Twenty-Three
Ursula
Silas lay unmovingon the floor of my apartment.“Silas?”
Breathing hard, I stared down at him, my emotions a swirling storm inside me.I didn’t want to feel sorry for him, but I couldn’t bear seeing him like this.I crouched and ran my hand over his scalp, over his hacked-off hair.I’d tortured a lot of beings in my life, and all had deserved it.But this?What the angels had done to him?What hisfamilyhad done to him, was hard to stomach.
What the fuck was going on?He did what they wanted, right?Shouldn’t he be in Heaven celebrating?Flying around with his newly returned wings, hand in hand with Rosalind, dreaming about the baby he’d just planted in her womb?
Gently holding his bruised and swollen jaw, I turned his head so he was looking up at me.“Wake the fuck up.”If there was fear in my voice, I refused to acknowledge it.It wasn’t fear, it was anger.I was still angry with him, right?
His eyes slid open, and I was hit by those silver irises.He blinked.“Urs?”he rasped, his voice utterly wrecked.
He reached for me, and I quickly pulled my hand away, like my life depended on it, and as I stared down at him and I felt the ice around my heart begin to slowly melt, I knew it did.I shot to my feet.This changed nothing.He was hurt because he’d fucked up somehow.He’d reaped what he’d sowed.
“You look like shit,” I said.
“F-feel it,” he said and coughed.“You came for me.”
I straightened my spine.“I did, yeah, because I don’t take betrayal lightly.”
“No, that’s not…I didn’t betray you, I…”
I crouched down again, trying and failing to harden my heart.Still, I said the words I needed to, the words that would keep him at arm’s length.“Baby, I brought you here to kill you.”
He didn’t react, just stared up at me, unafraid, maybe even resigned.“You do whatever you have to.If I have to go, I want you to be the one to put me out of my misery.I want to be looking into your beautiful eyes, at that beautiful face, when I take my last breath.”
Oxygen was punched from my lungs, and I grabbed his jaw.“Even now?Even when you’re moments from death, you choose to fuck with me?To try and manipulate me?I underestimated how fucked up you really are.”I leaned closer.“It won’t work, not this time.I fucking despise you, Silas.I feel nothing,” I lied, fighting down the devastation swamping me.
He lifted a trembling hand.“I love you,” he choked out.“I have loved you for three years?—”
“Stop,” I growled out and pulled away again, shooting back to my feet.
“The trial in that dungeon, making you drink the poison, you said I got off lightly.But what you didn’t realize, what you refused to see, was that watching you suffer, being forced to be the one to hurt you,was my trial.”He shook his head.“My biggest fear wasn’t just losing someone I loved, it was losing you.It was you, Ursula.”He took a deep, pain-filled breath.“If killing me is what you need to do, baby, then my life is yours.Take it.”
“You’re trying to get in my head.You’re messing with me to save your own traitorous skin.”
He tried to move and gasped.His eyes rolled back in his head, and he passed out from the pain.
Shoving my fingers in my hair, I paced the room.What the hell was I going to do?I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t kill him, but if I let him leave, if I let him live, he’d know I was as weak and pathetic as he thought I was.I’d fail Lucifer all over again.
A knock at the door had me spinning toward it.
“Urs?”Lucifer called.“Need you to let me in, sweetness.”
Zenon had called him.Fuck.I didn’t want to.I didn’t want Lucifer to see how low I’d sunk, but he’d already know.He probably saw this coming, the fall of his most relentless warrior.I had no choice.
I opened the door, and his gaze slid from me to Silas passed out on the floor.“Ouch,” he said as he strode over to him.“I know how that feels.Falling sure as fuck doesn’t tickle.Poor fucker’s been through it twice.Uriel wasn’t fucking around.These scars, his hair…yeah, he won’t ever be going back.”He looked up at me.“Are you going to kill him?”
I crossed my arms.“Yes…maybe.”
He nodded slowly.“Not really fair to kill a male while he’s all fucked up like this, though.”
“I guess,” I said and released a shaky breath.
He turned fully, so he was facing me.“If killing him means that much to you, do it, but don’t do it for my sake.”
“He screwed you over.”