WILLOW
“I’m leaving,” I said, drawing in a deep breath as he lowered his chin ever-so-slightly. A week ago, I might have missed the subtle
change, but some part of me recognized his movements for what they were.
A threat. A promise.
He sighed, walking slowly toward where I stood beside Beelzebub and closing the distance. He didn’t speak a word to tell me that I wouldn’t be allowed to leave, but he didn’t really need to. I pivoted slowly to face him more fully as he closed the distance, leaving the other archdemon to finally step away and walk toward the school. His wings twitched as he walked, and I had a sinking feeling it was a sign of his irritation with the male who approached me.
He raised a hand slowly, sliding it beneath the curtain of my hair and grasping me in that sensitive space where my jaw met the side of my neck. “Don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be, love.”
I jerked back from his touch, wincing when his fingers trailed over the front of my throat, and his jaw hardened. His golden eyes flashed, such a horrific contrast to the blue I’d grown used to seeing staring down at me. “Don’t make this difficult?” I asked, my words coming out sharply as the pit of anger that existed within me threatened to swallow me whole.
I’d had a target for it all. Had a purpose for all the ugly and the bad in my life. There’d been a way to channel it before, whereas now…
Now, there was just rage, and there was only one logical target for it. “Willow—” he said carefully.
“You fucking stabbed me!” I screamed. “And you have the fucking
nerve to act as if I am the one who is the problem?”
His hand dropped to his side slowly, clenching into a fist as he opened his mouth and closed it once before speaking. His own anger lingered beneath the words, hidden beneath something soft and vulnerable that I didn’t care to take the time to think about. “You were trying to leave me.”
My lips spread into a cruel, disbelieving smile as I turned my head to the side and winced at the bitter laugh that crept its way up my throat. “Of course, I want to leave you.” I sounded more like the demon and he the victim, when in reality, it was the opposite.
I’d believed every manipulation. Believed every lie and twisted truth.
“Again,” I said, pausing as I turned my attention back to him. My smile dropped, my laughter stopping suddenly as I leaned toward him. “You fucking stabbed me.”
“To save your life!” he yelled, snatching my hand from my side and tugging me toward him. My chest collided with his stomach, sending tingles through me despite the clothing between us. I’d always been hyper- aware of his body and felt the charge of attraction between us, but it had been more extreme since waking. “Everything I did in that tribunal room was to keep you alive.”
“No,” I argued, shaking my head. He didn’t get to rewrite what he’d done as if it was for my benefit. As if I’d asked him to kill all those witches.
I’d have sooner died.
“Everything you did in that tribunal room was for you. It was so that you could have your body on this plane. Everything you’ve done for centuries was so that you could end up right here, and fuck the consequences and the people who’ve been hurt. If it was for me, you never would have gone through with opening the seal.”
He paused, taking my free hand in his and placing it to his chest where his shirt was unbuttoned at the top. My finger brushed against his bare skin, and his eyes drifted closed with a pleasured sigh. He held my wrist tight, keeping me pinned there as he tipped his head to the side, and a tiny smile curved his lips upward as he opened that golden gaze to stare down at me.
“You’re right. I did what I had to do to be here in truth, to feel this,” Gray said, pressing my hand tighter into his flesh. “That was for me and me alone, and I have waited centuries for it to come to pass. However, if I
hadn’t taken the rib from you, you would have given your life to the seal. I couldn’t allow that.”
“And why not? That was always the plan, wasn’t it?” I asked, waiting for the confirmation of just how far his deception had gone. If it was as intense as Charlotte had implied, if I indeed was the cost of her bargain, then I didn’t see any other way.
He had the decency to look ashamed as he pursed his lips. “That was before.”
“Before what exactly? Before you fucked me? Before you told my father to raise me to believe I would be getting revenge for his sister, even though you’re the one who killed her?” I asked.
“Before I saw you the night I killed Loralei,” he said, stealing the breath from my lungs.
“That’s impossible,” I said with a scoff. “That was decades before I was born.”
“And yet it is the night that I marked you as mine,” he said, releasing my wrist finally and touching it to the top of my shoulder. His fingers brushed over the bare skin, the very tips grazing the devil’s eye I’d woken with after my nightmare.
“Loralei had been dead for decades by that point, Gray,” I argued, refusing to admit what I’d seen in my nightmare. It was too unfathomable to even consider.
“For you,” he admitted, conceding that point. “Although I gave this mark to an apparition who appeared at her side when I murdered her, fifty years ago.”
“I don’t understand how that’s possible. I don’t have that kind of magic,” I said, trailing off. There was no way to deny what he said, though, not in truth when I knew what I’d seen.
What I’d felt.
“You channel your black magic through the bones of your ancestors. Even without them, their blood runs through your veins. There’s a connection there that none of your relatives have thought to consider, but it seems maybe you could walk through their lives in your dreams if you tried.”
“I have no interest in using anything related to the Hecate line,” I snapped, knowing that every bit of my life that led me here; it had been so that I could die.
Charlotte wanted me to fix what she’d done. And I just wanted to go home.
“You’d be a fool not to. You’ll need it if you’re going to take the Covenant’s place here,” Gray said as I pulled back again. I couldn’t think straight with his hands on me, with that charge between us that defied all nature, making my skin prickle with awareness.
“I have no intention of taking anyone’s place. I’m leaving Crystal Hollow.” I swallowed as I said the words, knowing it was the only way for me to regain any of my humanity. For me to salvage who I wanted to be in the face of all that I’d lost through my life.
I wouldn’t be the devil’s puppet any longer.
Gray sighed as I stepped away, moving toward the treeline waiting for me and the Cursed, who would hunt me down if they could. Even that would be far better than a life as a prisoner. The trees swayed as if they could welcome me home, taking me into their embrace as I put my first foot into the woods.
“Please, don’t make me do this to you,” Gray said behind me. I paused mid-step, putting my foot down slowly as something in that voice made my heart sink. He approached slowly as I turned to watch him, rooted to the spot like the tree at my back. “Stay with me, Witchling.”
“Or what?” I asked, glaring at him. I took a step back as he approached, his actions casual and easy, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Or I will take back what I have given,” he said, reaching me finally.
He touched a single finger to my chest as I tried to call to the earth around me. A whisper from the trees came back, an apology in the wind, but nothing struck out at him. Nothing defended me this time.
His fingernail elongated into a talon, the sharp point of it pressing against my skin. I gasped as it broke through, a slow droplet of blood falling from the wound. It wasn’t the cut itself that stole the breath from my lungs and made my body seize with pain.
It was the suffocation of my magic, the sudden silence as the trees around me quieted. For the first time since I’d turned sixteen, they ignored my call.
“Gray,” I gasped.
He clenched his jaw, dragging his nail down through the center of my chest. The gash he drew bled little for how deep it was, a green mist coiling
as it emerged from the cut. He twisted his hand, letting the mist settle in his palm as it slid free from me.
“It didn’t have to be this way,” he said, his face sad as I raised my eyes to meet his. My hands trembled as I grabbed his in both of mine, holding him tight to my chest. Everything inside me was empty, the lack of buzzing in my head making everything…
Silent.
My bottom lip trembled as tears stung my eyes. “Don’t,” I begged, hating the plea in those words. “Please.” Black mist followed the green, gathering in his hand as he stole what he’d given to Charlotte and the first Madizza witches. “I don’t know who I am without it,” I said with a strangled sob.
His face unveiled with what I would have called sort of sadness, if he hadn’t been the one to cause me pain. He raised his free hand to cup my cheek, leaning down to touch his forehead to mine. “You’re mine,” he said as tears stained my cheeks and dropped down my chin onto his hand, which I refused to release. “I cannot allow you to keep the magic you would use to leave me.”
“I’ll stay,” I said, my voice growing frantic as that silence expanded in my head. Nausea churned in my gut, the distinct feeling of being alone in my body overwhelming me. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d felt so disconnected from everything around me, when the loneliness threatened to swallow me whole. “I’ll stay, just anything but that, Gray.”
He sighed, touching his mouth to mine softly as I cried. “I wish I could believe you. I wish I could trust that you wouldn’t leave me, but you tell such pretty lies, wife. I can’t believe a single one of them,” he said.
The bark at my back felt strange and unfamiliar, it felt nothing like the warm comfort of earth. “I’ll do anything,” I said, choking as I tried to wield that magic back into me. As I tried to take back what was mine.
“Then make a deal with me, love. There is something that I want, and that is the only way you will leave this place with your magic,” he said, his golden eyes flashing as the devil beneath his skin wanted to come out and play. I couldn’t stand the knowledge that I was trapped in truth, that there was no way around the deal but to become used to being alone.
“What do you want?” I asked, even as the potential answer terrified me. He already had his body. Surely, that was the extent of his sick, twisted plans.
“I want to finally consummate our marriage,” he said simply, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.
My confusion compelled me to question everything. “But we already…” I trailed off, unable to complete the sentence. I couldn’t believe I’d been so fucking blind that I’d given my virginity to the devil.
“I was wearing a fake meat suit,” he said, the softness of his voice fading away as he laid out his desire. “You had sex with my Vessel, and yes, it was me inside of it. However, you are not the wife of a Vessel, Willow. You are the wife of Lucifer the Morningstar, so you need to consummate with me.”
I sank my teeth into my bottom lip. It was only sex, right…
“Now?” I asked, trying to still the tremble in my hands. “Here?”
“No,” he said with a bitter laugh. “I have no interest in fucking you while you cry. So you are going to run, and if you make it through the woods, you’re free to go.”
I glanced over my shoulder as the mist in his palm began to recede, sinking back inside me and slowly filling me with the hum of magic. My relief over it drowned the fear I should have felt about what would happen if he caught me, but the opportunity for freedom—for a life with Ash—was too great for me to ignore. “And if you catch me?”
“If I catch you, then you’ll give me the fight I’ve come to crave from you. If I catch you, we will go to war in the way our souls already know— until my body recognizes every inch of your skin by touch. When I catch you, I will fuck you, and we both know you’ll love every goddamn minute of it,” Gray said simply, leaning in to whisper the threat. His teeth nipped at the sensitive spot below my ear, all at once a tease and a torment of things to come.
“What does that change? Having our marriage consummated?” I asked, glancing down at where the remaining mist had vanished into my body. Gray withdrew his hand, and I watched in horror as the wound healed over on its own.
My body was not my own anymore.
“You let me worry about that, love,” he said, taking a single step back. He stabbed his talon into the tip of his finger, touching it to my chest as his form of consent to the terms of his deal.
A deal with the devil.
Black spread across my skin, tendrils of darkness sparking over it before fading. He held out his talon for me, letting me reach out with a trembling, furious hand to prick my fingertip on the sharp point before it receded back to a normal nail.
I touched the bloodied finger to the hollow at the base of his throat, watching as my own darkness spread over his skin before it too faded.
He closed his eyes, a sigh leaving him before he opened them to stare down at me. I lingered awkwardly, not knowing when our game would begin. He answered that unasked question with a single, menacing word.
“Run.”
