The only way to buy us insurance is if he believes I sold her willingly.
I have to use what she did to me, the devastation she wrought when she forced me to my knees and put my scythe in my hand.
I need to use it all and let it come out of my mouth like I mean it.
The worst part?There’s a piece of me that does.
My tongue sours and my chest clamps so tight I fear I’ll never draw another breath.I don’t want to do this.I’d rather scrub sandpaper over my arms and erase the thought from my head.
But as the silence stretches across the room, it wraps me like a straitjacket.Suffocating me with the awful realisation.
I have to break her heart the way she broke mine, and I have to make it convincing so that Ignatius believes me too.
Ignatius’s eyes land on me.Scanning.Assessing.Evaluating.That devil has known me a decade, he can smell a play.What comes out next has to be real enough to convince him even more than Lucy.Or this is over.If there’s one thing I know about Ignatius, it’s that he betrayed his daughter for his own means.I am meaningless to him.If he’s willing to buy her soul, he’ll reap me right here if he smells foul play, regardless of the deal we made.But if he believes me, I get to live, and that buys me time to fight for Lucy.
So I stop trying to build a lie and let myself feel everything she did to me.
The cobbles beneath my knees.
The bony scythe against my fingers.
The tug and pull of her soul freeing from her body.
I remember the way she looked me in my eyes and forced my hand.
And she never once asked me if I was going to be okay.
Rage and heat and a trembling furnace slam into me so fast I stagger back.
I fix my eyes somewhere beyond her shoulders.I can’t look at her directly.I’m too mad, too broken.
I shrug at her.
One small movement that topples the last year and costs me everything.
It’s like tearing my heart in two as I level my gaze on Lucy.“The woman I loved made me reap her soul.If you think a quick fuck could fix that, mend the devastation you caused, you’re sorely mistaken.”
Ignatius’s sneer burns its way into my heart.My chest sears like the heat of a barren valley; dry, hot and utterly bereft of anything.
I want to rip my ribs open and hand her stupid fucking demon magic back so she can save herself.But I can’t do any of those things, because if Ignatius doesn’t free me, I can’t do anything to free her.
Her expression falters.
It hurts.
I bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself falling to my knees and begging for forgiveness.I bite so hard I taste iron.
Despite my eyes stinging, I keep them fixed on the point beyond her body.I have to or my features will melt.I need them icy enough I can suppress the hurt, until all that remains is cold, hard rage.
Lucy staggers back and hits the wall.“No,” she says, but it’s more of a plea.A desperate prayer for this to be a lie.
In the end, it’s not me who falls to my knees, it’s her.
And that is so much worse.
It’s only now I realise nothing Ignatius could do to me would be worse than this.
There is no greater torture than watching devastation I wrought tear the woman I love apart.
