Page 82 of The Shadow Sanctum

Dante.

ParadiseLost

Blah blah blah blah blah, we go through the bookshelf and my spinning mind.

I wipe my hand across my jaw and take another pause.

Think, you fucking bastard.

Think.

“How were you planning on contacting the outside before?” I growl while my fingers fly over anything my conscious mind can pull. It’d be easier if I had more time to think. “Did you even have a fucking plan?”

“I have a guy who’s coming in five days with three rounds of antibiotics. He’s going to parachute it over the fence on the south side… I have his information, but only as a backup. I wasn’t supposed to need it.”

I pause and turn to look at him. “Three rounds?”

He flicks a hand like it’s obvious. “You, me, and Liberty.”

My brows lift, and for a second we don’t have, I’m caught off guard.

He was prepared to save my life. Even before…

He’s always been the better friend, hasn’t he?

I lean back in the chair and blow out a long breath, roaming my gaze around the room but not really seeing anything. I’m at a loss, and I need to think.

It’s deeper than books and music. And of course it is.

It’s an easy guess for Luna, but Aurelius has lived. He’s loved. He’s lost.

My password was simple to guess, if you knew me. It was my mother’s name.

So who is Aurelius’s person? Who⁠—

My gaze catches on the only photograph in the study, the one frame on the shelf. A little girl with skin as white as snow. Small, fragile, smiling like she didn’t yet know the hell was coming for her. My chest pulls tight.

Jesus Christ.

Angel hovers over me, restless. “If you’re stumped, switch me.”

I type the word. L-u-n-a.

The trackpad buzzes with rejection. Wrong.

My jaw flexes. I glance at the photo again, then type it in lowercase. With letters disguised as symbols. With what I’m guessing is her birth year.

Nothing.

But then…

My brow furrows while I type in the name they gave her at birth. The name he gave her. Daemonium. Demon.

The screen unlocks with a soft chime. Folders and tabs spill open, already waiting.

Angel exhales like he’s been drowning. “Oh, thank god…” He presses his palms to his knees as relief breaks through panic.

But it doesn’t so much as touch me. My stomach drops through the floor.