Page 158 of An Unexpected Ascension
“They’re all gone,” I confirm.
I anticipated this, I saw it coming, yet nothing prepared me forthe devastation writhing through Briar. Everyone she has come to know and love here are all gone forever, no longer in existence.
“Why are we still here?” She looks up at me with a stoney face.
I shrug. “Perhaps because we’re demons and don’t truly belong in this world. Or maybe we have something even worse waiting.”
It takes a long moment for her to shake this stupor, for the unbelievability of this horror to turn to a debilitating rage. I can feel her body heating, her skin lighting on fire in my very arms, her heart galloping inside her chest. She shakes in my hold like a firework preparing to spear the air and detonate into a million sparks of pure hatred.
And it bleeds into me, every bit of raw fury, it wraps around my heart and yanks me to my feet, pulling her with me.
She laughs, with watery, wild eyes, she laughs. It echoes hauntingly through the empty stone church, settling right inside my soul.
“I’ve never wanted to take a life, never wanted to end someone’s existence – not even the man who killed me – but Lynx, right now I want to slaughter an entire army of Gods. I want to wear their blood like warpaint and their intestines as my fucking crown. I want to watch their eyes as I mutilate them like they mutilated you. I want to feel their hatred for me as I feel for them. I want their reign to come to a devastating end.”
I kneel before her, grasping one of her hands in my own and look up at my seething Angel.
“So you shall have it.”
I plant a kiss to the back of her hand before we free-fall into space. The world swirls around us in a collage of color before we’re righted on the grounds of Lucifer’s manor.
Chapter 55
The Angel
“Lynx! Briar!” the Devil’s voice calls out, echoing down the hall of the West Wing.
Quickly, I turn to my Demon. “Here.”
Looking down, his brows dip along with the corners of his mouth. In my hand I hold a small, round violet fruit, still as shiny as the day I snatched it.
“Briar.”
“Come on, we can split it. It worked for Lucifer and Ada; it could work for us too.”
I don’t miss the exhaustion in his eyes. Once a blue so rich it was unnatural and now, they sit dull like that fire he held has extinguished.
He curls his hands around mine, closing my fist around the fruit.
“I—” He sighs. “I don’t know if I want to exist for all of eternity. I think I might be okay if I don’t make it back from this war.”
My jaw drops at his confession, and it takes me a long few heartbeats to gather my thoughts.
“No. I don’t accept that. You don’t get to proclaim your love to meday in and day out, hold me when I cry, nurse my heart back to health just to leave me!”
He flinches. “Briar, after—” His eyes shut closed to fight the tears that waver in his voice. “After everything, I just don’t know if I want to go on.”
I step back to put space between us. “And what if you’re gone and we still don’t win. Are you okay with what happens after that? What will happen to me? How am I supposed to go on without you, Lynx?”
My frustration shows in the tears gliding down my cheeks. He brushes the wetness with his thumbs, then cups the side of my face yanking me to him. Lowering to meet me, he crushes his mouth against mine in a devastating kiss. A kiss that feels too much like goodbye.
When he pulls away, his eyes say everything his words don’t. “Take it and if I make it through this war, I will try my best to stay.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s not how this works. If you go, I go.”
He rears his head. “Briar. That’s absurd.”
“I don’t care.”
