Chapter Twenty-Six - Lucifer
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Lucifer
“WE TRY AGAIN,” I said. “For every soul still trapped in that place. We’ll try again.”
Her chin lifted. “Then why are you stopping me?”
“Because I’d prefer not to bring back any fewer people next time.”
She flinched at that. I hated myself for it instantly, but I kept going.
“We barely made it out. If we go back now, we will fail.” I let her see the truth of it in my face. “You need rest. We all do. And we need to find Topher. Then we make a plan that isn’t built entirely out of rage and grief.”
If we were going to attempt anything this reckless again, we would need every scrap of strength we had left. And I needed to find Topher before he disappeared for another 250 years, like he did the last time he lost someone.
She fought me on it at first. But she was exhausted enough that the fight kept fraying in her hands. Eventually, with her face turned into my shoulder and her voice gone quiet, she relented. Mainly, because she had run out of room to keep arguing.
I stayed with her until her breathing changed.
That was how I knew, not because she relaxed.
Because Evie never did. Even before this whole thing, even in sleep, there was always tension in her, little aftershocks still moving through her body now and then, as if some part of her never believed she was truly safe.
I wanted to kill whoever first made her feel that way.
Eventually, her breaths finally lengthened. Her hand, which had been fisted in my shirt like she meant to tear it apart, loosened by degrees.
I sat on the edge of the bed and watched her for another minute anyway, maybe longer. She was still in one of my shirts, swallowed by it, her hair spread over the pillow in disarray.
Her face was practically glowing in her sleep, which somehow made everything worse. It was still glowing, but still more breakable and too easy to picture Him lording over her in front of all of Heaven.
I brushed one knuckle against the blanket near her wrist, but stopped short of her skin. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I wanted to far too much.
I still couldn’t shake the memory of the way she had flinched in the van, the way her body had recoiled before her mind could pull it back. She had said it wasn’t me. I believed her, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.
I stood carefully, slow enough not to wake her. The mattress shifted under my weight, and she made the smallest sound, not quite a word, more like the ghost of one. I froze, but she didn’t wake.
I looked back once more before leaving the room. She was curled into herself, breathing shallowly, one hand tucked up near her face like she was trying to protect herself even in sleep. I hated that. I hated all of it.
I pulled the bedroom door mostly closed behind me and walked through the silent penthouse toward the terrace. The doors were already open.
Night wind moved through the living room in soft, cool currents, stirring the edge of a throw blanket draped over the couch. Beyond the glass, the city glittered with the same vulgar indifference it always had. Vegas never paused for grief. It just kept shining until you hated it for surviving.
They were all out there.
Azazael leaned against the stone railing with both hands braced behind him, his wings now hidden but his whole body still carrying the shape of them, broad and tense and made for violence, with nowhere useful to put it.
Liora stood near the far side of the terrace with her arms folded, staring out at the skyline like she was trying to decide which part of it to set on fire.
Morathis sat in one of the lounge chairs, too still, too composed, the kind of stillness that only happened when composure was taking every scrap of effort she had left.
Vespera had one leg crossed over the other, cigarette burning low between her fingers, elegance clinging to her by habit alone.
They all looked up when I stepped outside, but no one said anything.
The silence answered before I even asked. Still, I asked. “Has Topher come by?”
No one spoke, but Az shook his head once. Liora looked away. Morathis and Thyronis just stared into the morning light. Vespera exhaled a line of smoke into the dark and gave the barest tilt of her chin.
No.
I stood there for a second, staring at all of them like maybe one of them would change their answer if I looked hard enough. Then I crossed the terrace and took the empty space at the railing.
The city woke up below us with deliveries and loud cars. It was too early for most people, but their worst problem was probably a bad hand at blackjack or waking up next to someone regrettable. I envied them with a bitterness that felt too stupid to name.
The wind moved over all of us, and no one filled the quiet. That was one of the things I liked best about most of the fallen. We were damaged creatures, and when silence was the truest thing in the room, we knew better than to cover it up with noise.
I looked out at the horizon and saw the mountains again. I imagined the sealed seam hanging in the dark as if nothing had happened. Topher on his knees. Destiny unraveling in little threads of light. She was gone before the scream had even finished leaving him.
I ground my teeth. I should have been faster. The thought came ugly and automatic. I should have reached the seam sooner. I should have helped him and taken her the second I saw the first spinner. If I had only moved faster, thought harder. If I had only—
“You can’t do that to yourself,” Vespera said quietly.
I turned my head.
She was watching me now, the cigarette forgotten between her fingers, ash hanging by a thread as smoke rose in a thin, crooked line. Her expression wasn’t soft. Vespera didn’t really do soft. But there was no mockery in it either.
“No?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “You can’t stand here and cut yourself open over a cost we all knew was coming.”
Something sharp moved through me.
“She… died.”
“Yes.” Vespera didn’t flinch from it. “She did.”
The words hit the terrace and sat there.
No one objected. No one tried to soften them. Even Az, who would usually rather bite through glass than speak gently about anything, stayed silent.
Vespera took a drag, then stubbed the cigarette out with more force than necessary.
“We all walked into that knowing there was going to be a price. We all knew Heaven wasn’t going to let us leave cleanly,” she said. “We all knew.”
“I don’t remember agreeing to that one.”
Her eyes flashed. “Neither did she.”
Of course, she was right. Destiny hadn’t volunteered to be devoured into the seam. No one had chosen that exact horror. But choice wasn’t the point. Not in a war like this. The point was that we had all entered it knowing something might be taken.
Azazael pushed off the railing and paced once, slow and vicious. “Doesn’t make it easier to swallow.”
“Nothing can,” Morathis said.
It was the first thing she’d said since I came out. Her voice was quiet, but it carried. Always. There was something about Morathis that made even simple sentences sound like they’d been given too much time to become true.
Liora uncrossed and recrossed her arms. “He’ll either come back when he’s done breaking things,” she said, meaning Topher, “or he won’t.”
“That’s comforting,” Az said flatly.
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
I scrubbed a hand over my face and stared back out into the city. Evie was asleep inside. Topher was somewhere out there alone with a grief I didn’t trust to leave him breathing by morning.
I should have gone after him. Every old loyal part of me knew that. He had stood beside me through ruin after ruin, and Destiny had died in his arms while I got what I came for. If there was ever a time he shouldn’t have been left alone with himself, it was this one.
But every time I looked toward the terrace doors, my body pulled the other way. Back to the bedroom. Back to the woman asleep in my bed after Heaven had put its hands all over her.
I could feel the shape of her even from here, like some part of me had never stopped listening for her breathing. It made the whole penthouse feel split down the center, one half full of duty, the other full of something rawer and meaner and impossible to ignore.
I looked toward the hallway again. Then out at the city as the sun crested over the buildings. Then back toward the hallway.
I was fucking pathetic.
Vespera watched me do it twice before she spoke. “We’ll go look for him.”
I turned my head. She stood up, one shoulder against the terrace wall, another cigarette unlit between her fingers. Liora was near the doors, quiet and sharp-eyed.
“He shouldn’t be alone,” I said.
“No,” Vespera agreed. “But neither should she.”
That landed exactly where I didn’t want it to, but I swallowed what I wanted to say.
“She just got out,” Vespera said. “She’s barely sleeping, and you’re out here trying to decide whether your guilt makes a better companion than you do.”
I laughed once, low and humorless. “Careful.”
But there wasn’t much heat in it, and she knew it.
“We’ll find him,” she said. “Liora and I. He might even fight us, but then, gratitude has never really been the point with monsters like you.”
Monsters like me. I hated how much of the truth sat inside that. Because she was right. I knew she was right.
I needed to be with Evie, practically and physically. If she woke up alone after everything that had happened, I didn’t know what part of her might be lost.
Destiny was dead. Topher was wrecked. And still the shame stayed. Because my first instinct was still Evie. Always Evie. As if I hadn’t been choosing her over and over again since the beginning of time.
Something bitter moved through me. I let it sharpen my mouth before anything else softer could get out. “This concern for other people almost makes you seem tolerable.”
Vespera’s eyes flicked to mine, and the corner of her mouth hitched. She knew exactly what I was doing.
“Mm,” she said. “And there’s the king of Hell again. I was wondering when he’d crawl back into his own skin.”