“Devlin?” Violet lifts her head from my chest, peering up at me over her glasses, her hand on my heart. “What’s wrong?”
I smooth back the hair that’s fallen into her eyes. “Tell me what you feel.”
“Regret.”
“Regret,” I echo, my voice heavy with it. With an honesty I’ve never once shared, never once been comfortable revealing. “It’s a strange thing to be surrounded by people, yet feel so desperately alone, you wonder if you might literally disappear. Or worse—if you already have.”
The fire pops, casting us in a bright glow. Violet gets to her knees beside me and reaches for my face, her palms warm on my cheeks, tears glittering in her sapphire-blue eyes.
“I see you, Devlin,” she whispers. “I won’t let you disappear.”
And there, in those words, in the depth of understanding in her eyes, in the silence of the night and the soft warmth of the fire, it hits me—one more truth I can’t escape.
I’m bloody well in love with this woman.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
DEVLIN
I pull Violet onto my lap, and she straddles me and slides her hands over my shoulders, her gaze never leaving mine. She smiles now, a sweet and bashful thing that’s so very Violet it breaks my heart to look at it.
I don’t know how much time passes, me staring at her, falling deeper into her eyes, her searching mine for a soul that may very well not exist, but then the logs shift again and sparks cascade from the fire, startling Grumpy and Sunshine out from beneath the couch, and Violet sighs and traces a delicate fingertip across my brow and whispers, “What I wouldn’t give for a peek inside the Devil’s mind.”
“Very scary. I don’t recommend it.”
“Can’t be allthatbad. I mean, not like g-string-on-a-horse bad.”
“No, not quite. I was… thinking about home, actually.”
“I’ve heard California has the best sunsets. Is that true?”
“Itistrue, but I was thinking of myfirsthome.”
“Hell?”
I nod. “Specifically, the Desolation Mountains. It’s a region of Hell reserved for the worst demons guarding the worst souls who’ve ever existed—men condemned to eternal torture. The darkness there is endless—jagged black peaks as far as the eye can see, black sky, black rivers so poisonous even the most battle-hardened demons avoid them. The creatures who roam those peaks will tear a man limb from limb, wait for the body to regenerate, and do it all over again, because no one ever dies. Suffers, but doesn’t die. There’s no sound, either—not even a whisper of wind or the screams of the damned. Just a maddening, all-consuming silence. Near complete sensory deprivation punctuated by the most unimaginable pain and anguish. But in the very center of the region exists a lake the color of the deepest sapphires, ringed in flame. No one knows how it was formed, for it’s far too breathtaking to have come from Hell’s creators. It simply… exists.”
“Is that where you live? When you’re there, I mean?”
“No. I’ve only seen it once.”
“What made you think of it now?”
“Your eyes.” I trace my fingertips along her brow. “The color, the fire behind them. Beautiful and fierce. A quiet rebellion that defies all expectations.”
A tear slips down her cheek.
“You asked me once why I left Hell,” I say, my voice barely a whisper in the fire-lit dim, one more confession I’ve never before shared. “It was my family who asked me to leave, Violet. My father, mostly, but the rest quickly fell in line.”
“I thought… I thought you were cast out of Heaven, not Hell. At least, that’s the story I’ve always heard.”
“That bit is true. Iwascast out. Then they gave me free rein in Hell, which seemed to satisfy all parties, as it kept me out of their precious homeland and allowed my father to keep a foothold in the lower realms by proxy.”
“What happened to make them cast you out of Hell, too?”
“I committed an unforgivable sin.” I shake my head. A bitter smile dawns. “Many,manycenturies ago, I fell in love with a witch.”
Violet gasps.
