really how he defined himself, by their relationship? She remained in the doorway, wariness holding her in place. He swung back to her, his face hidden in the shadows of the unlit room.
“Tell me what she said.”
She didn’t have to ask who he meant. “She said the angels can hold back the Fallen, but if Lucifer comes after humanity, she can’t stop him as long as she has to contain your powers. Keeping them in check is making her weak. She doesn’t know how much longer she can hold out.”
“What else?”
She hesitated. Should she tell him about the One’s plans to bind with Lucifer? To become
“They’re also deliberately killing each other—wars, shootings, bombings. Look at what happened to you today. My powers have nothing to do with any of that, and taking them back won’t make a bloody bit of difference.”
“It will make a difference to the ones who aren’t like that. The ones who deserve a chance to fix things. To make things right.”
“War between the angels and the Fallen is coming. There are eighty thousand Nephilim about to be born. You can’t
“You don’t know that.”
Two strides brought him towering over her. “I do know that,” he snarled. “And it’s about time the rest of you—my mother included—admit it. She’s been fighting a losing battle on your behalf for six millennia. She’s lost her helpmeet, a third of her angel host, her son—and now I’m supposed to sacrifice my own chance at happiness for the cause?”
A frisson of uneasiness threaded through her. “I know you’re angry—”
“Don’t tell me how I feel!”
“—and hurt,” she continued, the cop in her striving to keep her voice level and not escalate the situation. “But try to understand—”
“Understand
“It’s not that simple!” she exploded. “This isn’t about you and me, it’s about what’s right. I won’t give up on all of humanity—I
“And I won’t give up on us,” he growled.
It took everything she had not to step away from him. Away from the cold that had reached out to wrap around her heart, brush against her soul. She shook her head. “There is no us. Not anymore. We’re done, Seth. We have to be.”
Anger wrestled with something else on his face. Something uglier. She saw him shift, saw his hands curl into fists. Her already damaged heart faltered. He wouldn’t—
He didn’t. Instead, he pushed past her and stalked to the door. He pulled it open. Then his vicious black gaze met hers over his shoulder. “You’re wrong. We’re nowhere near done, Alexandra Jarvis.”
The door slammed behind him.
Chapter 65
“It’s time.”
Lucifer watched a withered leaf drop from the tree outside the window.
“Did you hear me?” Samael asked. “I said it’s time. The births are beginning.”
“I heard you.”
“I thought you’d like to come to Pripyat for their arrival. It’s what we’ve been waiting for—what you wanted.”
What he wanted. Another leaf drifted down to join the growing pile at the tree’s base. A Nephilim army to finally do what he could not. Because pacts and agreements aside, Heaven would have always found a way to stand between him and the mortals, to prevent him from destroying them as he had wanted to do since their very beginnings. The One had never hesitated to pit angel against Fallen, might against might. But the Nephilim were different. They could not stand against the divine, and so she would not interfere with them. She would let them do as they might, let her precious nature run its course.
An army of untouchables. The certain extermination of humanity. Everything he’d wanted for millennia, and he felt the same nothing he had when he’d finally fathered the child that would lead them. No triumph. No exhilaration.
Just that yawning emptiness that seemed to take a little more of his soul with every passing day.
He closed his eyes. “Has Seth agreed to your idea?”
“I’m on my way to him now. I believe he has made his decision.”
“Then let him take my place at Pripyat.”
“But—”
“Samael.”
His aide fell silent.
“Just leave,” Lucifer said. “Please.”
Seth stalked the streets with long, vicious strides. He’d left the apartment hours before and had covered miles of the city. With every step he took, a little more of him unraveled, a little more fell away. Alex had been everything to him—no. She
From the moment he had given back her life when Aramael failed to save her, from the moment he had touched her soul to do so, she had become part of him, as vital to his existence as breath itself. Twice he had brought her back from where no other could. Twice he had connected with her on a level so deep, so profound, that they were inextricably, eternally entwined. Without her—
The air hissed from him.
Without her, he would cease. End. Become nothing.
Just as his father had become nothing without his mother.
Leaving the paved streets, he crossed the dark, sweeping lawns of a park and halted on the shores of the massive lake bordering the city. He braced himself against the biting buffet of the November wind, its chill against his skin nothing compared to the one at his core. In his head, Alex’s voice settled into the same, endless rhythm as the waves crashing onto the rocks.
He closed his eyes. Anguish warred with fury in his chest. All he had done for her, all he had given of himself, and this—
“Now are you ready to listen?” a familiar voice asked.
Seth’s eyes opened onto the dark stretch of water before him. At the corner of his vision, a shadow moved, barely discernible in the night. He considered the question. Alex would be horrified to know he’d been speaking with one of the Fallen, but he’d tried to do things her way. To follow her lead. Hell, even to see what it was about her fellow mortals that inspired such loyalty in her. And now he stood alone in the cold, without her, crumbling from the inside out.
“You said I wouldn’t have to give her up if I took back my powers.”
The shadow beside him inclined its head.
With careful precision, Seth detached himself from any remaining doubt. Any lingering conscience. He’d tried it Alex’s way. Now it was his turn.
“I’m listening,” he said.
