I folded my hands in my lap when she didn’t immediately continue speaking. Anything to keep me from reaching out to her.
“I found my essence,” she said. “My soul. It was this wondrous light. So bright. I was staring at it and thought, what if I could use it to fuse my people’s souls to their bodies? What if I could do this without having to harm you or Calyx? What if I was strong enough to be the creator and the source of their lives? But when I touched it…” She shuddered. “I awoke something in me. This blackness that rose from the deepest part of me. It tainted all that light. Then it came afterme. And—” She took another deep breath. “It did something. Possessed me, invaded me, I don’t even know. But it poured itself into me like tar down my throat.”
Every muscle in my body went rigid.
She’d told me she was fine. So, she’d lied. Or maybe she’d just wanted to believe her own lie. Either way, the truth was worse than anything I’d imagined. While I wanted to shake the foolishness out of her, I held still, remembering Eliza’s words about remaining calm and not showing judgment.
She ran a thumb absently over her knuckles as she spoke. “I didn’t say anything about it because when I woke, everything was fine. And I started to wonder if I’d imagined it. If I was losing my mind. Then we fought the dragon, and those wings just appeared on my back, as though my shadows knew exactly what they needed to do. I assumed my power was growing.”
I thought back to that day, recalling the sight of her soaring high above the dragon before punching down and slamming her blade right through its skull. That wasn’t an image that I would forget anytime soon.
“And when you merged your soldiers’ souls with their bodies?”
“It was almost…easy,” she whispered. “But that night—” She swallowed. “I had the nightmare.”
Slowly, the puzzle pieces all started to come together. I remembered the sound of her cries, the way she thrashed in our bedroll, how she’d shoved me away after waking.
“The darkness came after me there too. It trapped me, held me down, and…” She sighed. “You woke me from the nightmare, but that night, I threw up. I’ve never done that before, but I know what it is. I’ve been around sick humans. Except, it wasn’t like what humans do. What came out of me was black tar. Thick as oil.”
I jerked back and stared at her. God, there was so much she’d kept from me. “Nothing came out of you,” I said, grateful my tone came out reassuring and not angry. Inside, though, I was vibrating with it.
She winced. “Yes, it did. You just didn’t see it. At first, I thought my mind was playing tricks on me again. That I’d exhausted myself and was imagining things. But it happened. I know it did. It has something to do with the darkness spreading through me.”
Well, that sounded ominous. I needed more information before I could figure this out.
“Since then, everything’s been easier. Almost frightfully easy,” she said. “Calling my shadows, wielding fire, shaping Hell’s resources to whatever I need, stopping the pestilence. Those corpses out there—I can feel them. Calling to me to resurrect them. And I feel… I feel…” She fell quiet and closed her eyes.
I leaned in, steadying my voice so she wouldn’t hear the dread clawing through me. “What do you feel?”
“Powerful. Angry. Conflicted.” Her eyes—thankfully once again her sharp and celestial blues—locked on mine. “When I was staring at all the dead hellspawn, I couldn’t help but think how easy it would be to bring them back, to force them to fight for me. If they refused, I would just…kill them.”
That stopped me cold. Lily wasneverthat heartless. She would never force anyone—hellspawn or human—to fight for her, and killing simply because someone told her no? That sounded more like Lucifer’s way of thinking.
“The power is exhausting but intoxicating, Rath,” she whispered. Her words made my blood run cold. “It feels good when I use it. Makes me think I can do anything. Like I can make anyone do what I want.”
I tried not to let the horror show on my face. It terrified me that she was starting to sound less like the celestial I loved and more like the devil we were trying to kill.
Desperation ripped at my chest as I wondered how close we were to the nearest gate. I wanted to take her away fromhere, hide her somewhere on Earth, far from this cursed realm and her father. Anything to protect her. Anything to keep the darkness from spreading further.
But I couldn’t overreact. Couldn’t let her see how afraid I was. I had to stay calm and support her through this. Then I had to find a way to save her—because Irefusedto lose her to this disease.
I cleared my throat. “Why didn’t you tell me about any of this?”
“Because I didn’t want to scare you. And I didn’t want anyone to look at me the way you’re looking at me right now.”
Shit. So my expression had betrayed me. I wiped it clean, smothering every flicker of emotion before she could read more.
“Do you know what it is?” I asked.
Her tongue darted across her lips, and she leaned back, eyes drifting toward the broken ceiling. “I think it’s the darkness that Levi always said lived within me. The part that came from Lucifer. And my essence—the light—comes from Sofiel. From my mother. They’re at war inside me.”
She didn’t need to finish that sentence for me to know what she would have said. The darkness was winning. Because darkness was a tempting, evil thing.
“It’s strong. And it’s mine,” she continued.
Not an encouraging thing to hear her say. I took a moment to process all this.
“Say something,” she begged. “Promise me this won’t break us.”
