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He has nothing over me anymore. Not Rook, not Rose. I’d given in to his wants, his father’s wants, to save my sister. To protect Rook. Now that I no longer have to do that, I refuse to bow to a prick who’s beneath me. Who had always been beneath me.
“You want rid of me? Then do it, pussy,” I bite out. “But you better make sure you kill me first, Sinclair. ‘Cause I’m coming for your fucking head.”
Such a pretty boy, but even Lucifer was pretty once upon a time. The most beautiful. An angel.
She looked so pale when we broke the surface, so broken. Like she’d already given in to death when she’d sunk into the water. And that pissed me off—she’s not allowed to die. Not like that, not without a fight.
“If you knew that, then why did you? Huh?” She turns her nose up at me, hands balled up in tight fists by her sides. “For a guy who acts like the villain, you sure do love playing the hero, don’t you? That’s what you like, right, Rook? Saving the broken ones? You wanna be the hero?” “Do I look like a goddamn hero?” I grab her waist with both of my hands, pressing her flesh tightly as I haul her up the length of my body, then sling her damp frame across my shoulder so she is dangling down my back.
I don’t believe in Heaven or Hell. Which is an odd revelation for the guy everyone believes is the product of worshiping Satan. I believe when we die, we die. That’s it. We cease to exist, and we begin to decay until we are nothing but another piece of the Earth. There is no eternal damnation or heavenly gates. Just darkness. That’s what I believe. However, my mom didn’t think that.
It is said in Western folklore, you can use a crossroads to summon the devil or a demon. Depends on what deal you’re trying to make.
They are hailed by ritual items said to be buried in the center of where the roads intersect. It is there that you can bargain a wish for the cost of your soul. You can be granted anything your heart desires, but on a fixed date of the demon’s choice, hellhounds will unearth from the underworld, ready to claim that soul.
“No, Sage, this is my hell. My kingdom. My fucking rules. I reward good little whores only.”
Being different will mean you will feel alone at times. But when you find the people who accept those differences, they will be with you for a lifetime.”
It is dysfunctional, and we don’t always see eye to eye. We fight probably more than we do anything else. But they are my home. A dark, bloody, haunted house, but still my home.
“I don’t know what it is I feel towards Sage.” Lightning strikes hard, shaking the ground. “But whatever it is, it’s mine.”
I’ve been told since I came back about how I’d fallen from grace. How I’d become someone completely different than who I used to be. But I think that’s because I’m becoming the person I was always meant to be. And I want to do that, standing next to the person I was always meant to be with.
I look over at him, hellfire eyes blazing, knowing that if he were to tumble from the heavens again, falling like lightning from the sky, I would be the thunder that chased after him. I would stay there with him, in eternal flames as long as it was his fire that licked my body.
He is my Lucifer, and it’s time for me to show him I could be his Lilith.
“It won’t be pretty,” I say, my voice husky. “My pain is an ugly, consuming beast, Sage. Can you handle something like that?”
“You’re not a flightless bird anymore, Sage. You’re a phoenix. They tried to snuff you out, but you wouldn’t let them. You built yourself from those ashes with no help from me or anyone else. Just you.”
“I’m keeping you,” I say with a dry voice in desperate need of hydration. Her fingers sink into my hair, tugging at the ends slightly, and I can feel her lips tilt into a smile. “You’ve always had me, Rook. Always.”
Rook is on fire for me, and I intend on being the oxygen to continue fueling those flames.
Killing me won’t do anything.” Wrong. Killing him is going to feed the hellhound in our souls.
Bad things happen when angry people are left to grieve. Even worse things accrue when good people are forced to protect the ones they care for.
Rome hadn’t been built in a day, that’s what Alistair kept telling me when I’d get impatient. But it burned down in one.
Rook referenced Dante’s Inferno
But tigers don’t change their stripes, not overnight, and that would be a bridge I would cross if it was ever built.
But they don’t know what we did. They don’t know that she is more than just a flimsy angel. She is a force with the power to destroy anything in her way. A phoenix from the ashes. The Lilith to my Lucifer. The one I would burn the entire goddamn planet down for.
“As much as I’d love to cop a feel in a coffin, I’m being cremated, Theatre Geek.” Of course he wants to go out in a blaze of fire.
That’s how normal he is. How normal he has always been. When will society learn that the monsters of the world are not ones with yellow teeth and sharp claws? How many documentaries must we watch until we see the truth, see us for what we really are?
I was a born psychopath. I knew that already. I’d accepted that a long time ago. But she, could she counteract that? The made sociopath. Nature vs nurture.
“I think it’s time we finally had a chat, my dearest phantom.”
