How could my father send me to such a place? Was my crime really so great it was worth this punishment? Were any of these poor soul’s crimes worth this?
Thoughts of revenge plagued the darkest parts of my mind. Lilith’s hand brushed against my arm, and all nefarious plots slipped away. Once again, she was all I could think about.
When a dark shape emerged on the otherwise desolate horizon, relief washed through me, unwinding my clenched muscles. It didn’t matter that it was a dilapidated hut with a network of docks surrounding it and nothing more. It might as well have been a flourishing oasis.
The corpse creature dropped us off at the dock and, with a clumsy movement that I could only guess was a bow, dipped back below the mud leaving Lilith and me on the dock.
We were so weary, our legs wouldn’t hold us, and all we could do was collapse on the rickety wood. Forced to the absolute limit of my secondary form, my vision shrunk to pinpoints, and my mind turned to sludge. The last thing I saw was the blurred silhouette of a great hound, the dock flexing under its weight as it approached. I wasn’t sure if it was my own imagination, but it looked like the creature had three heads.
Then, right before my eyes, it shifted, and a slender male stood before us in its place. With a shaking arm, I held up the crown for him to see.
“As your king, I–I command you to leave us alone. Let us rest in p–peace.”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, darkness swallowed me, and I collapsed back into the comfort of Lilith’s arms.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jessica
Highway to Greed – Present
As Lucifer’s memory melted away, I shook my head and refocused my own vision, veering my attention toward the world beyond the passenger window of the DeLorean. Unlike the Second Circle, the third hadn’t changed much. It was still a wasteland filled with nothing but mud and dead trees. The only difference now was the concrete parking garage that was nothing but a shrinking dot in my side rearview mirror and the paved road ahead of us. Also, the absence of any Frankenstein creatures—at least from my immediate view—was nice.
“They’re all gone,” Lucifer interjected, answering the question I hadn’t voiced. “We pulled them out.”
I looked back at him, brows contorted with confusion. “You and Lilith?”
“And Cerberus. It was his shack the mire souls had taken us to. He took us in, helped us rescue all those poor souls. All the ones intact anyway. One by one, each one we rescued made their way up to Lust. It was with the help of all those souls that we were able to build a new home for them there.”
It was difficult to picture the energetic, bright-eyed chef in the middle of such a horrible, empty nightmare-fueled hellhole. “What was he doing out there?”
Lucifer let out a disgusted scoff, his hands flexing around the steering wheel. “Just what his king had commanded him to. Guard the mire, don’t let the gluttons leave.”
“And Cerberus obeyed Abaddon?”
“He had to. You saw how the magic of the crown compelled those souls to obey me. It’s no different with native creatures of the Underworld.”
“So he helped you and Lilith rescue all those bodies because you had the crown?”
Lucifer gave a nod. “Yes. I suppose it wasn’t really until I embraced the power of the crown that I truly came to be known as the New King of Hell. Even though I hated the damn thing. It was handy at that moment, but to this day, I still don’t wear it.” His brow crinkled. “People shouldn’t wear crowns unless they’re either cosplaying, or they’re the Burger King mascot.”
“But it has the power to compel people. You can’t tell me that you, Mr. Billionaire Playboy, never use it.”
He slid me a sharp look. “There is much more to be said for earning people’s loyalty through good intentions and mutual respect. And I’d like it if you stopped referring to me as a ‘playboy.’ Contrary to popular opinion, I haven’t taken a lover since you. And yes, that is a verylongtime. Especially for one whose favorite sin is lust.”
An uncomfortable silence settled over the car cab as we drove through the Third Circle. My gaze skirted over the endless stretch of muck that Lucifer had carried Lilith through. Being in his mind like that, I could feel the things he had felt. That raw, desperate need to keep her safe and how that feeling had managed to stay stronger than the exhaustion that had ravaged his body. Even if he still believed Eve to be his mate, he had loved Lilith. Deeply. And that love had been the force to keep him moving, even when his body had screamed at him to stop.
He hadn’t.
He kept going. For her.
Then, on top of that, he’d stayed to rescue all the souls from the mire? How long did that take? I couldn’t even fathom.
Suddenly, I got Cerberus’s joke with the bread pudding that he’d made to jog my memories of this place. The bread pudding that had too many raisins crammed in it. So many that I had to pick them out. So many that Lucifer had joked it would take two hundred years to pull them all out.
Holy crap, had it taken them two hundred years to rescue all of those souls?
I almost wanted to laugh at how absurd the subtle hint the bread putting had been, compared to Lucifer’s Plan B on getting me to remember. And I didn’t want to laugh. I didn’t want to feel the things I was starting to feel.
