Chapter Thirty-Four - Lucifer #4
His hand shifted weakly against the blanket, as if he intended to sit up, and he failed immediately. I placed a hand on his shoulder and pressed him back down. The ease of it was insulting to both of us.
“Don’t sit up.”
His jaw tightened. A shadow of himself moved through him then. A combination of offense and pride dragging itself upright on broken legs.
“I need to—”
“You need to finish a sentence without looking like death’s assistant.”
His mouth twitched a tiny bit. But gone too fast. Still, I’d take what I could get.
“The path,” he said.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
I tilted my head. “Careful, that was almost your usual tone.”
He ignored that, which was rude, but encouraging.
“It’s not where I left it,” he whispered.
The room sharpened around those words.
“What does that mean?”
“When Damien pulled me out of the Maw, the place I anchored it shifted.”
“I know that much.”
“No.” His throat worked. “It didn’t just shift to me. It buried deeper.”
“In you.”
His fingers tightened weakly in the blanket. “Through me.”
I didn’t like that distinction. “Define through.”
“The pathway isn’t attached like a rope. It’s a dead route. Folded and sealed. I can feel where it should be, but when I reach for it…” His voice thinned. “There’s nothing. Then too much.”
Wonderful. Nothing and too much. My favorite categories.
“Can you open it?”
“Not now.”
My jaw tightened. Topher saw it and looked away with shame. I disliked that even more.
“Topher.”
“I can’t.” His breathing had quickened. Not much, but enough. “Not like this.”
I sat forward. “Look at me.”
He didn’t.
“Topher.”
His gaze finally came back.
“I need the Book,” I said. “Lilith wants it. Damien wants leverage. The First Light is coming for it. It’s just a matter of time.”
His face changed. “Evie?”
“She’s here. She healed you.”
His brows drew together, confusion cutting through the fog. “She what?”
“Healed you.”
His gaze dropped to his arms, as if he expected the damage to still be visible there.
“It was her?”
“Yes.”
Something moved through him. Grief first. Then guilt. Then something worse.
“I didn’t ask her to.”
“No. She has quite the talent for ignoring what people ask.”
His eyes closed. “She shouldn’t have.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But she did.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke. Then his voice came quieter. “Is she all right?”
That was the first thing that sounded like him. The instinct. The concern tucked under everything.
I exhaled through my nose. “She’s furious with me.”
His eyes opened faintly. “So… yes.”
There it was again. A flicker. Almost humor. But not enough to count.
“More or less.” I leaned back. “But you’re going to rest for another day.”
His gaze sharpened. “No.”
“Yes.”
“The Book—”
“It’ll still be just as dangerous tomorrow.”
“Lucifer—”
“You can’t open the path like this.”
His mouth pressed shut. He knew, even if he hated it. That was better. That was him.
“If you try now,” I continued, “you either fail, tear yourself open, or open something badly enough that whatever’s waiting on the other side gets a hand through. I’m in no mood for another battle.”
Topher stared at me. “That isn’t what this is.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Then rest enough to explain why.”
His eyes drifted toward the door. Toward the hall.
“I hid it because it wanted to be found,” he whispered.
The words moved through the room like smoke, and I went still.
“When I took it, I thought I was stealing it.”
“Weren’t you?”
“No.” His eyes fixed on mine. “It let me. Almost like it called to me.”
Outside the room, something in the wards gave a faint, low hum, as if something heard him.
“It wanted out of Heaven,” he said. “Or away from Him. Or…” Frustration crossed his face. “I don’t know. I couldn’t think. Desi—”
He stopped. Her name didn’t leave his mouth, but it filled the room anyway. I said nothing. That was the kindest thing I could do.
His gaze went distant. “I thought if I hid it somewhere dead, it would stay quiet.”
“And did it?”
“For a while.”
“How long?”
He laughed once. It wasn’t humor. “I don’t know. Time was wrong.”
“Then what?”
“It woke up.”
My fingers curled against the arm of the chair. “Tomorrow,” I said. “You rest. You eat if the nurse tells you to. You drink whatever vile fluids she deems necessary. If you try to open a path before I say so, I’ll have Az pin your wings to a wall.”
His mouth twitched again, stronger this time.
“Cruel.”
“There you are.”
His expression dimmed, and that was almost worse than the silence.
“I’m not there,” he said.
The honesty was blunt and empty of performance. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I gave him the closest thing to mercy I had. “No,” I said. “But you’re still here.”
His eyes closed. For a second, I thought he might argue.
“Rest,” I said.
“I hate that word.”
“Evie does too. You can form a club when both of you are done scaring me into becoming everyone’s worst-case scenario.”
He didn’t respond. His breathing had already begun to deepen. I stood, but at the door, I paused and looked back. He still looked fragile, but I needed him functional in twenty-four hours, and I hated waiting. Waiting was faith for people with fewer enemies. But it was the right thing to do.
The Book couldn’t be retrieved until Topher could stand in the Reliquary and make a dead pathway remember it had once been a door. Until then, the safest thing we could do was leave it lost.