Page 110 of The Road to Hell

“She can’t stay here,” Rathiel shot back. He sounded different now. Hollow. Desperate. “If she does, she’ll die.”

“She’salreadydying, Rathiel!” Levi’s voice cracked with frustration. “Look at her! She hasn’t healed, hasn’t improved. She hasn’t once woken up?—”

A pause. Silence stretched between them, thick enough to suffocate. “You truly think this is the solution?”

“It’s the only way.” Rathiel’s voice was steady, but barely. I could hear the edge beneath it, the strain pulling him tight, fraying him at the seams. “I don’t have any other options.”

“This isn’t an option! It’s acondemnation!” Levi’s fury crackled in the air, raw and seething. “If you do this, if you erase this, she won’t just forget the war. She’ll forget you.” A heavy silence. Then, quieter, almost broken, Levi whispered, “She’ll forgeteverything.”

“Not everything,” came Rathiel’s quiet voice. “Just…everything that matters. Everything that will get her killed.”

“And what about you?”

Another silence. Then, “I don’t matter.”

Levi cursed under his breath. “I won’t stand by and watch you do this. If you go through with this, you do so alone. And know this: she’ll never forgive you. If she ever remembers, she willhateyou.”

“But she’ll be alive,” Rathiel snapped. “You think I haven’t heard the talk? You think I don’t know that Lucifer is scouring the entire fucking realm looking for her? That he has plans to string her corpse up in his courtyard like a fucking trophy? He will never stop. I have to get her out of Hell, Levi. It’s the only way. Somewhere she can heal, safely. Without the threat of her father hovering over her. You and I can’t protect her alone—Lucifer decimated our forces. There’s nothing left.”

Levi didn’t speak. The silence was louder than their argument.

Then, finally, in a voice so low I almost didn’t hear it, he said, “But her memories?—”

“If I don’t erase them, she will come back.” Rathiel’s voice cracked. “Nothing would stop her. Nothing would keep her from finding me, do you understand? We would do anything for each other, and this…” He released a ragged breath. “It’ll kill me, but it’s necessary.”

I tried to move, tried to lift my head, tried to force my body todosomething, but I couldn’t. I was weightless, untethered, caught between consciousness and the void. My eyelids were impossibly heavy. My limbs were stone, and my voice was lost in the darkness.

There was a scoff, and then heavy footsteps as someone walked away.

Levi.

I wasn’t exactly clear on what Rathiel wanted to do—my muddled brain hadn’t yet made sense of everything—but clearly, Levi disagreed.

I wanted to disagree as well, to open my eyes and tell Rathielno. But I hadn’t the strength. Which was the entire problem.

I heard Rathiel sigh, felt a soft brush of lips against mine.

“I’m sorry, Lily,” he whispered. “Sorry I couldn’t protect you. I swore I’d keep you safe, and I failed you. But I won’t let Lucifer kill you. I know you may never understand, but I’m doing thisbecauseI love you. You’ll be safe on Earth, away from all this.”

Another deep breath, and then something sparked deep inside me. Something foreign.

A strange pressure built behind my eyes, not pain, not exactly, but something deeper. Something enclosing.

A wall.

It started at the edges, rising slow but inevitable, brick by brick, sealing away the battlefield. The screaming dimmed, the blood-soaked earth blurred, the chaos pulled back behind cold stone.

A knife slipping free from my fingers.

Another brick.

A flagon raised in a silent toast.

Another brick.

A pair of burning blue eyes in the dark.

The wall grew higher. Stronger. Unyielding. Walling me off from what made meme.

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