Chapter 35
The ballroom of Hell was a crumbling museum of gilded decay.
Above me, chandeliers twisted mid-collapse. Red light caught on the fractured glass like dying stars. Portraits of saints and sinners were torn beyond recognition, but one cracked mural still clung to the ceiling like a memory trapped in time; Lucifer's fall.
My boots hit the marble with a rhythmic thud and echoed with every step, fishnet-clad legs pacing like I was stalking prey.
My skirt was stained with my enemy’s blood.
My crop top bore the shredded remains of a vintage Motley Crüe tee and enough spite to earn me a lifetime ban from anywhere holy.
Mascara bled down one cheek like war paint. My knuckles were bruised, and my soul…
Well, that was the whole fucking point, wasn’t it?
And he was going to see it. All of it.
His posture was all elegance. One leg crossed over the other, an elbow braced on the armrest. But I saw the tension in his grip. The sharpness in his gaze.
It was the stillness that gave him away. The kind that said a storm was coiled between his ribs and waiting for a reason to be unleashed.
I didn’t slow down.
I walked straight through the river of ash and across the veined black marble until I stood on the exact spot where the heaven above collapsed into this hell below.
Right where he’d fallen for me.
I thought about all those times I had wondered about his presence in my life. If he spent as much time with other demons as he did with me. If he teased them, made them crawl for him…
Now I know. He didn’t.
“Why me?” My voice rang through the silence, carried on a phantom wind toward the angel of hell.
His answering silence made my throat tighten.
“You could’ve had anything. Anyone. But when you jumped, it wasn’t for power.
It was for pride; ambition.” I looked at him, really looked and, with as much confidence as I could muster, spoke the truth lingering between us. “It was for me.”
Still, he didn’t answer. Those mismatched eyes shone like beacons in the abyss. I wanted nothing more than to answer their call, but kept my feet planted instead.
“Nice place you got here,” I said, voice echoing up toward the cracked cathedral ceiling. “Little more murder-y than I remembered. Did you redecorate, or is this the mood lighting for doomed romances?”
No real reaction. He just watched me with those predator eyes, and I felt them like claws down my spine.
I huffed a breath that was more tired than pissed.
“You got your payment,” I went on, chin lifting.
“Callen’s screaming for you on repeat. Joe’s…
handled. My end of the bargain is paid in full.
” My throat tightened around the words, grief and justice tangled in one ugly knot.
“We both know there’s no more blood left to spill that matters. ”
His shoulders pulled a fraction tighter. That was all.
My lips pressed together as I swallowed the last bitter edge of rage. The fury I’d carried for thirty years had burned itself out on Callen’s dining room floor. What lingered now was something quieter. Rawer.
I turned to leave, beyond over whatever this was; leaving me in this state of limbo with the question of us always lingering on my tongue.
I hoped he would call after me; ask me to stop, make his big ‘Dany, wait!’ grand gesture, but…
Still… nothing.
And devil damn him if that didn’t piss me off even more.
“You know what pisses me off the most?” I murmured, pivoting back toward him with a humorless puff of sound slipping out. “You let me think that you owned me; that our stupid deal meant I was yours.”
The heat rose in waves, sweat sticking my shirt to my spine.
Lucifer’s only reaction was a blink.
I let the silence stretch until it became too much to bear. Then I laughed, the clipped sound short and brittle.
“You never took it,” I said with confidence. “My soul.”
The air around him rippled. Something in his jaw ticked and the throne creaked beneath his grip.
“Was it part of the game?” I asked. “Let the girl think she’s damned so she’ll keep fighting? Keep bleeding? Keep entertaining the lonely prince of Hell while he waits for a reason to give a shit again?”
Lucifer stood, his movements slow and deliberate as the world adjusted around him.
“You think I played you,” he said.
“I know you did.”
Lucifer’s damning stare was the kind that could start wars.
“I couldn’t take it,” he said, quiet now.
Dangerous. “I tried. That night, you were begging me to.” His fists clenched and, for the first time in my existence, I saw the beginnings of a lonely, tortured man baring his soul to someone else.
“Begging me to let you die. And I reached for it, Dany. I did. Like a selfish bastard, I reached and took your soul into my hands.” He reached out, mimicking the story he told with such ferocity it made my heart clench.
Then, he ran both hands through his hair and turned away from me, his voice growing softer.
“I know what Elysium feels like; to walk through the golden grace of God and be surrounded by the promise of an eternity free of feeling.” Lucifer glanced at me over his shoulder, his stare so full of longing and sadness holding me captive as he confessed.
“But even heavenly grace couldn’t compare to the feel of your soul against my skin.
It nestled itself against my own reprobate soul, making me feel for the first time in my miserable existence that I could be…
Home.” His gaze lifted to the mural above the shattered throne of the broken angel, cast from the only place he’d ever known.
My throat burned. “You should’ve told me. All of this time. All of these stupid fucking games Lucifer, and for what? An eternal game of cat and mouse?”
“I wanted to see what you’d become when you thought you had nothing left to lose.”
I moved toward him, wrath and something gentler braided together, until we were so close I could see the fine golden hairs standing on end along his neck.
He smelled like smoke ozone right before lightning strikes the ground.
My heart felt like it was trying to beat its way out of my chest and into his hands.
Then, just like the devil himself, I took that leap of utter faith.
“You fell from Heaven for me, and then you let me think that you owned me. That I was indebted to you, obligated to answer every beck, call and whim.”
His silence wasn’t empty. It rang like the frantic chime of bells, and when he finally inhaled to speak, I hung on every word.
Lucifer leaned forward, his breath rustling the wayward hairs on my forehead as he whispered, “You were never mine to own, dearest Dany.”
And there it was; the truth.
The confirmation falling from his lips landed harder than a meteor and left a crater larger than the one made upon his crash to Earth.
Lucifer gifted me a treasure that he was never thought good enough to receive.
Free will.
He let me choose whether to live or die. Pulled me back from the brink of death just so I could decide whether or not vengeance was a path I was ready to take.
That was only the surface level, though.
Lucifer gave me the opportunity to choose…
Him.
“Even heavenly grace couldn’t compare to the feel of your soul against my skin. It nestled itself against my own reprobate soul, making me feel for the first time in my miserable existence that I could be… Home.”
The epitome of sin, and yet for me, he never gave in to a single one.
I reached between us, pressed my palm to his chest and sighed as I felt the familiar heat of him there. Familiar because it lived in me too; the crackling ember of something that never truly belonged to Heaven or Hell.
We were the Unwanted.
“Take it,” I whispered.
Lucifer flinched. Just enough for me to see it. “I can’t,” he said, voice low and shredded.
I arched a brow. “Since when do you, King of the Unwanted, follow rules?”
“You don’t understand,” he replied with a tension filled groan as if he were a dam crumbling under the force of the current. “If I take your soul, it changes everything. You’ll never be able to walk away, Dany. Never be able to choose anything other than me; just as cursed.”
“Look at me,” I whispered. His body shivered, head hanging low as if resisting the urge to let me look upon sin itself.
“Luci,” I tried again, half whispering, half pleading.
His tension was palpable and I felt it with every cell of my being.
Finally, though, he did as I asked. “Maybe,” I said, running my fingers down the angle of his cheekbone. “I don’t want to walk away.”
His jaw clenched. “Don’t say that.” Loathing was a venomous current running through each syllable. “You deserve more than damaged goods, Dany.”
The words he didn’t say spoke louder than those he did.
You deserve autonomy. A choice I was never given.
“You’re not taking it from me,” I said, leaning closer on my tip-toes until my lips ghosted across his as I spoke. “I’m giving it. There’s a difference.”
His hands fisted at his sides.
“I’ve lived without it this long,” I continued. “Carved pieces of myself out for vengeance. Let men define what I was worth. I’m not giving you my body and soul because I’m broken, Luci. I’m giving it because for once, I want to decide what flame consumes me.”
I took one hand in mine and placed it on my chest, right over the pounding of my heart. Then, slowly, dragged it down until he was outlining the curve of my breast.
The chandelier above us groaned, ancient puffs of dust falling like snow.
“If I touch you now, Dany,” he gritted out. “If I take you, there won’t be anything left of either of us.” Glass cracked. The ceiling split wider. Molten light bled from the seams. The weight of his restraint was coming to life around us.
Even though his words tried to push me away, his eyes struck a different cord in our symphony. He looked at me like I was the end of every prayer he ever wished he hadn’t answered.
“Do it, Lucifer Morningstar, or I will show you what it feels like to crawl.”
The molten heat in his mismatched eyes erupted. Through clenched teeth, Lucifer growled, “Fuck it.”
He was on me.
Like every wall he’d ever built shattered under the weight of wanting. His mouth crushed mine, hands roving desperately over my hips, into my hair, everywhere at once.
Lucifer kissed me as if he was jumping from the cliffs of heaven all over again. Like a man who’d waited eternity to deserve something worthy of surrendering to.
The ballroom roared around us, chandeliers shattering against marble in the distance as flames licked at the grand floor to ceiling arches.
The mural above his broken throne crumbled, flakes of oil paint falling away like ash while the devil consumed me.
Gone was the story of a broken man and, forged upon canvas, solidified in history, was an unwanted man kneeling at the feet of the pride and ambition he’d damned himself for.
“It was you,” he groaned between desperate kisses. “It was always you, Niepozadany. My Unwanted.”
That night, the stars themselves were forged anew. We ripped each other apart and, by the grace of the devil himself, became something that not even the heavens could contain.
Two Unwanted souls.
One forbidden love.
Zero fucking shits to give.
I was the Queen of the Unwanted, and the world would shiver under my rule.