Drusilla
I wake up alone.
The space beside me is still warm, the white bed linens rumpled and tangled around my legs. But the room is quiet, too quiet. My fingertips graze the sheets where Rapha curled around me just hours ago, his mouth on my skin, his body claiming mine with a hunger that felt both desperate and reverent.
Now, there's only absence.
The echo of silence, and the ache of something half-promised but already fading.
I lie still for a long moment, remembering the way he kissed me, worshipped me. The way he held me afterward, like I was the only tether keeping him from unraveling.
And now he’s gone.
Again.
Shame and anger prickles under my skin, sharp and unwelcome. I roll out of bed, shower quickly, and dress without thinking, pulling on jeans and a soft sweater. I braid my hair to give my hands something to do. The dread in my stomach only thickens as I head into town.
The Spellbound Shelf is quiet when I push open the door. The air is thick with incense and old paper, and the enchanted chimes over the door tinkle a lazy welcome. Alice looks up from behind the counter, her sharp blue eyes narrowing as she sees my face.
“Drusilla,” she says carefully. “You look tired.”
I smile tightly. “I need your help.”
She frowns, and from the shadows near the poetry section, Gordy rises like smoke, his beanie twitching faintly, alive with the snakes coiled inside.
“What are you planning?” he asks.
I tell them everything that happened last night, about Cassian and my newfound magic and waking to find Rapha gone. “So…I need to go to the Below,” I explain. “I need to find Lucifer.”
Alice drops the ancient text she was holding with a thud. Gordy’s brows shoot up.
“Absolutely not,” Alice says flatly.
“I’m not asking for permission,” I reply, steadying my voice even as my heart pounds. “I need to talk to him. Rapha’s slipping away, and Lucifer is the one pulling the strings.”
Alice circles the counter slowly, like she’s debating whether to hug me or slap me. “Do you even understand what you’re walking into? The Below isn’t hellfire and brimstone anymore. It’s temptation. It’s cruelty dressed in silk. If Rapha’s down there, it means he’s already losing the fight.”
“I know.” My voice trembles despite myself. “But I can’t stand here and do nothing.”
Alice shakes her head hard. “No. No way. This isn’t some love story where you kiss a monster and he turns back into a prince.
This is Lucifer. He doesn’t make bargains, he makes ruins.
You go down there, and you’re playing his game on his board.
You’re just one more toy for him to twist.” Her voice cracks at the edges, the cool detachment giving way to something rawer.
“You don’t come back the same—if you come back at all. ”
For a moment, I falter.
Then Gordy steps forward, his green eyes softening as he looks at me. “We need to help her, Alice.”
“She doesn’t know what she’s asking.”
“She knows exactly what she’s asking,” he says gently. “And I know what it feels like to fight for someone everyone else thinks is lost.”
Alice’s jaw clenches. “That was different.”
“Was it?” Gordy murmurs. “You were stone for weeks. I tried everything to find the curse that could undo it. Everyone told me it was pointless. That you were gone. That I should let you go. Everyone except Verity and Gideon.”
Alice closes her eyes and breathes slowly.
“But even if Verity and Gideon hadn’t stepped in to help, I would never have stopped fighting for you, Alice,” Gordy continues.
“Because I knew who you were. Even when you couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, I knew who you were and what you meant to me.
” He turns to me. “Just as Drusilla knows who Rapha is.”
Alice’s lips part, then press together again.
She and Gordy exchange a look, one of those silent conversations that happen between people bound by love, magic, and trust. She exhales a shuddering breath and shakes her head.
“Even if we wanted to help you, we wouldn’t know how. We don’t have access to the Below.”
“Um. Gordy looks sheepish as he rubs the back of his neck. “That’s…not exactly true.”
Alice turns to him sharply. “What do you mean?”
He winces. “You remember all those different spells I tried to bring you back?”
She narrows her eyes.
Gordy chuckles nervously. “Right, well, I may have cracked something open. Just a little rift. I thought I closed it. Mostly.”
“You what ?” Alice’s voice pitches higher, her hands flying to her hips. “You opened a rift to the Below and didn’t think that was worth mentioning ?”
“It wasn’t a rift rift , ” he insists. “More like a magical paper cut.”
“A paper cut that bleeds sin and hellfire?”
“I fixed it! I think.” He glances at me, then back at Alice. “But maybe it’s still… faintly there. A residual echo. If we coax it open, she might be able to slip through.”
“We’re not dragging Dru into the Below through some cursed trap door you left in our bookstore, Gordy. We don’t even know if it’s stable.”
“But I have to go,” I say quietly. “I’m not afraid.”
She stares at me, wounded and fierce. “You should be.”
“Okay, I’m terrified,” I admit. “But Rapha’s down there. And he’s being pulled apart piece by piece. If I can get to him, if I can remind him who he is, what we mean to each other, I have to try. Please.”
Alice’s eyes brim with conflict.
Finally, she exhales through her nose and turns to Gordy. “Where?”
“The old reading cellar,” he says. “Behind the Romance stacks.”
“Of course it’s behind Romance,” Alice mutters.
She disappears behind a curtain and returns with a small silver charm on a black cord. “Protection spell. It won’t stop Lucifer, but it’ll keep his little distractions from getting their claws too deep.”
She places it around my neck and presses two fingers to my forehead, whispering a word I don’t catch. “That’s for clarity. Hold onto your truth down there.”
I nod, holding back tears. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” she mutters. “Just come back whole.”
Gordy leads us through the cramped back hallway behind the Romance section. The floorboards creak beneath our feet, and the scent of old paper and honey-wax candles lingers in the air.
“I don’t even want to know what’s leaking out of this rift thingy,” Alice mutters as we descend a narrow spiral staircase. “And if anything has nested down here, demon, ghost, or goblin, I’m blaming you, Gordy.”
He offers a sheepish shrug. “I was panicking. You were stone.”
“And this was your solution?”
“I was desperate.”
She huffs but says nothing more.
We reach the cellar floor, and the air shifts.
It’s colder here, denser somehow, like the pressure of the earth has a pulse.
Old reading chairs are draped with sheets.
Forgotten tomes line the dusty shelves. A cracked mirror leans against one wall, its surface fogged with age.
And in the far corner, beneath a threadbare tapestry of a weeping willow, the floor glows faintly like moonlight caught in a puddle.
Alice stops, her mouth a grim line. “There.”
I step closer. The shimmer pulses as I near it, and the space beneath the tapestry begins to ripple. Gordy nudges the fabric aside, revealing a shallow depression in the stone floor about the size of a doorway. The air above it quivers, invisible and yet not.
“It doesn’t always show itself,” he says softly. “But when you want something badly enough…”
“It listens,” Alice finishes, her voice brittle.
I stare at the shimmer, heart pounding.
Gordy hands me a folded scrap of paper. “Names,” he explains. “Call them in order if you get in trouble. They owe me. Probably.”
I smile, barely.
Alice hesitates, then wraps her arms around me fiercely. “Don’t let him forget you.”
“I won’t,” I breathe.
Then I step forward.
The shimmer parts like water, cool and biting as it clings to my skin. I feel it slide over me, inside me, as if tasting my fears and memories. I don’t look back.
The Below welcomes me with velvet-dark shadows and perfume-thick air. Heat rises from the cobblestones beneath my boots, and above me, lanterns glow with unnatural fire. Laughter echoes from the alleyways, low and hungry. A sign swings on black iron hinges nearby:
Welcome to the Below. All sins accepted. No absolution required.
I make my way through twisting backstreets, pausing to ask for Lucifer’s whereabouts in whispers. Most beings here don’t look twice at me, but the ones who do? Their eyes are sharp. Hungry.
Eventually, I find the crimson door carved with sigils that pulse softly under my fingertips. Beyond is the speakeasy-style club in the Below that Lucifer apparently likes to frequent. I push it open and step inside.
The heat hits me first, humid and perfumed. Then the sound. Low music. Moans. Whispers. Laughter. Shadows pulse against the walls like breathing things.
At the center of the club, I stop. A woman is sprawled on a table, moaning with abandon as a demon laps between her thighs, his tongue unnaturally long, working in practiced circles that leave her clawing at the air. Her pleasure is theatrical, but not false.
I blush, my thighs clenching involuntarily. I tear my gaze away. I didn’t come for this.
Lucifer waits for me in the back booth like he’s been expecting me, sprawled like a prince of excess, his velvet yellow suit immaculate, his grin indulgent.
“Drusilla,” he purrs. “Rapha’s queen, in the flesh. I wondered when you’d seek me out. Found the little doorway in the witch and gorgon’s bookshop, did you?”
“I’m not here for your games,” I snap, taking the seat across from him.
“Of course you are,” he replies with a wink. “You just don’t realize it yet.”
I lean forward, gripping the table. “Let him go.”
His laugh is low and musical. “Darling, Rapha traded himself willingly. He knew the price.”
“And yet you couldn’t resist bringing back my father,” I say coldly.
His expression sharpens. “Cassian? Yes. Delicious little twist, isn’t it? Will he take you? Will Rapha lose control and destroy you?” He licks his bottom lip. “You mortals do love your tragedy.”
I clench my fists. “There has to be a way.”
Lucifer’s smile turns sly as if he’s been waiting for me to ask. “Well, there is one. You could bind his soul to yours.”
I still. “What?”
“A soul tether. Very old magic. It would keep him close. Grounded to you. But it would limit him. Take away his full autonomy.”
My stomach flips. “You mean take his free will.”
He shrugs. “Tomato, tomahto. It’s not a cage. It’s a leash. With just enough slack to feel like freedom.”
I shake my head. “No. I won’t chain him. If he fights for me, it has to be his choice.”
“You mortals. Always so dramatic.” Lucifer sighs. “Well, all you have to do is call my name if you change your mind. But don’t take too long. I get bored easily.”
His attention drifts toward the table again, where the demon’s tongue is now drawing gasps loud enough to echo. He snaps his fingers, and I’m back at the manor.
Everything is quiet as I slip inside. I shut the door behind me and let out a breath.
And then…pain. A sharp crack to my head. My knees buckle. My vision blurs.
“My daughter,” Cassian rasps from behind me. “I told you I would return.”
Then everything goes dark.