Chapter Thirty-Seven - Evie
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Evie
I KNEW SOMETHING had happened before Luc said a word. I could feel his fear down the bond an hour ago. Then the bedroom door opened quietly, and he stepped inside as if he did not want to disturb me, which was adorable, considering that subtlety had abandoned this household a long time ago.
I was still in bed, pretending to follow the doctor’s orders, which mostly felt like serving a prison sentence in high-thread-count sheets.
For the last couple of days, I’d been surviving on ondansetron and pepperoni pizza, a combination I was choosing not to examine too closely.
Considering I’d been too sick to eat for days, it felt like progress.
But now? Now I could eat that shit morning, noon, and night and still think about it like a lost lover.
I’d just finished off a slice when Luc closed the door behind him. And the weird thing was, he didn’t look at me right away. That was the first bad sign.
He crossed the room toward the closet, already unbuttoning his cuffs. His shirt was wrinkled. His hair was a little disordered, like he’d dragged his hand through it too many times while trying not to murder something or someone.
“Luc,” I said.
He paused at the closet door, just for a second, and then disappeared inside.
Oh. Absolutely fucking not.
I pushed myself a little higher against the pillows. “Did you seriously just come in here, pretend I didn’t exist, and go into the closet?”
His voice came from inside. “I just needed to change.”
“And I need answers. Look at us both having needs.”
There was a soft sound, a hanger sliding and fabric. The quiet, controlled movements of a man pretending clothes mattered.
“Lucifer Morningstar.” That always got him.
He appeared in the closet doorway in only his black pants, his shirt off, and a fresh one in his hand. The sight of him would have been deeply distracting if I hadn’t been busy trying to decide whether to throw a pillow at his head.
Unfortunately, it was still distracting. His chest was bare, the lines of him golden in the low bedroom light, all muscle and old scars and that infuriating, impossible beauty that made my brain briefly consider abandoning my argument in favor of more recreational yelling.
If he’d been closer, I would have. But… I stayed strong, mostly.
“What happened?” I asked.
His eyes moved over me first—my face, hands, my stomach, always my stomach now.
“I’m okay,” I said.
“That remains one of your least convincing phrases.”
“And yet you keep making me use it.”
One side of his mouth lifted, but he didn’t smile.
Instead, he turned back into the closet and pulled on the clean shirt.
And that’s when something cold slid under my ribs.
He was stalling. Luc didn’t stall. He threatened, seduced, negotiated, lied, killed, or brooded, often in an architecturally dramatic location. But he didn’t stall.
“What happened?” I asked.
The quiet that followed was too long. Then he came back out, buttoning his shirt with careful hands.
“I put your page back.”
The room seemed to tilt. My hand moved to my stomach before I thought about it.
“My page.”
“Ediphiel’s page,” he corrected.
The name moved through me strangely. It wasn’t memory. It was more like something on the tip of my tongue that I could place if I could just grab hold of it.
“Okay. But what happened?”
“The Book sealed it in.”
“Just like that?”
“No.”
His answer was too quick. Then, I watched him cross to the dresser. He took off his watch, set it down, then picked it back up again like he’d forgotten what he was doing. That scared me more than the answer.
“Luc.”
He looked at the watch in his hand. Then put it down again.
“The page changed,” he said.
My throat went tight. “Changed how?”
“It showed the name Ediphiel first.”
I swallowed. “And then?”
His jaw tightened. “Another word surfaced—Auctrix.”
He looked at me then.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t.”
His eyes sharpened. Angry Luc was better than whatever this version was. “Don’t what?” he asked.
“Don’t give me the soft answer. I’m not stupid.”
His mouth tightened. Then he crossed the room and sat on the edge of the mattress, close enough that his knee pressed against my hip. The bed dipped with his weight, and for one stupid second, my body relaxed because he was near. My stupid, traitorous body.
“It means something,” he said. “Morathis reacted. So did Thyronis.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It was.”
“Great. Love that for all of us.”
His hand twitched like he wanted to touch me, but he didn’t. That was the second bad sign. I reached for him instead. He gave me his hand immediately, like instinct beat fear by half a second.
“What else?” I asked.
His fingers closed around mine. Warm, but too tight.
“The page said your binding was broken.”
I stopped breathing. “What?”
“It said the claim was denied.”
The words landed somewhere deep. A place inside me that had been holding itself clenched since I woke in white and gold and heard The First Light speak to me like I was already His.
Claim denied.
I closed my eyes. A tear slipped out before I could stop it. Luc’s thumb brushed it away.
“I don’t know everything that means,” he said softly.
“I do.”
His hand stilled. I opened my eyes.
“I mean, I don’t know the magic of it. Obviously.” My voice shook. “But I know what it means to hear no after someone thought they owned you.”
His face changed, beautifully and painfully, like he wanted to kneel and kill something at the same time.
“He never owned you,” Luc said.
I laughed once, and it broke in the middle. “No. Apparently, the fucking Book agrees with that.”
But there was more. I could feel it in him. A tightness through the bond. A locked door inside his ribs.
“What else?”
He looked away. There it was. The third bad sign.
“Luc.”
“I searched my name.”
I blinked. “You searched yourself?”
He exhaled through his nose. “It found me through titles. Lucifer. Morning Star. Devil. Adversary. King. Fallen. Every name this universe has thrown at me.”
“That sounds… normal?”
“No.” The single word dropped heavily.
He looked toward the closet, where he had left his discarded shirt on the floor like the world’s most ominous laundry pile.
“It had no origin for me.”
I stared at him. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Luc.”
“I don’t,” he said, and the edge in his voice told me how much he hated that. “It said origin system not recognized.”
“Origin system,” I repeated.
“Yes.”
“Like… you’re not from… here?”
His eyes came back to mine. There was fear in them.
“I don’t know,” he said again.
This time, I let him, and my hand tightened around his.
“There’s something else.”
He went still, so still my heart started pounding before he said anything. My other hand slid over my stomach.
“No,” I whispered.
His eyes followed the movement. “Evie. Love.”
“What did you look for?”
His silence answered me.
My breath caught. “Tell me.”
“For them.”
“The girls?”
“Yes.”
My palm pressed harder over my belly. “And?”
He took too long. Terror moved through me fast.
“And?” I repeated.
“They weren’t in it.”
The words hit, and for a second, I couldn’t find the next breath.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stop saying that.”
“I would if there were another answer.” His voice was sharp with fear.
I swallowed hard. “They weren’t in it? Like blank pages? Missing pages?”
“No.” He looked down at our hands. “The Book has unborn children. It showed faint entries. Half-formed names. Lives not born yet, already cataloged.”
My skin went cold. “But not ours.”
“No.”
I stared down at my stomach. I hadn’t felt them since the dream. I had told myself it was too early. I had told myself bodies were weird and pregnancy was strange, and apparently mine had become the place where impossible things kept leaving fingerprints, so who was I to judge?
“The Book doesn’t know them,” I whispered.
Luc’s face tightened. “No.”
Panic rose, silent and cold. I pressed both hands over my stomach. “But… they’re inside me. Alive.”
“I know.”
“They’re not a theory. They’re not some prophecy puzzle. They’re here.”
“I know.”
“Then why aren’t they there?”
He closed his eyes, just once, like the question hurt him physically. When he opened them, the fear was still there, but so was something else. It was wonder—careful and dangerous wonder.
“The garden,” he said.
I went still. “What?”
“You said He couldn’t enter it.”
I shook my head. “He couldn’t.”
“You said the girls stopped Him.”
“They did.”
My breath trembled.
He moved closer, both hands now covering mine over my stomach. “Maybe the Book doesn’t know them because He doesn’t.”
The sentence opened in the room like a match struck in the dark. It was small and dangerous. A light, but not enough to trust.
“He doesn’t know them,” I whispered.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
His mouth twisted. “I’m trying very hard not to build a cathedral out of one maybe.”
A laugh broke out of me, wet and terrified, and then the laugh became a sob.
Luc pulled me against him carefully, and I went because I wanted to. Because I was tired. Because he needed me as much as I needed him. His hand stayed over my stomach, and mine stayed beneath it. For a while, we just sat there like that. No answers. No certainty.
I pulled back, and his eyes held mine.
“Thyronis called it impossible.”
“Oh, good.” I nodded slowly. “Love when ancient beings vote impossible.”
“Morathis agreed,” he said.
“Even better. A quorum of doom.”
His mouth softened for one breath, then went serious because my body had apparently become a traitor with dramatic instincts, something fluttered beneath our hands. Once. Then again. Luc stopped breathing. So did I.
“There,” I whispered.
His forehead dropped to mine, and his voice, when it came, was wrecked and reverent. “There.”
And for that fragile second, it was enough.