Page 58 of Lustling

“No, you weren’t.” He spits the words and then catches himself, as if the sound of them is small consolation. “But you don’t need to apologize to me,” he says, stepping back and running a hand through his hair. The motion scatters his anger into something that looks dangerously like fatigue. “You need to apologize to her.”

I nod because I know he is right. I will apologize. Later. For now Deimos exhales and the tension thins a fraction. “Right now, we’re going to Hell,” he says.

“Why?” I ask, though I already know the answer. We need answers. We need to know why a Warden of Hell wants Lillien, what ancient calculus tied her to promises she did not make. “Because the archives are the only place we’ll get them,” he says. His voice is dark and certain.

As we prepare, my head keeps circling back to her. To the look in her eyes when I offered her up. To Deimos’ words about her dream. To the little, impossible fact that I want that dream to be true. I want the proof that she is the thing in my blood that breaks me. It is disgusting and beautiful and I hate myself for feeling either.

We are going straight to Hell. I should be terrified, and in some ways I am. But hatred is easier there. In Hell I knew who my enemy was. In this house everything feels new and uncertain and worse.

I swallow and feel the old map of my life fold, then stretch. I am so, so fucked. But I move forward anyway because some sins are the only way to find the truth.

THIRTY-ONE

We walk in a silence that is something kinder than awkward. It is the kind of quiet that gives her space to fold herself around whatever just happened. I do not fill it with empty reassurances or the sort of hollow comfort that makes things worse.

She needs room to think. So, I give it to her.

The night air bites my face, but she barely feels it. Her fingers twist at the hem of Deimos’s oversized shirt the way someone grips a rope in a storm. It is a small, human thing and it tells me more than any words could. I do not prod. If she wants to speak she will. If not, I will carry the silence for her.

At her dorm her roommate freezes like a rabbit seeing a hawk. Technically, I am exactly that. She takes one look at my size, my tattoos, the way a demon wears menace like a second skin, and bolts. Bag slung over her shoulder, she leaves so fast the door slams like a punctuation.

“Well,” Lillien murmurs, amused. “That was dramatic.”

I chuckle, stepping in after her. “You have that effect on people?”

She shrugs, pulling a small duffel bag from her closet. “More likeyoudo.”

She packs slow and precise. A few clothes, a phone, a laptop, a handful of sentimental things that look older than their owner. Nothing extravagant, nothing excessive. The movements are final in a way that makes my gut tighten.

She sits on the bed and the shoulders that had been braced for a fight drop a fraction. The weight of it settles into her bones.

I kneel down so I can see her properly. Not to beg, not to apologize, none of that. Just to be on the same plane. “How you holding up, Hellcat?” I ask, trying for the light that sometimes works and failing in all the right ways.

She doesn’t meet my gaze. “I’m fine.”

I bark out a laugh.

Her eyes flick up, slightly annoyed, but also amused. “What?”

“Just funny, is all,” I muse. “You really think you can lie to me?”

She huffs, rolling her eyes. “I’m… processing.”

“At least that’s more honest.”

She looks at the window, at the dark outside, and I let the room breathe for a moment. Then, quiet and sudden, she asks the thing I never wanted to hear.

“Does Cassiel hate me?”

The question lands hard, not because it is absurd but because she truly believes it might be true. I study her face. “Hate you?” I repeat, because the word tastes wrong with his name.

She nods. “He wouldn’t even look at me.”

“Cassiel is complicated in the way ragged things are complicated. He runs on reason and the calculus of survival, not on tidy emotion. Hate isn’t in his wheelhouse,” I tell her.

I mean it. He is a fortress made of poorly spoken grief and awkward mercy. He would never hate her. He might makechoices she cannot forgive. He might speak in ways that cut. He might balk at the softness she brings. But hate is foreign to him.

She presses the point. “He wanted to give me away.”