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I watch though narrowed eyes as she stands. Then I get to my feet. I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be pain free. That doesn’t mean I forgive her. Not even close. I take a step toward her, pull back my arm, and punch her on the nose. She stumbles back but hits the wall and manages to stay upright. Blood drips down her chin. Good. I think about hitting her again but what’s the point? Instead I ask, “Is Khaosti alive?”

I hold my breath as I wait for her answer. She nods. “I have just treated him. He’s fine.”

Of course he is. “Yeah, but for how long?”

She doesn’t answer just waves a hand at the tray. “I brought you food.”

“Is it poisoned?”

She shakes her head. “I never meant you harm.”

“And yet here I am.”

“You were always coming here,” she replies. “That was your destiny. I didn’t change that.”

True. “Did you know that my mother was alive?”

I see the first real expression on her face. Grief, sadness. “No. You must believe me. I thought her dead. That she died soon after she sent you forward in time to me. She was so weak; she said that the spell was too much.”

“She wasn’t dead. She was in stinking dungeon for five thousand fucking years. He tortured her.”

“Even if I had gone looking for her then, she’d already been here most of that time. It was only nineteen years ago. She was my sister. I loved her.”

“Yeah, like you love me.” I’m not sure whether she’s deluded or just a goddamn liar. “Why?” I ask. Because it still makes no sense.

She wipes the blood dripping from her nose with the back of her hand. She could heal it if she wanted to, but maybe she thinks she deserves it. “Ravenna told me you were destined to destroy your father. That Selene came to her in a vision and revealed that you were the only one who could do it.”

“So?”

“I couldn’t let you destroy him.” I don’t know what to say to that, so I just raise my eyebrow and wait for her to continue. “Ravenna also told me that the amber you carried contained the good part of Lucifer. And I knew then what I had to do. I had to restore him to what he once was.”

She’s crazy. Has she talked to him at all? “I think it’s gone a little beyond that. He’s fucking evil.”

“You’re wrong. None of this is Lucifer’s fault. He was a good man. The best of all the Astrali. He could be again.”

And we’ll all forget the five thousand years of torture he put my mother through? “My mother didn’t agree with you.”

“She never knew him like I did.”

Now that’s a weird thing to say. “She was his wife.”

Hecate turns away for a moment and when she looks back, her eyes are hard. “He was mine. We were engaged to be married. She stole him from me.”

Wow. Something else I never saw coming. “You were engaged to Lucifer?”

“It was arranged by our families. But I loved him, I’d always loved him. And he would have come to love me. Then Ravenna returned from her studies, and they met, here at his estate. In that pergola where Lucifer’s Mirror brought us. She always was a romantic.”

“So,” I say slowly, “let me get this straight. You plan to somehow join Lucifer back up with his good half, and he’ll say he’s sorry for all the bad stuff he’s done, and that he loved you all along. And you’re what? Going to get married and live happily ever after. Are you fucking deluded?” I’m screaming the last words, and she takes a step back. She hunches over and for a second, I get a glimpse of the crone.

Then she straightens her shoulders. “It will work. He’s already told me he cares about me. That he’s always cared about me.”

“Yeah, and you believed him. And even if he does care, let’s not forget that he loved Ravenna and yet he tortured her for five thousand fucking years.”

“It will be different once he’s restored.”

And I realize something a little worrying. She’s off her fucking rocker. I want to scream at her to get a grip. That my fatheris steeped so far in evil that he will never get clean. But she’s beyond listening, off in her own little delusion. “Is that why you took the stone?” I ask.

She nods. “Yes. I tried to take it from you when you were a baby. But you got sick. I couldn’t risk you dying. You needed to lead me to the mirror.”