Page 68 of All's Hell That Ends Well

And if she died in this life before Lucifer could get to her—he’d lose her forever. As a child, her soul would go straight to Heaven, never to reunite with him.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered, and I meant it.

This whole situation pulled at my heartstrings. Just the thought of what it would do to me to lose Azazel in this way was enough to make my chest ache with deep dread. And he and I had only known each other for a year—not counting the ones I’d spent in Heaven without remembering him.

Lucifer and Lilith had been together for millennia. I couldn’t fathom the depth of that kind of bond.

Muscles clenched in Lucifer’s jaw, some of the black toxin receding around his eyes. Voice like cold velvet, he said, “I heard you were the one to kill Destatur.”

Talk about a non sequitur.

I lifted my chin. “I cut off her head with her own sword.”

His laugh was silent and filled with dark appreciation. “And you said you were a nonviolent person.”

“Well, not with those who deserve it!” I threw my hands in the air. “And she very much deserved it. Actually, she should have gotten far worse.” I pointed my finger at him, grim need for vengeance throbbing to new life inside me. “That death was too quick for what she’d done.”

Black eyes glittering, he regarded me for a moment. Then he rose from his seat and jerked his head toward the palace. “Come.”

Frowning, I followed him, Vengeance padding after me.

He strode back inside the palace, past demons who whispered in agitation as he neared and then sank to their knees in deferential greeting when he walked by. I traipsed after him, feeling awkward with the way I basically strolled past rows of kneeling demons as if they paid their respects to me, too.

Well, as a high-ranked seraph, I would indeed be greeted similarly.

I’d probably never get used to being received with such deference and subservience.

Lucifer led me back into the private wing of the palace, past his regular room. He opened a door only a few feet farther down the hallway and gestured me inside.

Warily, I entered the room, unsure of what to expect. Inside, the same kind of gloom reigned that I’d come to know from my meetings with him, broken only by a few small candles around the perimeter of the generous space.

My breath got stuck in my throat when I saw what the light illuminated in the center of the room.

Strung up with chains fastened around her wrists and ankles, her arms pulled toward the ceiling and her toes barely touching the floor, was a demon. Her clothes hung in dirty tatters on herblood-painted body, and her dark hair fell in tangles around her lowered head.

It took me a moment to recognize her, partly because her once blond hair was now a bloody mess. But when she raised her head and looked at me out of pained eyes, I whispered, “Enaia.”

Destatur’s accomplice in the plot to murder Lilith. She’d been in on it, had worked actively to set up the trap that would see Lilith die that fateful day on Earth. After the lead angel had killed Lilith, Enaia had run off to Hell to report what had happened to Lucifer—at least, the fabricated version she and Destatur had concocted, so Lucifer would think Heaven had broken the truce and then unleash his forces on Earth.

Which he’d done, of course. Being delivered the news that his beloved soul mate had just been killed, he’d been too grief-stricken, too furious, to stop and think, and he’d taken Enaia’s word at face value.

Just like Destatur and Enaia had figured he would.

They had not only used Lilith as collateral, treating her like an object to achieve their goal, but they’d also played on the depth of Lucifer’s feelings for her. For all their professions of loyalty to him, of wanting to see him as lord and master of all realms, they’d been just fine using him as much as her, with a disregard for him as a person that was cruelty in and of itself. The callousness of that kind of cold manipulation was mind-boggling.

“Has she been here all this time?” I asked, my voice rough.

Lucifer came to stand next to me. “Yes.” He put his hands in his pants pockets. “I’ve been working on her on and off. Making sure not a day goes by that she doesn’t feel the consequences of her sins.”

Black feathers littered the floor, red dots sprinkling them, and it was only now that I noticed the gallery of chopped-off wings covering the walls. Hundreds of them.

All of them hers, no doubt.

“Good,” I rasped, dark satisfaction drenching my chest.

Lucifer leveled his fathomless gaze at me, something old and terrible staring out of those eyes. With a flick of his hand, a knife appeared in his fingers. He tossed it in the air and caught it on the blade’s side, then held it out to me hilt-first.

I studied the dagger for a moment before my eyes traced to Enaia. Still alive, when Lilith was gone. She’d been one of Lilith’s personal entourage, her friend and confidante. A trusted companion, for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years.

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