Chapter Thirty-Four - Lucifer #3
The house felt too full, too fragile, but I stayed beside Evie until Malach had finished examining her. He checked her pulse, her temperature, and the IV site on the back of her hand. Then he listened for a long moment, one hand hovering near her stomach without quite touching.
I watched his face like it had personally offended me by being difficult to read.
“She’s doing well,” he said finally.
Evie let out a breath, but I didn’t. “Define well,” I said.
Malach glanced at me. “Stable. Improving. Stronger than she was yesterday.”
“That’s not a definition. That’s just a collection of hopeful words.”
Evie gave me a tired look. “Luc.”
“What? I’m being reasonable.”
“You’re threatening the doctor with vocabulary.”
Malach’s mouth twitched, which was brave of him. “The IV can come out.”
My attention snapped back to him. “Can it?”
“Yes. She’s keeping fluids down, her color is better, and the nausea seems manageable now. I’ll send oral anti-nausea medication for her to take as needed.”
Evie’s shoulders loosened against the pillows. “Thank God.”
The words slid wrong through the room.
Her eyes flicked to mine. “Figure of speech.”
“I know.”
Malach adjusted the cuff of his sleeve and gave her a small, measured smile. “You still need to take it easy. No sudden exertion. No stress if it can be helped.”
A charming plan, if one ignored the fact that rest had become a fantasy word in my home, like peace or reasonable enemies.
Evie made a faint sound. “Have you met everyone in this apartment?”
“Unfortunately,” he said. “That’s why I said if it can be helped.”
I leaned closer to her, brushing my thumb over the back of her hand. “You heard him.”
She looked up at me through lashes that still looked too tired. “I’m not made of glass.”
“No,” I said quietly. “But you’re carrying two babies after surviving Heaven, which is frankly a little more delicate.”
Her mouth softened, but her eyes shone with something that looked dangerously close to tears. “Two,” she whispered, like the word still startled her.
My chest tightened. “Two.”
Malach cleared his throat with the diplomacy of a man trying not to intrude on something sacred and terrifying. “I’ll have the nurse remove the IV.”
“I’ll go get her,” I said, already standing.
Evie’s fingers caught mine before I could move away. I looked down.
“I’m okay,” she said.
“You are,” I said. “And you’re going to stay that way.”
“Bossy.”
“Devastatingly committed.”
She rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth lifted.
Malach was already gone by the time I found the nurse outside Topher’s room. She stood near the wall with her tablet tucked against her chest, staring at Topher’s closed door like she was reconsidering every career decision that had led her into my house.
Smart woman.
“Nurse,” I said.
She startled, then straightened. “Mr. Morningstar.”
“Malach cleared Evie’s IV removal.”
“Yes,” she said, already moving. “I have the supplies.”
I walked her back to our bedroom. Evie was sitting propped against the pillows, watching the door like she had been waiting for me to return.
Her eyes dropped to the nurse’s tray. Then lit up.
“Oh, thank God,” she said. “I'm ready to be released from my plastic leash.”
The nurse smiled faintly. “Malach cleared you to switch to oral medication.”
Evie looked at me. “I have never been so attracted to a medical decision in my life.”
“I’ll try not to be jealous.”
She snorted.
The nurse set the tray beside the bed and reached for Evie’s hand.
Evie froze. It wasn’t enough that anyone else might have noticed, but I did.
Her gaze fixed on the tape at the back of her hand, and something tightened through the bond, small and sharp.
Too many hands. Too many things done to her body while she had not been able to say no.
I sat on the edge of the bed before either of them could tell me where to stand. Evie’s eyes flicked to mine. I held out my hand. She took it immediately. Her fingers slid between mine and squeezed hard enough to hurt.
Let it hurt me.
The nurse’s voice softened. “I’m going to remove the tape first. Then the catheter. A small pinch, and it’ll be out.”
Evie nodded once. “Okay.”
“I’ll be quick.”
“Great. I’ll try not be dramatic.”
I rubbed my thumb over Evie’s knuckles. “You’re never dramatic.”
Evie shot me a look. “I know sarcasm when it wears your face.”
“There’s my girl.”
Her grip tightened as the nurse peeled the tape back carefully, then slid the catheter free with practiced efficiency. Evie looked away, jaw clenched, breathing through it like it hurt more in memory than in her hand.
“All done,” the nurse said.
Evie exhaled like the IV had been threaded through her entire soul instead of the back of her hand.
The nurse pressed gauze over the site and taped it down. “Keep this on for a little while. Take the oral medication if the nausea starts again. And Malach was very clear that you are still to take it easy for a couple more days.”
I lifted her fingers and kissed them, careful of the gauze.
Evie smiled sweetly. Too sweetly. “I love how everyone keeps saying bedrest like it’s a commandment from God.”
The nurse blinked.
I looked at Evie. “In this house, I’d avoid invoking Him.”
“Fine. A suggestion from the medical-industrial complex.”
“Better.”
The nurse gathered the IV supplies and rolled the pole to the hallway. The room changed immediately, less clinical, and more like she belonged where she was, in our bed, wrapped in our sheets, alive and irritated and watching me too closely.
The nurse left the room with all the supplies, and I pulled the blanket higher over Evie’s legs. She narrowed her eyes as I tucked the edge around her hip.
Her suspicion deepened. “Why are you tucking me in like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re about to leave and hope the blanket distracts me.”
I paused.
Her eyes sharpened. “Where are you going?”
I looked down at the little square of gauze taped to the back of her hand, then at her face. “I have to go to the Reliquary.”
Her expression changed. “For the Book.”
I said nothing.
Her jaw tightened. “Luc.”
“I need to know what it’s doing.”
“You haven’t even seen it yet.”
“No.”
“Topher said not to open it.”
“I remember.”
“Then why do you look like you’re about to do the exact thing he warned you not to do?”
“Because I'm very good at making poor choices with confidence.”
“Not funny.”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”
That quieted her. I sat back down on the edge of the bed because standing made it feel like leaving, and I could feel how much she hated that.
“I’m not opening it yet.”
“Yet is doing a lot of work in that sentence.”
“Yes.”
Her mouth tightened.
“I need to see it,” I continued. “I need to know if it can be contained. If Lilith can track it, then Heaven can track it.
For a moment, neither of us spoke. Then her eyes lifted back to mine.
“And you’re going alone?”
“No.”
“Who?”
“Vespera. Hopefully, Topher, if he’s in any condition.”
“That’s not as comforting as you think it is.”
“It was not intended as comfort. It was information.”
“See, that right there is why people throw things at you.”
“I’m not leaving the building,” I said. “I’m not leaving you. But I have to make sure nothing else gets in.”
“Fine.”
“Thank you for your generous permission.”
“Don’t push it.”
The hall outside our bedroom was too quiet, but not peaceful. The wards had already changed the air. Az and Liora had been busy, and the penthouse now felt awake and irritated.
If Lilith so much as thought about stepping through one of my shadows again, I wanted the walls to bite first and ask my permission later.
I stood outside our bedroom for one moment longer than I should have, wanting to go back in, wanting the impossible, and then Topher made a low, broken sound from across the hall.
One disaster at a time.
The nurse was inside his room, taking his pulse with the grim concentration of a woman who had accepted that her patient load now included magical beings.
Her eyes lifted when I entered. “He’s stable.”
That word again. Stable. Mortals loved it.
His eyes were closed, his color better than it had been before Evie touched him. Less like death had left him at my door.
“Leave us,” I said.
“He needs to rest.”
“He needs to wake.”
Her mouth flattened. “He’s been through something severe. Whatever she did helped him, but his body still needs time.”
“His body can have time after I ask him some questions.”
She wisely decided this wasn’t the part of the day she wanted to unpack. “I’ll be right outside,” she said.
“Excellent.”
She left, and I closed the door.
Topher didn’t move as I approached the bed and stared down at him. With all his crisp control stripped away, he looked too young, and broken in ways Evie’s magic had mended but not erased. I hated seeing him like this, and I hated that I needed him more.
“Wake up,” I said.
Nothing.
I sighed. “Don’t make me be sentimental. Neither of us will recover.”
His lashes stirred.
“Topher.”
His brow twitched.
“Sariel.”
His mouth tightened faintly. Even half-dead, he hated that name.
“Wake up before I start calling you Sariel just to annoy you.”
His eyes opened pale and unfocused, and still full of pain. I considered that a victory. A pathetic one, but today’s standards had been dragged through sewage and set on fire.
“Lucifer,” he rasped. His voice sounded like it had been scraped against stone.
“Yes.”
He blinked slowly, trying to drag the room into focus. “Where…”
“The Revel.”
His gaze shifted to the ceiling, the walls, the curtained window. Recognition came in pieces. Then fear. A sharp flicker behind his eyes, there and gone before someone else might have noticed. But I noticed.
“The Book,” he whispered.
“Damien said you hid it.”
Relief moved over his face so briefly it might’ve been mistaken for pain. “Don’t open it.”
“So you keep saying.”
His eyes found mine with a little more focus. “I mean it.”
“I assumed you weren’t making conversation.”