“She may not, but you’ll try anyway. And you’ll keep trying until you can’t anymore.” Chaos must’ve picked up on the same thing I did because his voice was gentler than I’d ever heard from him.
Grim’s expression didn’t change, but his posture lost some of its rigid tension.
Taking that as my cue, I pressed on. “We have to figure out what’s going on. She could be hurt. We can’t keep waiting for her to come to us with information. We need to get it for ourselves. She’s depending on us.”
Chaos nodded along. “It’s time to go on the offensive.”
“Have you already tried to reach her through your access to the dream realm?” Grim asked Sinclair.
“Me? It’s not my turn.”
“How bloody thick are you?” Grim muttered. “She’s not reachable by anyone in this room other than you. Now’s not the time to wait your fucking turn.”
Sin’s mouth fell open, eyes wide as Grim’s words registered.
“He’s right, Sin. You need to go after her and make sure she’s okay.” Chaos dragged a hand through his hair and sighed. “I hate this. Knowing he has her and could hurt her whenever he wants.”
Sin flopped into the closest chair, immediately leaning his head back and closing his eyes. The rest of us just sort of stared at him, waiting for something to happen.
He peeled one eye open. “Can you all do something else? It’s super hard to concentrate when I can feel you all looking at me. I know I’m the most gorgeous man in the room, but this is a personal moment.”
“No,” I said. “Get on with it.”
He sighed and settled in, wiggling his shoulders and fidgeting until he seemed fully comfortable. The three of us watched on, and if Grim and Chaos felt anywhere near thetension I did, they were buzzing with anticipation. Sin’s brows drew together, a deep groove forming between them. It softened for just a moment before it returned, followed by the distinct downturn of his lips.
I already knew what he was going to say before he opened his eyes.
“She’s alive, but I can’t reach her. It’s like she super reinforced her mental barricade or something.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” I asked.
Chaos tilted his head in a considering way. “It could be. I’m more interested in the reason she’d need such strong defenses.”
“You think it's protection against Lucifer?”
This time, Grim answered my question. “We all know he can reach her there, especially now that he’s physically with her.”
“Fuck.”
Chaos took the word right out of my mouth.
“What is our next step? If she has to keep her walls up, we won’t stand a chance at finding her without outside intervention,” Sin asked.
“It’s unlikely Lucifer is ever going to divulge that information, even if she hadn’t put her defenses in place. It’s like Chaos said, we need to make a move. No more waiting for her to tell us how to find her.” I was already filtering through potential allies in my mind, hoping we could find at least one of them.
“Lilith,” Grim murmured, almost like an afterthought.
“What about her?” Sin asked.
“She’s our only link to both Merri and Lucifer. If anyone knows where he could be keeping her, or the best way to go about tracking them down, it will be her.”
“Great, but isn’t she in hiding too?” Chaos asked.
“She is, but I know a surefire way to reach her,” Grim said.
“Well, don’t leave us waiting,” I said.
“It’s time for the four horsemen to pay a visit to The Den of Iniquity.”
