Page 55 of The Damned (Coven of Bones #3)

B EE L ZE B U B

Margot slept.

Her face was blank, as expressionless as the girl’s was in the pit.

But whereas the girl had been filled with the emptiness that came from trauma, Margot seemed to have finally found a little bit of peace.

She didn’t so much as twitch when I leaned forward in my chair beside her bed, sitting vigil until she awoke from the aftermath of the visions.

I wanted her to wake. Wanted her to know without a doubt that the violence of the Seventh Circle had fully released her from its grasp.

I ran a hand over her smooth, unscarred arm, remembering the way her flesh had torn open beneath the weight of her own self-hatred.

The mirror served as a reflection for the worst of our violence, pitting us against our worst enemies.

Whatever it was that drove that violence was what we faced in attempting to overcome, and I’d long had the sinking suspicion that it would be herself that Margot had to face.

I hadn’t been able to bear to tell her the truth, to tell her that she would need to face her own demons in order to reach the Ninth Circle.

She’d already been so combative about coming with me because of her fear of the Second Circle.

Telling her there was a chance that she might need to find a way to forgive herself would have doomed the mission from the start.

She’d have sat in her anxiety and fixated on it, letting it stew within her in a way that would have been far more detrimental to her mental health than just facing the challenge when it came.

“Come on, songbird,” I murmured, brushing a lock of blond hair back from her face.

It wasn’t uncommon for people to take some time to wake after emerging from the pit.

While the injuries sustained there may not have been real, the torture they inflicted on the mind was every bit as real as I was. “It’s time for you to wake up.”

She remained still, her head tipped toward me—drawn to me even in the depths of sleep. I watched her chest rise and fall, counting the movements to reassure myself she was still alive.

I’d come so close to losing her. To having to stand by and watch her lose the battle with her own self-violence.

I’d known she was suffering, but never had she made me realize just how deep the fear of what she was capable of was.

It had sunken into the depths of her soul, etched itself onto her very bones in a way that she hadn’t thought to escape.

She’d planned to die before she could hurt others the way she’d been hurt.

She’d planned to strip the world of her beauty, of the kind of selflessness that came with a person willing to make that sacrifice for people she didn’t even know.

She could never have been the monster she saw when she looked in the mirror. She wasn’t capable of it, no matter what her magic could do.

I hung my head forward, dropping it into my hands where they remained clasping hers.

They were the fingers she’d broken in the pit, the ones I’d heard snap in the illusion that was created for her benefit.

I ran my fingers over hers, feeling the rightness in them.

The lack of breaks reminded me that she was okay, that the trauma she’d had to re-experience was horrible, but she’d wake up.

She had to fucking wake up.

“Violence is cruel. It takes the very thing we hate the most in our lives and makes us face it, where most people spend their entire existence avoiding it except for small transgressions over the course of years. To pass through violence, you have to take it all on at once and come out the other side without committing murder,” I said with a laugh, thinking back to my first time passing through the Seventh Circle.

The demon I’d had to face had been my greatest competition for my place at Lucifer’s side, a practice for a battle that would one day come to pass.

I’d let Satanus live in the vision, and later on I’d allowed him to continue being free at Lucifer’s behest. It was a fact I still regretted to this day, believing the smug bastard would be far better suited to the prison that now housed Michael the archangel.

Instead, he’d saved my life. If he hadn’t been there, Margot and I might have been dead. Maybe Lucifer had known I would need him one day, or maybe He hadn’t. But between that and the mercy Margot had shown herself, I had to think there was something to be said for overcoming one’s own violence.

“Beel?” Margot’s soft voice said, making my head snap up. I looked to her as she blinked back the sleep in her eyes, centering her focus on my face for a moment before it dropped to her uninjured hand. “I don’t understand. What happened?”

“You won,” I said with a gentle smile. “You made it out of the vision without hurting yourself.”

“It wasn’t real? It was an illusion?” she asked, and I watched the thoughts churn in her head. The realization that she’d suffered for something that wasn’t actually happening, and her attempt to wash away the conclusion she’d come to in her moments of fear.

I touched the side of her head with one hand and her heart with another, letting her feel the weight of me. “It was real in here. That’s all that matters,” I said, waiting for her nod of acceptance.

Her lips twisted like she might cry, and I hoped more than anything she wouldn’t. I’d seen her tears more often than I cared to in such a short time knowing her, and I’d have done anything to erase them permanently. “You left me,” she said, her voice cracking.

“Just because you couldn’t see me doesn’t mean I wasn’t right there, songbird.

I was with you the whole time,” I said. Even if it had been torture to watch, to have to witness and be trapped on the sidelines and unable to intervene without condemning her to being stuck in the Seventh Circle.

Unable to progress, unable to move through Hell as she pleased.

“You saw?” she asked, the caution in that voice giving me pause.

“I saw,” I said, agreeing even when it would have been easier to lie. To tell her only she’d been privy to the details of her experience.

“You must think I’m pathetic,” she said with a scoff, the laughter betraying a new annoyance with herself.

“I think you’re strong, Margot. I think it took immense strength to overcome that. There was nothing pathetic about it,” I scolded, reaching down and squeezing her hand in reassurance.

She sat in silence for a moment and I let her, allowing the quiet of the room to give her the space to process all that she’d experienced.

When she finally spoke, it was with glowing eyes of fire and a newfound determination in her voice.

“I don’t want to just exist anymore. I want to live, ” she said, voice catching as she snagged her bottom lip between her teeth.

I smiled, tucking her hair behind her ear as I leaned in. With one hand braced on her other side, I kept my weight suspended over hers, not touching her anywhere but that beautiful face. “Then that is exactly what you’ll do.”