Sins of the Damned (Fallen Cities: Elisium Book 2)

by Elena Lawson

  “Kincaid, you can’t kill Tristane. You’ll bring the entire angelic armada down on our heads. You know he’s the archangel’s golden boy.”

  “Let them come!” Kincaid snaps.

  “Fool!” Devereaux chimes in. “You’d bring their wrath down on us all. Your mate would not be spared, Asmodeus. Would you see her dead to appease your fury?”

  Something shatters downstairs, and I haul myself from the edge of sleep, propping my body up as best I can.

  “Whoa,” Artemis whispers from beside me as they continue to argue downstairs. “Go slow.”

  “Art!”

  My voice is nothing more than a croak, and I clear my throat as I turn, wrapping my arms around him in a fierce hug. I don’t know what is happening to me, but I want to cry I’m so glad to see him.

  Once, it took days of torment to make me cry. It took eighteen jabs with the prod before I dared let a single tear fall.

  What have these people done to me?

  I’m falling apart.

  “Uh, I’m happy to see you too, but um…”

  A flush crawls up my neck, and I release him, pulling Kincaid’s covers around myself to cover my nakedness. “Sorry.”

  “All good. I’m glad you’re awake. Let me go get Kin—”

  Another shattering sound echoes up the stairs, and Artemis sighs.

  “How long has that been going on?”

  Art shrugs. “Pretty much since they brought you back.”

  I move to shuffle off the bed, but Artemis stops me with a hand around my arm. “Kincaid said he wanted you to rest. You’re still healing.”

  “I’ve rested too long already,” I all but snap, having to steady myself with a slow breath to keep from losing my temper. “And Kincaid should have thought of that before he started smashing everything.”

  I rush to pull on some clothes with clumsy fingers, finding one of Kincaid’s discarded tunics on the floor. It goes almost to my knees, and I figure it’s good enough. I don’t want to waste any more time. Afraid that if I don’t intervene, he’ll either destroy the entire house or start a war with the angels that we won’t be able to win.

  Artemis’ healing has done wonders on the lingering aches and pains in my bones from Carver’s tools, but days without proper food or water keep me unsteady, battling off wave after wave of vertigo as I trudge down the stairs to a cacophony of shouting in the dining room.

  Black spots dance at the edges of my vision, but I blink them away, the slow burning fire in my core lighting a fuse that won’t be so easily put out.

  They silence as I approach, and all eyes turn to me when I enter.

  “Paige,” Tori exclaims. “You’re awake. Are you okay?”

  “I will be,” I reply as kindly as I can as she pulls out a chair and gestures for me to sit.

  I shake my head. I’m too wound up to sit down.

  A scattering of broken glass litters the floor at Kincaid’s feet. Blood coats his knuckles, but the wounds created when he put his fist through the glass door of the liquor cabinet have already healed. He looks at me like he’s seeing a ghost. Like I’m some malicious spirit come to torment him.

  His fists clench at his sides.

  “You should be resting,” he says.

  “Ha!” I scoff. “And let you start a war while I sleep? I don’t think so.”

  “Do not insert yourself in matters you do not understand. There must be retribution.”

  “The angels weren’t going to hurt me, Kincaid. Interrogate me, maybe, but not hurt me. And you already got your retribution.”

  A vivid image of Carver’s remains burns itself into my memory and my hand goes to my stomach.

  “Go back to bed.”

  “No.”

  A muscle jumps in his temple. “You are the most infuriating creature I’ve ever known.”

  “Ditto.”

  Lady Devereaux catches a laugh in her hand, covering the sound with a cough. But then her reflective eyes narrow on me and she steps in, brushing her fingers over my cheek. “What happened?”

  What?

  “Your soul. It’s…different than it was before.”

  The cause of that little mishap bounds into the room as though called, his little bell jangling. Casper purrs loudly as he moves to rub himself against my legs. I shoo him away with a soft kick. “Go away, you little heathen.”

  Devereaux looks between the cat and me, understanding softening the crease in her brow.

  “He tricked me,” I explain. “Got me to accept a trade for power when Kincaid was nearly there.”

  I kick him away again, more forcefully this time. “And he could’ve just helped me himself. I saw what you turned into. You could have killed Carver all on your own.”

  Devereaux crosses her arms. “Well, I don’t know why you’re surprised. He’s a trickster demon, after all.”

  I roll my eyes as Casper hisses at me. “You’re lucky I don’t make good on my promise to roast you over a spit.”

  Kincaid glares after the cat as he pads away and there is no doubt in my mind that if our souls weren’t linked, he’d be making a kitty kabob himself.

  “Anyway, we have more important things to talk about,” I say, finding the strength to cut the fuse before I explode. But as my fury wanes, the voices that’d been blocked out from being so far underground resurface, creating the white noise I didn’t miss in the back of my head.

  “Like what?” Tori asks as Artemis wanders into the room and slumps into a seat. There are dark circles under his eyes and he’s paler than a sheet. Kincaid probably had him up all night working on me.

  “Like how Carver was in league with the demon responsible for killing Malphas and Dantalion.”

  I have Kincaid’s attention now. He rushes forward, slamming his hands down on the table across from me, fingers splayed. “Who?”

  I worry how he’ll react when I tell him, but there’s no avoiding it. Just like I worry there’s no escaping death for him if the devil himself is the one dealing it.

  “Lucifer.”

  His lips part as his eyes search mine, perhaps searching for any trace of doubt. He won’t find any. I may have blocked out most of what happened down in that dungeon—I may be blocking it still—but that admission is branded into my memory.

  “But…why?” Tori asks, falling into the chair she’d pulled out for me, cocking her head. “Why would he kill his own men?”

  Kincaid’s fingers dig into the mahogany wood of the table, adding gouges to the scrapes already marring the surface. “He has long felt betrayed by us,” Kincaid utters, dropping his head as though he’s already defeated.

  “When the archangels dragged him back to Hell and allowed us to remain as wardens of the damned…”

  “He blamed you?”

  “He was furious, but not with us. At least, it hadn’t seemed that way.”

  “Then why kill you?” Tori asks, squinting at Kincaid. “What would he have to gain? All he’s ensuring by killing the seven is that he’ll never have another opportunity to resurface. Without the seven to open the gate, the only beings who could are the archangels, right?”

  Kincaid nods gravely.

  “Then what’s his endgame?” I ask.

  “I don’t know.”

  My nails bite into my palms. “We have to stop him.”

  Kincaid snaps his head up. “No. You will do nothing. I’ll not have you in harm’s way again, Na’vazēm. I will do this alone. If I fail, so be it.”

  “Stubborn ass! You need my help. We have to do something,” I bark. “If he succeeds, there will be celestial war on earth. Millions will die.”

  His eyes darken as his gaze slides from my face. “You forget, Na’vazēm. I am no hero. I would watch this world burn to keep you safe. And I would do it with a smile.”

  The room is stunned into silence at his omission, but none more than me. I open my mouth to reply, but find I can’t. Someone’s hollowed out my insides, shaken up the contents of my mind. Everythin
g’s backwards, and I’m not sure how to put it right again. Or that I even want to.

  Devereaux wanders closer to the table and Kincaid blinks at her as though he forgot she was even there, but she doesn’t notice, her gaze is fixed on me. “Did you learn anything else?”

  She’s looking at me like she already knows the answer, and my stomach turns at the thought of admitting it aloud. It seemed inconsequential at the time, but now, faced with Kincaid and Lady Devereaux, I’m not sure what to say.

  Will they think of me differently?

  It was one thing to have Devereaux speculate about it that night at her cottage in Infernum, but this would only confirm it.

  “Yes,” I admit after a moment. “But it’s not helpful. It doesn’t really even matter.”

  Devereaux looks doubtful as Kincaid rounds the table to me, settling those bright yellow eyes on mine, searching. “What is it?”

  I can’t look at him. “I…I’m not Diablim. Or at least, not entirely. Carver said—”

  “Carver said what?” Kincaid demands and a bolt of alarm races up my spine.

  I swallow hard and wet my dry lips before replying, but drawing it out isn’t helping anything. “I have angel blood,” I admit. “And demon’s blood. Pure, he said. On both sides.”

  “That’s impossible.” Devereaux scoffs.

  “I’m just telling you what he said,” I sling back at her, heat in my cheeks.

  “Angels and demons cannot procreate,” Kincaid confirms. “It’s been so since the dawning of time.”

  I grind my teeth. “I’m just tell you what he told—”

  “Wait,” Kincaid roars, startling me when he grabs me by the arms, snapping my head up to look at him. “When were you born?”

  “What?”

  “When were you born?”

  I tell him the year, barely able to get the syllables past my lips as panic seeps into my every pore.

  “The date,” he hisses.

  “Kincaid!” Tori shouts, rising like she might try to pry his quickly-blackening hands from my body, but I cast her a warning look.

  I manage to wriggle myself out of Kincaid’ bruising grip, giving him a withering look. He sobers when he sees the discoloration on my biceps, falling back into the table.

  “November,” I tell him. “The fourteenth.”

  “She can’t be,” Devereaux whispers.

  Tori gasps and Artemis drops his head into his hands. What are they all understanding that I’m not?

  “Will someone please fucking explain to me what’s happening right now? What don’t I know?”

  “Twenty-three years ago the gates were opened and Lucifer walked the earth,” Devereaux mutters to herself and all the breath is robbed from my lungs. My head spins.

  Kincaid looks at his hands like they must belong to someone else, and when he lifts his gaze to mine again, I see defeat in the ledger of his stare.

  “You’re his daughter.”