“I’m sorry,” I breathe into her neatly braided locks.“I’m so sorry.”
“Fuck you, Midnight,” she says, still crying.There’s no malice in her tone, just pain.And it breaks another piece of me.
This is the only way.
My clock has been ticking for ten long years and I am so very, very tired of living this way.I was always meant to give my soul for another’s, I just chose the wrong person.
I can fix that now.
I can give the greatest woman I’ve ever known a chance to live.A chance to prosper free from control.
“You have to pass Finis.Do it for all three of us, okay?Last woman standing,” I say and brush a hand over Lex’s hair and kiss her forehead.
“I hate you so much,” she says, squeezing the life out of me and rubbing my back.
“That’s okay.”
Red scratches her neck with one hand.The other working on Lucy.
“I don’t want to interrupt, but if you’re going to do something, now is the time.Whatever this Ignatius is doing is slowly draining her.”
I grit my jaw and pull myself free of Lex, who watches me walk away.Her eyes bore into me the entire walk down the aisle.
It’s her soft cries that will haunt me long into the underworld.It feels like I’ve betrayed her even though I’m doing this for Lucy.
Doing this because I am exhausted from running and hiding and fighting my fate.
It is time to face the decision I made and deal with the consequences.
I enter the dungeon and make my way to Ignatius’s cell.
He stinks.His clothes are dirty and ripped, his face smeared in muck, but he holds a triumphant gaze in his eyes, a faint glow humming beneath his skin.
That motherfucker has no idea what’s about to hit him.I unclasp my scythe from my hip for the last time.
“I wondered when you’d come back.Ready to die already?”he snarls.
I sniff, wipe my hand across my forehead, very blatantly brandishing my scythe.
His eyes narrow.“What are you planning to do with that?”he says, decidedly less smug this time.
I smile, it’s lopsided and a little crazed.I tilt my head, waiting for him to catch up.
“Funny thing I learned about deals.See I always thought there was only a couple of ways to break a contract: renegotiation… you were never going to do that.”
He smiles at me, all toothy and vicious.
I continue.“An angelic blessing.Well…” I turn around, gesturing at the world in general.“I don’t see any willing angels.Do you?”
“And killing the demon you made the deal with.”
He laughs.“Is that what you’re here to do?”
I grin.“Nah.See, the way I figure it, the original deal is the reason I’m dying.But the subclause… that’s the one you really value.The one giving you Lucy.”
His expression falls, the ego peeling away and making his skin pale.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
