Page 27 of All's Hell That Ends Well

He flinched as if punched. That terrifying mask of death and darkness on his face slipped by the slightest degree. When he spoke again, it was a hoarse whisper. “What did she say?”

I was trembling all over, and a sliver of reason wormed its way back into my thoughts, some of the adrenaline-fueled bravado leaving me. Still, I had to see this through. In for a penny, in for a pound. “She said that you used to be different. Not as vicious and hard. That you had to kill all softer parts of yourself in order to establish your rule and protect her. And that as you became colder and crueler, she grew more and more numb. She felt like she’d been in a stupor for thousands of years, detached and depressed. Until she met me. I reminded her of who she used to be.”

Lucifer didn’t seem to be breathing. Ever so slowly, he sank down on his chair again, his gaze unfocused.

“The way she spoke of how you once were, in the beginning,” I went on haltingly, “there was a glow to her. Same as when she said she was among the few who still got to see the last parts of your kindness that you hadn’t excised. She still loved you. Believed in you.” I swallowed the lump of fear in my throat and added quietly, “You can choose to honor her faith.”

The silence that reigned was thick enough to choke me.

Lucifer sat in the semidarkness, the flickering candle casting an eerie shadow play on the walls, while Vengeance had laid all three of her heads on her paws and tucked her tail.

My mouth dry, I cautiously asked, “Your Grace?”

His icy power seemed to pulse in the room, like a stuttering heartbeat.

“Count your blessings,” Lucifer murmured so low I almost didn’t hear it, staring unseeing into the air.

“Pardon?”

Turning his head away, his expression as gloomy as the room that wrapped him in darkness, he rasped, “Go.” When I hesitated, he added, “He’s waiting in the fourth room on the right.”

My pulse stumbled into a hard gallop.

“Thank you,” I whispered, and then I dashed out of there before whatever mood had struck him would evaporate and he’d snatch this piece of happiness from me once more.

CHAPTER 9

Iskidded out into the hallway, turned right, and counted the doors as I ran.

One. Two. Three. Four.

Yanking the handle of the door, I threw it open, my eyes scanning the room. A dining hall, it seemed, with a long table and multiple chairs, and there, in front of a fireplace on the opposite wall, stood Azazel.

His eyes widened as he saw me.

I uttered a high squeak.

The next moment, I’d jumped right over the table in the middle of the room, and I launched myself straight into his arms. He caught me with a strangled sound—half laugh, half growl, with something desperate just underneath it.

His wings erupted with a whoosh, and he wrapped them around me as he pressed me close, burying his face in my neck. I tunneled my fingers through his hair, breathed in his scent, soaked up his warmth, drank in his energy.

“I’ve missed you,” I choked out. “I’ve missed you so much.”

And I wasn’t just talking about the past days since I’d discovered his demon nature in that cave and he’d been taken into custody.

The yearning I felt, that echo of something vital in my life that had been lacking, the sensation of having lost something precious to me, it had been there all throughout my life as an angel. All these years without my memory, I’d still felt the hole deep within me where his love had been ripped from my consciousness.

“Even when I didn’t remember you,” I said hoarsely, “I still felt the loss of you.”

He let out a shuddering breath, drawing back to frame my face with his hands, his expression ravaged with pain. “You will never know the anguish in my soul during those years I didn’t have you in my life. Every day, the only thing that made me endure was the thought of finding you again. Of getting you back. I am nothing without you.”

I shook my head in his gentle grasp, my eyes clouding over. “Don’t say that. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met. You’re kind and funny. You’re capable and driven. Don’t ever think you’re nothing. I mean, you’ve fought your way up toarchdemon.”

Storms in his eyes. “For you.” His thumbs stroked over my cheeks. “I did all that for you, and I am all of that because of you. Without you with me, I am a shadow of the male I could be.”

“Stop,” I whispered, and then I kissed whatever next words he wanted to say right from his lips.

He let me.

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