“You think you are the only one held here against her will? My eyes see no real sunlight, my lips taste no real food. I smell only brimstone and rot. I live off of corrupted souls.”
He held his arms up and gestured around him. When he faced me again, something incredibly tragic entered his features. “This has been my prison for as long as I can remember.
“But now that you’re here, that all will change.”
He harvested the dead and I harvested the living.
I placed my fingers to my temples and rubbed. This entire time I hadn’t realized … All that power. I thought it came for free. I should’ve known better. Everyone pays a tithe. Especially me.
I dropped my hands. A long time ago Andre told me that the devil did all that he did for one sole purpose.
Power.
My gaze slowly lifted to his. “What will you do with all that power?”
He cocked his head. “Isn’t it obvious? We take over other realms, one by one. Earth first,” he said, sauntering to me, “because that one’s the most powerful and the most corrupt. And now it’s accessible.
“Limbo will fall shortly after that. Then the Otherworld—I’ve already begun to claim it, but this will be the proverbial nail in its coffin. The fae are delightfully nasty things; it will be nearly effortless to bring their world into the fold. And eventually … the Celestial Plane. Heaven.”
Horror, true earth-shattering horror, dawned on me.
He meant to take over every world in existence, and I was the key to them all.
Chapter 26
Gabrielle
I was back.
The earth spit me out into snow, and I dug my hands in it. The devil wanted this place, and he would use me to get it.
World domination. Excuse me, worlds domination. That was his end game.
A shudder worked its way through my body. Now that I was here, an increasingly large part of me wanted to see his plans actualized. It was the same part of me that fed off of suffering.
However, knowing how my power worked allowed me to better control it, and through it, my tumultuous emotions.
The devil had shared his secrets, but I hadn’t shared mine. I didn’t dare think about them. My mind was no longer a safe place for even me to linger.
But I was finally ready to act on those secrets.
Well, as soon as I made it back to civilization, I thought as I took in my surroundings. Snowcapped mountains jutted up around me. I saw no houses, no streets, no signs of life—other than frost covered grass. And that looked pretty dead to me too.
I was dusting snow and dirt off myself when I heard the hiss of breath. A moment ago, where there’d been empty space, my friends and Andre now stood. And Andre … Andre’s heart was breaking, I could see it on his face.
He must’ve smelled the devil on me or seen my sins in my expression.
He stepped forward, then fell to a knee, like his legs could no longer support him. The weaponry strapped to his body clinked as he did so. “What did he do to you?”
I wasn’t going to get a chance to see that smile of his before I confessed. I stumbled over to him, kneeling in the snow in front of him. We were close, but we weren’t touching.
Andre was having none of that. He scooped me up around the waist and pulled me close to him.
Somehow this was even worse. To be held in his arms while I confessed.
His nostrils flared at the smell of my guilt and—hopefully—my remorse.
I glanced at my friends. They were now going to witness this conversation. Oliver looked like he wanted a bag of popcorn.
I exhaled a shaky breath. “The devil and I … did things.”
“What things.” Andre’s voice was flat, but I could see the world breaking in his eyes.
How to explain the sensation of letting the devil in. It hadn’t felt like it did with Andre, this warm presence that was a part of me. The devil staged an aggressive takeover. He’d seized my heart and decided to occupy it. I’d lost myself in the process, by the time I surfaced I’d found myself in an intimate situation with him.
Andre squeezed me tightly and shook his head. “Forget it. It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters,” I whispered.
“No, it doesn’t. What matters is how you felt about it, and how you feel about me.”
At his words, bloody tears dripped down my face. “I can’t fight him off, Andre. He ordered me to be held down and bled and not twenty-four hours later, I allowed him to get close to me.” Admitting that hurt something fierce. “How do I feel about it? Disgusted. Horrible. Evil.”
“Enough.” Andre’s voice cut through the night.
My mouth snapped shut.
“Do you love me?” he asked.
I swallowed thickly and looked away.
“Do you love me?” he repeated, turning my head to face him.
“With everything that is good in me, yes,” I said.
Most of the pain in his eyes seeped away at that. “That is all I need, Gabrielle. Through thick or thin, I am yours.”
I searched his face. My heart was thawing, my mind was disbelieving. “You’re serious,” I said.