I turn my face into his jaw, crying into his throat. He curls around us both, his arms careful and trembling.
Saraqael and Ithuriel work quietly at the foot of the bed, and I feel the bleeding stop, my body getting warm again as Az still pours all his love for us into me.
Syrin perches at the edge of the mattress, watching us with shining eyes. For some reason, I sense there's tragedy in her past too. A shared pain. Maybe births that didn't have such a happy ending. I give her a grateful smile.
Daniel sits back on his heels, exhaling slowly. His gray robes are a mess, covered in my blood.
“You did beautifully,” he says, echoing Syrin’s earlier words.
I snort. “I hardly did anything.”
Leander makes a small, indignant sound against my chest, and I look down at him.
“Bonjour,” I tell him softly. “Tu m'as fait peur, toi.”
You scared me.
Az's lips press against my temple. Then the top of my head. Then the side of my face, unhurried and reverent.
I shift Leander in my arms and tilt him toward his father.
Az goes completely still. Then his large hand moves carefully to cup the back of our baby's head, his thumb tracing the edge of one tiny horn with a reverence that makes my throat close up.
“Hello,” he says, his voice like gravel. “I'm your father.”
37
ASMODEUS
It's been four days since Leander came into the world in a mess of blood, with golden angelic light filling the bedroom, and the absolute certainty that I was about to lose everything that mattered to me filling me.
The child is asleep on my chest right now, his weight negligible. One of his tiny fists is bunched against my sternum. The two nubs of his horns press into my collarbone when he moves his head, and I let him, because I will apparently allow this person to do anything he wants to me.
This is who I've become.
Simone sits cross-legged on the other end of the sofa, facing me, her sketch pad balanced on her knee. She should be resting. Instead, she keeps drawing. The pencil moves in slow strokes, and she hasn't looked up in twenty minutes.
She's healed. The angels saw to that before they left, leaving her whole and healthy and so tired she slept for fourteen hours straight while I sat at the edge of the bed with the baby and counted her breaths.
“You're staring,” she says without looking up.
“I'm always staring.”
“You're staringmorethan usual.” Simone's pencil stills, and she finally glances over the top of her sketchbook at me, then at the baby on my chest. Her face goes soft like she's undone by the sight of us.
“He's still asleep,” she murmurs, setting her sketchbook down. The more she looks at us, the stranger her expression becomes.
I narrow my eyes at her. “What?” I rumble, quiet enough not to wake Leander, but forceful enough that she knows I see the wheels turning in her head.
“When do you think we can make more?” she whispers, nodding at the baby on my chest.
I blink at her—I must be growing hard of hearing in my old age.
“I'm sorry? Did you just say what I think you said, little fairy?”
She lifts her eyebrows and smirks at me. “You're the one who said you want me to stay pregnant forever. Round and full of your cum.”
Her wicked grin makes me think I've utterly corrupted her. But while her words should arouse me, instead, what I feel is all-consuming dread.
