Page 21 of 1001 Dark Nights: Bundle Forty-Seven

I look down at my hands. “Do you ever blame me?”

Her dark hair swirls down by her waist as she lays me back against the bed and caresses my face, her blue eyes nearly twinkling like the stars. “Blame you for what?”

“Protecting you.” I swallow. “For being what I am—?”

“Ninety-nine percent Archangel and one percent Dark One?” She winks. “Your father, Sariel, sacrificed everything for you. So much that he gave you his essence, so you’d one day go back to where you were always meant to be.”

I snort out a laugh. “Heaven? Who, in all of this world, deserves that privilege?”

“Nobody,” Stephanie says quickly. “But that’s the point. We help the humans learn how to ascend and how to become their best selves, and then we hope that when Anubis and the Creator judge, they can become what they were born to be before…” She starts to choke up. “Before the Fall in Eden.”

“The war in Greece, so much war.”

“And…” She’s quiet for a minute. “The day in Pompeii, when you were forced to make a choice and almost lost everything because of it. Do you ever wonder where they are?”

I smile. “I’d like to think I’m all-knowing, but I only see so many possibilities. I don’t know the choices.”

“But you see their faces.” She rests her head against my chest. “Can you trust me and honor me with the answer of the face you see now? The grown child?”

My chest is tight.

I saw it tonight.

I saw it clear as day.

I saw him chained to the bed.

And then I sawher. The cursed goddess, Lilith, and Danu, who has the power to destroy it all if she can continue acquiring more blood for the next few years.

Lilith will suck him dry.

Then she’ll relinquish the power of the blood because she has no choice.

And Tarek will die.

“I can’t save him,” I whisper to Stephanie. “It’s free will. He is there of his own volition, whether he knows it or not.”

“What do you mean?” She sits up. “Who?”

“He doesn’t realize it yet,” I say and start running my hands through her hair. “But he met his end the minute he met the beginning.” I can barely get the words out. “The minute he met Lilith.”

“The demon?” Stephanie frowns.

I shake my head. “She acts as a succubus as her punishment for the very thing she was created for—to be the mother of all. She’s both Eris and Lilith. She’s the one.” I have to say her name. Ihaveto say it. “She’s one of the children Eva saved, who were reincarnated after her cursed beginning. She’s the first…”

Stephanie’s face pales. “Are you saying the Lilith you met is actually the first woman to be—”

I nod. I don’t need her to say it.

“And Eva, as in Adam and Eve, is the one who saved a cursed child she knew had Discord forever in her soul?”

I nod again.

“Then what was your punishment?” Stephanie grips my hand tightly.

I smile and cup her face. “It was the last straw before the angelic part of me fell… Because I saved what should have died. I saved the beginning, when there was supposed to be an end. And I didn’t just save her.” I swallow slowly. “I saved several, though most are dead. I’ve secretly searched for the others, and we placed one in a very well-known family because of his powers.”

Stephanie jerks back. “Are you talking about Tarek?”

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