Page 15 of Wicked Believer

Now that he’s gifted me God’s redemption and unleashed whatever this ... darkness is within me. The bit of his powers he unwillingly transferred to me.

I shake my head. “Could have fooled me.”

I pull away, trying to escape the nearly irresistible influence he seems to have over me as I move toward the edge of the clearing, but he quickly captures my wrist.

“Charlotte—”

“Inferno,” I snap, using my safe word before he can go any further.

Lucifer stares down at me incredulously, but he releases my wrist instantly.

I open and close my mouth several times, failing to find the words until I close my eyes. I inhale a slow, steadying breath, just like my therapist taught me. “The Lucifer I know wouldneverbe okay with the idea that someone had manipulated him. Made him a pawn in their game.” I open my eyes again.

And even through the shadows, I can see his gaze darken.

The anger in his eyes as he looks at me.

At how I’ve damaged his pride.

But the ... resentment I see there is new to me.

“Perhaps you’re right. I’ve changed,” he sneers, staring down the bridge of his nose as he begins to circle me, a predator once more. Suddenly, I’m backed up against a rotting tree, his shadows clutching me at the base of my throat. “But it’s you who did this to me,” he hisses against my ear. “Would you have me undo it?”

My knees quiver, and his lips part as he steps closer, breathing me in. He trails his nose along the length of my jaw, his tongue flicking. Like he can taste the salt on my skin.

“Now,” he purrs, “let’s head back to that blasted thing you once called a home before either of us says something we do not mean.”

Abruptly, his shadows release me, and he stalks toward the edge of the clearing.

But I’m not finished yet.

“I don’t know what I would have chosen, you know,” I call after him, my words stopping him in his tracks.

His shoulders go rigid.

“I don’t know what I would have chosen had I known everything.”

Lucifer turns to face me, his eyes so full of hellfire, they glow. Like two burning amber jewels in the dark. “If you value our life together, I beg you not to speak another word.”

“Or what?” I gape at him. “You’ll hurt me?”

“Never,” he snarls, like the mere suggestion that he would do so without my consent is an insult to him. As if I don’t knowexactlyhow beastly he can be.

“Then why? Even if I wanted to, you wouldn’t allow me to leave.”

I’ve been held captive to Lucifer’s will before, though I ... thought things had changed recently.

The flames in his eyes flash, burning bright. “Because I cannot be held responsible for what I would do to keep you with me.”

I let out a shuddered breath.

In another life, another moment, one where he hadn’t killed my father without my permission, one where he hadn’t remade me from the ashes of God’s redemption, where his crazy Mother hadn’t stolen all my free will from me, those words might have meant something, made me melt.

Now, as I stand here, the last grasp I felt I had on my human life slipping through my fingers like sand through an hourglass, the full reality of all that he’s planned, of how thoroughly I’ve been manipulated, chills me.

He destroyed the last human part that was left of me.

And not by my choice like I thought, but by fate.