WILLOW
One moment, there was only darkness. Only a hollow where light had once been. The vague vestiges of flames burned the back of my
eyelids, taunting and teasing me as if my spirit readied itself for the pyre.
Then there was air, sharp and painful as it filled my lungs. My eyes flung open as I drew in a ragged gasp, sitting up so suddenly that my vision swam with dizziness. My lungs burned with the air that filled them, as if they’d been frozen in time, waiting for me to wake.
My mind was a mess, a maze I couldn’t find my way out of. My chest heaved with exertion as if I’d just run a mile; my breathing labored in the panic that consumed me. My hand crept toward my throat, grasping the skin there as I fought to remember how I’d come to be in Gray’s bed.
The moment my fingers touched my skin, the crack of my neck snapping burst through my memory. The darkness that came after and then the complete and blinding pain that overwhelmed my body.
I scrambled from the bed, getting tangled in the blankets as I flung my legs over the edge. Falling to the floor with a thump, I fought to free myself from the distinctive mess of them in my panic. Kicking and clawing at them as I shook my head from side to side, I crawled toward the bathroom on the other side of Gray’s room.
“Willow!” he yelled, but I couldn’t bear to turn my eyes to him. I couldn’t stand to look at him even as I felt him step into the open doorway to his private living area. I grimaced as I tried to stand, resisting the urge to scream when I couldn’t seem to get my legs out of the fucking blanket.
My chest throbbed with pain, and I touched my palm to it as a strangled noise clawed its way up my throat.
Gray moved, carefully avoiding my legs as he removed the blanket and dropped it on the bed. My legs were bare on the floor, only a black nightgown covering my intimate areas as I squeezed my thighs together. He lowered himself beside me, sitting on his haunches as his face came into view. “You’re alright,” he said softly, his voice deceptive and soothing. It called to me like the softest melody, a teasing taunt of magic that hadn’t been there in his Vessel form.
Sin wrapped up in skin, a body meant for luring humans to a place of endless suffering.
Tears stung my eyes at the notes of it that still reminded me of the man I’d known, of the one I’d somehow, foolishly, allowed to deceive me into falling in love with him.
The man who had never even existed in the first place.
I wrapped my arms around my stomach, my mind a whirlwind. I couldn’t make sense of all that had happened. I couldn’t understand the implications of what he’d done, of how long he’d been planning this.
“How did I get here?” I asked, swallowing as I pinched my eyes closed. I wouldn’t have willingly come to his bed, not after everything he’d done. There was a gap in my memory where I couldn’t remember anything.
I’d opened the seal and put Gray back into Lucifer’s body, but there was very little after that. “You need to rest,” Gray said, reaching forward to slip his hand beneath the curtain of my hair. His fingers brushed against my skin first. Then his palm cupped my jaw as he turned me to face him. His golden eyes shimmered as he stared down at me, his thumb brushing against my skin in a soft caress.
The sound of my neck cracking again pulsed through my mind, sending me scrambling back away from the devil himself.
I drew in a deep, shuddering breath, trying to quell the rising nausea in my stomach that came with the realization.
“I died,” I said, my voice barely a whisper as I stared at Gray, at Lucifer. I forced myself to think, giving him the name he’d always owned. Separating the being who stood before me from the one I’d thought I’d known.
“Briefly,” he said, as if that absolved him of any guilt. His demon snapped my neck, taking me from the world I’d barely even gotten to see.
But the acknowledgement was enough to realize that he’d done something even worse to bring me back.
“What did you do?” I asked, raising my hand to cover my mouth as my nausea worsened.
“Come back to bed, love. Your body needs more rest,” he said, ignoring the question entirely.
I groaned, getting my feet underneath me and rushing for the bathroom as guilt struck me in the chest that was already throbbing. My legs slipped beneath me, as if they weren’t my own. There was something so off about the body that had always been mine, something so strange about what I’d always called my home on this plane.
“Willow,” Gray repeated, following after me with slow, measured steps. He wrapped his arms around my waist, helping me get my balance as he brought me to the bathroom and let me drop to my knees in front of the toilet just in time for my stomach to purge itself.
Soft, gentle fingers coaxed my hair back from the sides of my face and from where it threatened to fall forward, gathering it into his grip at the nape of my neck as I vomited. “You’re alright,” he murmured, and I wondered if the words were more to convince me of it, or himself.
My stomach continued heaving long after I’d finished vomiting, my body seizing as it tried to expel what was no longer there. I raised my hand, wiping my mouth with the back of it before placing a hand on each side of the toilet and rising to my feet weakly. Flushing the contents down, I tried not to panic at the sight of the red liquid filling the toilet and moved to the sink to furiously rinse out my mouth.
“Don’t worry, Witchling. It’s not your blood,” Gray said, ever helpful as the sink stained with pink. As if vomiting blood was my biggest worry right now.
The reflection I saw in the mirror when I raised my gaze finally looked exactly as I remembered, as if there was no sign of the ways I’d changed so drastically. The only jarring difference rested on my chest, at the top of my cleavage, where a black circle stained my skin. Tendrils of darkness bled out from the center, carving through my skin like cracks in a windowpane that hadn’t yet shattered.
My amulet hung just above it, the rose gold stark against the black tourmaline and the mark. My bottom lip trembled as I stared at it, trying not to let my fingers touch the stain. “Will it go away?” I asked, sinking my
teeth into my bottom lip. It was such a stupid thing to care about, when the alternative was rotting in Hell.
But I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life marked by the fact that he’d sacrificed to save me.
“No,” he said calmly, handing me a bottle of mouthwash. I took it, refusing to thank him for it, as I took a sip and rinsed my mouth more thoroughly.
I glanced at him in the mirror when I was done, holding his eerie golden stare. His hair was more disheveled than I’d ever seen it, his torso still bare. The line of a single scar was raised in white from his wrist to his elbow, and I felt certain it hadn’t been there before I’d…
I swallowed.
“Who?” I demanded, turning to face him. He stepped closer as I spun, trapping me between his body and the vanity as he leaned forward.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said simply, shrugging lightly as he raised a hand to touch a single finger to the darkness blooming on my chest.
I swallowed, trying to gauge my best course of action. Gray had been strong when I’d thought him to be just a Vessel, but this form must have had infinite power at his disposal. He’d been the one to create my ancestor. The one who had given her the magic that she then shared with all of the witches. That kind of power made what I held at my fingertips look like child’s play. “It does to me,” I said, not knowing how to proceed.
My instinct was to punch him in the throat—knee him in the balls—to curse him into oblivion, and judging by the smirk on his face, the bastard damn well knew it.
“Don’t look at me like that when I can’t bend you over the sink and remind you exactly what you really want, Witchling,” he growled, taking me by the hand as he guided me out of the bathroom. I stumbled over my own feet, my steps uncoordinated. He tore back the covers he’d dropped on the bed when he helped me untangle myself.
“All I want to do to you is slit your fucking throat,” I snarled, wincing when he reached into the nightstand drawer and pulled a blade free.
He held it out for me, turning it so that he gripped the flat sides of the blade between two fingers and gave me the hilt. “Go ahead then, love. See what good it does,” he said, his voice fading into a condescending laugh.
I took it, gripping the handle and finding no comfort in it. I could slit his throat, but I knew it would do no good. He would bleed all over the floor,
but life would never leave him for a wound of the flesh. “Surely, you know this will not go well for either of us. How exactly do you see this ending?” I asked, slamming the tip of the dagger down into the nightstand at the bedside.
Gray paused, placing a finger beneath my chin. “End?” he asked, his voice going mystified, as if I was the one who had lost my sense. As if I was the one who needed a reality check. “There is no end for you and I, Witchling.”
I took a step back, the mattress behind me pressing into the backs of my thighs and giving me no escape unless I wanted to make myself vulnerable by attempting to climb over it. I paused, raising my chin as I stared him down. “Everything ends, Lucifer. Even you,” I said, forcing my bottom lip to remain still. The task seemed daunting, impossible even, but I would find a way.
“Do you remember when I told you that I can afford to be patient? One day, everything you know, everyone you love, will cease to exist. I will be all you have left to turn to,” he said, the words striking me in the chest. “It would be such a shame if you were to fight this—us. It just may motivate me to assist the natural course of life and death and rid us of all those who you would turn to for help.”
I swallowed, staring up at him with a furrowed brow as I tried to grasp the meaning of his words. Surely he couldn’t mean—
The memory of him quickly and efficiently killing the twelve other students to join Hollow’s Grove forced me to close my eyes.
He could. He could, and he would.
“Lucifer,” I said, the quiet plea in my voice making me feel weak. I hated him for making me reduce myself to begging for the lives of the few friends I had.
“That is not who I am. Not to you,” he snapped, cupping my face gently and brushing his thumb over the front of my cheek.
“Gray,” I said, the word coming out choked. I didn’t want him to be Gray anymore. I wanted to remind myself of the evil that lurked beneath his skin.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” he said, the words a reminder of how it had been between us so briefly. I didn’t answer, unable to find the words to remind him that he’d made it this way. No one had forced him to manipulate me, to use me for his own purpose. He leaned forward, touching
his lips to mine softly. He pulled away before I could even protest, his mouth warm where I was used to feeling him cold. “Get some rest.”
I looked at the bed over my shoulder, shaking my head. I needed to see Della and Iban, to know they were safe. “I need—”
“You need to sleep. Your body came back from death, no matter how brief. Sleep, my Willow,” he said, pressing down on my shoulders until I had no choice but to sit on the edge of the mattress.
“No. I need to know who paid my price. Who you killed in my place to satisfy the balance,” I said, attempting to push to my feet.
“Hell help me, Witchling. You are going to rest even if I have to put you in this bed and pin you down myself,” he argued, the warning lingering in the air between us. I didn’t want him in the bed with me, not when I couldn’t trust myself around him.
Even hating him, or even wanting to gut him and send him back to the pits of Hell for what he’d done to me, part of me remembered how he’d felt when I thought I cared for him. “I’ll rest,” I said, offering an olive branch for the moment.
One battle at a time, I reminded myself.
“If you tell me who,” I said, watching as he clenched his teeth in frustration.
“A witch. I don’t know her name, nor do I care to. Beelzebub made it quick and painless, just as he did with you,” he said, the matter-of-fact statement feeling like truth. Gray didn’t bother to acquaint himself with the witches that couldn’t offer him anything in return.
I nodded, hoping he would have at least recognized Della or Margot as my roommates. I could only hope they hadn’t been harmed because of me, unable to live with that on my conscience.
I slowly lifted my legs into the bed, ignoring the ache in my bones as it felt like my very being shifted with the movement. Like my body couldn’t adjust to the strangeness of coming back from the dead. I laid back awkwardly, wishing I had more clothes and hating the thought of Gray changing me while I’d been unconscious. Gray covered me with the blanket the moment my head hit the pillow, taking up residence in the chair beside the bed.
I sighed, staring at the ceiling.
Who could sleep while the devil was watching them?
