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“So you don’t care about us mortals, but isn’t there anyone you would want to save? Anyone worth it to you?”
He paused, shadows in his eyes. He didn’t need to answer, though. It was clear as day there, a memory of someone he felt worth saving. He didn’t answer right away, as if the scene played before him, as if he were reliving whatever it was in his past that I’d brought forward.
Which made me wonder—exactly who would the devil value? What sort of person would he find important enough to save the world for? Important enough to risk his daughter for?
Lucifer nodded, then brought his gaze back to me. He hadn’t needed to say anything, to admit I was right, because the set of his shoulders said it for him. He held a hand out and a small box appeared in his shimmering palm.
“I took a box from you before, and it didn’t go well.”
“If I’d known what trouble you would be, I wouldn’t have summoned you. I can assure you, the last thing I want is for you to return to hell.”
How much it seemed he didn’t want me around him placated me, so I took what he offered. My fingers passed through his as I took the box, reiterating that he wasn’t actually there.
I opened it, and a ring sat inside.
It was silver with a beautiful red gem, the band like twisting vines. “What is this?”
“Lilith’s ring from her marriage to Adam.”
My lips tipped down. “I’d figure she’d hate this thing. How does it give us a link to her?”
“That is not just a gem. When Adam and Lilith were paired, we bound them in a ceremony no longer used, one that took a tiny piece of each’s life force and trapped it in their ring, as a sign of their oath to the other. This is that ring, and it holds a spark of Lilith’s life force. Should Hunter possess any tracking skills at all, he can follow it to Lilith, wherever she may be.”
I looked down at the ring, at the link we needed, the break in the case.
“Promise me something,” he said, stopping me.
I turned, the old adage about never making deals with the devil running in my head. “What do you want?”
“I know my daughter very well, because she is so much like me. I have no illusions about how this must go. Only one of you will walk away from it. So, I ask that you remember she was not always what she has become. It is easy to see her only as she is now. Things have not been fair to her, and while that doesn’t excuse her, it does, perhaps, explain her. If anyone could understand the truth, could look beyond what is easy to see…I hope you can.”
That drove it home, reminded me that as much as I wanted to see this one way, things were never so simple. No one could do anything without waves, and just as Gran had told me before, others would have to live with the choices I made.
I would make my decisions, and everyone else would end up paying the price for it.
Whether that was Gran losing her life, Kase losing his freedom or the pain of a grieving father…
There was so much pain left to come, and I was afraid of how heavy it would be on my shoulders.
