She shrugged, her expression shifting between exhaustion and apprehension. “I don’t know where my head is. We’ve been trying for this very scenario all this time, but now things are different. Lucifer isn’t our adversary, he’s our?—”
“If you say ally, we’re going to need access to a dictionary. That man is not our ally.”
Merri cut me a razor-sharp look at my interruption. I held up my hands in assent.
“He’s part of this group now. There’s no way to deny it. I can’t choose between any of you, including him. It’s all of you or none.”
“None isn’t an option,” Grim was quick to say, shadows erupting out of him.
“Duh. That wasn’t a real option, Grimsby,” Sin said, before second-guessing himself and asking, “Right, kitten?”
She nodded, stepping into Sin’s arms to reassure him in the best way she could. All of us loved touching her, but Sin thrived on physical connection. He visibly relaxed as soon as she buried her face in his chest, his fingers stroking her hair and lips pressing against her crown.
“What if it’s the antichrist?” she asked, voice small but the question looming large.
There was a beat of silence as we all weighed our various answers.
Malice surprised me by being the first to speak. “We’ve always been okay with the world’s eventual end. So really it just comes down to finding a safe place to ride it out.”
“Do you have one in mind?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Hell seems like the most obvious bet. If Lucifer really is part of this group now—with it being his realm and ultimately being unaffected by what happens to Earth—he would ensure our safety.”
“You’re forgetting something,” I said.
“What?”
“The horsewomen aren’t just going to step aside and let Lucifer keep his throne. The antichrist will ensure his apocalypse, but now that they’ve shown their cards, it's obvious they have no intention of letting him rule. Which means hell will be every bit as much of a battleground as Earth.”
Grim huffed. “We’re talking in circles. Hell will not be safe, nor will Earth. Heaven isn’t an option either. It will be the first thing to be obliterated once the apocalypse is completed.”
“There are other realms. Ravenndel, the underworld, Novasgard,” Sin offered.
“What makes you think we’ll be welcome in any of them?” I asked. “They don’t have any loyalty to us.”
“Or owe us any favors,” Grim added.
“I think you guys are missing the bigger picture. We can’t just fuck off and abandon the rest of humanity,” Merri said.
The four of us exchanged glances. We were far less concerned with humanity than she was, but she still saw herself as part of them.
“All we care about is you and the baby,” I told her.
She made a face. “I’m sure that’s supposed to sound very romantic. And it sort of does, butIcare about humanity.”
Malice huffed out a breath. “Which means we have to as well.”
“Right.”
“Then it looks like we’re back to the drawing board, as it were,” Grim grumbled.
“Does anyone have any other useful solutions? So far we have death, or death.” Sin’s frustrated tone matched exactly how I was feeling.
“Did someone say death? That is one of my special interests,” Lucifer announced as he sauntered into the suite without an invite.
I glanced at Grim, my body tensed and instinctively ready for an altercation. The fallen angel was our enemy until very recently; I couldn’t help my reaction to him. It was very clearly the same for the others, the temperature in the room dropping several degrees as everyone except Merri glared at him.
“What? Did I interrupt?” he asked, entirely unfazed.