“I’ve been planning my war and my great escape for millennia. I knew there’d be costs—I’d expected pain, sacrifice. I thought it would be physical. I hadn’t expected you. I hadn’t planned on watching you take my pain and making those sacrifices for me.
“More than anything else, I hadn’t planned on my pain and sacrifice being emotional. I hadn’t expected it to hurt here,” he touched his chest, “where I can’t so easily heal myself.”
I didn’t breathe.
The Deceiver had been deceived. He hadn’t planned on using me to build his army on earth; he’d just improvised. He also hadn’t planned to care about me, but through our connection he’d been forced to.
What had he said? He’d let the enemy in?
I stared up at him as realization set in.
Of course. Of course.
Soulmates were bonded pairs. Love, among other things, passed through that connection. And from all that I gathered, God and love were synonymous.
The devil had let his enemy in.
“Yes,” he said, reading me, “you finally understand the chink in my armor.”
“Why did you take me if you knew this?” I asked.
He pushed himself to his feet and extended a hand to me. I hesitated.
“Little bird, for once this really isn’t a trap. I have answers for you. Take my hand.”
Though I was loathe to touch him, I did so, grasping his hand. He hauled me up.
We left our room. “The reason I took you, despite the risks, is really quite simple: you give me access to Earth.”
“Once upon a time, there were three fates.” The devil and I walked through the castle gardens. I hadn’t spent much time here, so close to where all those screaming souls were. The sound of so much agony chaffed against my spirit—and it was already so downtrodden.
The devil called this place the glass garden, and I understood why. Trees, bushes, and flowers were hewn from obsidian. They seemed to grow straight out of the lava rock beneath us, so lifelike I could see minuscule veins on the leaves, and rough bark on tree trunks.
I touched the petal of a flower we passed. It felt … alive. This was a strange, disturbingly beautiful place.
I withdrew my trembling hand. I was putting myself back together piece-by-piece after last night, but I was still shaken by all that had happened.
“These three fates sought to appease the old gods,” the devil continued. “So they formed husbands and wives for them. One of those gods was me.”
He snapped off a nearby rose. “You were to be my gift.”
Ah, the good ol’ days when women could be given like presents.
“Some of the other gods had received husbands and wives, and some had married each other. Each union diluted the power of the gods—one pie, too many pieces. They fell, and the remaining gods claimed their power. I saw what these marriages did, and I knew I did not want you.”
The feeling was mutual.
Even as I thought that, my connection tugged me closer to the devil.
“Initially,” he clarified, picking off the rose’s obsidian thorns one by one and tossing them to the side. “Don’t misunderstand—I very much liked the idea of my own woman—someone made specifically for me who would spend eternity at my side—but I was ambitious, and I wanted to share my power with no one.
“But the fates promised me that my wife would make me powerful, that she wouldn’t lead to my destruction like the wives of so many other gods had. And this place …” The devil surveyed our surroundings. I followed his gaze. Beyond the obsidian hedge that bordered the lush garden I could see the tips of flames reach high into the sky. Its brightness reached far, but it couldn’t drive away a darkness above it. “This place can make even a god go mad, if left alone for long enough.”
Methinks that was exactly what happened.
He led me to a dark stone bench, and we sat down, his body angled towards mine. “They gave me a glimpse of you.” He reached out to touch my hair. “And I was gone. You’d taken me completely. They made me a mate who could unearth who I once was, before time and power and loneliness warped me into this.”
“This is not just about you,” I said.
Sure, somewhere in that twisted form of him, there was a kernel of love, and I had the ability to lure it out of him. My heart ached with the need. But what if he broke me first?
There was no use rehashing what happened to me last night. He knew about it, and he had to realize how close he’d already come to cracking my mind.
“I would never break you,” he said.
“Stop reading my thoughts.”
“I cannot. You were made for me. That is how much a part of me you are.”
He rolled the stem of the glass rose in his hand. “I’ve always believed thorns rather than flowers incentivized people.” He took my hand and pressed the rose into it, curling my fingers around it. “Thorns haven’t worked with you. I’m trying flowers.”
I stood, holding the strange flower in my hand. “I don’t want this.” I stared down at the obsidian rose in my hand, then looked up at him. “I don’t want you.”