Chapter 21

CHAPTER21

Icouldn’t sleep.

My body was as antsy as if I’d had ten cups of coffee, my mind was working overtime going through all of the possible torture scenarios Lucifer could come up with for me, and my heart…better not go there.

I’d tried to lie down on the newly summoned bed in the corner of the sitting room, with Vengeance watching over me with a worried expression on two of her heads—the third was trying to catch its own tongue—and the hellkittens joining me in a cuddle puddle. But try as I might, I didn’t get a lick of sleep.

Every unknown noise startled me to the point I sat upright in bed, and the kittens soon left my side due to my tossing and turning. My heart racing, I’d glance around the dark room, expecting Lucifer to waltz right in and snatch me away.

I was sure he’d have no trouble getting in here. There probably wouldn’t even be a servant to announce his arrival—I could just imagine his reaction if anyone tried to keep him from going straight for what he wanted.

In the minutes in between scary noises and almost heart attacks, my thoughts looped back to either my mom’s impending death and my desperation to hold on to her, or to Azazel and Azmodea finding out their long-lost mother was still alive, though still firmly out of their reach.

Thus I vacillated between fear so acute it stole my breath and gave me heart palpitations, and the squeezing, stabbing kind of hurt and anguish that made me whimper and cry until my face felt so swollen it might rival a boxer after a bloody match.

Azazel didn’t come to bed that night, which only poured fuel onto the fire of my anxious thoughts and churning emotions. That he’d leave me here alone, with the uncertainty of Lucifer’s maybe/maybe-not impending arrival to snatch me away hanging over me like the proverbial Sword of Damocles…it didn’t sit right.

Was he mad at me? Oh god, he probably was. I’d kept this huge secret from him, even if against my will, and for an entire year, I’d lived with him, talked with him about a thousand different things, slept next to him, shared so many intimate moments, while all the time, I’d kept quiet about something that impacted his life a whole fucking lot.

Even if he rationally understood that I didn’t have a choice, some part of him must feel betrayed.

I know I would.

Feelings weren’t rational, and it would only make sense for him to be hurt by my deception.

Which, of course, hurt me in turn.

God, by now, I had so many layers of hurt wrapped around me, I wouldn’t even know where to begin to peel myself out of it all.

Underneath the pain I felt knowing that he was no doubt angry with me festered a different kind of sense of betrayal—because he wasn’t here for me. No matter all the sharp and broken things between us right now, I’d have thought he might have at least wanted to be here for whenever Lucifer came to claim me. Should Lucifer take me away, who knew how long I’d be gone? Going by how immortals measured time and the appropriate length of punishments, I could be looking at months, maybe even years, of paying for my transgression in Lucifer’s palace.

And with Azazel gone, I wouldn’t even get to say goodbye.

When the morning rolled around—noticeable as such only by my own time keeping, because the sky never changed—I decided I couldn’t lie in bed any longer, unsuccessfully chasing the oblivion of sleep. With a sigh, I got up and went to clean myself up. The lack of rest made my hands shake, and I fought dizziness as I showered and then dressed.

My breakfast came and went, with me barely able to eat anything, and I eyed the coffee with a healthy amount of suspicion. I was tired AF, but if I drank that cup, it would likely not make me more awake and better equipped to take on the day, but instead make me smell colors and give me two heartbeats for the price of one.

I was already anxious and jittery enough. No need to make my nervous system even jumpier.

For a moment, a really low and shameful moment, I considered ordering a bottle of amrit. If I got drunk on that—and stayed drunk on it—I’d be successfully rid of any anxiety until Lucifer decided to come and collect me. Riding out the time until my punishment in a bubble of bliss seemed so fucking tempting.

That was the moment I knew I had to get out of my rooms and get myself something to do. Azazel still hadn’t come back, and when I inquired about him with one of the servants, they told me he’d gone to work. An estate like his didn’t run itself, I knew that, but it still smarted that he hadn’t even stopped by to check in with me.

So I called Vengeance and took her for a walk.

She had to go potty anyway, and I figured it made no sense for me to stay put in my quarters. If—no, when—Lucifer came for me, he’d find me either way.

I threw some giant balls for her outside, which was mainly possible because I’d had a catapult built that would launch those balls the size of a small boulder high into the air to crash down hundreds of yards away. Vengeance loved it. She was wicked fast and always caught the ball before it even touched the ground, and then she’d trot back over to me and deposit the ball into the catapult’s bucket.

It was uncanny with her, but when she was on the spot and the situation was serious—like needing to catch that ball—she never failed. She was all predatory canine power and prowess, impressively so. But as soon as the pressure was off, she was Ms. Clumsy. Like when she trotted back to me with the ball in one or more of her maws, she’d trip over her own feet more times than not. I knew that should I really be in danger at some point, Vengeance would be one hell of a bodyguard, and woe be those who meant me harm.

All other times? She was delightfully goofy.

And for a few minutes, it actually took my mind off my sorrows.

Of course, that only lasted until I was done playing with her, and we walked back into the mansion. I sat down in the giant hall with the many pillars and a huge fountain in the middle—an ostentatious display of Azazel’s wealth and power, since water was so valuable down here—and while Vengeance drank with the grace of a toddler smashing their face into a birthday cake, I sat there on the rim of the fountain and sank into my maudlin thoughts and feelings.

Some more outgoing people sometimes assumed that introverts were aloof, islands unto themselves, somehow removed from the need for casual physical touch. They couldn’t be more wrong. We did need it, just from those few we knew well and felt comfortable with.

Right now, I was in dire need of a hug. I’d spent the last twelve plus hours in a constant state of fear, grief, despair, and distress, with nobody to vent to and no one to offer me comfort. At this moment, I’d kill to be able to see my bestie and talk to her, but that was out of the question, of course. Another visit to Earth so soon after the last one was a risk not even I was willing to take, as much as I disagreed with Azazel’s stern stance on the timeframe between visits. And even if I were able to go see Taylor right now, the hug of comfort from her was impossible anyway.

So I sat there, kicking my feet, feeling like shit, because the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Azazel had been right with what he’d said after we’d come back from my mom’s.

He’d been right, and it hurt like hell.

No one liked to have a mirror held up and their own faults reflected back at them, especially if those shortcomings were ugly as fuck. Last night, he’d shown me exactly how ugly I could be, and though I hated seeing him point out that side of me…I’d needed to hear it.

Because he was right. I hadn’t been thinking of my mom, of what was best for her. I hadn’t considered her needs, or wants. Just my own. I’d been ready to demand that she damn her soul, just so I could have her a while longer.

Thinking of that now, it made my skin crawl.

That was not the kind of person I wanted to be. And it was not the kind of person my mom raised me to be.

That thought really drove it all home.

So while I grudgingly and with no small amount of shame accepted that Azazel had been warranted in calling me out, which doused the anger I’d felt right after we came back, I still wasn’t too fond of how he’d basically called me emotional. It might have been true, yes, but that wasn’t the smartest thing to point out to the overemotional person at that moment. Just like telling someone who’s agitated to just calm down never really helped them to actually calm down.

Of course, in the grand scheme of things, this was an inconsequential detail to stay mad about.

What wasn’t, though, was the fact that he’d walked away and left me here by myself.

He’d been MIA since he stormed out last night on his way to inform his sister of the whole fucking mess, and I’d had to struggle through the nauseating mix of my emotions alone. To be fair, he had his own deep feelings to sort out as well, but…we could have worked through this shit together.

Not to mention that Lucifer could have shown up at any point in the past twelve hours, and Azazel wouldn’t even have been here to say goodbye or maybe plead with him or something.

Instead, he’d left me all alone, with the looming possibility that the supreme overlord of Hell might waltz in here any minute and drag me with him to face certain torture.

Deep inside me, the part of me once before traumatized by abandonment and neglect bled anew.

I hung my head, feeling so damn lonely.

“Zoe,” a voice pulled me from my painful musings.

I raised my gaze to see Hekesha standing a few feet away, impeccably dressed in her fighting gear as always, her dark hair braided, not a strand out of place. Her brown eyes studied me with a note of worry.

“Are you all right?”

Sudden tears burned in my eyes, and I sniffed, my chest constricting. “No.”

“Oh,” was all Hekesha got out before I launched myself at her.

She twitched back as if ready to fend off an attack, but didn’t strike me as I slung my arms around her and squeezed tight.

“Hold me,” I choked out between sobs.

“Uh…”

My words were garbled because I was crying so hard at this point. “I feel so much. So sad…I can’t…I just need…a friend…hug.”

Stiff as a board, Hekesha stood there as I clung to her like a particularly sobbing wet scarf, and after a moment, she tentatively laid one arm around my shoulders and patted my back in awkward taps.

“There, there,” she said, though she made it sound like a question, as if she was trying out a new language and wasn’t sure of the vocabulary.

I sobbed harder.

Eventually, over the course of several sloppy, tear-filled minutes, I told her about the stress with Azazel—leaving out the details about Naamah, because while the vow was already broken, I wasn’t sure whether revealing her existence to even more people might not make everything worse—and about my mom.

“And so I’ll lose her forever,” I croaked, “and I’ll never see her again, and it just rips me apart, you know?”

Pat, pat. “I don’t.”

Sniffling, I drew back and looked at her.

She shrugged. “My mother tried to kill me when she found out I was half demon.”

“Oh.” Yikes. But also, that explained a lot.

I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry. That must haven been…” Hard didn’t quite cut it. I settled on “Devastating.”

She shrugged again, looking away to the side.

And now I felt shitty. Here I was, with a great childhood with loving parents, and sure, I’d had a bit of trauma with my dad leaving us, and now my mom dying, but…considering what Hekesha and Caleb had lived through, complaining about my sorrows felt like a privileged pity party.

“Thank you,” I mumbled.

“For what?”

“Giving me a reality check.” I tugged at a stray thread on my top. “I’m lucky to have had a mom like mine, and I should be grateful for the time we had together.”

Hekesha regarded me for a minute. “Your feelings are still valid,” she said eventually. “Just because others have had it worse doesn’t mean your grief is unwarranted. Life is not a trauma competition. There isn’t a threshold of bad experiences you have to meet to be allowed deep feelings about what happens to you.”

I stared at her, my eyes watering yet again. “You’re a good friend, you know that?”

A flush darkened the warm tan of her face, and she cleared her throat and glanced away. “Your hound is trying to eat her own paw.”

“That’s okay.”

And we both turned to watch Vengeance chew on her left hind paw with one of her maws then startle when she kicked herself in the mouth, looking around with wild eyes as if searching for the perpetrator who’d just slapped her across her snout.

* * *

After another nightwithout Azazel coming to bed—as per the servants, he’d been working nonstop, which was quite possible, seeing as demons didn’t strictly need sleep and could go indefinitely without rest—I decided to go searching for him, decorum be damned. I’d march right into whatever meeting or task he was completing and demand he talk to me. I could understand if he was mad at me, but it wasn’t right to leave me here stewing and not knowing what was going with him, sitting on pins and needles and expecting Lucifer to kidnap me at any second and having to deal with all this crap alone.

I was already dressed and fuming and ready to stalk out the door when said door opened and in walked my darling demon.

I halted in mid-step, all my pent-up frustration going poof at the sight of him.

His face was set in hard lines, his shoulders tense, while resignation lay upon his frame like a transparent cloak, weighing him down. A dark, slightly bitter note vibrated in his energy, tendrils of shadow curling behind his back and over his arms as if the essence of his wings wanted to leak out past his control.

When his eyes met mine, the silver in them was so pronounced, they fairly glowed.

“Zoe,” he said quietly, crossed the distance to me, framed my face with both hands and kissed me with the kind of reverence afforded to unexpected blessings.

I almost melted on the spot, the part of me starved for reassurance blooming under his obvious display of affection. Still, I was trying hard to hold on to all my misgivings about his long absence. Nope, no, I wouldn’t be pacified with a kiss.

I pulled back, retreated a step, and then slapped my hand on his chest, baring my teeth. “You left me.”

Something like contriteness shone in his eyes. “Yes.”

“You left me,” I repeated, pointing at him with a finger, “knowing full well that Lucifer could show up at any time and take me away, and yet you walked out and stayed away for two nights and one day, and I had to sit here, alone”—my voice broke and tears burned my eyes, because, dammit, I was an angry crier—“and I was so afraid, and I needed you to be here, but you weren’t!”

He took a deep breath. “I am sorry for that.”

I balled my hands into fists. “Where were you? Why didn’t you come back sooner?” Why did you leave me all alone? I wanted to add, but I didn’t trust myself not to break into sobs at the hurt behind that question.

He clenched his jaw, anguish flickering over his features. “Sometimes,” he said quietly, his voice threaded with pain, “there are no good choices.”

“What do you mean?”

He flexed and curled his fingers, almost absent-mindedly. “I stayed away so I wouldn’t fuck things up.”

“What?”

Looking to the side, he rubbed a hand over his face. “I didn’t trust myself to be here when Lucifer came to take you away. If I had stayed, and I had witnessed him coming to collect you…” His expression was the darkest I’d ever seen on him. “Zoe, I wouldn’t have been able to stand by. I would have tried to stop him. Not by pleading with him. Not by asking nicely. No. Whatever leash holds my fury at bay would have snapped, and I’d have assaulted Lucifer, the King of Hell.”

He made a pause to let that sink in. I shivered at the savage glow in his eyes, and at the picture he painted.

“I’d have damned myself,” he continued, “as well as you. An unprovoked, unwarranted attack like that would have made everything worse. Whatever he might have planned for you, he’d have heaved more punishment on top for my transgression. Not to mention that he’d be justified to retaliate against me directly. I could have ended up in his dungeon, or maybe chained beneath the glass floor of his entrance hall, for who knows how long.” Quietly, he added, “And where would that leave you?”

I gulped, my stomach a pit of nausea.

“I am well aware,” he said, stepping closer and cupping my face again, “that I am your sole anchor down here, your only protection. That if I were gone, and you’d be left to fend for yourself, whatever status and power you had gained through me would be stripped away, and you’d be fair game for anyone.”

I trembled in his hold.

“I won’t let that happen.” Deep, deep conviction vibrated in his voice. “I will always be your shield. I will do whatever it takes to keep you safe, and in this instance, that meant staying away in order to protect you. Because I know, without a sliver of a doubt, that despite my best intentions, I would not have kept my composure had I been forced to watch Lucifer take you away.” His thumbs stroked over my cheeks. “But don’t you think for a minute that it was easy for me to stay away. That it didn’t hurt me to leave you here, knowing you were scared, that you needed me. It tore me apart.”

I laid my hands on his, my heart aching. “You should have told me that before you left. I still wouldn’t have liked it, but at least I would have understood your motivations.”

He was silent for a moment, then he nodded. “You’re right.”

I raised a brow. “Conceding my point so easily?” For a being of several thousand years, he sure showed quite some adaptability here.

“I am not used to this.” At my frown, he added, “Relationships. Communication at eye level. Compromise. I’ve never had to consider making someone privy to my thoughts and feelings on a regular basis. I’ve been used to deciding things for myself, without consulting others. This”—one of his hands slid down and caressed my neck in a gentle hold—“is new for me.”

A swarm of butterflies took flight in my belly.

“You’re my partner,” he said softly. “I should have let you know what I was thinking.”

I nodded, biting my lip. “Okay.” I lowered my eyes, then asked softly, “Are you mad at me?”

“For keeping this from me?”

I played with the collar of his tunic. “Yeah.”

A considering pause, then—“I was a bit, yes. At first. But there was no malicious intent on your part. You didn’t want to keep it secret from me, I know that.”

“Knowing and feeling are two different things, though.”

“True, but I choose what to hold on to and what to let go of. This is something that couldn’t be helped, there was no other course of action, and it’s clear you regret it as much as I do. Which means I won’t dwell on it.”

My fingers dug into his shirt. “So we’re good?”

“We are.”

And then he pulled me to him and into the hug I’d sorely needed from the male I loved. I melted into his embrace, inhaling his scent, letting the heat of his body sink into my chilled bones.

“Why hasn’t he come?” I whispered after a long moment, and I knew I didn’t have to elaborate on whom I meant. “I broke the vow. Shouldn’t he be champing at the bit to punish me?”

He was silent for a few aching heartbeats, then he stepped away and pulled me with him to sit down on one of the sofas.

Facing me with an arm slung over the backrest, he said, “I will not ask him to see my mother.”

“What?” I sat up straighter. “But…why?”

He hadn’t seen her in so long, and I knew how much she meant to him. I’d thought for sure he’d be on Lucifer’s case immediately, demanding to visit his mother. I definitely would be, if I were in his position.

“Azmodea and I agreed that it’s best if we don’t change the status quo.” At my surely puzzled expression, he softly added, “The fact that he hasn’t come for you right away could mean two things. Either he wants to draw out your punishment by making you wait, thereby playing on your increasing anxiety the longer he delays coming to collect you.”

I gulped. Yeah, that sounded like a Lucifer thing.

“Or,” Azazel went on, a focused gleam in his eyes, “he will not come for you as long as the status quo doesn’t change.”

I blinked at him in confusion.

“If there is a reason,” he said, “that he has kept my mother hidden from us for so long—be it to be petty and cruel to us, or out of some other, unrelated motive—he might have a vested interest in keeping it that way. So as long as he doesn’t come here or summon you to him to dole out punishment, both Azmodea and I will refrain from asking him about our mother. We won’t mention it. We will not make waves or poke at him in any way.” His eyes burned into me. “And maybe if we act as if you never said a word about our mother, as if you never broke your vow, it will keep him from coming for you.”

I was stunned speechless for a good, long moment. That they would do this…for me? Refuse to demand to see their mother, relinquish their right to visit her, on the off chance that it would spare me punishment? Something sour settled in my stomach, and I hugged myself.

“But what if that’s not the reason he hasn’t come yet?” I asked, worrying my lower lip with my teeth. “What if you guys make this sacrifice for me only for him to show up after some time to punish me anyway?”

“Then we will have no reason anymore not to ask him to see our mother.” His face turned hard. “And while he might not want to let us see her, we’ll have Daevi’s backing should we go and demand to visit her. We went and talked to her the other night, and we confronted her about keeping this from us all this time. She knew, and she didn’t tell us. She has quite a lot of guilt built up from that, and she seeks to make amends. As Naamah’s mother, she has a say in this. Should Azmodea and I decide we want to see Naamah, Daevi will make Lucifer grant us access.”

My eyes stung. “So you’re just holding back on seeing your mom again to keep me from being hurt.”

He held my gaze with unwavering strength. “Your safety is my first priority.”

“And what about Azmodea?”

I was sure that keeping me unharmed was important to her, but…that important? More important than seeing her long-lost mom?

“Azmodea agrees with me that this is the best course of action.”

Then why did it make me feel so shitty?

I opened my mouth to say some more, but Azazel cut me off.

“This is not up for debate.”

“But—”

“I will never,” he said through gritted teeth, grasping the back of my neck in a gentle grip, “consider handing you over to Lucifer for punishment. Not even to see my mother. I’ve done well without seeing her for thousands of years. This doesn’t change anything.”

But it does, I wanted to say. This was different than before. Not seeing her because he’d assumed her dead was one thing. In a way, it was easier because he’d believed she was gone, so there really was no chance of ever seeing her again. But now that he knew she was alive and right here, in Hell…

I didn’t believe for one moment that it would be just as easy for him to ignore this now. Knowledge like this had a way of creeping up on someone, always lurking just there, never going away. He’d remember every time he’d think of Lucifer, or his palace, or Daevi, or his mom. So many different factors in his life that could trigger the reminder that, oh, yeah, his mother was alive—but he couldn’t see her.

He tipped my chin up with one finger, his eyes shrewd. He likely saw right into my doubts and fears and objections, and his next words proved me right. “Promise me you won’t bring it up again. Don’t try to change my mind.”

I swallowed, met his gaze steadily, and nodded.

His power pulsed around him. “Say it.”

“I promise I won’t try to discuss this with you again.”

I felt the binding of the small vow I’d just made lay itself around me, and Azazel released a deep breath and squeezed the nape of my neck. Even for promises, this kind of magic seemed to work, which was probably why he’d insisted on me speaking the words.

But the thing about words was…they had to be precise for the meaning intended. What I’d just sworn to was not to mention the whole thing to Azazel again, and he thought that meant the issue was settled. He thought it would mean the status quo would be cemented.

But I’d only sworn not to speak to him about it.

I had not said one word about not doing something about it.