Page 117 of Legendary

Isabel let out a short laugh. “You sent it to that stupid boy. I’ll kill him myself.”

Dimitri, who was now next to me, brought his hand up to stop her. “Oh no, I would rather enjoy doing that.”

Rae grazed her hand along Dimitri’s shoulder as she came up behind him. “I would love to play with him a little, watch him squirm before you do.”

I wanted to throttle her. I wanted to kill every single one of them. “Just leave him out of it. None of this makes fucking sense anyway! Jonah is dead, there isn’t a high executive’s magic to take to do whatever the fuck you wanted to do with me. I have no more of a handle on that angelic side of myself than I did before, so that’s not much of a plan either. You. Make. No. Fucking. Sense.”

Lilith made her fingertips touch, creating a sort of triangle and brought her hands up to her face. “You see Dani, when I originally had my plan, I thought I needed all sides to see it through. I didn’t mind that my partners had their own agendas, so long as it didn’t take away from what I wantedto do. Markus, poor thing, he did everything I asked, but he was so enraged towards Jonah that it blinded him. Angels do not make good company, no matter what side they’re on.” She clucked her tongue, wagging her finger at me. “I learned that while it would be fun to nurture both your sides and watch you make a mess and give me all the things I wanted, that maybe I was going the easy route. Angelic magic is powerful, especially matched with demonic magic in one body, it would have been a sight.” She lifted one of her shoulders. “But Dani, you’ve been such a good demon, so good at making sure that light gets shadowed by the dark that I should really let it flourish, shouldn’t I?”

I blinked at her, not fully understanding.

“Your dagger would have just been the perfect artistic touch, especially when I make you murder all your friends.” She smiled at me proudly, her lips pressed together. “But I can work without it, I mean it’s not like that boy can use it. It’s not like you really need it for what I have planned for you.”

“You can’t make me do that,I won’t.You can show me fucked up shit all you want, but I’ll go downwithyou before I let you manipulate me.” I struggled against the restraints, feeling a burning sensation as Isabel forced her magic into me again.

Lilith sighed as if she was bored. She delicately rubbed at her arched blonde eyebrow. “Oh, my love, it’s quite hilarious that you think you have choices. You came to me because you thought this was your only option left. I made it clear—Dimitri made it clear— to you that my generosity was waning, and you chose to ignore it. So now you have no more choices. That independent nature of yours, that confidence that I graced you with, will not be kept all to yourself anymore.”

She was closer to me now and I could smell the power radiating off of her, I could sense her need to do whatever she was planning. It put me on edge, and it was the kind of antsy feeling that I hated because I didn’t know what the other person was planning. I didn’t have any indication of what may be coming next. Her breath was hot against my face as she leaned down near my ear. “I’ve always accepted you for who you are. Always pushed you to be the best you could be, and you think that you’re going to have some cute little happily ever after with that pretty angel. You think that they’re going to accept you with open arms over there, just forget about everything you’ve done and give you a clean slate? You think they didn’t second guess you when you almost killed that child, when I kept getting in your head, did you think they weren’t giving you sideways glances hoping you wouldn’t use your weapon against them?” She pulled back and almost gave me a look that could have been assumed as loving, but I knew better than that. “It’snever fair to limit yourself, Dani.”

“Be the monster, Soul Seether. It’s really all you’re good for, huh,” Isabel snarked, taking a few steps towards me. They had me surrounded but there was a calmness to the air, like they were waiting for some big finale.

“I’m not a monster, you traitorous little shit.” I spat, turning my head to burn my eyes into hers.

Lilith grabbed my face, forcing me to look at her again. She squeezed my cheeks as she spoke. “She’s right, Dani. Youaremy pretty monster, but I think you’ve forgotten what that means.” She traced her finger down my neck and tapped my chest. She tilted her eyes up to look at Dimitri. “And your father is okay with this? Even though I shouldn’t need permission.”

Dimitri adjusted his jacket. “Lucifer and my father don’t want much destruction to Purgatory, and theydon’twant it bleeding into Hell, but they don’t care about much else. Do what you must and make sure I get what’s mine in the end.”

Lilith dug her nails into my chest, cutting me. I flinched from the initial pain, biting my tongue through the rest. “I know you’ve been wondering about my little experiments, my little voids, and it was just killing me trying to figure out what I was missing, but then it hit me. I need a connection; I need something with strength and resilience, preferably one that can survive with or without a soul to guide them because they’ll have me. Their darkness calls to the same darkness that they were bred from. They would feed off of it, I’d be their guide into the world of so much power. Power and darkness strong enough to push past any force of magic.”

“Your boys have enough angelic magic for me to siphon and use, so don’t worry about them not being useful before you kill them,” Isabel added with a bitchy smirk.

“You’d be a parasite and I’m not going to be your host,” I answered, pushing back.

“Ugh, again with the choices,” Rae mumbled under her breath.

Lilith dug her nails in further, sliding them down to open her cuts up more. Blood was starting to run from the open wound. I continued, “You can’t take out the angelic side of me. You’d have to kill me, and we both know that’s obviously not what you want.”

The dark queen let out an open-mouthed laugh as if I had just said the funniest thing. “Oh, my love, there are ways to kill you that are much worse than pure death itself.”

“I did once tell you that you were her strongest creation, did I not?” Dimitri said, wrapping one of his fingers around one of my curls and letting it go. It was only then did I notice his missing hand. I knew I had been theone to cut it off, but it was strangely satisfying seeing it again.

“You will learn that I am the only family that matters to you. Or maybe that’s because I’ll be the only one you’ll have when this is all over. I’ll give you everything, Dani, make it so you are the strongest you’ve ever been. The things I’ll make you do.” There was a stinging pain in my chest as she plunged her nails further into my skin and ripped them into my chest. There was blood and then it was like her hand had gone right through as if I was hollow. I had never been on this side of things before and it hurt,fuckdid it hurt. My chest felt tight, and my vision kept flashing from black to gray to red and back to black. Lilith’s eyes were a bright red as she dug around inside of me. I could hear myself screaming but it sounded like everything was underwater. The air was dry and humid, I felt dehydrated. It felt like there was a massive stone on my chest causing the air in my lungs to come less frequently, eventually threatening to stop altogether.

“There you are.” Lilith yanked her hand from my chest, and I let out a sound that made it seem like all the air had been pulled out of me. I looked over at the ball of translucent matter. It danced along her palm as she held it.

“What are you going to do about that pesky little angelic light, hmm?” Isabel asked, watching me take in breath after breath. It felt like something was missing, but I couldn’t reach it. I didn’t know which way was up and my mind was foggy and confused.

“See I can’t just destroy it like all the others, no you are special, my love.” Lilith motioned for my soul to go over to Dimitri, who grabbed it and created a ball with it in his hands. His eyes flashed red and then went black. Dimitri had the power of Hell on his side and despite my hatred for him, he unnerved me even more than Lilith. The soul hissed and pulsed in his grasp, but the once translucent matter turned a deep gray and then solid black. Dimitri’s eyes went back to normal, and he gave my soul back to Lilith. “I told you Dani, there are fates much worse than a traditional death. I’ll poison you from the inside and every single thing you do, every single one of your friends you slaughter, every single angel and Enchanter that you watch bleed to fulfill my wishes will make it worse. You will darken yourself over and over again and it won’t stop until I decide when your death will come.” She held my dark, bleeding soul in her hand and slowly closed her palm. There was a rush to my chest as she crushed it. I cried out from the pain; it was nothing I’d ever felt before. She opened up her hand to small bits of my soul bobbing up and down.

Lilith gathered them into one hand and then settled in front of me. “I have the perfect first thing for you to do since I’m so generous, but you still need to learn your lesson. I won’t make you kill your friends.” Withoutwarning she slammed her fist into my chest, and I cried out a blood curdling scream as she extended her hand and let the pieces of my toxic soul find its way into every crevice of my insides. “I’m going to have you makehimdo it.” She removed her hand and leaned back a bit to look at me.

I felt an electric sting around my body, knowing it was Isabel using her magic on me like she’d done with all the other demons Lilith experimented with. I felt like she was cocooning me within myself, making it so I had nowhere to go but wherever Lilith told me, wherever she could ensue the most chaos. My body started to flood with this wave of poisonous venom that was darkness incarnate. That part of my soul was screaming for joy, drinking it in. There was this tiny, tiny part that was crying, damn near begging me to notice it. It was a glint of light that I saw. I tried to swim towards it, trying not to drown and gag on the darkness that was clouding everything. I reached out my hand to grab it, but I was pulled back, ripped away from the one thing connecting me to the other good thing that had come into my life. I slumped over in my chair, exhaustion taking over.

Slowly, so slowly, the light was smothered and suffocated as my eyes closed fully. That glinting light, that warmth was now nonexistent. It was being molded into something else, something I didn’t recognize, as if the darkness was enveloping it in a prison of my own making, silencing it. I couldn’t see it anymore. I couldn’t feel it anymore. All I felt was nothing, just like she wanted. She made it so the only person who could guide me through was her.

You are my pretty monster, but I think you’ve forgotten what that means.

My eyes were closed but I felt Lilith behind me, it was like I could feel her everywhere. She leaned down to my ear and whispered something.

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