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“Yes.”
“So…” She hesitated over her thoughts. “This would have all been part of her plan, no? I mean, why Eden? I remember seeing the book there. It was like it called to me from the shelf. I was content with the Ouiji board under my arm and a bottle of wine in my tote and as I stood there in line it was like… I don’t know. A constant drum that banged, begging me to hear it. To go to the book.” Her eyes lifted, catching mine. “Why? She had to know I would buy the book. That I would take it to Eden’s and we would read from it. That Eden would be the one who…” She exhaled, her eyes dropping again.
“The plans of witches are usually meticulous.” In the beginning I hadn’t considered that Eden was meant to be a part of this plan the whole time. My thoughts were short-sighted. I had thought of her merely as a happenstance. Someone who was thrown into the thrall of my life. A blank piece that had been undecided until it was. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure. If the book was a part of Vindictia’s plan, Eden may have always been the piece that would set it all in motion.
Why Eden?
I dropped my head as thoughts danced in my mind.
Fear rippled through my chest, its bitterness filling my mouth with bile. It wasn’t mine. My fear was more volatile. This was hers.
We were linked. We had been from the moment she became my wife, long before she opened the box and set the hidden parts of me loose. Was that the will of the key? Or was it more? Did who held the key matter?
My brow dropped in thought.
There was so much I didn’t know. I had been foolish enough to believe I didn’t care about the demonic parts of me that I never dared to use or want for. That box was a myth to me in the way I pushed it into the back of my mind. A figment of lore that would never step foot into my life. And yet it had.
The ornate key illuminated under the flesh of her chest was a sight locked in my mind.
Was Eden the one always meant to hold my key?
“Demons are powerful beings. Unlike the word in your lord books, we are not sin eaters or tempters. We live in our own world, much like this one and thoughts of beings like you seldom cross our minds. We don’t care about you… egotistical beings that think all of creation revolves around them. Nonsense.” I scoffed at the very thought. “A long time ago, summonings were created. It was likely a retaliation of some kind. A punishment we all have to bear for the deeds of few. This is my fourth time here. Summoned by foolish mortals who know nothing but think they know everything.”
Imani rolled her eyes but it was Alicia who spoke up. “What about witches? Do they live in the same world as you?”
“There is crossover. A sort of bridge between our world and theirs.”
She considered my answer. “And us? What are we to them?”
I lifted my shoulders. “I never thought to ask. This world has never been one I had any interest in.”
“Until Eden,” Lulu said slowly.
“Until Eden,” I confirmed, voice low. I lifted my head, looking at each of them in turn. “One thing you believe is a twisted truth of our reality. Demons have no hearts, at least not in our chests. The stories say it’s because with our hearts we are too powerful, so they exist separately from us until we are mated. Then that being becomes the keeper. Eden is my keeper. Whatever Vindictia wants from Eden it has to be because of that.”
“Wait… so… there’s no heart in your chest right now?” Olivia’s eyes hovered over the space on my chest where a heart should live beneath.
“No.”
“Then… where is it?” she asked.
I said nothing. In truth, I didn’t know for sure.
Immortal beings like demons weren’t vulnerable in the way so many others were, our hearts were almost impenetrable things. Mated to a mortal, a being that could be killed by the weather of this world, a harsh wind that carried them away, my heart could become her armour.
My silence made them exchange glances.
“Asmodeus,” Lulu urged lightly. “Will it keep her safe?”
“Yes.” Hopefully.
Eden had opened the box and let it out. I felt it. Felt the moment it was suddenly freed and I was hit with everything all at once. Her feelings, the ones I had already been battling against, surged into me with a force that should have been my undoing but had somehow embodied me. They found home in my chest and I gladly welcomed them on the cusp of our binding. Those feelings… they had to hint to where she placed it. Where she unknowingly laid my heart. It had been put in a place where she could constantly pour her emotions into me. Where each beat of her heart echoed into it. Where each crack ran its length through her heart before carving at my own.
My heart would keep her safe… because if I was right, it was a shield wrapped around her own. A cocoon of my power sat inside her chest just beneath the key.
At least that was what I had to hope. I had to hope with everything I was that Eden put my heart somewhere it would keep her safe. I had to hope it was right where it was supposed to be.
Inside my wife.
