WILLOW
Gray laced up the boots he’d bought me as a compromise on the combat boots he knew I would have demanded to wear. I sat
processing his words, quiet as I tried to understand just how far back all of this went. How was I supposed to function on the path to revenge when there were centuries of history I didn’t even know?
“Your sister?” I asked, pressing my lips together.
He nodded, peering up at me with bright golden eyes through dark lashes. “Another angel cast down from heaven,” he answered, standing smoothly as he caught my hand and guided me to my feet. He fluffed out the length of my hair, the bright red ends standing out sharply against the black fabric. “I am not the only one who has earned my father’s wrath over the centuries since our creation. I was just merely the first.”
“What did she do?” I asked, avoiding asking him about his own banishment. I knew what we believed. I knew what the humans believed. And I had no doubt both versions of the story were biased in the opposite way of what his would be.
Gray grinned as he directed me to the mirror in the corner of his bedroom, taking his place behind me as he left me with no choice but to stare at my own reflection. Even with the wedges on my knee-high boots, he was far taller than me. “The same thing as me,” he said, giving me a vague response. The fact that he didn’t trust me enough to provide me with a sliver of the truth shouldn’t have surprised me, given my own nefarious reasons for even asking the question in the first place.
If I wasn’t trustworthy, I couldn’t exactly be angry that he didn’t trust me. He shouldn’t, even though I needed him to anyway.
“And what was that exactly?” I asked, swallowing as I asked the question I didn’t really want to know the answer to. I wanted everything to remain black and white, not muddled with personal bias and middle ground.
“I’m sure you’ve heard the story,” Gray said dismissively.
“I want to hear it from you, not an ancient text that has passed through so many hands and translations, nothing is for certain anymore,” I said, holding his stare.
“You’re hoping it won’t be true,” he said as I spun to face him. It suddenly seemed so important that I felt his gaze on me for this conversation, not seeing it reflected in the mirror.
Mirrors were gateways, and I didn’t want to risk someone sharing the intimacy of this moment centuries from now when my great-granddaughter wandered into my memories.
“I’m not hoping for anything. I just want to understand my husband,” I said, hating the truth in the words. He knew my most profound shame, my darkest secrets, yet I knew so little of his past from him directly.
“I loved my father,” he said, the somber expression on his face reminding me so much of the portrait of Lucifer falling from grace that he kept in his office. His reminder. “I loved him so much that I never wanted to risk anyone turning away from him. The fact that they may not make it to Heaven and feel the warmth of his embrace was unfathomable to me. I wanted to make it so that humans could not choose to sin at all, rather than risk them being condemned.”
I sighed, hating the sympathy I felt. Was it any different than when a parent placed restrictions on their children, until they proved they could make good decisions?
I didn’t know, and I despised that lack of clarity.
“You wanted to strip them of their free will,” I said instead, seeking for him to own up to the actions he knew I would disagree with. I wanted his honesty more than anything, even if it couldn’t change anything about my opinion of the creature he’d become.
“I wanted to do whatever it took to make sure that they never made the wrong choice,” he corrected, his conviction of those words striking something deep inside of me. His eyes flared as if he understood it as well, the parallels we could draw between what he’d wanted for humans all those
years ago, and the situation he’d forced me into now. “It’s different,” he said, shaking his head in frustration.
“Is it? Am I free to make a choice you don’t agree with, then?” I asked, wincing when he took a step back from me. I grabbed onto his forearm, holding him still and forcing him to stay with me for this conversation.
If he could trap me in this relationship, then he could damn fucking well listen to what I had to say about it.
“You can choose anything else you want, anything, as long as you choose me,” he said, covering my hand on his forearm with his own. His fingers curled around me, gripping more fully than I would have expected.
“That’s not how it works and you know it,” I said, my voice stern yet soft.
“Why not?!” he yelled, pulling back from me. He paced in a circle, his breathing erratic in his anger. The display was so out of character for him that it made me flinch back, but his pained expression when he turned to face me finally had my shoulders dipping, the fight draining out of me. “I have given enough. I have lost enough. I am not going to lose you, too.”
Despite my best intentions, the back of my throat burned. His pain was so palpable, so like my own, that it struck me just how similar we were.
I stepped toward him cautiously, closing the distance until I halted in front of him. Reaching up to cup his face in my hands, I gave him the truth even if I knew it would hurt him. An eternity of this would hurt more.
“Because until you’re willing to let me go, you’ll never really have me. You’ll always wonder if I would stay—if I would choose you, if given the chance, and not knowing will haunt you for the rest of your days.”
His brow creased, his face twisting as he considered my warning. That sounded like an eternity of absolute misery to me; never being able to trust in anything the man I loved said.
Always waiting for them to leave.
I released his face, about to walk away. He still needed to dress for the evening, and I’d done enough to put him on edge for the night. “I’ll let you get dressed,” I said, the gentleness in my voice surprising even to me. If he was truly like me, he needed some time to gather his thoughts in private.
I headed for the door, pausing when Gray caught my arm gently. I turned my head to look at him over my shoulder, finding his back still mostly close to me. “Would you?” he asked. “Stay? Would you choose
me?” he asked, and the vulnerability in that question reminded me of someone so much younger than Lucifer the Morningstar.
“I don’t know. I can’t choose you until you give me the choice,” I said, pushing through my hesitance to answer. I’d wanted to hurt him, wanted to get revenge for what he’d done to me. Except this somehow felt like kicking an injured puppy when he was down. “And you never will.”
I left the room, leaving him to his thoughts. I thought hurting him would make me feel better. Would help me feel like I’d taken a little bit more of my power back.
But I just felt like shit.
I waited for Gray to emerge, keeping the notion of winning his trust in the back of my mind as I approached him and straightened his
tie. He’d donned his careful mask all over again, the vulnerability of a few moments ago a thing of the past.
But I saw it in the way he studied me, in the way he considered if there was any truth to my words. Maybe he was without a conscience and what I wanted didn’t matter to him so long as he had what he wanted.
Or maybe I’d struck a nerve.
“What exactly are you expecting from me tonight?” I asked, peering up at him from beneath my lashes in a peace offering. His gaze was intense on mine, as if he saw right through my actions, so I turned to the window to hide them. The lights surrounding the school illuminated the gardens just outside the building, casting eerie shadows over the cemetery in the distance. The bones pressed into my waist, reminding me of their presence as I stared at the witches who’d been buried wrong. The call of that magic was so overwhelming I barely managed to tear my gaze away, looking toward Gray’s knowing stare.
“It’s okay to answer the call,” he said, turning my face to his again. He touched my cheek, cupping it with a gentleness that grounded me against the violence in that magic. It was life and death, the swirl of a storm of two clashing forces.
One could not exist without the other, yet it felt as if the two would tear me to shreds long before they ever successfully coexisted.
“Why did you tell my father to seduce my mother in particular? Why did it have to be a Green?” I asked, unable to stop the question from escaping me. The more pressing answer would have been to wait to hear what he expected of me, but in the moments when I felt like I was only an inch from breaking, I couldn’t be bothered to care.
Gray sighed, moving to the arm of the sofa. He sat down, perching gently as he spread his legs and guided me between them. Even sitting, he was so tall he came to my throat. Taking my hands in his, he worried them with the anxiety of answering things he thought better left in the past.
I could read it on his face, that bond between us pulling taut. I didn’t need to read his mind to know his thoughts, and I hated what it did to my emotions regarding him.
“Charlotte was the most powerful witch I’ve ever known,” he said, his voice sad—as if he missed the woman he’d admired in his own way. “Until you.”
“So you wanted me to be powerful?” I asked.
“No, if anything, you being stronger than her would put me at a disadvantage. Nevertheless, I watched countless Hecate witches, Charlotte included, be corrupted by the call of death and the overwhelming power it gave them. I wanted to take the opportunity to give you a chance to still feel alive, even if the bones of the dead surrounded you,” he said.
“But you’d never planned for me to survive,” I said, being that his words didn’t make any sense.
“I didn’t plan for you to survive until I saw your dream-self lurking when I killed Loralai. I claimed you that night,” he said, brushing his fingers over the mark I’d woken with fifty years after he’d given it to me. “I never intended for that claim to be anything less than permanent, and I knew adding some life to the necromancy would be your best chance.”
“My best chance for what?”
“Surviving me,” he said, pushing to his feet. He guided me to the door as I stumbled after him, faltering as I considered his words. Did that mean he thought I would outlive him? Or simply that I could survive the things he put me through?
Jonathan meowed as we headed for the door, jumping down from his perch on the back of the sofa and stretching.
“I don’t understand,” I said, letting Gray guide me into the hallway. He held out his arm, and I took it even though I wanted to snub him. I didn’t
think I had many allies outside of him and my friends. Plus, I wasn’t dumb enough to believe the Coven would welcome me with open arms. They’d tear me apart with their bare hands if I let them.
“I’m not an easy man to love, Witchling. However, if anyone stands a chance of doing it and coming out the other side, it’s you,” he said, leaving me reeling. What he said was true, yet it was different than actually hearing him admit that he knew it to be true. “You asked what I expect of you tonight,” he said, shocking me when he paused in the middle of the hall and changed the conversation. I understood the urgency of where we were about to go, but my brain struggled to keep up, nonetheless. “I don’t expect anything of you, but I would appreciate it if you could set aside your animosity toward me long enough to present a united front.”
“Are you asking me?” I asked with a scoff. Gray didn’t ask for anything. “Juliet reminded me that if I’d wanted an obedient plaything, I could
have had a dozen choices who would be willing to do just that,” he said, smirking at the fury that overcame my face.
My cheeks went hot as I yanked back my arm. “Thank you for that explicit reminder.”
“But I don’t want that, and I never have. I want a partner. I want a woman who loves me enough to challenge me to see the world differently. I want you, Willow, and I understand that I cannot have you if I tell you to do as you’re told,” he said. “I may not be ready to permit you to choose everything, but I can give you this, right now.”
“Who are you, and what have you done with Headmaster Thorne?” I asked, quirking a brow at him as I crossed my arms over my chest.
“I’m not saying I won’t piss you off or do shit you despise nearly every day, although I am saying that in this, I can stand at your side and allow you to choose to do the same for me,” he said, grasping my arm and tucking it back into his so we could resume our walking.
“Why didn’t you just let me choose when I tried to leave? I didn’t want to abandon them,” I said, referring to the Coven I’d condemned to infighting.
“Because I’m not ready to say goodbye, and you were reacting on impulse out of fear. The Willow I know would never back down from a fight. Do you remember what I told you when you asked what happens when you’re tired of fighting?” he asked, making my heart skip in my chest at the reminder of that night. Of the beating I’d suffered and how broken it
had made me feel that I had confided in a man who was supposed to be my enemy.
“This is different,” I disputed.
“I told you that you would allow me to fight for you. You gave up on us, but I never stopped fighting, Witchling,” he said as we reached the top of the stairs. He released me long enough to let me gather the side of my dress in my hand and lift it so that I could descend smoothly. The stones at my feet seemed to recognize me, rising up to meet me with every step and offering what comfort the cold surface could provide.
“So you want me to play the role of the woman in love with the devil who decimated the entire Coven?” I whispered.
“No. I want you to tell the truth. I manipulated you just as much as any of them, and I don’t care if they know that truth. I’m the devil, not a saint,” he explained with a smirk. “I want you to take the Coven that belongs to you, regardless of your mistakes, and recognize the need for stability in this chaos. You and I will lead our set of peoples the same way the Covenant was always designed to do.”
We continued down the stairs in silence, Gray seeming to understand that I needed time to process how this would play out and what I wanted to do to make it happen. I didn’t want my Coven to be at war with the Vessels and Archdemons and understood that would bring nothing but death, but what did I know about leading them?
I glanced out the windows as we passed, my eyes immediately drawn to that cemetery once more.
I’d give them something they hadn’t had in a long time. I’d give them the truth.
