Not her shaking or her shame.
Not that instinct to punish herself for surviving a world He’d designed to bruise her.
He had built this whole fucking problem like a maze and then stood outside it pretending He was holy for watching us bleed inside.
I could taste Him in the back of my throat when I remembered her crying, that clean, reverent lie he wore like perfume.
Every tear she’d swallowed, every inch of fear she’d carried, every time she’d doubted her own power, her own worth, because He’d made sure the rules were rigged from the start.
And let’s face it, that Motherfucker had done it to all of us, even me.
I just needed one moment, one moment of peace with her. One chance to hold her without fear chasing the edges of it. I just needed one chance to feel her heartbeat under my palm and know she was real and here and safe from Him.
And then I wanted to reach through the sky and drag Him down by the throat. I didn’t know how much longer I could keep the hunger for violence from becoming the only language I spoke.
I didn’t know if we could actually do this. If the plan we were stitching together with ancient beings, half-truths, and desperation would hold, or if I’d tear it apart the second something went wrong.
I could feel the wrath coiled inside me already, hot and impatient, straining at its leash. What if I lost control? What if I burned it all down? What if my need to reach her destroyed the very thing I was trying to save?
The cigarette burned down too fast. I didn’t notice until it bit my fingers. I crushed it out and immediately lit another, because pain was better than numbness, and I needed to feel something I could survive.
The door behind me opened. I didn’t turn.
“You’re going to get addicted,” Topher said quietly.
“Unlikely,” I muttered.
He came to stand beside me, not close enough to crowd, and for a moment, neither of us spoke.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I said finally.
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “You don’t have a choice.”
“I know.” My voice came out rough. “That’s not what scares me.”
He waited.
“What scares me,” I continued, staring out over the city, “is that when I see Him again, I don’t know if I’ll stop. I don’t know if I’ll remember that there are things more important than making Him suffer, and it might get me killed.”
Topher’s jaw tightened. “You will.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No,” he said evenly. “But I know you. And even when they’ve called you the Devil, you’ve always been afraid of becoming one.”
I laughed once without any humor. “I’m afraid I already am.”
Before he could answer, I felt movement on the terrace. Topher felt it too. His head lifted. My spine went tight. Cold slid in beneath the heat of Vegas, a wrongness creeping across the rooftop like a draft slipping under a door that shouldn’t exist.
The door opened again, and Vespera stepped out first, horn gleaming black. Her presence was immediately unsettling, like she didn’t belong to any single rule set. And beside her—Liora.
She moved like contained violence. Like someone who knew exactly how much damage she could do and chose restraint anyway. Her eyes swept the rooftop, cataloging threats, exits, and weaknesses.
My pulse spiked.
Vespera met my gaze. “You asked for me?”
I inhaled slowly. “I did.” I turned from the edge of the balcony, smoke drifting from between my fingers.
I looked over at Liora, who was in fighting leathers and boots with her hair in a braid down her back ready to leave on the mission tonight.
“And you brought help.”
She smiled with the patience of someone who’d waited a long time and then bowed with a fist at her chest. “My liege, I’m here to serve.”
It seemed ridiculous in this place, but I nodded an acknowledgment with bare feet cold against the stone. I turned to Vespera and offered a seat, but she stayed where she was.
I said, “You’ve been there. You worked inside it.”
She glanced away as a muscle in her cheek fluttered. But I don’t think it was defensiveness. It looked more like regret.
“You know where His little dollhouse is,” I continued. “How it’s arranged. I don’t want to walk in there blind. I need to know exactly where we’re headed.”
Liora stayed silent beside her, watching me with that careful stillness she had when she knew better than to interrupt something like this.
But Vespera came over to the railing and looked past me, out at the city, at the lights scattering below us.
She reached for the cigarette, took it from my fingers, and inhaled slowly, letting the smoke linger before she breathed it out.
I felt Liora clock that small intimacy, the fact that I hadn’t protested, the space I’d let disappear between us without comment. Her gaze lingered a beat too long, thoughtful, measuring. I wondered what question she’d just filed away.
“I shouldn’t have ever agreed to it,” she said quietly. “I shouldn’t have let her talk me into it.”
Lilith’s name didn’t need to be spoken.
“I was… horrified when I first saw it, but I stayed because I told myself I was protecting them,” she went on. “That someone worse would take my place if I didn’t. That it was temporary.” Her mouth flattened when she glanced at me. “It wasn’t.”
The memories were there in her eyes. I could see them. Whatever she’d witnessed in that dollhouse, it hadn’t faded with time. It was embedded in her, the kind of knowing you never scrape out.
“I still see it,” she said. “What He called devotion. What she called His right.”
I took the cigarette back, took a slow drag, and exhaled. Smoke curled into the dark like a confession that didn’t need absolution.
“Lilith is still his favorite,” I said then. I didn’t soften it. Didn’t warn gently. “She always was. No matter who He’s collecting, no matter who He’s punishing. She somehow has Him wrapped around her finger.”
Vespera’s gaze snapped back to me.
“If she finds out you’re helping me, she’ll try to get to you,” I continued. “She’ll try her best to manipulate you. Remind you that you were always her chosen. That she needs you back.” I held her eyes. “She’s very good at that.”
For a moment, the only sound was the city and the soft hiss of the cigarette. Then Vespera’s expression twisted into disgust.
“Take her back?” she said flatly. “After what she did?”
She shook her head once, sharp and final. “I’ve been waiting to stab that two-faced bitch in the heart for a very, very long time.”
A sound escaped me before I could stop it, low and rough. It was almost a laugh.
“Good,” I murmured.
The word settled between us, not as a joke, but as a shared understanding. Then, Liora exhaled softly, like she’d been holding her breath the entire time. And Vespera’s shoulders squared. Whatever guilt she carried didn’t vanish, but it stopped owning her spine.
“So,” she said. “When do we go?”
I turned back to look out over the edge of the roof, then down at the cigarette burning dangerously close to my fingers again. I let it fall, watched the ember vanish into the dark below.
“Soon,” I said. “And when we do, there’s no pretending about what that place is.”
I turned back to her. “And no mercy for the ones who built it.”
Topher’s gaze shifted, taking in Vespera, then Liora beside her. He leaned over and said low, “The Arcana are settled, and they’ve taken the upper floor. No disturbances so far.” Then, quieter, almost human, “You should get some sleep.”
I took another drag from the cigarette and exhaled slowly, the smoke curling into the night like a thing that refused to stay buried.
“I’ve tried,” I said.
I crossed the balcony and dropped onto one of the lounge chairs, letting myself fall back without ceremony. The stone was cold through the thin cushion. It felt appropriate.
Topher hesitated. “Do you want me to show them to their rooms?”
Before I could answer, Liora stepped forward and bowed her head toward me again, formal and sincere.
“That would be appreciated,” she said.
Vespera stayed, taking a seat across from me.
“I’ll take a moment,” she said, eyes still on the city. “It’s been a long journey. I need some air before I try to sleep.”
Topher nodded, accepting it without comment. He gave me a brief look, the kind that carried a dozen unspoken check-ins, then turned and disappeared back into the penthouse with Liora.
The door shut behind them, and the balcony fell quiet again.
I stared up at the sky, at the indifferent sprawl of stars barely visible through the light pollution. Somewhere in that distance, Evie was still out of reach.