“Nothing to apologize for,” Echo tells me, as I feel a shadow brush against my shoulder in a gesture of comfort. “We’ll figure it out.”
“How?” I ask incredulously, feeling more and more shit piling onto my shoulders. I’m a possible world-ruiner, and their Gate is still fucked. We’re just throwing good news around like glitter today.
“I said you can’t be a Gate Guardian,” Nefta interrupts. “I didn’t say you couldn’t help fix the Hellgate.”
Her words pull me up short. “What?”
“Go down to Hell’s Embrace. You’ll need to go to the literal Hellgate to do this. Demonic Gatekeepers created the Hellgate, but it was demonic Annuli who made it work. You can go down and help to reset it to its former glory, like the way it was when it was first made. It’s one of your true duties, after all.”
I sit up straighter, finally glad to hear some good fucking news. “I can? How do I do that?”
She opens her mouth to explain, but Tazreel groans just then and sits up, scratching away the unconsciousness from his eyes as he looks around. “What happened?” he asks, his voice scratchy from sleep.
Nefta takes this opportunity to get up, abandoning her teacup as she walks over to me, so I rise to my feet too. “I need to go now. I’ll be back, but there’s something I must check on before I can return to the Legion and report everything that happened. If you need me, call,” she says in a hurry.
“But—”
“Your scythe is the key, Delta,” Nefta says with one arched eyebrow, indicating a heavy double meaning.
She sends a look over her shoulder at Taz. “Good to see you aren’t completely useless on the battlefield, Pride,” she says, turning and sweeping out of the room before he can say a word back to her.
Taz scowls at the empty space she just was occupying. “That angel is a pain in my ass.” He looks over at me, like he’s just now noticing I’m here. “Ah, Delta. Glad to see you didn’t die. Must be my Abdicated blood that kept you quick on your feet.”
“Must be,” I say dryly.
His wings poof up behind him. “Did you see I had the Ophidian in my grasp? Even held a knife to his throat.”
“Fuck, we’re never going to hear the end of his bragging about that,” I mumble under my breath. Crux snorts.
“I believe I killed the most on the battlefield, too. Certainly more than your mother. One hundred sixty-seven demons, I culled,” he adds proudly as he rocks back on his heels. “I counted.”
“Of course you did,” I reply, barely suppressing the urge to roll my eyes. But then I remember Lucifer, and a grin spreads across my face.
The sight of it makes Taz stop preening long enough to narrow his eyes on me. “What?” he asks warily.
“Lucifer wants to talk to you.Immediately,” I say, adding some flair to my tone as I wag my brows.
That takes the wind out of his wings. “Why?”
I lift a shoulder. “Don’t know. He said it while he was wearing your body like a coat. It was pretty fucking creepy, actually.”
Taz sighs, looking up at the ceiling. “Fuck, I hate when he does that.”
“I bet,” I say cheerfully. “So you better go back to Hell quick and see what he wants. I think you’re in trouble.”
He snaps his eyes onto me. “I most certainly am not introuble.”
“Are you sure about that?” I ask, working to keep my face perfectly serious.
Doubt and worry flash over his features for just a split second, and I nearly lose it right then and there. I think the corners of my lips twitch, because his expression turns pissed. “You’re a little shit, you know that?”
I chuckle. “You don’t wanna be late, Taz. You better hurry.”
“You’re just trying to get rid of me.”
I place a hand over my heart in mock offense. “Me? I would never.”
I hear a couple of the guys snicker, and Taz’s teeth clench. “This is why I never wanted progeny!” he complains before turning on his heel and stomping out of the room. “I will summon you at a later date!” he snaps before disappearing down the hallway.
