28. Max

28

MAX

M y breath caught in my lungs, shock rolling over me that had nothing to do with the fact that he pressed the edge of my blade to the sensitive flesh of my neck.

"Saif? As in Sayty's twin?" The blade dented further into my skin when I spoke, but I didn't fight him off, didn't back away.

It was easier to study him now that his face was barely even a foot from mine. There was a layer of grime covering the visible patches of his face, and his hair was knotted with matts, like dried blood had fused bits of the wild waves to his scalp. His full lips were chapped, and there appeared to be a small piece of one ear missing—an almost impossible feat for a partial demon.

He smelled of dried sweat and musk and there was something almost wild about him that I couldn't quite pinpoint, but that fit perfectly in these woods. I wondered when the last time he'd even been indoors had been.

There was an otherworldliness in the dark abyss of his eyes, an intelligence that was almost terrifying to look directly at for more than a moment or two .

But after taking him in, I found myself searching for fragments of myself too. Pulling apart Lucifer's features that had braided with my own, trying to fill in the missing bits, crafting an image of my mother from the man who stood in front of me, using myself as part of the blueprint.

He dropped his wrist and pressed the handle of my blade into my palm, our fingers brushing as I closed mine around the familiar hilt.

A shot of warmth sparked down my spine, easing any of the remaining tension still cradled in my body. There was a kinship I felt suddenly, thrumming through my veins.

His stare burned into my skin, like he was studying me with just as much curiosity, just as much disbelief.

"As in my uncle?" I whispered, afraid to speak it too loudly, like putting voice to the hope would give the universe a chance to seize it away from me, to blot it out before I could be sure.

His jaw worked subtly at the word, the only indication he'd heard me.

For a moment that felt far longer than it probably was, he said nothing, just held my gaze in his, considering. Then, with a heavy exhale, he took a step back.

"Forgive me." He shook his head, eyes now taking in our surroundings, landing everywhere but back on me, like he'd already used up all of his capacity to take me in. "It's been a long time since I've seen her. And you share so?—"

He took a few steps back, then sat down next to his pack, shoulders slumping slightly like the heaviness of whatever he'd been through had finally come to collect.

"I thought you were dead." Hadn't that been what Charlie had said? That she'd inherited her restaurant at The Lodge from an uncle she'd never known? From Saif?

"Good as." He nodded, then began digging roughly through his pack until he pulled out a pouch of water and then immediately drained it into his mouth. "That was intended. "

My legs, of their own volition, buckled, until the rest of my body followed suit and I found myself suddenly sitting on the cold, wet forest floor a few feet away from my resurrected uncle.

Ralph pranced back over to us, oblivious to my shock. He dropped the ball in my lap before he circled a few times and curled into my side, his warmth a welcome presence as I leaned into him.

A ridiculous smile carved across my face. This was our first win in so long. And we so desperately needed one. "My fa—Cyrus. He adopted me. He tried finding you. But Charlie said you'd died. You left The Lodge to her and the others—to The Defiance."

"The Defiance, eh?" His nose curled slightly. "That's what they went with? Has a bit of unnecessary drama to it, doesn't it?" He tilted his head, considering. "Cyrus. She mentioned him before. A good man, she said. He raised you, yes?" I nodded. "Then I'll be happy to meet him."

The joy ripped from my stomach like a knife. "He—" I took a deep breath, trying to dislodge the sudden weight in my chest. "He's gone."

Saif's expression softened slightly. "I see. I'm sorry. That appears to be the case for far too many who deserved a longer chance at happiness." As if sensing my discomfort, he rifled through his bag once more and pulled out an orange, peeling as he tackled the rest of my unanswered questions. "I needed people to think I was dead, and so I made it so. But, as you can see," he tossed the cured peel back in his pack as he broke the fruit into two, tossing me half. "I am not. Not yet, anyway."

"Where have you been?" An edge of accusation slipped into my tone before I could correct it. If her twin survived, why did Sayty give me to Cyrus? Not that I would give up a single moment I'd had with him, with Ro—but could I have had this uncle in my life too? Another tether to family ?

"Hunting."

"For what?"

"At first, for my troublemaker of a sister. She had a knack for hiding that not even I could ever quite crack. Then, after I realized how futile that was, for Michael."

"Sayty? My mom, you mean? Or a different sister?"

"Your mother." His stare snagged on my face again, as if he was parsing her out in me the way I had been moments before in him. "But I didn't find her."

I choked on the small chunk of orange. Did he not know?

I suddenly hated myself, that I'd have to be the one to shatter that hope.

"She's gone too."

He considered me for a moment, popped a slice of orange into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed it, before responding. "Maybe. I didn't believe that for many years. You see, for protectors, twins are rare." He offered a slice of orange to Ralph, grinning when the hellhound inspected it for a moment before swallowing it whole. "And your mother and I—we are the anchors. At least we were. I'm not entirely sure if your birth negated that."

"Anchors?" It was the same word that Lucifer had used about me. An anchor which the shadow magic could sift through. A catalyst.

"Do you know the history of the realms?"

"Some of it." I tossed the rest of my orange to Ralph. The adrenaline coursing through my body made it impossible to stomach anything right now. "Cyrus told me that Sayty's line—your line too, I suppose—had a hand in creating hell. That your ancestors split ties with The Guild after, attempting to restore the balance of power The Guild had misaligned."

He nodded. "That's part of it. Our ancestors were tricked into using magic they didn't understand—manipulated and used by those who went on to formulate the so-called Guild." He took a deep breath, letting it out in a heavy sigh. "But creating an entire realm is no simple thing and they had no idea what they were really getting into. They imagined it to be a truce, one that would bring peace to different factions of demons, while creating a shield to protect humans from our world. And to keep our world protected from humans. That kind of ritual, that kind of binding, required very key, very rare ingredients. Anchors. Not a place, but a person. Two people, mirrored selves. Doppelgangers. Twins." His brow arched as he glanced at me, meeting my eyes only briefly, "I don't know if you are aware of this, but our family is prone to twins. They skip generations, always at least one, but more often two or three in one of our descendant lines."

"And twins are powerful." I hated myself as soon as the statement slipped through. Obviously he knew that already. I found myself desperately wanting to please this uncle, to impress him with the half-formed scraps of knowledge I'd been handed through Lucifer, Cyrus, and the others.

He grinned, pushing past the embarrassment I was sure was legible on my cheeks. "Very. But do you know why they are so powerful?"

I shook my head, wanting the explanation to come from him.

"Because they are in perfect unity, perfect balance. When supernatural twins are born, they represent a magical sync that isn't often found, one that cannot simply be created. A way to siphon and control power through a constant ebb and flow—mirrors that refract and reflect in perfect harmony. Like a breath—an inhaling and exhaling in equal measure. It's a fragile power, but an impossibly important one."

"Which is why twins are so often portal guardians." I thought of Nash, and what had become of his sister Nika, what had happened to Darius and his younger sister—both harsh, painful examples of what could come from disruptions to that delicate balance.

He ran his fingers through his long beard, nodding. "Portal guardians are twins because the realms were created by twins. They are a fragmented mirror of that power, an attempt to harness and use it. But it is always an imperfect system—they are not of the original lines. According to our stories, when the realms were created, power was siphoned through two pairs, one on this side and one on the other."

"And so our family," the phrase tasted strange on my tongue, "was one of those sets?"

"Yes. But that power cannot die. With it, the realms collapse. So every other generation or two, twins would be born from that ancestral line, the power and connection to the magic inherited by the new generation."

"You and my mom, you mean—you are the most recent twins? The anchors?"

"Yes, we were. Or are," he grunted, "I hardly know anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"The connection to the realms, to the magic, only works as a set. When that set is fractured or broken, it has nowhere to go, the balance is twisted. Things began to change, morph, when Sayty disappeared into hell many years ago."

"You weren't with her?" It was only one of a thousand questions I wanted the answer to.

I knew of course that she'd been to hell. Where else would she have met Lucifer? Though it was still shocking to consider. The Guild had never been able to access the hell realm—it was one of the reasons they told us they kept their prisoners. To pull the location from them, to find a way to close the realms for good—to protect humanity .

A weird spark of pride licked up my spine at my mother defying them—at her doing the one thing they could not.

He shook his head. "Sayty and I were almost never in the same place at the same time. From the moment we were born, we've been in the same room as each other only a handful of times. The anchors' power is more volatile when we are together. It becomes too unpredictable, an infinite echo that grows too strong—too easy to manipulate, too tempting for others to try and harness. And the power only holds if we continue our lines and stay alive until we do. The odds are better if we are not together."

Like the council. They were certainly more difficult to find and kill when we had to track them down across the world.

"When your mother returned, she was pregnant with you. She visited me here, very briefly, though I remember only one thing from that meeting—" seeing the question form on my lips, he grinned then pressed on before I could interrupt, "You have her patience, I see. She was with a man, one who had the ability to mind warp. I remembered only what he wanted me to remember. Probably for your safety as well as mine."

"Do you know who he was?"

He shook his head. "I remember almost nothing about him, just that he was there, that he apologized for his mental intrusion." He snorted. "Which was thoughtful, I suppose."

"The one thing?" I dug my hands into Ralph's fur to keep from grabbing Saif's head and shaking the answers from it. I'd been fed so few truths about my family, about my mother's history—I was greedy for every morsel he'd give me.

"He told me to find Michael. That if I could locate him, I could potentially save my life—and yours."

"You know about the realm's collapsing, then? That I will need to prevent it?"

His nostrils flared slightly, like he was sniffing the magic in the air. "Even the humans are beginning to sense that something is off, Max. And I am more closely tied to the magic between realms than almost anyone." He tilted his head, studying me again. "Or at least I was, before you."

"Who is Michael?" I asked, not entirely sure if I should apologize for that.

"The missing half to the other set." At my look of confusion, he grunted. "You are the daughter of Lucifer, are you not?"

I exhaled. "As in Michael, Michael? Like the angel?"

"He's no more angel than Lucifer or our ancestors, or any of the other ancients from before. Whatever word we attach to them, he and Lucifer are the only pair. Through them on one side, and our ancestors on the other, the realms were created—worlds mirrored to each other, at first. But protectors grew greedy. And it became clear very quickly to our ancestors that crafting the new realm had nothing to do with creating more space, with protecting humanity from the power we wield. It had only to do with some people's incessant thirst for power. Because it was born of greed, the magic through the years grew only more demanding, ever-hungry. It fed and thrived on a thirst for violence, power, and chaos, distorting the energy into something it was never meant to be."

"Lucifer has a twin," I repeated, my brain stuck on that thought. "He never mentioned it."

"So you've met him?" Saif asked, his eyes hard and the subtle curve of his mouth flattening out into a line. He clearly had no love for the man.

I nodded, not entirely sure what else to say. My feelings where Lucifer was concerned were a tangled mess that I had no intention of sifting through any time soon. "Did you find him? Michael, I mean?"

Saif's jaw worked as he studied his calloused hands. "I spent over a decade searching for Sayty. I was certain that she was alive, that if she wasn't, I would know somehow—that I'd feel it. We usually die together, when it happens. When the new generation of anchors takes our power. I think my connection to the magic disappeared when she did. But I remained. And though I felt different, I thought she might be out there still, that she'd simply found a way to bind the power—a difficult art that very few have perfected." His eyes met mine before they dropped again, a sheepishness in his stare, a guilt. "I admit that I wanted it back. That kind of power, the connection to the world, it could be intoxicating at times. Very few people are born into this world with such a clear purpose—and it was all the more unsettling to have it ripped away. It was there, and then it wasn't. But if she was dead, it shouldn't have disappeared—it would have gone to the next line. And since she gave birth to only one child, it shouldn't have passed to you."

He grunted. "It took me many years to realize that you were likely the daughter of not one line, but two. That my sister likely carried Lucifer's child. That maybe, because you are the daughter of the two lines, I don't know—maybe it makes sense for it all to end with you. A singularity. The workings of our world are never as predictable or tidy as we often think, but in some ways, there is a kind of beautiful symmetry to your existence. To the world we've broken, collapsing around us." His lips thinned into a rigid line. "It's unfair, perhaps—that those who had no hand in destroying it must inherit the disaster. But such is the way of this world."

"And now," I cleared my throat, my mouth had gone bone dry. He'd stopped searching for her, she'd been missing far longer than the ten years he'd looked. I felt the small tendril of hope dissolve on my tongue. That could only mean— "and now you believe that she's dead?"

Saif toyed with the empty bag that held his water for a moment before he nodded. He swallowed, studied a patch of the ground to his left before his glassy eyes met mine. "I'm sorry I did not heed her wishes sooner. I thought if I found her—" he pinched the bridge of his nose, took a deep breath, "but my apologies give you nothing. I've spent the last years of my life trying to find Michael. And with Sayty gone, it was more imperative than ever that the world think me either dead or missing. I couldn't have anyone after me, after the power in our line, after you. The best hope was that they blame the fluctuations in the realms on the anchor power dying out—a natural end.

"So, to keep them from looking for me or my power, better that they think me dead. It offered a freedom I'd never had before. And I used it to fulfill her last wish." He licked his lips, a frustrated bark of a laugh pulling from them. "But of course, I failed in that too. And now it is too late, and it is you who will pay that price. Perhaps we all will. If I had found him, if we could have reversed the spell cast in the creation of the realms with all four mirrors, the chances of you surviving such a ritual would be slightly less bleak.

"Lucifer, Michael, me, you—it would be an imperfect mirror, an echo, really—but a chance. The original set survived, and though our side of the power has weakened over the years, it's not impossible to hope that we could too, in the undoing of the ritual. I searched for years, through pockets of shadow magic and portals, but I could not find him. I wasted years held captive in some offshoot of hell, but even when I escaped, I could not find anyone who'd seen or heard from him in centuries. He seems to have disappeared shortly after the realms were created."

He slipped a hand in his jacket and tugged, pulling away a worn rope with a large stone dangling from the middle.

As if of its own accord, my hand reached for it, my eyes locked on the strange stone, the rest of the world falling into background particles. I held my breath at the sight of it.

Power, both familiar and not, washed over me, coating my skin, diving deep into the marrow of my bones, infiltrating all of my senses until it was all I could see. All I could feel .

"Shadow magic," I said, feeling the almost familiar pull to it. With great difficulty, I tore my eyes from it to look at Saif. "But different, somehow."

Saif nodded, his eyes unblinking as they bore into me. "Greta got word that you were here. That your power was growing. Things have sped impossibly in the last year—things that once put in motion, we can't return from. The fabric of our reality is collapsing—and the choices of greedy men many years ago could spell death for every living being in this realm and all others. A bit ridiculous then, that with such high stakes, and all my time searching, this is the only thing I have to give. A pendant that belonged to Michael. A family heirloom I only just recently came by. All other trails to the man himself have dried up. It is said that his blood, a piece of his power, is infused in the heart of it. Perhaps you can make use of it, perhaps it will be enough to prevent the world's undoing."

"Greta?" her name came out as nothing more than a pathetic croak.

A wistful expression flitted briefly across his face, but melted as he studied me for a moment. "She's gone too, isn't she?"

I nodded.

He sighed, then cursed under his breath. "She was the only one I was in contact with, and even then, only very minimally. She didn't know who I was, not fully. But she sensed the urgency, and agreed to become my eyes on you. Though I'm told you did not always make that easy," his mouth bent into that fish-hook grin again, "like your mother in that way too, I suppose."

Silence settled around us like a cold fog.

The euphoria at seeing him slowly dissolved into dark, echoless understanding. I couldn't deny the flutter in my chest at the possibility he'd found a way to save me. A Hail Mary in the final seconds of the game. Instead, he brought a crushing certainty that the worlds were collapsing. That I would die. That even then, the ritual might only just keep things together—a fragile possibility.

Strangely, that mere whiff of hope had made the unsettling reality only more difficult to face. There might have been a way—a way to stay with Darius, Eli, Atlas, Wade, and Declan—but it was now gone.

"So that's it then," I said, closing my fingers around the stone, comforted, if slightly by the steady weight.

Saif took a deep breath, watching me again, though I couldn't tell what he saw, what he was trying to read. "Are you very scared?"

The question was a deep, aching blow to the chest, but it also held relief, a balloon of tension popping its release.

Was I scared?

I hadn't really let myself linger on this specific fear. I'd been close to death so many times, that adrenaline and fear were impossible threads for me to unwind.

But this was different than all those times before.

I'd be willingly going to my death—I would be my own cause of destruction.

I wouldn't fight it, not knowing what I knew now, what could become of the world if I did.

And, honestly? I was fucking terrified.

As much as I wanted to be the kind of heroic figure who could just go into the darkest night, wearing a badge of bravery and honor, with no selfishness and fear braided into it, I wasn't. I wasn't some forged, selfless hero.

I was just a girl who'd been born into a specific past, just the end of a story and lineage of pain and sacrifice I only barely understood.

In comparison to what came before me, and what lay ahead of me, I felt weak—clumsy and incompetent .

I nodded, swallowing back the rush of emotion that washed over me, thick and hurried, now that I finally dared to look at it.

"Me too," he whispered. Some strange kinship floated between us, a tether of acknowledgment, of sameness. The power that flowed through me flowed through him too, but when I looked into his eyes, I saw the same fear, the same sense of incompetence against what we were up against. We were just two people, each holding only a fraction of the power of our ancestors, the original anchors. And we were all that stood between the realm and a power that had grown only stronger with a hunger to devour it.

Though we'd had radically different experiences, the loneliness of our roles in this world was mirrored in each other.

Saif wouldn't try to stop me. He wouldn't fight me on my decision like my team had, wouldn't tell me it was the wrong choice.

Because it wasn't.

The blood of our ancestors flowed through us—that power, that connection was a sacred promise that had to be fulfilled. Put right.

He stood up, closed the few feet between us, and dropped next to me, awkwardly patting Ralph on the head as the hound adjusted to the added presence.

Saif's shoulder pressed against mine, his side leaning into me—a strange, unexpected comfort, steady and true even though I'd only just met him.

Silence fell over us for a long stretch, but it wasn't uncomfortable. If anything, it was just surreal.

My mother's twin was alive. My uncle. And he was sitting next to me.

Something about his presence gave me a new kind of strength—an acceptance of what was to come. Maybe even a sense of pride in feeling connected to this long line of ancestors I'd been deprived of knowing. I wasn't alone in this task. I didn't know him, but Saif was here now, he was part of this with me.

An idea started to form, ephemeral and transparent at first, but growing solid with hope.

"Do you know where we're from?" I asked, trying to keep the excitement from my voice. I'd been denied my own history for so long that I was starved for even the barest taste of it, the smallest morsel. But it was bigger than that, bigger than my own desires. "The ritual requires a nexus. Lucifer thinks it might be where the original ritual took place, though he has no memory of it."

"Our ancestors are from a region in Southwest Asia, near modern day Lebanon." He paused, considering for a moment, while I lingered on that word— our . "Though that doesn't necessarily mean that was where this all began. The ancients could shift through space, they moved through the world with a different kind of ease than most understand. The spot where they landed—it could be anywhere."

I slumped back against Ralph, wrestling with the impossible scope of anywhere .

Lucifer was supposedly there in some capacity—maybe we had a better chance of jostling his memory, with magic, or a trick of some sort.

"Is he certain that it must be the literal place of origin?"

I shrugged, unsure.

We settled back into silence, the temporary lightness growing heavier with each passing moment.

"I'm sorry," he said, breaking the fragile silence, "I wish that I'd done more, that I hadn't spent so much time trying to avoid what couldn't be avoided. I'm sorry that I've left you to face this alone."

"I know." I wasn't alone. My fear slowly started to ebb, making way for not quite the calm of acceptance, but something much closer to it than I'd felt before. "I understand. I wouldn't have been able to let go of that hope either, if I thought she might still be alive, out there somewhere."

His jaw clenched, expression unreadable. He took a deep, steadying breath, then turned to me. His rough hands grabbed mine, peeling my fingers back until he revealed the stone.

His gaze dropped to it, focused and unsure. After a heavy sigh, he nodded, then he picked the stone up, sliced the sharp edge into the tender flesh of my palm, and carved a rune into my skin that I couldn't make sense of.

"Hey," I pulled my arm back, staring at the small pool of blood cradled in my hand. "What the hell?"

Without explanation, he sliced a similar wound into his own flesh, then grasped my hand with his, our blood mingling as one.

His eyes held mine, unblinking, and I found myself unable to move, unable to look away. He spoke in a language I didn't recognize, but it resonated deep in my chest like a rumbling drum, and moved up my throat until his low and melodic voice harmonized with mine. I didn't breathe as an unfamiliar tightness wrapped around me, a vise I couldn't break from.

Panic bled through every atom in my body, but I couldn't bring myself to stand up or push him away. It was like he'd cast a trance over me, one my body was determined to wait out, no matter the consequences.

The black of his eyes bled, until no white remained, the swirling smoke there calling to me in its strangeness.

Then, as quick and firm as the trance had held, it loosened.

He fell back, breaths harsh and unsteady. The color quickly drained from his face, the light from his stare, until he looked thirty years older than he was, almost sickly.

Michael's pendant dangled from his hand as he fell back against Ralph, his eyes open and unfocused as they searched aimlessly before finally landing on me.

"It isn't much, my niece. But it is, unfortunately, the only thing left for me to give you—an unbinding spell, my blood to yours. Any remnants of my power are yours. Any lingering blocks placed on you in infancy are gone. It's not enough for you to survive the ritual, but it will hopefully be enough for you to see it through."

And with that, his eyes closed, and the tension in his body fell slack.