Chapter Thirty-Three - Evie #2
His face was pale in the low light, his mouth slack, his blond hair damp and pushed back from his forehead.
He didn’t look like the intimidating angel who had once looked at me like I was a logistical problem with eyeliner.
He didn’t look like the sharp, controlled man who had taken me to Hell and acted as if every emotion was an administrative error.
He looked young. And breakable. And… lost. Then his chest rose, slowly and shallow. I exhaled so quietly it barely counted as breathing.
“Topher,” I whispered.
I moved closer. I couldn’t see the bruises Luc had mentioned. The blanket covered most of him.
A lump rose in my throat. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
I didn’t know what part I was apologizing for.
Destiny. The rescue. The fact that I had survived and she hadn’t.
The fact that he had been out there falling apart while I lay in bed, protected by everyone he had helped save me.
Maybe all of it. Maybe apologies were useless little cups against an ocean, but they were what I had.
“I’m so sorry,” I said again.
A soft sound came from the side of the bed. I startled so hard the IV pole rattled. My eyes jerked toward the corner. And there she was.
Lilith stood near the shadows at the other side of Topher’s bed as if she had been there the whole time, as if the dark had simply decided to become a woman.
She wore black, naturally, because apparently evil had a dress code and she was deeply committed to branding. Her hair spilled over one shoulder in glossy waves. Her mouth curved into a smirk sharp enough to draw blood.
“Well,” she said. “Look who wandered out of the display case.”
Panic detonated in my stomach. For one blinding second, I couldn’t speak. Or move or breathe. The room seemed to tilt around her, the shadows stretching too long, the lamp flickering once beside Topher’s bed.
Lilith’s gaze swept over me, lingering on Luc’s shirt, the IV line, my bare feet, my hand already flying to my stomach.
Her smile sharpened. “You still have that look,” she said softly.
My skin went cold. “What look?”
“The one they get after He’s touched them. Like they’re waiting for someone to tell them what shape to be.”
The words hit like a slap.
For half a second, the room was not Topher’s anymore. It was white veils and gold light. Soft hands arranging me. A body that did not feel like mine. The horrible, honeyed pressure of being looked at like an object placed under glass.
“No,” I whispered.
Lilith tilted her head. “No?”
“I’m not one of them.”
Her gaze lingered with surgical care as she took a step toward me. “Of course not. You escaped.”
The panic rose so fast I almost choked on it. Before I could say anything else, the hallway outside erupted with motion.
Then Luc burst into the room. “Evie?”
His voice cracked across the space between us, raw and panicked and furious all at once. His eyes found me first. Then his gaze snapped to Lilith. Everything in him came apart. The room buckled under it.
The lamp beside Topher’s bed shattered. The curtains snapped backward, though the windows were closed. A pressure hit the walls so hard that the framed print above the dresser dropped crooked and cracked across the glass.
Luc moved. One second, he was in the doorway. The next, he had Lilith by the throat and slammed against the far wall hard enough to split the plaster. Her feet left the floor.
I screamed. Topher’s body jerked on the bed.
Luc’s hand tightened around her neck, his body between her and me, his hair sleep-mussed, shirt half-buttoned, barefoot and terrifying and absolutely not in control.
“What. The. Fuck. Are you doing near my mate?” he snarled.
Mate.
The word tore through the room. Lilith’s eyes flashed.
It was tiny, so tiny I might have missed it if I hadn’t been staring at her with my heart trying to claw out of my chest. A flicker at the corner of her mouth.
A brief, ugly tightening in her gaze. Jealousy?
Or memory. Or the sting of something she thought she had outgrown and clearly hadn’t.
Then the smirk came back, thinner this time. “Your… mate,” she rasped. “How traditional of you.”
Luc drove her harder into the wall. The plaster cracked upwards in a jagged line.
“Answer me.”
“Luc,” I said, but it came out too small.
He didn’t take his eyes off her, and that scared me almost as much as Lilith did. His hand stayed around her throat. The air around him had darkened, not shadow exactly, but something heavier. Something that made the corners of the room seem farther away than they should have been.
Lilith’s nails dug into his wrist, but her smile somehow survived.
“I came for what you stole.”
“I stole many things,” he said. “Be specific.”
“The Book.”
The word landed strangely, and the room quieted around it, like other things were listening.
I looked at him. Luc didn’t look back.
“What book?” I asked.
Neither of them answered me. I hated that more than I hated the IV.
Lilith’s gaze slid toward me, and Luc’s grip tightened so sharply she winced.
“Look at me,” he said.
She did. Mostly.
“The Book of Names,” she said. “You have it.”
“I don’t.”
She laughed once, breathless and ugly under his hand. “Liar.”
“Not this time.”
“You expect me to believe Sariel dragged that relic out of Heaven and somehow you don’t have your hands on it?”
Topher? My gaze flew to the bed. He was still unconscious, but his breathing had changed, faster now, shallow and uneven.
Luc’s jaw flexed. “I expect nothing from you. It saves time.”
Her gaze flicked past him toward me.
Luc shifted half a step, cutting off her line of sight so completely it felt like a door had slammed shut.
“Do not look at my mate again,” he said, his voice low.
Lilith’s mouth curved. “Still so protective.”
“Still so alive,” he said. “Don’t make me reconsider it.”
Something cold and satisfied moved across his face, but it vanished almost instantly beneath the fury.
Lilith swallowed against his hand. “I can trade.”
“No.”
“You haven’t heard my offer.”
“I heard your voice. That was enough.”
“Elias.”
The room went sharper. I didn’t know the name, but Luc did. Or maybe he knew enough. His grip didn’t loosen, but his stillness changed.
Lilith saw it and smiled through the pressure on her throat. “Damien’s pretty little lost cause,” she said. “Still tucked away in The Beloved. Still breathing. For now.”
My stomach turned, but Luc said nothing.
Lilith’s eyes glittered. “And Mara.”
My breath stopped. Lilith looked past Luc’s shoulder at me just long enough to make the offer cruel.
“Your little Lustrine friend is alive too,” she said. “Soft-hearted thing. Terrible survival instincts. I can give you both.”
Luc’s voice went very quiet. “That’s not enough.”
Lilith blinked. For the first time since I saw her, real surprise touched her face.
“Not enough?”
“No.”
I stared at him. “What the fuck are you doing?” I hissed.
Luc didn’t look at me, but answered, “Negotiating.”
“With her?”
“Apparently.”
“Are you insane?”
“Frequently.”
Lilith’s smile returned, slow and intrigued. “You do have it.”
“I said I don’t have it.”
“But if you did,” she said.
Luc leaned closer. “If I did, you would not be getting the entire Book.”
The words made my stomach drop. Because that didn’t sound like a refusal, that sounded like a door opening.
Lilith froze. She was cautious now and hungry. “What would I get?”
Luc’s hand finally loosened enough for her feet to touch the floor, but he didn’t step back. He kept her pinned there, his body a line of violence between her and the rest of the room.
“One page,” he said.
Lilith’s eyes flared, but it wasn’t disappointment. It was desire.
“My page.”
Luc watched her. “Why?”
Her smile slipped, only a fraction. “Because it’s mine.”
“Try again.”
Her gaze hardened. For a moment, the room filled with the old silence between them, the kind made by centuries and blood and betrayal. I could feel it, even without knowing all of it.
Lilith lifted her chin. “It holds my seventeen names,” she said. “All of them. The names He buried. The names He twisted. The names He used to bind me into what He wanted me to be.”
Her voice thinned at the edges, but it wasn’t weakness. It was rage. “And my true name.”
Luc’s expression changed.
Lilith’s smile came back, but it was not pretty anymore. “With that, I can finally break free of Him.”
The words moved through me slowly. Break free.
I hated that the phrase did anything inside me except disgust me. But it did. A tiny, awful part of me understood the hunger in her voice. I knew what it was to be kept by Him, made into something useful.
Luc was quiet for one dangerous second. Then he said, “The entire Beloved.”
Lilith laughed. It burst out of her, sharp and bright and almost genuine. “You always did have a talent for asking impossible things.”
“I wasn’t asking.”
“You can’t have them all.”
“Then you can’t have your page.”
Her smile vanished. The room seemed to hold its breath. I did too. Lilith’s eyes flicked toward me. Then back to Luc.
“You don’t understand what you’re bargaining with.”
“I understand perfectly.”
“No,” she said softly. “You understand what you want. That has always been your prettiest flaw.”
Luc’s hand tightened again. She gasped once.
“The. Entire. Beloved,” he said.
“I can’t give you that.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t.”
Luc stared at her. She stared back. For once, neither of them looked like they were lying. My heart pounded so hard it made my hands shake.
Lilith spoke first. “The Beloved isn’t a hotel I can just evacuate for you.
It moves. It’s folded into the realm, remade when He is displeased, hidden when His control begins to slip.
I can get inside certain rooms. I can pull certain threads.
I can steal certain pretty things when He looks away.
” Her mouth twisted. “But all of them? No.”