Chapter Twenty-One - Evie #3
The question flashed through me so hard it almost made me sick, because the answer should have been obvious. It should have been immediate. I should have moved. I should have ripped His arm off me and gotten out of that bed and made the walls shake with how loudly I told Him to go to hell.
But I just lay there and took it. And hated myself.
He made a soft sound behind me, almost a breath, almost satisfaction, and that was somehow worse than if He’d spoken. His thumb moved once, a slow stroke low across my stomach, and my whole body went tighter with dread.
I kept staring at the wall so hard that it blurred as I clenched my teeth. Anything but this. Anything but the hand under my robe. Anything but the way my own body had betrayed me for one ugly second and mistaken warmth for safety.
My breath came thin and shallow. His mouth brushed my hair when He finally spoke, his voice low enough to feel more than hear.
“Relax,” He murmured.
The word was soft enough to sound kind, which only made it worse.
Then His mouth brushed my hair again, barely there, then drifted lower to the curve where my neck met my shoulder, not a kiss so much as a claim disguised as tenderness.
My whole body locked harder. Every nerve in me knew what was happening even while the rest of me lay there, still and horrified, like stillness might somehow buy me time.
His hand moved too.
It left my stomach slowly, sliding lower over the thin fold of the robe until it found my hip.
His palm settled there for a beat, warm and steady, and then, with terrible deliberate ease, traveled just far enough to graze the low, vulnerable line of my body beneath the fabric. It made every muscle in me lock.
The touch was light. That was the horror of it.
It was intimate enough to hollow me out with dread.
My body registered only warmth, the simple fact of skin and heat and proximity.
Because my mind was nowhere near comfort.
My mind was frozen white with terror, screaming at me to move, to get up, to twist out of His arms and demand what the fuck He thought He was doing.
And still, I did none of those things. I just lay there and took it. And hated myself a little more.
If Luc had seen that hand move, seen the measured patience of it, the way He made violation look almost gentle, there would’ve been blood on the walls. Lucifer Morningstar would’ve torn this room apart with his bare hands trying to kill Him.
And maybe that should have comforted me. Instead, it only made the shame burn hotter. Because Luc wasn’t here. I was. And I was still lying in this bed, saying nothing, while this monster continued to touch me.
And the worst part, the part I knew would keep me awake long after this ended, was that this was exactly how He wanted it, quiet enough to make me doubt my own panic, careful enough to make my silence look like permission.
But I wasn’t just scared of him. I was scared of what would happen if I broke this strange, fragile stillness. Would He pull back and smile and act wounded. Would He not pull back at all? Was the kindness He showed me when I was sick just another path to this exact moment?
His hand remained where it was, warm against my stomach, and I felt the awful clarity of it settle in.
This was how He did it. It was never violent or by force. He broke you with gentleness and patience, and little trespasses that made you question your sanity.
My lips parted. I didn’t know if I was about to tell Him to stop or apologize for being afraid, and that realization scared me almost as much as the hand under my robe.
But still I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. Whatever part of me should have moved first, should have twisted free or shoved back or said stop, had gone white and distant with fear. My body lay rigid in His arms while my mind skittered uselessly behind glass.
So I did the only thing I could. I reached for Luc. With the thread between us, the tether that had survived everything He’d done to it. I found it half-blind and yanked. Hard.
The answer came like fire through water. It wasn’t words or even thoughts. First, it was recognition. And then it became fury.
It tore down the bond so fast it made my breath hitch, hot and violent and immediate.
Luc knew. He knew I was afraid, knew I was not alone, knew exactly whose hands I was trapped under.
The rage that surged through him was so bright it almost blinded me, a black-red flare of murder and devotion and helpless distance.
For one wild second, I thought the force of it might split me open. But then it changed.
The fury didn’t vanish. It narrowed. Softened at the edges where it touched me. The violence turned outward, away from me, and what came through after it was worse in a different way.
Love. Terrible, aching, unmistakable love.
It moved through the tether like fingers over bruised skin, not enough to erase what was happening, not enough to save me, but enough to tell me he was there.
Enough to tell me I was not imagining my own terror.
Enough to tell me that if he could have torn Heaven down stone by stone to get to me at that moment, he would have.
The force of it made the backs of my eyes burn. Still I didn’t move.
I lay there, frozen and hating myself, while Luc’s love poured down the tether in a steady ruined wave until, somewhere between fear and exhaustion and the awful warmth of that false comfort around me, I slipped under.
But sleep was not mercy. It was absence. And when I woke, horror came back all at once.
I didn’t know how long had passed. The room was still bathed in that same honey-colored light, unchanged, untouched, as if time here had no dignity at all. For one soft, sick second, I didn’t understand why my muscles ached.
Then I felt Him behind me. Still there. Still… holding me.
His hand still rested low on my bare stomach, possessive in its calm, and when I shifted even slightly, my body registered something else, too much of Him, too obvious, too unmistakable.
His erection was pressed long and hard up against my back. Disgust slammed into me so hard it almost made me gag. Disgust and fear, woven so tightly together I couldn’t separate them.
I lurched out of the bed. It was clumsy and graceless, and I nearly fell on my face.
I caught myself on the edge of the mattress and backed away too fast, my pulse thundering, my mind scrambling for something, anything, to say that would get me out of the room without sounding as terrified as I was.
I didn’t look at Him. I couldn’t.
“I—” My throat felt scraped raw. “I need the bathroom.”
It was pathetic. Transparent. The sort of excuse someone made who had no better options and no real privacy left to claim.
But I said it anyway. Because what else was there? Nothing. There was nothing else because I was a fucking prisoner. And I hated Him.
In that moment, with my skin crawling and my chest heaving and the memory of Luc’s fury still burning faintly in the bond, I hated Him with a clarity so clean it felt almost holy. If I’d had a knife, if I’d had a shard of glass, if I’d had anything sharp enough to matter, I would have used it.
I stumbled into the bathroom and shut the thin door harder than I meant to. I didn’t slam it. I wasn’t brave enough for that. It was just enough to put something between us.
Then I sat down on the toilet lid because my legs were ready to give out, and I bent forward, elbows on my knees, breathing the way Destiny had taught me to when panic started climbing too high.
In through my nose. Hold. Out slower. Again. And again. And again.
It took too long. My heart wouldn’t listen. My skin wouldn’t stop feeling wrong. Every inch of me still felt trapped in the shape of His arms, no matter how far I’d moved from the bed.
I needed to scrub myself clean with scalding water. I pressed my hands hard against my thighs and forced another breath. This couldn’t be all I had. It couldn’t.
I forced myself to sit up straighter. My reflection in the mirror looked pale and furious and shaken enough to break.
“No,” I whispered to it. “You can do this.”
I lifted my hands, and at first, I thought the trembling was just that, trembling.
Then I saw the gold move. A crackle of lightning ran fine and bright beneath my skin, down through my fingers, delicate as veins and twice as alive.
It flashed once between my knuckles, a low, wild shimmer that made my breath catch.
I stared. The gold answered my fear, but not like before. This time it was awake and listening.
“Oh,” I whispered.
Then another thought hit me, colder than the first. If He came in and saw this—
I was on my feet before I’d fully decided to stand. The lightning skittered again over my fingers, brighter now, and I curled my hands into fists like that could hide it, like that could hide anything.
Outside the bathroom door, the room was too quiet. I didn’t know what to do. Do I walk back out there like everything was fine? Do I wait it out in here until He left?
And then—
I heard the faintest whisper of my name through the wall here in the bathroom.
“Evie.”
Was I just imagining it?
But then—I heard it again, “Evie. It’s time.”
It’s time? Time for what?
Then the whisper sounded like it was right behind the wall, “Evie, it’s time to use your magic.”
I looked at my hands again, the gold sparking off my fingers, and I pressed my palm to the wall.
“Please, please, please,” I begged, and suddenly, a seam opened. I stared at the bathroom door, praying He didn’t come looking for me as the seam widened. I slipped through, and right in front of me was a swirl of white smoke.
I looked back one more time and pressed my hand to the stone wall, sealing the seam again. And when I turned back around, Cindralis was grinning.
“He’s coming for you. He’s almost here.”
My stomach dropped instantly, “What?”
“Your Crownless Star.” She looked past me with a far-off look, her eyes paling as she said, “They’ve just neared Heaven’s gate.”