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Chapter Twenty-Five
I’d never realized pain this deep could exist, that a person could be entirely hollowed out. I’d suffered before in my life, but they had always beenmysuffering. They’d been times when life hadn’t gone the way I wanted, when I hadn’t gotten what I needed, but in the end, they had been my pain.
Staring at Gran’s still body, stretched out on a stone slab in the courtyard beneath the large branches of the tree, was a whole different sort of pain. I could endure anything, it seemed, but loss.
No matter how much I’d shaken her, when I’d screamed and cried, she hadn’t moved. Her skin had grown cold, her lips still and lacking the smile I’d known most of my life.
It didn’t feel possible.
“Ava?” Troy’s voice was careful, as if unsure of his welcome.
I didn’t answer.
I didn’t have it in me to answer.
It all seemed like too much work, like effort toward something useless. I’d pressed forward, I’d done what I was supposed to and in the end I’d failed. Lilith was gone, I had no idea how to proceed and now the one person who had known me the longest was dead.
Even without my answer, Troy came up beside me, a still and steady presence I hadn’t realized I needed.
“How can she just begone?”
She’d seemed so full of life, so impossible to end. Gran had been the moon, something that I expected to always be there.
The fact that she wasn’t shook me to my core.
Troy took my hand in his and squeezed, not offering any stupid platitudes, any ‘I’m so sorry,’ bullshit that didn’t mean a thing.
He left me alone after a minute, and even though the others filed in, even as Kase, Hunter and Grant stopped by as if to remind me that I wasn’t alone, even if I wanted to be, nothing took away the sting, nothing fixed the foundation that was broken. It felt as though forever I’d trip over the cracks made by losing her, as if I’d never getting my footing again.
I knew what I was, but the one person I wanted to talk to about it, I couldn’t. The one person who made sense of everything was gone.
Lucifer came up to me, and when he spoke with his normal voice, without the horror I’d heard in that room, it felt disingenuous. “I may not have always gotten along with Gran, but I respected her. I can’t say that about many people.”
“Don’t you talk about her,” I snapped, not caring that I was speaking to Lucifer, that he could do anything he wanted to me. “This is all your fault. You think I haven’t figured it out?Youwanted me here, you knew what I was and you put that reaper there to draw that out of me. You did it all just so whoever was behind it would target me, right? You used me as bait, and she paid the price for your stupid plan.”
Lucifer didn’t deny any of it. How could he? I was right, and he didn’t regret any of it. The asshole was an ‘all’s well that ends well’ sort of egomaniac.
“She died protecting you. She would have been happy for that to be her ending.”
I turned away from her to face him, to find him dressed in all black other than a red rose pinned to his jacket like some funeral wear. “She shouldn’t have died at all! Don’t you get that? She wasn’t supposed to die.” I planted my hands on his chest and shoved, wanting to hurt him, to hurtsomethingif it would just make me feel a little better.
Maybe if I did that, some of the pain inside me would dissolve.
He didn’t move, as solid as ever. “Yes, I used you, because I had to. I needed to know who was behind this before it was too late.”
“Don’t you talk to me about the greater good.”
“Why do you think Gran was here? She came to hell because sheknewwhat needed to be done. She did nothing without knowing the consequences, but still she came. She made the choice to save you because you are the only person who can stop Lilith. Gran was a fate, able to see how choices fit together, and she decided that your life was worth more than hers.”
“Well, she was wrong,” I whispered, crossing my arms and turning my back on Lucifer.
“I’ve never known Gran to be wrong before. Do you know what she told me the first time we met? She was a child then, an outcast from her people because of her gifts. She came up to me—I could travel to Earth back then—and she knew what I was. Her eyes turned white and she said, ‘You will give up what you need for what you think you want.’ I should have heeded that warning, but I didn’t, and she was right. Thousands of years later, I lost the thing that mattered more to me than anything else just as she said I would.”
“If you’re expecting sympathy for your little sob story, you’re going to be waiting forever.”
“No. My point is that Gran knew nearly everything. She sacrificed herself to put you where you needed to be, and you lack the luxury of falling apart, Ms. Harlin. You do not get to mourn or pity yourself or lament your place.”
“Fuck you,” I spat. “Fuck you and your daughter and this whole fucking place!”
