“He didn’t do one,” I muttered. Which was the smart thing. We should’ve listened to him, but we didn't.
“Should’ve fucking followed suit. Aziel only has like a millennia more experience with the King than you guys.”
“No shit!” I raised my voice, wiping the blood from my nose. “We’re bloody useless to her down here. We need help. Could you—”
“We’re sleeping with an angel right now,” Brann interrupted, and Oren elbowed him in the ribs, making him wince. “What? If it’ll help Lilith, why not?”
Oren sighed. “As much as I hate helping the three idiots, we can ask him to poke around, but only for Lilith.”
I nodded. “Lilith is who we all want to help.”
“You owe us,” Brann said before they left and I made my way back to the guys.
Thaddeus had packed the clay further into the ground by a couple of centimeters from pacing, and Blaise hadn’t moved from where he was standing when I left. He looked borderline catatonic. I didn’t think he actually knew where he was right now.
I tugged at my hair with a huff. They hadn’t noticed Brann punch me, and irritation flushed through me. “Come on, mate. I need you to snap out of it.”
Blaise’s gaze snapped to mine, and I could see him breaking. He'd had his heart crushed twice today, and it just wasn't working anymore. “How? She’s stuck in Heaven, and we have no bloody way to get to her or to know if she’s okay.”
“She’s done so much for us, but look what we let happen to her.” Thaddeus’s voice cracked, but he didn’t stop moving.
“We didn’t let Gabriel take her,” I growled. “He had it planned. We couldn’t have stopped it, but we can get her back.”
“How do you think we can do that?” Blaise asked. “We can’t even leave Hell for a fucking month.”
“Aziel, the bloody demon, was smart enough not to listen to that wanker,” Thaddeus snapped, and he was right.
Blaise sank to the ground on his ass and rested his head on his knees. His hands pulled at his hair as his eyes held a vacant look. “Because he’d been bound by a blood oath before, and we were daft enough not to listen to him.”
“Desperate,” Thaddeus corrected. “We were desperate enough not to listen.”
A silence settled over us for a beat.
“I told Brann and Oren that Gabriel has Lilith in Heaven. They’re seeing an angel right now, so they’re going to have him poke around for information on her,” I said.
Thaddeus stopped pacing as his head turned to me, and Blaise glanced up at me.
“Good,” Thaddeus said.
“Thank fuck one of us has a brain right now,” Blaise muttered.
“I wouldn’t say that.” I swallowed hard. My chest ached. “I’m barely holding it together right now. After Aziel mentioned what Gabriel did to her…”
Thaddeus sucked in a sharp breath. “I didn’t bloody know.”
He visibly shook with rage. He was just as riddled with guilt as I was...as we all were. But feeling sorry for ourselves wouldn’t get Lilith back in our arms.
Blaise clenched his fists so tight that blood seeped from between his fingers. “I’ll kill him.”
“We all want to kill him, but I feel like a mug for not listening to Aziel about how dangerous Gabriel was,” I muttered with a frustrated sigh.
We may be vampires, but we were from the living realm. We were way out of our league here, and we needed reinforcements.
I’d do anything to have Lilith back where she belongs, with us. I'd take her place in a heartbeat if it meant she didn't have to suffer at the hands of that piece of shit ever again.
