Page 31 of Dead End

I rose to my feet. “You’ve had your fun. Let him go and leave Fairhaven for good.”

He sauntered toward me. “Care to wager another three trials?”

I felt the heat of his breath on my skin and inhaled the foul stench of sulfur. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

“I would kill you myself, precious, but I promised The Corporation that I would leave you for them. A pity. I would enjoy the process almost as much as I’ve enjoyed torturing your… What is it that you call him? Ah, yes. Your inamorato.” He tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear, letting his fingers brush my cheek.

I gripped his hand and squeezed, fighting the terror that climbed up my throat, thick and heavy like mud. I had to control the narrative, which meant I had to quickly initiate a nightmare of my own creation before his had a chance to manifest.

Darkness consumed us both, but there was no fear, no rush of panic. We were both intimately familiar with our shared bedfellow.

“Where are we?” Lucifer’s voice was velvet-smooth, as though I’d escorted him to a new restaurant to sample the delicacies.

Light trickled in, illuminating a great mirror reminiscent of Sie-king T’ai, the one I’d stood before on the lost island, along with Bruce Huang. The mirror showed all of the subject’s bad deeds to the god Ch’u-Chiang, after which he passed judgment on you.

Lucifer admired his reflection, dragging a hand through his hair. “Dapper as always, if I do say so myself.”

The reflection changed. His handsomeness, his grace, the wisdom that once made him the Morning Star—all of it gone, replaced by a twisted and deformed figure.

He chuckled. “Is that little horror meant to be me?”

“Not meant to be. It is. That’s the mirror of truth.”

And right now it reflected the truth of his corrupted heart and the crushing weight of his poor choices. The supreme ruler of hell remained perfectly still, trapped by the reflection of his own failures.

The mirror cracked in several places, revealing countless versions of Lucifer.

“Is it still seven years of bad luck?” he mused.

Chains slid from the shadows and coiled around Lucifer’s limbs and chest, growing tighter and tighter. These chains were not made of metal, but of memories—reminders of his wickedness. The more he struggled, the tighter and heavier the chains became, until he could no longer support their weight.

Now he was falling—endlessly, through an expanse of nothingness. The light of the mirror grew dimmer and dimmer, until it was a mere speck in the distance, and eventually disappeared entirely. He seemed to fall through time itself, no end in sight, no place to land. In the endless void, he was alone, no longer aware of my presence.

The nightmare reached its most suffocating point. No voices, no sounds, not even an abyss—only pure, unadulterated silence. A silence so deep and profound that it seemed to crush all thought. A silence that stretched into eternity. Lucifer stood in this silence, a prisoner of his own mind, aware that this nightmare had no end. That he had no escape unless I, the goddess of nightmares, willed it.

This was his eternal punishment: the agony of knowing what he could have been and instead what he had become. Soulless. As empty as the void that now contained him.

An agonizing scream filled the void; it was unlike any sound I’d ever heard. Not primal.

Unnatural.

I left him in that box of abject misery, unmoved. I wouldstand sentry for an eternity if it meant Lucifer could never again hurt Kane.

I felt a pair of hands on mine, cool and steadfast. I recognized their texture, the rough callus on the right side of his index finger.

Kane.

“Come back to me, Lorelei,” he said.

“Not yet,” I ground out. My body shook.

“I won’t let you lose yourself, not for me.”

“Don’t you see? I’m doing this so you don’t have to.” One of Kane’s fears had been losing himself to his darker tendencies. With his anger toward Lucifer… It wouldn’t surprise me if he unleashed hell on earth.

“This isn’t your fight.”

“Of course it is.”

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