Page 107 of All's Hell That Ends Well

My pulse pounded so loud in my head I had trouble hearing any of my racing thoughts. Next to me on the couch, Azazel had grown still as a statue, the shock reverberating over through our bond adding to mine.

“But—that means—” I stammered. “You’ll become?—”

“Human,” Lucifer finished for me. “Yes.”

“And you’ll die!”

“Eventually. As humans are prone to do.” His gaze on the hellcat, he petted the shiny black fur, his expression not the least bit troubled.

“No!” My voice came out strangled, my heart in my throat.

Lucifer paused in scratching between the purring cat’s ears and lifted his eyes to me. A slow, slow smile unfolded on his face. “Ah,” he said with a sly note to his tone. “It seems you have developed sympathy for a cockroach after all.”

I blinked at his reference to my words from a while ago, when I’d told him I’d rather get to liking a cockroach than care about him.

“Why are you doing this?” Azazel asked, his voice laced with confusion. “Why decide to stay with her? Your plan for years has been to get her back to Hell.”

Lucifer was quiet for a moment, his gaze once more on the cat that had stretched out on his lap. Which, given the bobcat-like size of the feline, meant he was half covered by it. “I thought about what you said.” His eyes met mine. “About what it would mean to bring her here.”

I stiffened, my breath stalling. Azazel glanced at me curiously.

“And I’ve been thinking,” Lucifer went on, absent-mindedly scratching the cat’s belly, “about the past, and patterns, and the traps we fall into. And how it would be unfair to measure her new life by my image of our past, to expect to re-create that which is irrevocably lost. If I bring her back here, even when she remembers, it will not resurrect what we had. Not entirely. She will not be the same person, regained memories notwithstanding, and her experience will be different. She will have had nearly two decades lived in a new body, a new world, with a new human background to shape the way she thinks and feels. If I intend to whisk her away from the familiarity of her life to bring her back here, it will be in service to my own needs and wants—and in utter disregard of hers.”

I couldn’t breathe; the shock sat so deep, compressing my lungs. When I’d talked to him about Lilith, I would never have thought that he’d actually listen and internalize my message to this extent. That he’d come to this conclusion and take such drastic action.

“One thing,” Lucifer continued in the heavy silence following his explanation, “that I’ll never do is disrespect her needs and wants. I have never been selfish with her, not when I first approached her in the Garden, and not when I offered for her to join me in Hell. And you were right when you said that this time the situation and the conditions of her coming with me would be vastly different from that first choice she made all those thousands of years ago. I will not make her choose between a life on Earth with her family and friends and a life with me in Hell. That would be cruel, and I haveneverbeen cruel with her.” He bared his teeth, a hint at the impressive power he held flashing in his eyes.

A beat of silence, then Azazel’s soft question: “So you would die for her?”

Lucifer’s eyes of abysmal darkness flicked to Azazel. “Wouldn’t you for her?” He indicated me with a jerk of his head.

“Gladly,” Azazel said with adamantine conviction.

Before I could say something, Lucifer spoke up again. “Though, this is not the question to ask yourself. To die for someone is easy. To kill for them, even easier. But can you live for someone? Can you forsake your privilege for someone? Are you willing to surrender your power, your might, your standing for the one you love?”

I barely dared to breathe, my gaze fastened on Lucifer and this mind-boggling side of him.

“How shallow would be my devotion,” he said quietly, a rough note to his voice, “how hollow my profession of love, would I not be willing to sacrifice for her happiness, especially when that sacrifice is actually meaningful?”

“My God,” I murmured, pressing a hand to my heart, from where an ache spread through my chest.

“He wouldn’t know of sacrifice,” Lucifer muttered, “besides demanding it of others.”

I raised both brows. “But didn’t he kind of have himself killed as a sacrifice for humanity?”

Lucifer tilted his head. “But did he stay dead? Was it the end of him? Did it cost him anything but a bit of magic to come right back to life?”

I pressed my lips tightly together, unable to argue the point.

Lucifer waved a hand. “Which brings us back to how a sacrifice is only a sacrifice when it has meaningful, significant consequences that actually cost you something. Dying isn’t a sacrifice when you can snap your fingers and resurrect yourself.”

I almost choked on my own spit. Next to me, Azazel pursed his lips, his eyes gleaming with amusement.

“So, yes,” Lucifer went on, “I will stay on Earth with her once she is grown up and has regained her memories. I have lived anunimaginably long life. Most of that was spent with her by my side. We have both tasted immortality, have enjoyed our slice of eternity together. All the while, we were caught unmoving in time like insects preserved in amber. What we have never tasted together is a mortal life. What it feels like to have an end date, to know your time is limited. To make the most of the years and decades ahead of you, precisely because they are few in number.”

I swallowed hard, still not able to process the fact that Lucifer, the Devil, the big bad throughout history, was willing to give up his power to live a human life with his lost love. That he was fully prepared to die a human death because he’d rather join Lilith on Earth than ask her to leave her family and friends behind.

And that in a few decades’ time, at most, he would cease to exist—or rather, his soul might ascend to Heaven. Unless…

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