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Her eyes flicked to his, and he knew she could see the questions brewing in his mind.

“Maybe I can help,” she added, her full mouth quirking in a way that suggested she was asking him what the problem was. Or maybe it was her way of challenging any assumptions he might be making about her abilities—rather, her inabilities to help them with this.

God, he loved her.

Even though Darien didn’t like the idea of Loren being around this stranger before he’d had a chance to feel her out for himself, she could make her own decisions. And besides, Dominic would be there with her the whole time. That alone should’ve put his mind at ease, but he was beginning to realize that Kalendae had done a pretty thorough job of fucking him up. He wondered if he would ever find a way back to his former self, or if that version of him was dead now.

“Darien,” Loren chided softly. “Stop it.”

He blinked, clearing away the memory of when he’d woken up among the destruction of their city and realized he’d been dead only a moment before. “Stop what?”

“Overthinking. I can see the gears turning in your head.”

“Gears?” Jack cut in with a snort. “What gears? There’s nothing upstairs but some dust and a tumbleweed.”

Darien shot Jack an icy glare that made most people shrivel up like a raisin. “Remind me again why I tolerate you.”

Max said with a chuckle, “Because he’s hard to get rid of. He’s sworn in as a Devil and your brother-in-law.”

Jack was grinning. “Unless you can forge my signature on the divorce papers, you’re stuck with me, big boy.”

“I don’t need a signature, I need a bullet and a body bag, so quit being a smartass.”

“Darien.” Ivy clicked her tongue.

“Ivyana,” he countered.

“Idiots,” Lace offered.

The girl at Lace’s side looked at her with curiosity. “Idiots?” She fumbled the word on her tongue.

“Yeah, idiots,” Lace said. “Stupid, moronic, dumb—”

“Dumb.” She nodded emphatically.

Dominic wheezed a laugh. “She knows that one.”

Loren spoke up before the jests could continue. “I’ll be fine, Darien. I promise.” She looked over her shoulder at the girl. Empathy showed in her eyes, and it made Darien wonder if she was remembering back to her first night here at Hell’s Gate—how frightened she’d been. “Besides, she looks scared half to death. Maybe it’ll help to have someone like myself there with her, instead of just…” Her attention fell upon the Angel of Death, who raised a dark brow at her in question. Loren finished, humor coating her sweet voice, “…Well, Dominic.”

The Angel chuckled. “I’m not sure what you mean by that, but I’ll take it as a compliment.”

“Considering you’re a big scary Darkslayer, it is a compliment.” She walked over to set her mug in the sink. With her back to the rest of the room, she mouthed a question only Darien could see: Okay?

Darien nodded. “We won’t be long.”

Even though one of his best friends was at Loren’s side, and even though this was his house and the library was just on the other side of the entrance hall, Darien still found himself watching Loren until she’d vanished inside the room and shut the doors behind her.

Before those doors had fully shut, she turned to look at him, something they both always did.

Always. And the thing was, he never got tired of it.

—

“Alright,” Darien said, leaning back in his chair with a slap of his thighs. He was at the head of the dining room table, his Devils seated around him. “Let’s settle it with a vote.”

He’d spent the past thirty minutes filling them in on everything that had happened with Finn Solace that afternoon, laying out the pros and cons of working with the Magical Protections Unit to take down the illegal arms trade his father had been involved in. There were a lot of questions that came up, a lot of concerns—and a hell of a lot of silence from Ivy, who was sitting at the other end of the table, Jack at her left, Lace at her right.

He would settle this with a vote first, and then approach his sister about her concerns after.