And it wasn’t a lie.
He’d opened up his soul for me to explore. Perhaps not on purpose. Or maybe he had. The intention didn’t matter. What mattered was the information he allowed me to find.
The truth he displayed for me even while hurting.
His loneliness. His painful past. The way my words had cut him.
Vivaxiaandpetkept swirling in his thoughts, the two of them resembling knives against his psyche.
Distant screams echoed in my mind as flashes of memories that weren’t my own filtered into my head.
Az’s screams, and those of his Phoenix.
Gods, what had he been through?
This Vivaxia woman must have been a force to behold if she’d instilled this kind of emotion in Az, simply from the mere mention of her name.
Az dropped the document to his side.
“Do I want to talk about it?” he repeated, sounding hoarse. “No. But maybe I should. Maybe my history with Typhos is what you need to hear to better understand him. To better understandme.”
I swallowed, the emotion in his tone matching the frustration I felt inside him.
He didn’t talk about the past. Not because he avoided it, but because it was just so ancient.
However, his mind told me he was realizing the importance of it now. How we couldn’t move forward without me knowing these crucial details about him.
Typhos would always be part of him. He’d always be someone Az admired and respected and cared for, and this history was the key to understandingwhy.
I gathered all that from his thoughts, the reveal leaving me breathless.
“I’ve been trying to show you who Typhos really is, but it doesn’t seem to be working. Now I know why. You need his history.Ourhistory.”
His violet irises glimmered with determination and a tiny flare of hope—as if he could finally recount his past and do something good with it.
“It’s a long story, if you want to hear it. So I will tell it to you on one condition.”
Ididwant to hear it.
More than anything.
Gingerly, I took the document back from Az and rolled it up. “And what condition would that be?”
“That you don’t interrupt me until I’m finished.”
CHAPTER29
AJAX
I didn’t goto the throne room.
I went to Zenaida’s house instead.
Lucifer expected me to obey his “request” with haste, but I no longer reported to him. He’d removed my title. Treated me like an outsider. Told me I couldn’t have Cami because I wasn’t a Hell Fae. Yet expected me to bow to him as my king.
No.
That wasn’t how this was meant to work.
