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Once again, on the verge of tears, I shook my head. He was telling the truth, and I knew that too, but I still couldn't shake off my guilt.
"We had a fight," I breathed. "Now he's gone, and I'll never be able to apologize to him. Reconcile with him."
Tanael sighed and looked at me thoughtfully.
"Is that what hurts so much?" he wanted to know.
"Yes," I whispered quietly, as if I shouldn't say it. Was that what I was allowed to feel? Didn't his absence and my love for him have to be what hurt me the most?
Tanael nodded sympathetically. Slowly, he let go of my chin.
"What if I told you there was a way to reconcile with him?" Curiosity, coupled with a simultaneous doubt, danced across his face. "Would you take the chance?"
"What are you talking about? Alex is dead!" I replied angrily. "Of course, I'd want to make up with him, but that's impossible! Stop making fun of me and my grief."
"Nothing is impossible!" Tanael replied, and his eyes seemed to lighten up.
"I'm certainly not going to sit here for your amusement." I stood up resolutely and turned towards the door.
"Myrina, where do you think we are right now?" he called after me, unperturbed.
I stopped, as he had scratched one of my most pressing questions.
"In Italy." My voice didn't sound as firm as I would have liked, and I knew he could sense my uncertainty.
"You know we're not in Italy." He had followed me like a cat and was now standing so close behind me that I could feel his body heat.
"Where are we?" I breathed, dazed by his sudden proximity.
"We are in the underworld, Myrina. Or, as you so astutely put it, in hell," he whispered to me, and without looking at him, I guessed it was the truth.
CHAPTER 4
Ipaused, frozen. The underworld? Hell? Memories of moments I had repressed popped into my head. The shots of Tanael and me on the tablet screen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art gala. The sudden disappearance of our chauffeur. The provocative dresses that no one else had seen. The garden on the roof terrace had never existed and looked incredibly similar to this one. My simultaneous presence at Anne's abduction and on the roof terrace. The gifts, including the necklace and the building plans. The terrifying powers of John Adam Nash when he had lifted me by my throat in our garden. The glistening light Stephan had pulled me into after Alex's death. A portal? And, of course, Hecate with her silver eyes and floating gait. Was she really the goddess I knew from the myths?
"Breathe, Haye," Tanael's voice pierced my confusion and created a new question. If we were here in the underworld, who or what was Tanael Baldur?
"Who are you?" No matter how absurd the thought seemed, I stammered and said the first thing that came to mind. "The devil?"
"I have many names." He hesitated briefly. "The most common are Satanael and Lucifer."
Silence fell over us. I felt it was him now, holding his breath expectantly behind me. Satan and Lucifer. The devil. The evil one?
But why wasn't I overcome by the fear that came with those names? Only now did I realize I had never been afraid of him, not even when I thought he had betrayed us and had Alex murdered.
I slowly turned to him. I wanted—no, I had to look into his golden eyes, eyes that were definitely not of my world, eyes that were nothing human.
"Lucifer? Like the fallen angel?" I asked as I watched his jaw muscles tighten.
"Yes." He sighed. "But not the whole story has been passed down correctly. Some parts have been lost in the millennia that have passed since then," he said thoughtfully. Did I hear something like nervousness in his voice?
"What exactly does not correspond to the true events?"
"For one thing, I am originally a god—the God of the First Light, as indicated by my name, Lucifer, the bringer of light," he explained quietly.
"A god?" Now unsettled, I stepped from one foot to the other.
"The fallen angels were banished from heaven because Lucifer ... um ... so you because you wanted to take God's place." Even as I said this, I realized that this part of the story couldn't be true because, unlike what Christianity had taught us, if Tanael was also a god, then there had to be more than one of them.
