Page 67 of All's Hell That Ends Well

Summoning an armchair for himself, Lucifer sat down as well, and that was how I came to lounge with the Devil outside his palace, surrounded by barren dirt fields, the hellscape-ish sky above us churning with raging storms. Vengeance came happily trotting over and parked her butt next to my divan.

A small table appeared in front of me, with an assortment of fresh and dried fruit as well as a steaming mug of tea.

I eyed Lucifer over the offerings. “Awfully thoughtful of you.”

His smile showed a little too much teeth. “I take care of those in my service.”

Plucking a grape from the cluster, I plopped it into my mouth. “You don’t seem to take much care of your palace.”

Apparently, my filter had gone bye-bye for the day, and I was now voicing every thought in my head.

He gave a negligent shrug. “So?”

“It’s a bad look.” I sipped from the tea. “Like you don’t give a fuck anymore.”

“I don’t.”

Sighing, I set the mug down. “Even if you don’t, you need to keep things running. Like our lady and savior Taylor Swift said, fake it ’til it’s true, and all that. Do it with a broken heart. Otherwise, people will think?—”

“I do not care,” he snarled, “what others think.”

“But they care!” I glared at him with all the glower power I could muster while lying down. “Your reputation’s already suffered, your security is shit, and people are whispering that you’re losing your touch. If this keeps up, eventually, enough of the archdemons are going to band together to take you out.”

He appeared completely unconcerned, his face a mask of coldness. “I’d like to see them try.”

“Well, I wouldn’t,” I ground out.

“My, my,” he said and laid a hand over his heart, “don’t tell me you’ve come to care about me.”

“I’d be more likely to develop sympathy for a cockroach,” I shot back. “But I am tied to you for the time being, and I don’t want to get stuck in the middle of a supernatural war.” I paused, then added, “Again.”

“Don’t concern yourself with politics,” he said, flicking his hand dismissively. “Just focus on finding her. That’s all that matters.” When I wanted to argue further, he said with finality, “Nothing else is of importance.”

I ground my teeth in frustration, knowing fully well I wouldn’t get through to him about this. At least not right now. He’d shut down that line of conversation and wouldn’t hear any more of what I had to say. Well, I’d just try again another time.Because I sure as shit wouldn’t let him circle the drain further, not when my fate and that of Hell as a whole hinged on him being stable and at full power.

I’d rather deal with him ruling than with anyone else who might usurp his throne. Better the devil you know, and all that. Literally.

I slurped my tea and studied him for a moment, his pitch-black eyes staring off into the distance, the wind whipping his obsidian hair off his face. “When you speak of her reincarnation,” I said into the storm-lashed silence between us, “you keep saying ‘her’ and ‘she.’ But what if it’s ahe? What if I find the person she’s been reborn as, and it’s a guy?”

Lucifer leveled that dark gaze at me, raising a brow. Right then, he resembled the lofty human idea of how an angel would carry himself more than he’d ever done before, the look he gave me equal parts condescension and endless patience. “You think I care? I appreciate all forms the same. My love is not contingent upon the shape of its target. Hers is the one soul I ever bonded with, and her soul is the spark that fills any shape with beauty. Whoever she will be in this life, her light will shine through. I could not care less about which form she takes.”

I almost choked on my tea.

“Do you need medical attention?” Lucifer asked dryly.

“No, no, just…processing the fact that you’re panromantic.”

He scoffed and looked away. “Humans and their labels.”

“Not throwing any shade.” I raised both hands. “I’m not judgy.”

After another moment, I quietly said, “I get that you want to find her desperately because her absence causes you pain…but you do know that, right now, she’s a child? She’d be seven or eight at most. So even if I find her soon…” I grimaced and waved a hand. “She won’t be of age for another ten-plus years, so why the rush? You’d have to wait for her to grow up anyway.”

His stygian eyes glinted darkly, and black lines feathered out from them, like some toxin was spreading through his veins. “Exactly that,” he said with a snarl. “She’s a child. I have been torturing men for millennia for the most heinous of crimes, for the most depraved sins. Believe me when I say I know a million different ways someone can hurt a child. I want her under my protection”—he bared his teeth—“as soon as possible.”

I gulped, partly intimidated by Lucifer’s ferocity, partly anxious thinking about how, indeed, Lilith might have been born into a horrible family. There were too many cases of child abuse or neglect, too many small victims who were failed by the very people who should have nurtured and protected them.

And even if her family was good, there were still a million things that could happen to her outside her home. Human predators, accidents, unsafe environments, diseases, poverty, war…depending on where she was born, the odds could be heavily stacked against her survival.

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