For hours. Days, perhaps, with not so much as the glimmer of a single star to break the endless black.
He didn’t hunger or thirst. Didn’t tire. Didn’t do anything but ache.
His heart was obliterated, a dead and broken thing that would never beat again. Would never feel anything again but the bottomless pain of loss.
Jacinda…
He missed her. Longed for her. The earthy scent of her. The sound of her laughter. The otherworldly silver-blue light of her hellfire. Her magic. The shape of her mouth when she said his name, when she sighed for him, when she came for him.
When she loved him.
How had it all come to this?
“Back so soon, Angel?” A voice called out from the darkness, the now-familiar form of a dimpled, purple-haired demon taking shape.
“Demetria,” Gabriel breathed, unable to hide the relief in his voice. “What are you doing here?”
“Savingyourstupid vampire ass, apparently. Why the hell aren’t you topside making babies with my girl?”
“Vampires can’t—”
“Figuratively speaking.”
Gabriel smiled at the thought, but it didn’t last.
The truth stabbed him in the heart once more. He’d never see Jacinda again.
How the fuck was that even possible?
“So what happened?” she asked. “You fall through the portal or something? Or did she change her mind about sharing and send your fanged, fine ass back for me?”
Demetria laughed, but Gabriel said nothing. No point in it. Demetria couldn’t change what he’d done any more than Gabriel himself could.
And he didn’t want to. As hopeless and lost as he felt now, he’d face a thousand eternities just like this if it meant giving Jacinda even one moredaywith her father. Whole and alive. At peace.
The demon’s laughter faded, and she cocked her head, scrutinizing him. “Gabriel, seriously. I don’t understand. What are you doing here? I thought… Wait. Are you… Ohno. Don’t tell me… no. You didn’t. Youabsolutelydidnotdo what I think you did. Did you?”
“I… might have?”
“Are you fucking insane?”
“Certifiable.”
She glared at him, black eyes gleaming with anger. “You made a demon deal.”
“She was going to take her, Demetria. I had no choice.”
“She, as in… Oh, you stupid-ass bloodsucker, you didnotjust say that. Her mother? Of all the demons in hell, you made a deal with Jacinda’smother?” She pressed her lips together and shook her head, her admonishment ripping open his wounds all over again. “So this is your eternity? Your fuckingeternity?”
Eternity.
What did that even mean anymore? Down here, every minute that passed in Jacinda’s life would feel like a decade to Gabriel. For all he knew, his body hadn’t even turned to ash yet.
A sharp pain lanced his heart, and he paced the dark emptiness, picturing her holding him in the Ravenswood crypt, picturing his body turning to ash in her arms. Picturing the dust of his bones coating her porcelain skin, her lips, alighting on her dark lashes.
He wondered if she’d keep him in an urn or let him go. Wondered if she’d gather him up and release him, or bury him beneath the earth—perhaps in the Enchanted rose gardens.
He wondered if she’d visit him there, or if she’d leave New York with her father as she’d once talked about.
