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For all the girls who never feared Hell because they know the Devil is a woman and Hell hath no fucking fury.
If the murdered girl chose to haunt me, at least my demon would have some company.
Looking back, it had been foolish of me to think that my demon would have permitted a boy to love me.
Lilith was the enemy. Since the day Yahweh informed me she would be my successor, I had hated her.
This was so much worse than before when all he had done was kill people and stalk me.
“The darkest places in Hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.” —DANTE ALIGHIERI, INFERNO
“The devil doesn’t come dressed in a red cape and pointy horns. He comes as everything you’ve ever wished for.”
‘I decide when you’ve learned your lesson. I decide everything for you, Lilith. I will decide when you come. I decide who you touch, and I will decide when you die.’
She has infected what little piece of a heart I have.
He was squeezing the back of my neck so hard it hurt and was looking at square-head like he wanted to know what the man’s insides looked like.
If I hadn’t known I was obsessed before, it was clear now.
“I’ve been stalking you your whole fucking life; what made you think tonight was going to be the night you got away?”
He was watching me absorb my surroundings with such a tender, affectionate look on his face. I realized he was really enjoying this, which surprised me. I knew he liked to hurt me, but I hadn’t expected him to also enjoy showing me beautiful things.
I am sorry you have been lonely, Lilith, but I am not sorry for keeping you for myself.”
They acted like I belonged to them, not like I was one of them.
“You know as well as I do that I’m not capable of being kind… but for reasons that I cannot fathom or understand, you make me want to fucking try.”
I knew he was right. He was a demon. An evil fucking creature that ruled the underworld. He had tormented me my whole life and had never given me a choice in anything. He stole every piece of happiness I could have ever hoped for. He clipped my wings and chained me to the ground. So why did it feel like he was trying to tell me he loved me when his black heart didn’t even know what love was?
It wasn’t clear to me if I actually wanted any of this or if I was just submitting out of a sheer need to cope and survive. My mind was still confused, and my moral compass needed to seriously be reconfigured, but my body was sure as fuck responding positively.
“Please, what, Lilith? Put it in? Take it out? Fuck you harder? Use your words,”
realized how much I had stolen from her by not allowing her to have any friends. An aching pit of guilt grew in my chest as we watched. The happier and more animated she became, the more I felt like absolute shit.
He couldn’t truly think that little creature with her whip-smart mind and library full of knowledge was evil, could He?
I wanted what Lilith had. I wanted room to experiment, books to read, and stars to gaze upon.
She smelled of death and carnations, and I had never smelled anything so lovely.
I was Lilith’s nightmare, and I belonged to her and her alone.
“Must you? Does it matter why you feel this way? Isn’t it just enough that you do, and I am willing to respect that?”
As scary as Ramel was in his Reaper form, I would take his inky death fingers over feather face any day.
Every inch of me was surrounded by him, and all I knew was his touch and the burn of his ownership.
There was no escape. There would never be an escape. My life began and ended with Ramel fucking Endlyne, whether I liked it or not. The sick truth was I was beginning to think that I didn’t want it to end.
“I don’t need you to trust me, Lilith. I just need you to stop fighting this. The trust will come in time. Just stop making me hurt you and submit.”
The small hesitant piece of affection that had been trying to bloom in my heart suddenly froze over. I felt a tear slide down my cheek. Who was I kidding? He wasn’t any different. He was the same. My captor. My demon. “Can’t you see that’s the very reason I can’t?” I whispered. “You say you love me, but you can’t force me to love you back, Ramel. I’m not making you hurt me. You can choose to stop. You can let me decide for myself what I want instead of forcing your will upon me.”
monster who had spent my whole life destroying me. “If you’re looking to trust me, Lilith, then you can trust this: I will never stop trying to force you to love me. I will push and bend you to my will until I’m the only thing you see and the only one you want. One day you will willingly be mine again. Until then, I will take whatever parts of you I can steal because I promised you forever, and forever starts today… whether you’re ready for it or not.”
I knew there was a difference between love and obsession. What Ramel felt for me teetered on the edge of both.
“To truly love another person is to accept the work of loving them is worth the pain of losing them.”
I wasn’t as interested in punishing her now that I had my memories back. It would be different if she also had her memories back and understood the game. The look in her eyes earlier, when I knew the endorphins had faded and she had been left alone in her own thoughts, had shaken me.
“Rebellion is the seed of freedom.”
“I call it the Silent Cemetery. Super easy to make, really. Two ounces of blackberry juice, one ounce of pineapple juice, and a squeeze of lime with a splash of simple syrup. Of course, you need a few ounces of black vodka and a little squirt from the smoking gun, and there you have it.”
I realized with a start that I hadn’t just come to accept it but expect it. If he wasn’t actively trying to touch me, or I wasn’t the center of his universe, something was wrong.
“I love you, Lilith. I would rather be unmade than live in a world without you in it.
I found that the more agency and leniency I gave her, the more she looked at me like she didn’t hate every fiber of my being. When I had given her the dagger and she realized I was attempting to give her the ability to defend herself… The way she had looked at me… I wanted her to always look at me like that.
Even the strongest fall if they don’t have anyone waiting to catch them.” My already shattered heart cracked as he pulled me in tighter to him. “You’ve never had anyone to catch you,” he whispered against the shell of my ear. “That ends now.”
No one had ever looked at me the way he was looking at me now. Like he would move planets and reduce entire galaxies to stardust if I asked him to.
He clung to me like I was an anchor, and he was a ship battling the swells of an angry storm. Don’t leave me, don’t leave me.
I had frightened him. He had been worried I finally found a way to escape not just him but all the pain and suffering that came with the burden of living. He kissed me, and I knew it was a plea. A plea to stay here with him.
“I’m fucking in love with you, Lilith. I want you to remember that you love me too. I don’t know how to do that, but I’m hoping you’ll let me try.”
I didn’t know how to tell her that the sight of her hurting made my stomach ache so much I thought I might die. What right did I have to ask her to stay here with me? I wracked my brain for something real I could tell her. Something that might make her see that despite the fact I was the villain in her story, she had always been the star of mine, even when I had been too lost to recognize it.
A few days of kindness did not make up for a lifetime of abuse and suffering.
You deserve better, Lilith. You deserve better than what I’ve given you, but you also deserve better than a lonely, premature death.”
“I want to be better for you,” I said softly, forcing past the painful lump that suddenly seemed to have made a home in my throat. “But you have to stick around long enough for me to try.”
She didn’t though, and that was the problem. She didn’t hate me, and she felt like she was betraying everyone she had ever loved by not being able to hate the demon that had killed them.
I wasn’t even sure anymore if getting her memories back would be enough to erase the damage I had caused.
