Page 3 of The World Undone

Which was how I landed on the primary reason I hadn’t told any of them the truth of that dream.

They’d fight me on it. I knew they would.

I would have stolen Cy’s choice the instant it emerged from his lips, if I’d been given the chance.

But I also knew that they’d all lost so much already. I wasn’t ready to completely shatter the small bit of bliss we’d been able to carve out for ourselves here since that night. It had taken us all too long to find each other—to break down the walls we’d all erected around ourselves for protection, to let each other in.

We were finally all in one place, finally together. It seemed cruel to shatter something so fragile now.

I needed more time.

I’d tell them, of course, but I wanted the chance to unwind a little, to enjoy being with them for a bit—before shit hit the fan. Again.

I mean, it had only been a week since we took down Headquarters, but it had flown by in a rush. As exhausted as I was, my body was still high on all of the adrenaline and chaos around us.

“You’re not telling me everything.” Izzy tracked my every movement, like she had a radar in tune with every muscle twitch, but she didn’t fight me, didn’t press for more.

Instead, we started walking towards the med center again, taking the long, winding way so that we could enjoy each other’s company alone for a few more moments. We were never alone. Always busy. Always stumbling from one problem or issue to another. Always surrounded by other people, watching us with half curiosity, half trepidation.

I missed our movie nights something fierce.

“And I won’t force you to say more until you’re ready,” she continued, “but I’m here to listen whenever you are. I just ask that you keep that in mind. You don’t have to carry everything by yourself, you know?”

I wrapped my arms around myself to repress the chill. Her stare could strip me bare, layer by layer, and see all the dark and twisty things I tried to keep shoved into the back of my mind for perusal at a later date. Things I tried to hide even from myself.

It was infuriating.

But it was also comforting in a weird way too. As chaotic as the last year had been, I’d made some true connections that I wouldn’t trade for all of the world.

In this case though, she wasn’t completely right. I did have to carry this one thing on my own. This sacrifice was mine and mine alone to make.

I wasn’t ready to tell her about my conversation with Lucifer, but I did compromise and update her on the things Six and I had been working on up until we freed Atlas.

She did the same, with her work infiltrating The Guild from the inside. It was a surprisingly brief story.

Her time at The Guild without me had been ‘productive but single-focused’—with the new, heavy surveillance, they weren’t able to do much but hack into some of the servers—thank you Arnell—and collect names and leads of those who might be willing to fight with us when shit hit the fan.

And hit the fan it did. There was flying, ricocheting shit everywhere. It was a goddamn masterpiece of shitty abstract art.

Of course, to me, what they’d been doing didn’t sound single-focused at all—Izzy and Ten were fucking badasses and did more than we could ever thank them for while we were away from Headquarters. But they’d hit a lot of obstacles and dead ends. Izzy brushed most of their troubles off, eager to hear my adventures and weave them through with her own suspicions and conjectures.

We were both far more eager to hear the other’s story, less so to tell our own.

She did promise to get me the tedious notes Arnell had been keeping on the council’s movements as soon as she could. Something we’d no doubt need very soon.

“So, three things for his mysterious ritual?” She twisted a strand of dark hair near her collarbone—it had grown a few inches since I’d last seen her, another glaring reminder of how skewed time got whenever I visited hell—as she let the information settle over her. “The catalyst—which is you, your power at full charge,” she put one finger up, counting along, “the nexus, and the abraxas.”

I nodded, adding a soundless, and my death to that list.

I’d pull the magic encasing the shadow realm through me, the perfect catalyst, repairing and restoring it, or dissolving it altogether.

I wasn’t sure which. No one was. Not even Lucifer.

That was part of the problem with an impending apocalypse—we were in pretty uncharted territory. The history books couldn’t tell us much.

Not least of all because The Guild didn’t exactly keep objective—or accurate—tellings of history.

“And we know where the abraxas is,” she continued, grimacing, “or at least who has it.”

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