I choked in heaping gulps of air as terror unlike anything I’d ever known spread throughout my belly. I wasn’t frightened for me, but for Kobal and everyone else here.
“Love bites you in the ass no matter who you are,” Lucifer sighed.
Lifting my head, I met Kobal’s eyes. “Kill me,” I rasped out.
“So brave, this one!” Lucifer clapped me on the chest with enough force to knock whatever air I’d managed to inhale back out of me. “She thinks you have a choice in this, but you’re not programmed that way, are you, Kobal? If she wasn’t involved in this, you would sacrifice yourself for all those creatures standing behind you now. The pathetic thing is that you don’t realize just how far beneath you those creatures are, but that’s a conversation for another day.”
Lucifer waved his hand in front of his face as if he were brushing his words aside before leaning so close to me that his lips rested against my ear. “Do you want to know a secret, daughter?”
I refused to acknowledge him as I kept my gaze on Kobal and tried to convey every ounce of love I had for him.
“Would you like to know why I never attempted to stop you from trying to close the gateway?” Despite my resolution not to look at Lucifer, my head turned toward him when he asked this and our eyes locked. “I’ll tell you, andonlyyou, the secret.”
CHAPTER 24
Kobal
I remained where I was as River’s eyes widened on Lucifer. I couldn’t hear what he said to her, but whatever it was caused her blue lips to tremble. The small veins beneath the surface of her flesh were visible as her teeth chattered. Pain radiated from her, yet fire had burned in her eyes when she told me to kill her.
She wasmyChosen. Mine to love and protect, and she was asking to die because I had failed to keep her safe.
Lucifer’s mouth twisted into a cruel smile as he kissed her cheek. I lunged forward. I couldn’t kill her; I knew that as well as I knew that the Fires of Creation had forged me. However, I would not let him continue to torment her.
I’d already sent a message to Morax, alerting him to where we were and telling him to bring the rest of our troops here. Through our bond, the hounds would feel the bloodlust within me, would feel the battle, and they would come. If I kept Lucifer distracted, I could get River away from him when the others arrived.
Angels burst into motion as they came at me. Behind me, a battle cry erupted and the clash of steel rang against steel as the two sides attacked each other once more. Before I could reach River and Lucifer, Caim turned and planted himself in front of me. His wings unfurled and he swung one at me. The lethal tip sliced across my cheek, spilling blood.
So much for switching sides. For his lies, I’d make him pay almost as much as Lucifer when this was done. Lowering my shoulder, I crashed into his chest. His wings curled around me as his arms embraced me.
“Go for him. I will get her,” Caim’s words barely pierced through my bloodlust as I dug my claws into his back.
When they did register, they distracted me enough that Caim swung an uppercut into my jaw. The blow staggered me back and knocked my hold on him loose. Caim swept a wing at me, shoving me further away from him.
“Do not kill him!” Lucifer shouted. “I will tame the hound!”
Caim folded his wings behind his back; his chin rose as he held my gaze. The angels smirked as they closed in on us, and some of them took flight to orbit overhead. Phenex and Crux circled my legs, snarling as they kept the angels away, but they wouldn’t hold the winged pricks off for long.
Outside the ring of angels, the clash of steel against steel, the cries of the dying, and the snarls of the hounds resonated from the two, battling factions.
“More are coming, my lord!” an angel called from above, and I realized Morax and the others had arrived.
Rushing forward, I shoved angels out of my way as they tried to block me from River. I didn’t have the time to engage them in a fight—something Phenex and Crux understood as they leapt forward to drive more angels back, but they didn’t go in for the kill.
A wing hit me in the back, nearly knocking me to the floor as River tried to rip herself free. Lucifer placed his hand on her chest and pushed her more forcefully against the seal. Her scream resonated within me until her suffering became my own.
Nothing should have been able to pierce the seal, yet the spikes Lucifer had driven into her hands were buried in it.
Her blood is affecting the seal,I realized as it dripped down her arm. Against the unnatural paleness of her skin, the vibrant red stood out starkly.
“Leave us!” Lucifer barked.
The wraiths stopped circling and rushed upward as one powerful unit. They vanished through the ceiling a hundred feet overhead.
I tore the arm off an angel as I thrust her out of my way and used the bloody stump to bash in the head of another. The spikes on their wings sliced at me, flaying open my back and slicing across my chest, but I barely felt it as I remained focused on one thing: getting to River.
As more blood seeped from her, the ground beneath my feet vibrated before lurching violently and knocking me back a step. Around me, the angels scrambled away from the seal. Their frantic movements opened a pathway between me and River just as a crack spread through the seal behind River.
The crack lanced from her hand down by her knee all the way to the one above her head. One of the jagged lines raced toward the ceiling while the other ran from her palm to the ground. Orange light seeped through the edges of the fissure when it spread behind her.
