Page 145 of Living Legend

I wanted to smile at that thought with him. It sounded nice.Home. Purgatory had seemed off to me, ever since I woke up, thrust into a life I assumed I deserved. I had fulfilled everything Lilith had asked of me, and I had made allies and maybe a few enemies down there; it had been a sort of home to me. Every time I went to bed, though, it was as if I could imagine myself somewhere else, somewhere I dreamt of. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe, the place and the life I had thought about in my dreams were real. That voice I would hear trying to pull me out of my darkness wasn't a trick at all/ maybe that was me, trying to fight to get to where I actually belonged.

Wait.

I leaned back a bit, pulling my arms out of his grasp. "How do you know all of this?"

His eyes darted back and forth between my eyes. "I told you how."

"No. You told me that Natalia helped you find out. You didn't tell mehow."

He opened his mouth and closed it again. Opened it and closed it. I could hear pieces of a sentence beginning, but then he would stop and reevaluate. I reached my hand up and grabbed his chin, forcing him to look at me. "Speak."

He swallowed and I watched out of the corner of my eye as his Adam's apple bobbed. "I went into the past. Into your mind."

I felt my hand tense, watching him flinch at the tension. "You went into my head? How would you even do that? I have no memory of anything before Purgatory."

Through clenched teeth, he was able to grit his answer out. "Magic. Natalia used magic."

I released his face and placed my hand at my hip. "Well, that's fucking obvious. What I don't understand is how you were able to figure out what time to go to, where to go. Fill in the blanks, Nicholas."

He rubbed his jaw, then placed his palms together and tapped his index fingers together. "Yeah…about that. I wondered how I was going to do that as well. Natalia said that that memory isn't gone from your head, so we were able to access it. I had to drink this weird potion with parts of your hair in it, but it's not like I tasted hair, so I guess that's a good thing. That gave me a deeper connection to you—"

My eyes practically ripped out of their sockets. "Myfuckinghair?" He closed his mouth immediately. "She had a piece of my fucking hair?" I heard my voice grow louder, but I didn't care.

Nick put a finger to my lips, and I could feel his breath wash over my face. I would have felt the urge to kiss him if I wasn't so fucking flustered. "Yes, okay. Yes, it was fucking weird. No, I don't know how she got it, but I assume it's when you went to Oculus without my knowledge, but that part isn't important right now, so you can please keep it down?"

I wiped his finger away from my lips and lowered my voice. "I'll speak to her myself about how much of a fucking violation that is. My fucking hair, Nick."

He seemed to physically relax the minute I stopped calling him Nicholas, as if he didn't want me to be mad at him in any way. I was caught off guard -- I thought, at any moment, I’d wake up in Purgatory and this would have all been a dream. But every time I blinked, nothing had changed. I was still standing in front of a raven-haired angel who had just told me I was meant to have big white wings and live in this picturesqueheaven. I could sense he was on edge, like he didn't want to say the wrong thing and upset me. Lucky for him, I was too busy trying to understand the past years of my fucking life to be upset at him.

"Can you sit down so I can explain it to you?" He motioned towards his bed again. I watched as his chest rose and fell as he eyed me patiently.

I rolled my eyes and walked over to the bed, sitting down right at the edge. He followed my movements and sat down next to me, our thighs almost touching. He told me the entire story, every single detail.

I chewed on the inside of my cheek as I mulled over his words. Lilith had made me a demon and taken me away from what I was meant to be. Cullen was there, so he knew. He knew the entire time. I knew there were never any real feelings, but he knew everything from the very fucking beginning. He knew it when he flirted with me, and he knew it all when he was fucking me. I had always thought he was around Lilith so much because he was fucking her as well, which still could have been very true. He was a part of all this, and he had willingly died without telling me. His commitment to Lilith was astonishing, but we demons don't turn away from a challenge.

We. We? We demons? Am I even allowed to claim that anymore?

"You don't know who this other girl was? The one Lilith seemed to trust?" I asked, positioning myself more comfortably on the bed.

He shook his head. "Nope, nothing. She seemed adamant about doing whatever Lilith said. She defiantly had magic, since I'm sure she's the one who fucked with our portals."

I choked on my breath at his words. I watched him do the same as his eyes widened as the look on my face turned from contemplation to clear bewilderment. "Your portals?"

Nicholas closed his eyes and scrunched up his mouth, as if he was mentally trying to rewind the last five seconds. "The Animus Seeking. You remember me explaining that to you?”

"Yeah?"

He rubbed his forehead, pressing down on his eyebrows. "When I got to the time I needed, it all looked familiar. It felt like I'd been there before and then…I realized I had."

I swallowed the thick lump that had developed in my throat. "What does this have to do with me?"

"As I watched Lilith do everything she did…when it was over, I saw…" He let out a long, intense sigh. "I saw myself."

"I don't understand." Really, though, I did.

"Dani, I was supposed to be there. I was supposed to find you and see your light. Whoever that girl was, she stopped me from helping you." His voice was shaky, as if it hurt him to say each word. He tentatively reached for my hand, and I let him hold it, squeeze it. I didn't squeeze back, not because I didn't want to or because I didn't sympathize with his feelings, but because this was complete bullshit. None of this made sense and as much as I wanted to know what Lilith’s plan was, I didn't think it would be any of this shit.

Lilith had been experimenting with demons in Purgatory this whole time. The ambush at The Skies barreled through my memory like a bolt of lightning. She had done that to them. She had given them pure tunnel vision to do her bidding just because she could. That was something so small for her, yet it caused so much havoc. She plucked me from my death to turn me into a weapon, into her pet project to take down her enemies.

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