Page 117 of An Unexpected Ascension
Finally, I bring the liquor to my lips if only to delay speaking my worries aloud.
“I can take the truth. However harsh it is. I can accept whatever pain the universe wants to inflict on me, but Briar? I-I think it broke her. You should have seen her face. The way she crumpled to the ground as if her very heart was being ripped from her chest. Her cries.” My eyes find Lucifer’s. “They were so quiet in that place, all sound was quiet, but her cries – My God – I heard them loud as day.”
Those hardened eyes soften just the slightest.
“I know those cries, my friend. Live them every day I reign over Hell.” Yes, perhaps he does know what I’m feeling. Lucifer pushes himself to stand and rounds the edge of the table. With a gentle hand, he squeezes my shoulder. “So much for not loving a Fentonelli.”
This time, I don’t bother lying.
Love.
What business do I have claiming to be in love?
None.
Yet here I am aching over the pain Briar feels as if her very heart is my own. As if it belongs to me when I’ve done nothing but push and torment her, blame her for my sister's death when she was centuries from being born.
I have no business loving her or asking for her love in return.
No, my chances at love died the moment I watched the life fade from Damien Fentonelli’s hateful jade eyes.
And after?
My father.
The other men who reminded me so much of my sister’s murderer.
Their deaths made me irredeemable.
That last bit of my soul rotting black before my final kill; before my own death.
The last time I felt even a modicum of the blessed thing was years before my own adulthood. Perhaps even the story I shared with Briar. The way Mercy looked at me when I gifted her that doll. Something not even our own father would have done. Yes, perhaps that was the last time I felt so much love.
Dragging a hand down my face, I sigh. The halls of Lucifer’s manor are so heavy with silence and the soft yellow glow of the sconces flicker against the black walls, drawing me further down past my own room.
Though we only returned mere hours ago, I still have the urge to be near the angel. To drown in her and pray to the Devil that she’ll let me.
It’s so silent.
Even my footsteps against the dark wood of the floors hardly make a sound.
I pass the top of the stairs and cross over to the West Wing, following the tether that ends with Briar.
I pause outside her room, ready to knock, but think better of it. Instead, I just let myself in only to find her absent.
“Briar?”
No answer.
There’s a faint metallic smell perfuming the air and burning my nose. My heart stutters a beat and the world comes to a crawling halt.
“Briar?”
Nothing.
To the right, beneath the cracked open door of the ensuite is abright flash of red against the golden marble floors. I can feel my mind screaming with each step closer and when I push open the door, my lungs seize.
Blood.
