Chapter Twenty-Four - Lucifer #4
Topher lost his mind. He turned in the threshold with her still in his arms and started tearing at the creatures barehanded, ripping them free, flinging them away, cursing so viciously the words didn’t sound human anymore.
But every second he stayed turned, more of the Lattice caught her.
More thread lifted out of her body in glittering strands.
“Go!” Thyronis roared.
Topher didn’t hear Him. Or he did and refused.
“Topher!” I shouted again.
Evie twisted in my arms, saw what was happening, and made a sound I never wanted to hear from her again.
Destiny’s face had gone shocked and young and horribly clear. She clutched at Topher’s shirt with one hand, but the other was already coming apart in lines of gold-white thread, unwinding from wrist to fingertips. Not flesh. Not bone. The pattern of her. The making of her.
And the Riftspinners were taking it. Worse, they were using it. The stolen threads ran from Destiny’s unraveling body straight into the seam. Into the opening. Sewing it closed with her.
“NO!” Topher bellowed.
Az hit the swarm on pure instinct, slamming bodies out of the air, ripping whole clusters from the tear, but there were too many now, too many tiny clicking mouths, too many silver filaments firing inward, stitching the seam with everything they could steal.
Morathis threw reflection after reflection over the Lattice, but even She looked strained now, Her face gone white and sharp with effort.
Liora grabbed Vespera and hauled her bodily through the threshold into the desert side of the tear.
“Lucifer!” she screamed.
I had seconds. Maybe less.
Topher was still trying to save her. Still clutching Destiny to him while the seam tightened around both of them.
And Destiny—she looked at him. Not panicked now. Not even really there anymore. Just wrecked open with pain and love and something like an apology. The threads took her mouth next. Her face dissolved into light in his hands.
Topher made a sound so wrecked it was like he was coming apart around it. Then she was gone. Just… gone. Reduced to bright unraveling strands that the Riftspinners snatched from the air and fed into the closing wound in the sky.
The seam pulled inward with a long wet hiss. Topher nearly went with it.
I lunged. So did Az. We hit him hard enough to knock him sideways through the threshold just as Thyronis ripped one final inch of space out of the seam with a roar that sounded like old doors being torn off the hinges of the world.
I drove us through. Darkness and pressure. Then desert.
We hit the ground hard on the Nevada side, stone and dirt and cold air and gravity all rushing back at once.
Evie stayed wrapped around me, breath torn out of her.
Az landed in a skid. Liora rolled and came up with Vespera half under her.
Morathis dropped to one knee like elegance had finally met a limit.
Topher didn’t land. He crashed. Half on his side, half on his knees, hands still out, still curved around a body that wasn’t there anymore.
Behind us, Thyronis tore Himself free of the seam. The opening shrank instantly.
The Riftspinners swarmed over it in a frenzy, clicking, stitching, pulling the last stolen threads of Destiny into the tear until the wound in the air sealed itself shut with one final bright sucking whistle.
Silence hit like an impact.
But Topher broke it. His scream tore across the mountain and kept going, raw enough to make the desert itself feel too small to hold it. The earth beneath us rumbled.
No one moved. No one spoke.
The sealed seam hung above us like nothing had happened, just empty night where Heaven had been.
Topher stayed on his knees, staring at his hands. I could still see the last of the light threads on them. The last of her. Gone.
Evie slid down from my arms slowly, like she no longer trusted the ground.
My shirt was soaked through with her tears.
Az stood a few feet away with his chest heaving, wings half-open and useless for the first time since I’d known him.
Vespera’s eyes were wide, and she had both hands over her mouth.
Morathis looked stricken in that awful quiet way only very old beings ever did, as if grief had bypassed all performance and gone straight to the bone.
Liora turned her face away.
I looked at the place where the seam had been. Then at Topher. Then at the empty dark above us. And for the first time since Heaven started falling apart, I understood that no amount of winning was going to make this feel like anything but a loss.
Topher bent over at last, hands braced in the dirt, shoulders shaking hard enough to look violent. No one touched him. No one was stupid enough to try. The wind moved over the ridge in cold passes. Far below, the cargo van waited where we’d left it, absurdly mortal, absurdly intact.
Evie came to stand beside me. Her hand found mine. I held on because there was nothing else to do.
Above us, Heaven was sealed. But in front of us, dawn was starting to bruise the horizon. And on the mountain, with Destiny gone and the seam stitched shut using what had been left of her, the cost of loving anyone in a war like this finally stood up and looked us in the face.