I sobbed at the name. I could feel the archdemon’s hands on me, his gray scales rubbing against my pink ones. His hot breath, his cruel laugh.
Maybe Lucifer was looking into my mind, seeing flashes of the cold and bitter memories of him in my head because at that moment, he looked so fucking angry, almost disgusted with himself.
“I didn’t know the depths to which he hurt you. You hid those memories from me. You hid them so well… I would have killed him if I’d known that he forced you like that.” His voice broke, weak under the weight of his anguish.
“How could you trust a monster like him?”
Another shake of Lucifer’s head, his face frozen in an expression of aghast with the horror this discovery had brought on. “He—swore his loyalty to me. He helped me find you… I can’t read his mind, and you hid your past with him so well.”
Lucifer’s voice waived. He ran a hand over his face, and when it dropped into his lap, his golden eyes gleamed with murder. “I’ll kill him. I don’t care how loyal he’s been, how much time has passed. I’ll fucking kill him.” His voice was lethal and sent a shiver through me.
His gaze turned soft when his pupils focused on me. He raised his fingertips to my cheeks, barely touching them, yet they stained red beneath the whisper of his touch. “Please forgive me. I’ll kill him once we return to the surface. I’ll shed the blood of anyone if it means earning back your love, your trust.” He gripped a lock of my hair in his shaking fist and put his nose to it, making a tearless sob into the blonde strands. “I’ll burn the whole fucking world down if you asked me to, Jessica.”
My heart ached for him, almost as if I could feel his pain. And on some level, I could. His hatred for Abaddon rivaled my own, palpable in the air and leaving my tongue heavy with the taste of ash.
“No, you wouldn’t,” I choked out on a bitter laugh through my torrent of tears. “You like to think you’re the villain because that’s the box your dad and your brother placed you in. But they were wrong. It’s why Lilith followed you through Hell. Before her beast ever resonated with you. She knew you were her true king long before she knew you were her true mate.”
He lifted his head, his Adam’s apple twitching with a swallow, no doubt upset that I was still speaking in the third person. That I wasn’t fully acknowledging all the brutal facts being laid at my feet. He held my hand and threaded his fingers through mine, then lifted my hand to his mouth to plant a tender kiss on my knuckles. I shivered as his breath feathered over my skin, sending goosebumps up my arm.
“You understand you wouldn’t know these things if you were anyone but my queen? Right, love?”
He was right. Even Sane Jess couldn’t argue with what Reckless Jess had bought into the second the devil started selling the fantasy. At this point, I was balancing on a precipice, caught up in a war. On one side, Jessica. The twenty-six-year-old nurse who’d been raised in a single-parent household. Loved baseball and too much booze on the weekends. Then there was Lilith, that ancient demon shifter, Queen of the Underworld. The demoness who loathed her beast and who fell in love with a disgraced angel and helped him rebuild Hell.
Which one was I?
Could I really be both?
“I stillneedto see more. But I’m going to be honest here. I don’t know howmuchmore I can handle.”
“Alright…” He hauled himself to his feet and helped me up, jabbing a finger into the elevator button. He gathered me in his arms and helped me into the elevator. I didn’t need help walking. My limbs were still shaking, but for now, I was pushing Abaddon to the far reaches of my mind. Still, it seemed the devil was using any excuse to maintaining contact with me, now that I was allowing it.
The crazy thing was, his touch made me feel better, soothing away the jagged edges that were the pieces of Lilith’s memory before she had met him.
“Nyx?”
The intercom clicked, and the voice of Lilith’s sister answered a second later. “Yes, Sire?”
“Take us to the fifth floor.”
“Right away, Sire. “There was a pause from Nyx’s end. “May I ask how it’s coming along with…Jessica?
He cast a glance at me, worry etched into the corners of his eyes. “I believe things are starting to come back to her.”
“Really?” There was a hopeful lilt in Nyx’s tone. This time, her voice was having a different effect on me than it had when I’d seen her in the second circle. My heart lifted, a swell of butterflies filling my stomach.
I had just seen her a few hours ago, yet it felt like years, like I had known her for ages and… And I somehow…missed her. I missed her so much my throat tightened, and my legs turned to jelly beneath me. I leaned against Lucifer for support, his scent of leather and whiskey enveloping me like a blanket and calming my nerves.
He dropped his gaze to mine, the heat and love banked in his golden depths causing my breath to hitch. “Do you want to talk to her?”
Swallowing, I gave a slow nod. “Yeah. Um… Nyx?”
“Yes?” her voice came through, oozing with hope and joy and so much emotion. All from a single syllable.
“Uh, can you tell me what your relationship with Lilith was like? What was it like growing up with her?”
“We were very close. Born of darkness and chaos. So,solong ago. It was awful back then. Back when demons were hardly more than animals. Our parents weren’t around, and for the longest time, all we had was each other.
“I remember when I had my triplets. I knew from the clairvoyant dreams they gave me that they weren’t going to be normal. Birthing them lasted…” her voice tightened at the memory. “Eons. You were there with me through every excruciating second. When I first held them, they were so small, yet they seemed to have this sort of aura around them that made the whole realm hold their breath until they drew their firsts. Then, they looked at me, and I could see the whole world staring right back at me through their eyes. I was terrified. Then, you squeezed my hand and smiled and cracked a joke. I’d just given birth to three little girls who could see from the beginning of time all the way to the dark death of the universe. And you cracked a damn joke, Lil.”
