Chapter Thirty-Two - Lucifer #2
“You woke up asking for me.”
“I had a weird dream.”
“Az said the babies were talking to you.”
The words felt insane leaving my mouth. Worse, they felt true.
Evie was quiet for a second. “I think so.”
My hand tightened around the phone. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
“Luc—”
“Exactly.”
Another small silence. Then she sighed, and I could picture it too clearly. She was lying in our bed, too pale against our pillows, one hand probably curled over her stomach, her mouth pressed into that stubborn little line she got when she was afraid and furious with herself for being afraid.
“I was in a garden,” she said. “Or I think I was. I don’t know. It didn’t feel like a normal dream.”
“What did it feel like?”
“Real.”
That word slipped under my skin. Damien’s gaze sharpened from across the back seat. I ignored him.
Evie told me in a shaken rush. In her dream, there was a garden that hadn’t been finished. The trees were half-formed. The flowers changed when she looked at them. And the water ran upward into a sky with no sun or moon or stars.
And she said our babies were there, except they were little girls. When she told me that, something opened under my ribs so violently I nearly reached for it. We had… daughters.
I wanted to be in our bed so badly my body almost forgot where it was.
I wanted Evie tucked against me, safe beneath my mouth and my hands.
I wanted to protect those two impossible heartbeats through her skin and pretend, for one selfish moment, that wanting something badly enough could make it untouchable.
Instead, I was trapped in a goddamn car cutting through the desert with Damien chained across from me, that backstabbing fucker, breathing my air like he hadn’t already used up his allotted supply.
My gaze slid to him. Damien looked back. Wrong choice. The chain around his wrists tightened hard enough to bite. He grimaced but, wisely, said nothing.
Vespera turned her head a fraction. “Lucifer.”
“Luc,” Evie said, quieter now. “Are you there?”
I forced myself to breathe. “Yes.”
The word came out too rough, so I softened my next response. “I’m here.”
The girls looked like me, she said. Dark auburn hair and pale blue eyes. My eyes. Then, she said something curious. They didn’t speak with words, only gestures and expressions, as if language hadn’t reached them yet.
What stopped me cold was when she told me that something tried to get into the garden. A brightness. A pressure. I knew instantly it had to be Him. But the girls stopped Him. The garden closed around them, and He couldn’t get in. Pride shot through me, sharp and savage beneath the fear.
She said I was in the dream. She saw me at the edge of the garden, but it wasn’t exactly me, and I wasn’t sure what to make of that. The girls knew me but said I’d forgotten something.
“What did I forget?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Evie whispered.
Then she told me she’d asked their names. For one impossible second, everything in me leaned toward the answer.
I hadn’t let myself imagine them yet, not fully. Names belonged to a future I was still too afraid to trust. But the thought hit me anyway, bright and dangerous, that maybe somewhere ahead of us, Evie and I had already chosen them. Maybe their names were waiting for us.
I wanted to know. Damn me, I wanted to know.
“And?” I asked.
“They tried, but it sounded like wind and water and bells.” Her voice got smaller. “Then they told me not to say it, and I think I know why.”
“Why?”
“Because… names are how He finds things.”
Every thought in me sharpened. All of this was related, I could feel it—the babies, the book, Topher, Evie, all of it. The pieces didn’t fit yet, but they were close enough to each other to make a shape I hated.
I didn’t speak for a long time. I just looked at Topher, slumped against the window beside me, barely conscious, the only living tether to a relic I still hadn’t seen. A relic that held names. A relic Heaven wanted badly enough to come hunting.
“Luc? What is it?” Evie asked.
I looked away from him.
“Nothing you need to solve tonight.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting until I’m back.”
“Are you coming home now?”
The question went through me. I looked at Topher and then Damien. I could see Vegas rising in the distance like a false dawn.
“I don’t know yet.”
Evie went quiet, and I hated myself immediately.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I found Topher, but this is not finished.”
“You said you were bringing him home.”
“I am.”
“But not here.”
My hand tightened around the phone. “Love.”
“No, I know,” she said quickly. “I know you’re trying to keep me safe.”
“That is one of my less negotiable occupations.”
Her breath shook, and the sound almost undid me.
“I’m just very tired of safe meaning everyone leaves the room.”
That landed badly. Because she was right. I had left her in our bed with a nurse and guards and reassurances while I went into the dark without her. Because I had told myself protection was the same thing as presence, and it wasn’t.
“I know,” I said. The admission came out rougher than I intended.
She took a quiet breath. “Is Topher going to be okay?”
I looked at him again. “I hope so.”
The answer hurt her. I felt it through the bond, a small flinch of guilt and grief that made my ribs tighten.
“But we have him,” I said. “That matters first.”
“What happened to him?”
My eyes cut to Damien. His expression didn’t change.
“I don’t know yet.”
“That sounds bad.”
“It is not ideal.”
“Luc.”
“It’s bad,” I said.
She was silent for a second. Then, softly, “But you found him.”
“Yes.”
“Can you help him?”
I closed my eyes. There she was. Even sick and scared, her first instinct was mercy.
“Evie.”
“I mean it,” she said. “If he’s hurt, help him. You don’t have to worry about me every second.”
“That isn’t something I can stop doing.”
“Well, try while also helping him.”
A laugh nearly escaped me. It died before becoming sound, but still, she had put it there.
Vespera glanced back at me, one brow raised. I ignored her.
“I will do what I can for him,” I said.
“And then come home?”
“I’ll come home as soon as I can.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
I despised that she accepted it. I despised more that she had to.
“I love you,” she said.
Everything else in the car went briefly irrelevant.
“I love you too,” I said. “I’ll wake you when I get there.”
“I wasn’t planning on sleeping.”
“Good.”
“Bossy.”
“Protective,” I said. “I’m told it’s one of my least charming qualities.”
A faint, tired laugh. Then rustling.
Az came back on the line. “Lucifer.”
“No one enters the penthouse.”
“No one will.”
“If she so much as feels strange, you call me.”
“She already feels strange.”
“Azazael.”
“I understand.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “How are her vitals?”
“Stable. The nurse checked her and the babies about an hour ago. No physical distress.”
My chest tightened again.
“Good.”
“How’s Topher?”
I looked at him. “Alive.”
“That all?”
“It’s what I have.”
Az was silent for a moment. Then, quietly, “Bring him back.”
“I’m trying.”
I ended the call and lowered the phone. No one spoke. Vegas glowed in the distance.
Vespera finally broke the silence. “You know,” she said finally, “I used to think there was nothing uglier than watching you angry.”
I looked at her, but her gaze stayed on the road ahead.
“I was wrong. Listening to you afraid for her is much worse.”
“Your talent for nuance remains unmatched.”
She ignored that. “I think the Book matters more now.”
“I gathered.”
Damien shifted in his chains. “If what she saw is true, then The First Light is already searching.”
I turned my head toward him slowly. “Say less.”
He didn’t. Naturally. “He’s just going to look harder. You know He is.”
Vespera muttered, “You truly are committed to dying in this car.”
Damien looked at me, bruised throat and all. “I’m not threatening her. I’m telling you what you already know.”
I smiled. He stopped speaking.
Topher stirred beside me. His fingers twitched against the seat. His lips parted, and for one second, I thought he might wake. He didn’t.
But he whispered one word. “Don’t.”
I leaned closer. “Topher.”
His brows drew together faintly, as if he were hearing something unpleasant from very far away. “Don’t… open it,” he breathed. Then he went slack again.
Vespera turned in her seat. Damien’s face lost what little color he had left.
I looked from Topher to Damien. “The Book?”
Damien swallowed. “That would be my assumption.”
I leaned back slowly. Why should anything be convenient?
“Rafi,” I said.
His eyes met mine in the mirror. “Yes, sir?”
“Service entrance.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Call ahead. Clear the corridor from the garage to the private elevator. No staff. No security.”
“Understood.”
“Vespera.”
She looked back.
“When we arrive, you take Damien to the Reliquary.”
Damien’s eyebrows lifted. “Do I get a vote?”
“No.”
Vespera smiled faintly. “How nostalgic.”
“Chain him to something heavy.”
“With pleasure.”
Damien looked between us. “And Topher?”
“I’m taking him upstairs.”
“What about opening the path?”
“That can wait.”
“If the path shifts—”
I leaned forward just enough for the chain around his wrists to tighten again.
“If Topher dies,” I said quietly, “there will be no path. No Book. No leverage. No Elias. And no corner of any realm where you will be safe from me.”
The name landed exactly where I intended. Damien looked away first.
I sat back. The Revel rose ahead of us, all black glass and gold light, beautiful as sin and twice as costly. For the first time since I’d taken ownership, it didn’t look like a palace. It looked like a target.
A little while later, the car slid into the private service entrance beneath The Revel, where no tourists staggered past in sequins and bad decisions, and no one asked questions they didn’t want answered.
Rafi brought us to a stop beside the private elevator bank. For just a moment, no one moved. Then, I opened the door.