Chapter Twenty-Seven - Evie #3
My stomach twisted, and it had nothing to do with nausea this time. I just kept picturing Destiny. I stared at the blanket and tried to get the image of her unraveling out of my head. The image of Topher holding onto the shape of her.
“What about Topher?” I asked quietly.
Luc’s body changed, enough that my pulse kicked. He looked away first, which was answer enough.
“Luc.”
His jaw tightened. “We still haven’t found him.”
Cold moved through me. “What do you mean you still haven’t found him? It’s been… days.”
He exhaled through his nose, already bracing for the fight. “Exactly what it sounds like.”
I stared at him.
“He walked off before any of us could get near him. I’ve sent Vespera. Az. Liora. They’ve all been looking.”
“And?”
“And no one’s found him.”
I looked away because the guilt came in hot and ugly all over again. Destiny dead. Topher gone. And me in bed with an IV in my arm while everyone else kept paying for my survival.
Luc must have seen something on my face, because his voice changed when he spoke again. “Don’t.”
I looked back at him. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t start doing that to yourself.”
I laughed once, small and joyless. “That’s convenient.”
His eyes flashed. “Evie.”
“She died trying to help save me.”
That shut everything up. Even him.
My throat tightened anyway, and I pushed through it because if I stopped now, I was going to cry, and I was getting very tired of crying every time I said her name.
“She died because she was there for me,” I said. “Because you all came for me. Because I was the one He took.”
Luc sat down and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped so tightly the tendons stood out.
“She died because Heaven was fighting dirty,” he said, each word clipped and controlled. “Not because your life was somehow worth more than hers.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what you’re thinking.”
I looked away again. He wasn’t wrong, and I hated that.
Neither of us said anything for a moment.
I thought of Topher’s face when we came back without her. The way he had gone so still, it hadn’t looked like grief at first. More like something inside him had been cut loose from the rest of his body.
“I knew he cared about her,” I said softly. “But I didn’t realize…”
Luc’s gaze lifted to mine.
I swallowed. “I didn’t realize it was serious.”
Something passed over his face like he’d been waiting for me to find the edge of it.
“Did you know they were together?” he asked.
I turned my head. “Destiny and Topher?”
“Yeah.”
I watched his face for a second.
“I wasn’t sure,” I said quietly. “But I thought maybe.”
He looked away first.
“She wanted to stop being a secret,” he said.
My chest tightened. “And he didn’t?”
Luc let out a slow breath through his nose.
“He did,” he said. “Eventually. They were fighting about it when we were hunting for Thyronis.”
I stared at him. “Fighting?”
He nodded once. “Destiny was done hiding it. Done pretending it was nothing. She wanted it out in the open.” His jaw flexed. “Topher was being Topher about it.”
“Meaning emotionally constipated and weirdly noble about the wrong things?” I asked.
Luc gave me a look. “Meaning he thought keeping it quiet protected her somehow.”
That hurt. Because it sounded exactly like something a man in love and terrified would tell himself after being in the middle of what Luc and I had been going through.
“But he finally agreed,” Luc said.
I stared at him for one long second, and then the understanding hit all at once.
“Oh no,” I whispered.
Luc looked back at me. His expression darkened with something quieter than rage and maybe worse.
“Yeah.”
“And then she died.”
The words landed like broken glass. And suddenly, the room was too full of Destiny, of all the futures she should have had and didn’t. I could see her in flashes, purple hair, laughing too loudly, saying exactly what she meant, dragging the truth out of people like she had every right to it.
She'd always wanted more. And Topher had finally given it to her, just in time to lose her.
My eyes burned. “This is really bad,” I said.
Luc was quiet for so long, I thought he wasn’t going to answer.
Then, very flatly, “Yes.”
I looked back at him. “He’s your best friend.”
Luc scoffed on instinct. “He is not my best friend.”
I gave him a tired stare. “Luc.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “He’s a… loyal employee.”
That actually pulled a weak laugh out of me, half because it was absurd and half because it was so very him.
“That is the saddest, most repressed thing you’ve said all day.”
His mouth twitched despite himself. “I’ve said much sadder things today.”
“Maybe.”
The humor died as fast as it came.
I thought of Topher walking off into the dark with that hollow look on his face. The way he screamed on the mountain. The thought of the universe tearing the person you loved apart in your arms.
My stomach turned again. Not nausea this time, but fear.
“You need to go find him,” I said.
Luc looked at me immediately. “Evie—”
“No.” I shook my head. “You do.”
“You’ve been sick for days. You’re pregnant.”
“I know.”
“I can’t just leave you.”
“I know that too.”
His jaw tightened. “No one’s found him.”
A shock of cold settled in my belly. No one’s found him.
I looked at Luc and saw that he knew exactly how bad that sounded. “What if he’s…” I started, then stopped.
I didn’t have to finish it. His face got this hollow look anyway. He had already gone there. To all the worst places.
“I know,” Luc said quietly.
I reached for his hand and held on hard enough to make my point.
“Sure, he’s your employee, and he’s loyal, he’s your whatever, but you’ve known each other for a long, long time. He’ll hear you in a way he won’t hear them.”
Luc didn’t answer. Because he knew I was right.
Then I said the part I hadn’t wanted to say out loud because speaking it made it real. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
His eyes came back to mine, and I saw the exact second instinct beat denial. He stood, slowly, and walked to the closet, like the decision weighed more than either of us wanted it to.
“If I go,” he said, already slipping into that practical, kingly tone he used when he had to do something he hated, “Malach’s nurse stays. Az comes back the second I call him. You do not get out of this bed unless it is absolutely necessary.”
“Define absolutely necessary.”
His stare sharpened.
I sighed. “Fine.”
I watched him change into black fatigue pants and a black long-sleeve dry-fit shirt. He shrugged on a black utility jacket and slipped on a pair of boots. He came back to the bed then, bent, and pressed his forehead to mine.
“If he’s done something… irreversible,” he said, very quietly, “I’m going to be a nightmare.”
I let out a weak breath that might have been a laugh. “That feels a little understated.”
“It is.”
Then he kissed my forehead, and when he pulled away, he was already wearing that harder shape again, the one the king of Hell put on when he had something to hunt and no room left for softness.
When he left the room, that bad feeling stayed exactly where it was, cold, patient, and waiting.