Chapter Thirty-Four - Lucifer
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Lucifer
TOPHER STIRRED THE moment Lilith vanished. His fingers twitched against the blanket, the smallest movement, and every person in the room turned toward him as if he had screamed.
Evie stood behind me, like she had any right to look breakable and furious at the same time. Az was now near the door, silent and blade-still.
I stood between Evie and the place Lilith had disappeared, every nerve in my body still burning with the effort it had taken not to rip Lilith apart and decorate the walls with the pieces.
The room smelled like her. That was the first thing I hated.
Lilith’s perfume. Smoke and gardenia and myrrh.
It clung to the air, to the cracked plaster, to the fractured glass on the bedside table.
She had been in my home. Near Evie and Topher.
Near everything I had been stupid enough to believe was protected because it belonged to me.
I looked toward Az. “Wards,” I said.
His eyes met mine. “Yes.”
“Additional layers. Threshold seals. Nothing enters this penthouse unless I know it.”
“I’ll begin immediately.”
“Not immediately enough.”
Az’s mouth tightened, but he nodded once. He understood that this was not irritation. This was fear with its throat cut open.
Topher made a low sound from the bed. Evie moved before I could stop her.
“Don’t,” I said.
She ignored me. Naturally. She stepped around me, dragging the IV pole with one hand. The plastic wheels whispered over the floor, entirely too cheerful considering the circumstances.
“Evie.”
She did not even look back. “Luc.”
That one word carried warning, exhaustion, and the kind of stubbornness that made empires reconsider invading. Unfortunately for her, I had been an empire. I caught her wrist gently before she could get too close to the bed.
She looked down at my hand. Then up at me. Her eyes were still wide from Lilith and still bright with too many things she didn’t yet know.
“Let go,” she said.
“No.”
Her jaw tightened. “He’s hurt.”
“I noticed.”
“I can help him.”
“You’re on bedrest.”
“Right now I’m standing.”
“A temporary problem.”
Az made a sound suspiciously close to a breath through his nose. I didn’t look at him, but Evie did.
“Don’t encourage him.”
Az lifted a brow. “How am I encouraging him?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t know. You just are.”
Az’s mouth twitched. He dipped his chin once toward her. “Noted.”
The nurse chose that moment to appear in the doorway, which was either poor timing or excellent self-preservation, because if she had entered thirty seconds earlier, she might have met Lilith and quit reality altogether.
She knocked once on the frame, her flicking from the cracked wall to the broken glass, then to Topher, and finally to Evie standing with her IV pole like the world’s most stubborn hospital escapee.
Her lips flattened into that medical line I had come to recognize as suppressed panic wearing comfortable shoes.
“Evie needs to get back to bed.”
“Thank you,” I said immediately.
Evie turned on me. “Don’t sound so pleased.”
“I’ve found an ally.”
“You’ve found someone with a degree and common sense. That doesn’t mean she’s right.”
The nurse blinked.
Az looked vaguely fascinated, as if watching a mortal argue with me about medical compliance had briefly restored his faith in entertainment.
“Evie,” the nurse said gently, “you really do need to lie down. You’re still recovering, and you shouldn’t be up this long.”
“I’ll go back in a minute.”
“That’s what patients say right before they faint.”
“I’m not going to faint.”
I looked at her.
She glared at me. “Don’t make that face.”
“What face?”
“The face where you’re imagining catching me and then being smug about it.”
“I would never be smug about your collapse.”
“You would be so smug.”
“Privately.”
“Luc.”
Topher moved again, and our argument died. His head shifted against the pillow, and his brows drew together as if he were trying to wake from somewhere too deep. His lips parted, but no sound came out.
Evie’s expression changed. The anger softened first. Then the fear. What remained was worse. Mercy. I had seen Evie furious, aroused, terrified, brave past the point of sense. But mercy on her face could ruin me. Because it always cost her something.
She pulled her wrist gently from my hand. This time, I let her.
“Evie,” I said quietly.
She looked at me. “I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do.” Her voice lowered. “You’re afraid I’ll hurt myself.”
“That is one item on a very long list.”
“I’m afraid too.”
The honesty stopped me. Her fingers tightened around the IV pole, then relaxed.
“But he came for me,” she said. “All of you did. And Destiny died. And Topher…” Her voice caught, just slightly. “Topher is lying here looking like this, and I don’t know what I can do, but if there is something inside me that can help him, I’m not going back to bed and pretending I don’t feel it.”
The room went still. Something inside me moved with it. Because I knew that tone. It was the same tone I heard in myself whenever anyone suggested I leave Evie to fate and better judgment.
Az looked at me. I hated that he didn’t need to say anything.
The nurse did, however. “She shouldn’t be doing anything strenuous.”
Evie gave her a strained little smile. “Great news, I don’t even know what I’m doing.”
“That’s not reassuring,” the nurse said.
“No,” Az said quietly. “But it may be true.”
I looked at him. “Helpful.”
He didn’t reply.
Evie stepped closer to Topher’s bed. The nurse moved as if to stop her, then reconsidered when Az and I both looked at her. To her credit, she didn’t flee. She only pressed her tablet tighter against her chest, which had become her version of a weapon.
Evie stopped beside Topher. His eyes were still closed. His skin was too pale, his breathing rough and uneven. He looked wrong in that bed. Wrong in the room. Wrong in the world. Topher had always been made of lines, rules, and irritating competence. Seeing him reduced to this felt obscene.
Evie reached out, and her hand hovered over his shoulder, not touching yet. Then she drew it back and looked at me.
“I’m not asking permission.”
“I gathered.”
“But I’m telling you before I do it.”
A bitter little smile tugged at my mouth despite everything. “How generous.”
“Growth.”
“Questionable.”
Her eyes softened. Then she turned back to Topher. She touched his hand first, carefully, as if even unconscious, he deserved the warning.
“Topher,” she whispered.
His fingers twitched once beneath hers, and her breath hitched. She moved closer, leaning over him just enough that I wanted to put one hand on her back and the other under her knees and carry her straight out of the room.
But I did neither. Because I loved her and feared her. And because sometimes those were the same thing with different names.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
The words were quiet and not for any of us. They were for him.
“I’m sorry for Destiny. I’m sorry you lost her. I’m sorry you helped save me, and then no one could save her.” Her voice trembled. “I’m sorry for all of it.”
Topher’s face tightened. A small sound slipped from him, broken and barely there.
Evie’s eyes filled. “Yeah,” she whispered. “I know.”
My throat closed. I hated this room. I hated the Book. I hated Heaven, and The First Light, and every shining lie that had led us here. But most of all, I hated that Evie was trying to heal someone else while she was still dealing with her own illness.
Her fingers curled gently around Topher’s. Then she closed her eyes. “Help me,” she whispered.
Nothing happened for one breath. Then, two.
The nurse’s shoes squeaked softly as she shifted her weight. Az didn’t move. I could hear my own pulse.
Then Evie inhaled. But it wasn’t a deep breath. It was… different. Like something inside her had opened a door she had not known was there.
“Heal him,” she said. Gold light cracked down her arms.
The nurse gasped. Az’s wings flared in shadow behind him, there and gone so fast a mortal might have mistaken it for the light flickering.
I moved without deciding to. One step toward Evie. Then stopped. Because I wanted her to know I trusted her. To know I believed in her.
The light moved under her skin like living lightning, branching from her shoulders down to her wrists, bright gold veined with something deeper, something green-black and alive, like roots under sunlight. It crackled over her hands and spilled into Topher, where her fingers held his.
Topher’s body arched. The bedframe slammed once against the wall.
The nurse made a sharp sound. “Stop, stop, he’s—”
“Wait,” Az said. His voice cut through the room with enough authority that even I obeyed for half a second.
Topher gasped. His eyes flew open. The light poured through him, and for a moment, I saw every wound inside him answer. This was not soft human healing. It was command and correction. It was a storm told to become bone, blood, breath.
Black veins flared beneath his skin. Then dimmed. His breathing hitched, broke, and found a steadier rhythm.
Evie swayed. I caught her before she hit the floor. The gold lightning snapped out like a candle pinched between fingers.
“Evie.”
Her body sagged against me. “I’m okay,” she whispered.
“Don’t.”
Her head lolled briefly against my chest. “I hate when you say that.”
“I hate when you lie.”
“I’m not lying.” Her eyes fluttered open. “I’m just… recalibrating.”
“You are about to be recalibrated back into bed.”
The nurse was already beside Topher, checking his pulse, then his pupils, then whatever else her training told her to do while standing in a room where a pregnant woman had just called lightning from her veins. Her hands shook only a little.
Impressive.
“He’s breathing better,” she said, half to herself. “Pulse is stronger.”
Az stared at Topher. Then at Evie. Then at me. No one said what all of us were thinking. Because none of us knew the name for what we had just seen.
Evie lifted her head from my chest and looked toward the bed. “Did it work?”
The nurse swallowed. “Something worked.”