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“You must be so thrilled,” Bifiel continued snidely, oblivious to my turmoil, “to be provided with your own suite now. I can’t believe I’ll be stuck here while you get to move out.”
“Where is he?” I rasped, lifting my gaze to her again. “The demon I caught. Where did they take him?”
“How should I know?” she bit out. “Not like I’m important enough to be told. I barely even found out the reason for your sudden promotion. As for the demon scum, wherever he is, I hope he rots. Nasty spawn of evil.” Her lip curled.
I was up on my feet, my hand around her throat, before she could blink. “Get the fuck out,” I growled.
Her fingers clawed at my hand, her eyes going wide. “But this is my room!”
With a snarl, I released my wings, along with a pulse of power through the hand holding her.
Bifiel squealed.
I leaned in, baring my teeth. “Seeing as I outrank you, virtue, I’d think it best that you heed my command. Leave.”
I shook her once, eliciting a gurgle, and then I shoved her toward the door.
Bifiel stumbled out and ran as if a hellhound snapped at her heels.
Hellhound… My heart pinched as I thought of Vengeance, and my aggressive bravado deflated. I remembered how she’d suffered during those days I’d been stuck in Lucifer’s palace, how even just a short absence like that had driven her to howling madness. I clutched my chest, my lip trembling. Eight years ago, I’d left her there in Hell, guarding my body…and I’d never come back.
Did she think I’d simply abandoned her? How long had she howled for me to return?
Through the tears swimming in my eyes, I saw the chest of drawers in the corner, and I sucked in a breath as it hit me. I ran over to it, yanked out the bottom-most drawer, and pulled out the box with shaking hands. Opening it, I lifted the tunic out, a sob catching in my throat at the sight of it…at the memory—finally—of whom this belonged to.
My fingers glided over the black material, my heart aching.
I remembered how he’d put this on. Back in his mansion in Hell, in our bedroom, just before we’d left to meet Lilith to go to Earth. I’d pulled him down for a kiss with my fingers hooked into the collar of this tunic. Had petted his chest over the fabric, smoothing out wrinkles.
Azazel.
That sob finally broke free. It hurt, burning through my lungs and my throat, hot tears streaming down my face. I wept with gasping, painful sobs, burying my face in his tunic that had long since ceased to smell like him. Wept into the one thing he’d given me to cling to in my new life, like a token of his intention to come for me.
And he’d come.
He’d done the impossible, had infiltrated Heaven—how?—risking life and limb for the chance to see me, to hopefully trigger my memories to return. He’d spent eight years setting this up, with undoubtedly single-minded focus and teeth-gritting determination. I knew him, knew that he would have pursued this goal with the kind of fierce ambition that could break worlds.
Only for everything to come crashing down, that ambition of his breaking him.
He’d risked it all, and he’d lost.
My hands crushed the tunic. Desolation swept through me, pulling me unerringly into an abyss of darkness.
No. He wasn’t lost yet. He’d been caught, but he was still alive. I knew enough about Heaven’s protocols and politics to be sure they wouldn’t immediately kill him.
First, they’d try to get information out of him. They’d need to determine whether he’d been sent by Hell or had acted on his own, because the answer to that question would decide if this was a singular instance of a rogue demon that could be handled without making a fuss or if it was an official incident that would threaten the truce between Heaven and Hell.
Not to mention they’d need to figure out how he’d been able to enter Heaven in the first place, a feat that should have been impossible for a demon. The gates wouldn’t let anyone pass who wasn’t an angel?—
My eyes widened as understanding struck me.
His angel heritage. I had no idea how, but he must have used it to fool the gates into letting him pass.
And thinking back to how he’d appeared to me as Aziel…there hadn’t even been a hint of his demon nature. All I’d felt from him was angelic energy.
So, clearly, using his angel side had done the trick to get him into Heaven.
Well, I knew that and he knew that, but unless the angels in charge of his arrest and trial got wise to the fact that he was half angel, they’d assume they had a huge security leak on their hands that might be taken advantage of by other demons in the future. As far as they knew, he might just be the vanguard, performing a trial run of this new way to invade Heaven. And once he was successful, the flaw in Heaven’s defenses could then be used by Hell to send an army.
