Page 156 of The World Undone

“I—” Warmth flooded through me, and I resisted the sudden urge to pull him into a hug, to soothe the flood of thoughts that were so clearly ripping and tearing through his peace. “I don’t think there’s a choice. I appreciate your hesitancy, I really do.” It was nice realizing, for the first time, that I was more than just a pawn to the man who donated half of my DNA. “But there are no other options.”

“You don’t deserve this world, this life.” He straightened, darkness clouding his expression before it became inaccessible to me again. “It should be me who carries this burden, not you.”

We were silent for a few moments, lost in our own thoughts.

“I can stop you,” he said, the words mumbled so softly I barely caught them, as if he was formulating a new plan he’d only just considered. “The oath. I could keep you from going through with it. I could order it.”

I snorted. “I’d likely die anyway. And so would you and everyone else.”

He startled again, like the words had slipped out without his knowledge. He turned to me, the lines of his face hard. “You could stop, before it gets to be too much—restabilize the barrier between realms, don’t dissolve it. It could work, buy us some more time to forge another plan. Or maybe my power. If I find one of the ancients who can somehow transfer it to you—or my lifeforce. Maybe—maybe I can help. Or if I find?—”

He continued rambling, but I stopped listening to his brainstorm. I knew it was futile. We were out of time.

A small tendril of affection unfurled in my chest, releasing some of the unease and fear that I’d been unconsciously bottling for months.

I hadn’t been certain that we could trust Lucifer, that his path forward was the right one for the world—both his realm and mine. I’d been expecting something darker, more selfish, in his motivations. A plan to kill all protectors, or to level all of humanity, perhaps.

I saw now that as prickly as he usually was, I was ultimately wrong about him. He was an asshole most of the time, and I didn’t agree with most of his methods. But I saw now how much his decisions were ruled by his own loneliness.

This had never been about my power—about him gaining more, just for the sake of it. This wasn’t even about revenge, about taking out The Guild.

He wasn’t some pure beacon of good, but he wasn’t evil either.

He was willing to lay down his life, to give up his power—while The Guild fought only to steal more.

I reached for his hand again, threading his fingers through mine, and squeezed, cutting off his desperate ramblings. I bit back a grin. Perhaps I’d inherited my proclivity for rambling from him.

The edges of the dream world grew blurry, and I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I felt somewhere, deep down, that this would be our last time together—that I wouldn’t see him again before the ritual.

“Tell me about her,” I said, staring out at the rippling stillness of the river.

His hand tensed in mine, and I was certain that the strange magic of this dream world that softened and opened him up had finally dispersed—but then he relaxed.

“She was naively kind,” he started, his voice soft, but betraying no emotion, “deeply compassionate. But she was also no pushover. Strong. Wild. Ambitious.” I chanced a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eyes and saw that his own were sparkling as he allowed himself, for once, to get lost in the memory of her. “She was stubborn, maybe even more stubborn than me—something I wouldn’t have thought possible before knowing her. Intelligent. Beautiful, obviously, but it was so much more than just beauty, in the way I’ve always understood and used the term. She redefined it for me—filled it with light. The first time I saw her smile, really smile, I forgot how to breathe. Before her I—I wasn’t myself.

“It was like meeting her shaped me into existence somehow, lifted me from a cave I’d been locked in for centuries. When she left,” he cleared his throat and paused, collecting himself, “I was certain I wouldn’t survive it. The only thing that kept me going was the possibility that I’d escape here one day, that I’d find her. That I’d make things right.”

There it was—the true reason he wanted the realms dissolved, his innate power returned. So that he could find her, reunite. Try again.

I hoped he would. I hoped, in the depth of my chest, that she was alive, somewhere out there. That when this was all over, they’d be reunited. Find peace at least, even if the love that once existed between them was no more than a memory for her.

A steady release eased over me as his words cloaked me, peculiarly warm and filling me with soft rays of hope.

I wanted the people I loved to find happiness, to find love and joy in the messiness of the world—and regular messiness, not the kind crumbling at the edges from The Guild’s greed. I wanted that for them all, even if I couldn’t be there to witness it.

He’d stopped talking, I wasn’t sure when, and we both simply existed next to each other for a while, watching the serene landscape of The Styx.

It had a way of drawing me in. It always had.

My heartrate picked up, my body chasing an idea, a recognition that my mind was slowly catching up to.

I knew these lines of the shore, the rocky landscape, the taste of the air. This feeling of connectedness, I felt it every time I was near this shore, but it wasn’t the only one that made me feel this way.

My dreams with Lucifer—they should have been impossible, he’d said so himself. And every time I had them, we met here.

For weeks—no, months—I’d found myself waking from a restless sleep, floating in the depths of Lake Cadaver.

A shocked chortle ripped from my lips at that name.

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