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But I wouldn’t, I realized. If he ordered me to kill the queen’s child, I wouldn’t do it. Even if I was sure the child was Nephilim. The idea of Nephilim was something like the idea of a hellhound. If everything you knew about them came from a book, you would run from the fuckers. They look mean and ugly and they could kill you, but like all things, a hellhound was about what you put into it. Puff was never going to be a raging ball of murder. He would always protect those he loved, but he would never go after the blood of the innocent. In some ways, I worried the Nephilim had been hunted down because of their potential and not their actual actions. Beyond that, the queen’s child would be a baby. I couldn’t kill that child any more than I could have harmed Lee or Rhys or Evan or Fen.
Except I had. My body had. I’d felt his rage as he’d sent a fire bolt Evan’s way. He’d talked like me. He’d accessed my memories, and when he spoke, he spoke as me.
“Hey, it’s okay. Don’t think about it.” Kelsey slid off the bed and opened the cloche with a happy sigh. “Danish. Yes. Eddie makes the best pastries. Look, there’s chocolate croissants. Your favorite.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think I can eat now.”
Even though I wanted to.
“I already had the throwing-up portion of my day.” Kelsey took a Danish and settled onto the couch, proving she wasn’t leaving any time soon. “I wanted to talk to you about the dinner thing Lucifer is throwing.”
I knew exactly what she was going to say. “You’re not taking me.”
Her face fell. “Technically he ordered Gray to bring his family. That means I can leave you behind. I think it’s for the best. Lucifer is a tricky fellow.”
I waved that off. “He’s a massive ass, and I don’t need to hang with him and eat at his table.”
“Good,” she said, obviously relieved.
“But you have to know that if you send Lee in, he’s going to get caught,” I said.
She was right back to looking worried. “He’s got a plan.”
“Lucifer has a better one. Look, Lucifer knows we have a sick wizard. You can’t expect that he doesn’t know who Dean is and what he means to the planes.” I felt the need to talk her out of this insane plan. But I also didn’t have a better one. She would hate the only thing that would work. “So if he knows then this dinner party is about one thing.”
“Gray.”
I nodded. “You’re going to have to choose, Kels. Do you want the kid to live or do you want your husband free? Or you can let Lee try to steal it and open a whole bag of very demonic worms.”
“We don’t even know where he keeps his wings,” Kelsey said, picking off some Danish and chewing it thoughtfully.
“Even if you did, I assure you he could feel it if someone plucked one off. The truth of the matter is Dean’s best bet is to have Lucifer rescind the Uro. The fire comes from Hell. He has control over it. He could fix it at any time. I don’t think he’s going to be willing to give up a body part to save a kid who could kill a man you claim can potentially give Lucifer what he wants—to close the door to Heaven.” I was coming around to the idea. It made sense given what I knew about Myrddin.
I liked it better when I hadn’t questioned everything about my life.
“Well, we have to try. I have to hope Lee knows what he’s doing.” She polished off the first Danish and went for the second. “We haven’t had a ton of luck finding your soul. Evan and Fen are in town asking a black-market dealer what Myrddin would keep it in. I don’t guess you want to give me a hint where you think it could be?”
My eyes rolled. “How the hell would I know? It’s not like I had a…”
I’d been about to saychoice. But I had, hadn’t I? That piece of my soul had been a gift to the master.
Like the demon blood had been my choice?
I wasn’t sure what was more pathetic—the idea that I laid down everything I believed in and became something terrible, or that I’d been a scared girl in a woman’s body shoved into becoming something terrible.
“I don’t want you to get a headache, so don’t worry about it right now. I’d actually like to talk to Lily when we get back to Frelsi about figuring out a safe way to access your memories,” Kelsey said, her tone gentle for once. “I’m not going to push you to remember. I can’t help but think about how when you took my wolf off, it went to Trent.”
Before they’d devoured my magic, those witches had forced me to pull Kelsey’s wolf off her soul. They’d wanted them separate so Kelsey would only have her human strength, and so all those human insecurities would flood back into her without the wolf to balance them. They hadn’t cared about a vessel for the wolf, wrongly thought it would simply disappear. They hadn’t known or cared much about the soul. That wolf had leapt straight into Trent, into its mate, and he’d held her until Kelsey could take her back.
I’d had no one.
“It’s different. I didn’t have a mate.” I was fairly certain it was useless for her to look for it.
“You’re sure it’s not inside Casey? He could miss having a piece of soul in him. He’d probably think it was weird vampire indigestion or something.”
“It didn’t go into Casey. He was too far away. If it had gone into someone, they would have had to be close to the Coven House at the time my soul was taken. No. I think Myrddin found a way to store it. It doesn’t matter. I don’t want it back. What he took from me was pain and rage and vulnerability.”
“And your ability to feel joy. He took your deepest emotions. Liv, I know you were hurting, and if I manage to find it, you’ll have to feel those things, but you can’t heal without going through the pain.”
