Page 185 of Wicked Believer
Every minute passing on the clock feels like a mounting risk that something horrible will happen to Jax. If Lucifer hadn’t gotten there just in the nick of time when Mark tookmecaptive, if Azrael hadn’t held on to my soul for a few moments longer out of sheer, devoted loyalty to the love he still holds for his ex, then I ...
I can’t even bring myself to think it.
My best friend isnotgoing to die tonight.
Not if I have anything to say about it.
I need to find a way to get to her faster.
Waiting until the end of the awards show is definitelynotokay with me.
My eyes dart to Lucifer. I understand where he and Azrael are coming from, where they might believe that my suggestion is the most logical, strategic, and fair agreement. They’re trained celestial soldiers. For them, emotions aren’t an important factor in decision-making.
But they are for me.
And I am not going to fail my best friend again.
Not for something as trivial, and honestly as out of touch, as these awards.
As I peek out toward the crowd from where I’m standing backstage, for the first time since debuting at Lucifer’s side, I don’t feel any admiration or kinship with them.
Instead, I feel disgust.
At the spectacle.
At what a monumental waste of money all this is.
There’s no such thing as ethical consumption in a capitalist hellscape,I remind myself. Imani taught me that. She would think that, of course. But even to me, it’s a flimsy excuse.
On the other side of the world, people are dying.
Hell, there are people dying here on these streets every day.
Yet we all conveniently ignore it and continue to prop up the system in the name of what? Capitalism? Corporate greed?
And like so many others, I fell into it headfirst.
Into the glitz and glamour. The seductive draw of the power it brought me. I’d spent so much of my life feeling small and powerless that at first it intoxicated me.
But what’s the purpose of all this wealth if I’m not going to use it to create a better world? If I don’t reach back my hand to help end others’ suffering?
If not for that, thenwhatis the goddamn point?
I nearly open my mouth to ask Lucifer that exact question, but he pulls me to him, and it’s like whatever spell he casts that has me in an almost constant chokehold grips me by the throat again. Maybe Azmodeus is right.
Maybe Idon’ttruly realize how dangerous Lucifer can be.
And now that I’m starting to, I’m ...
Not certain I like what I see.
“Are you ready, darling?” he asks, that velvet-and-sin voice wrapping around me.
God, I want to lean into him, to melt into his arms like I always do, but something stops me.
A newfound sense of morality, I guess?
It’s hard to justify this glamorous, glittering world he’s made me a part of while I’m worried that my best friend could be out there dying because of me.
