What if he won’t let us leave? What if he keeps us here just to spite me? A little loophole in Luce’s no punishing her rule. He could simply keep us all here, letting the Gate fall, and teaching me a lesson about obedience. My teeth grind together.
Would he do that? Would Lucifer let him?
He finally lets out a sigh and scrubs a hand over his suddenly weary face. “Fine. I’ll transport you back. For now,” he says firmly. “But I reserve the right to pop in whenever I feel like it, and when I summon you, you will answer and return immediately. Is that understood?”
I repeat his words in my mind, trying to see if there are any obvious tricks or loopholes that I should be concerned with. “I’ll answer when summoned, but the Gate is the priority, so if something is going on with the Hellgate, that supersedes your summons. Oh, and you can’t keep me in Nihil longer than I want to be,” I counter offer.
“Agreed,” he tells me a little too quickly. I suddenly wonder if I missed something. I review the wording again, but I’m just not seeing what it could be.
“Agreed,” I finally relent.
“Good.”
He flicks his hand, and then off to the side, a wall that looks similar to the veil of gooey metallic liquid like in the Vestibule appears out of thin air, like a doorway.
I stare at it in open-mouth shock. “You mean, we don’t have to go back to the Vestibule, up the stairs of doom and through the Hellgate to get out?”
“No. Luce’s inner circle can go where they please, when they please,” he states smugly, studying his nails, and implementing a hair flip that only his pompous ass could get away with.
I take in the portal, and relief floods me. I’m not ready to set foot back in the Vestibule. I don’t know if I ever will be.
“Thank you,” I tell Tazreel quietly, beyond grateful that he’s doing this, even though I can tell it’s the exact opposite of what he wants to do. Maybe he’s not as irredeemable as I thought.
Taz gives a curt nod and then casts one more warning glare at the guys before turning on his heel, the doors slamming behind him as he returns to the party.
All of us are quiet for a moment, reeling from the exchange. Crux is the first to break the ice. “So. He seems nice,” he says conversationally, the snark bringing a small smile from my lips. “You think he’ll give us his blessing if we ever want to get hitched?”
A bubbling laugh comes out of me as I turn to him. “Nope. Not in a million years.”
Crux grins. “Good thing we’re immortal, then.”
The smile leaves my face. “Wait...we’re immortal? As in, we don’t age?”
“Correct.”
I look at the four of them warily. “How old are you guys?”
“Old enough to know that we shouldn’t answer that question,” Echo teases.
“We should go,” Jerif says. “I can feel the Gate. We’ve been gone too long.”
“Yes,” Iceman agrees, reaching down to take my free hand. “Let’s go home, shall we?”
Those are just about the best words I’ve heard in a long time, and my spirit practically sings. “Hell yeah. Get me out of this asylum before I catch the crazy too.”
“I wouldn’t normally object to you taking off your clothes, Maverick, but why exactly are you stripping down in our driveway?” Iceman asks me.
I growl as I contort my body in the weirdest angles so I can reach the zipper and peel myself out of the now soaking fabric of what used to be a beautiful dress. So much for keeping it and wearing it on my bloated PMS days when I need to feel beautiful and eat until the hormonal rage subsides.
“The fucker probably did that on purpose,” I grumble as I step out of the moonstone encrusted purple fabric that was my gown. “Could have portaled us to the front door of the mansion or right into a nice warm bath, but noooo.”
“No shifting within a mile from the Hell portal remember?” Jerif tells me. “We’re probably as close as he wanted us to get.”
I give a huff. “You guys get dropped on the driveway, and I get dropped right into the fucking bog you have hidden at the bottom of your estate’s stupid hill,” I growl. “Not fair.”
I can tell the guys are trying really hard not to laugh at my slimy, muddy state. I can taste the sludge in my mouth, and it’s already saturated my wings.
“I was holding your hand, so you tell me how I ended up down there and you didn’t?” I ask Iceman. But my eyes widen when I see what he’s holding in his hand. “Wait a minute. You managed to catch my scythe and save it from the bog, but not me?” I ask, fixing my glare on him.
He looks down at the stick a little sheepishly before quickly passing it back to me. “Apologies.”
Shaking my head, I kick off the one shoe that survived my tumble and try to wipe off my legs with the less sludge-covered portions of my dress. “Ugh, why does this shit happen to me?”
The other guys cover their mouths with their hands, but the snickers leak out despite their best efforts. I whirl on them, putting one hand on my hips while I hold the scythe in the other. I’m now only decked out in a skin colored, corseted bodysuit, and the mud that’s slowly dripping down my calves.
“You know Grumpy Lurch is going to cut me in my sleep if I trek in another mess,” I tell them. “He’ll fuck with my food, probably Nair my shampoo, and fill the house with doves because he’s petty like that. So I’m stripping down now before we get there.”
None of them argue my logic. I bend over, trying to get as much filth off of my feet as I can. I should probably be grateful
