Epilogue

EPILOGUE

T he sands were so hot; she was glad that she wore shoes. But she had to be here. There were important words to be said, and the oracle inside of her had wanted to come here. So here she was. Standing beneath a small parasol with her feet burning and already angry at Sloth for being late.

"Where is he?" she muttered, not for the first time. Lilith leaned beyond the parasol to glare somewhat in the vicinity of the sun before ducking back underneath it.

"Summoning the demon king of Sloth is always a lesson in patience," Envy replied with a chuckle.

He put his arm around her shoulder, but it was so damn hot here. She couldn't think when there was sweat dripping down her back and she badly wanted to scream because she wanted to go back to their cool, stone covered home where she wasn't melting in the sun.

"Why can't he just be here?" she asked. "On time. When I asked him to be. No one ever denies an oracle when she tells them to be in a certain place at a certain time."

"Except a demon king who has very little interest in what you have to say." He took his arm off her shoulders as though he knew she needed the air. Then he carefully took the parasol out of her grip as well, making sure that it was out of her reach before he turned back to her and made her look at him. "He will be here. And in the meantime, why are you so upset?"

She didn't know. Or rather, she knew, but she was afraid of what she had seen. Because if she was right, then Sloth needed to get here now so she could get everything moving in the right direction.

"It's about her," she finally whispered, and Envy turned all of his attention to her.

"Her?"

"The woman that I saw Sloth was in love with."

"You already told him she was reborn." Tiny wrinkles formed between his eyes. "What else could there be for you to say?"

A shadow passed over their head, massive and far too large to be anything but a dragon. And that was part of what she had seen.

Sloth was spending more and more time as his dragon. It limited what he could do, but he preferred it to being a man. There were expectations as a man, and no one put those expectations on a creature like a dragon. The bronzed beast landed on the sands in front of them, hitting so hard that they almost sank into the tiny granules like he had somehow created quicksand just with his weight.

In a blink, Sloth in human form strode toward them, a frown on his face and a glare only for her.

"I thought I told you there would be no more looking into my future," he snarled the moment he was close enough to them. "I don't care what you saw, what you see, or what you think, Lilith. There are some things we are not meant to know."

"And sometimes everything will go easier if we did know," she replied, hurrying to his side even as Envy hissed at her to wait for him. "Just let me help you, Sloth."

"I don't want your help."

"No, you are afraid of my help, and those are two very different things." She reached for him, but waited with her hand just barely outstretched. He had to make the final leap. "I know there is something that we are all missing. Something that desperately needs to be brought to light. Please, Sloth. Let me help."

Quietly, so his brother would not hear, Sloth said, "I do not wish for you to see what I have been doing in your absence."

"Then I will not look," she answered honestly. "I will be careful to not look at anything other than your future, Sloth. I just have to know what I missed."

He reached for her hand and let her slide her fingers between his.

Lilith was thrust into the future as though even her power didn't care what he had been up to. This wasn't about disappearing for a few moments or knowing what it was like to live in a demon king's body. No, she had something to do. Something to see.

Immediately, her power coiled around the thread that was so linked to the woman he had once loved. The link that had never died, not even after she had left this realm.

"I was right," she whispered, not even seeing him anymore but the future that was laid out before her. "She never left."

"She died."

"She did, but her spirit stayed here. She saw into the realms of other places, the realm of death, and she denied it. She stayed here, waiting for the right person to slip into. I thought she had done that recently. I thought you had more time. But she's been here for years, Sloth. She was reborn almost thirty years ago." Lilith blinked, trying to find the pathway that would let him find her, but it was a hard one.

Sloth's fingers tightened around hers. "How do I find her, then?"

"She's hiding from you," she whispered. "Hiding so far away that it will be almost impossible to find her. She doesn't want to be found. You will have to do something drastic to get her out of the sands. Like an eagle in the air, you must hunt her."

"How?"

"Every woman in the kingdom must be brought to you. Every single one. You must search for her. Every single one." Lilith blinked, and the future disappeared, but she still felt hopeless after saying the words. "You are going to have to look at every single person in this kingdom until you find her. And I hope you recognize her."

"I have never forgotten her," he rasped. "And I never will. I will recognize her the moment I see her."

"Then I wish you luck," Lilith replied, stepping back into Envy's grasp. "Because you're going to need it."