Page 182 of Hell Bound

“Impossible.”

Lilith climbed off my lap, circling around me. She reached out and ran her fingers over something.

It looked exactly the way she used to touch my wings… when she’d stroke the feathers, admiring the softness.

My concern was growing. Without a healer, whatever was happening to her could be irreversible before we ever had a chance to stop it.

“There’s something wrong with them, though.” Lilith cocked her head, musing over the wings that certainlyweren’tfucking there because I couldn’t fuckingfeelthem. “There’s… little gold chains. Draped all over them and glowing.”

My breath caught in my throat.

“I don’t know what it is, but…” Lilith came around and crouched next to me, her frown becoming a scowl as she puzzled over it. “It feels like they’re calling to me. I don’t know how else to describe it.”

She reached out again and touched thin air behind my back, but this time she closed her eyes.

The inner fire of her hair flared a brilliant red. I saw a burst of light from her hand, a thousand thin, golden chains flying away from her hands, snapping and breaking amidst bursts of flame—

And a sudden, familiar weight dropped onto my back and shoulders.

I could barely breathe. Every sense was focused on the strained muscles of my back, the weight that hadn’t been there seconds ago…

On the wide sweep of pitch-black wings spreading from my shoulder blades.

Lilith exhaled slowly, her eyes now wide. Her hand was trembling.

“Oh my god, I just did that.” She sank to her knees, staring at the black feathers sweeping the surrounding ground.

An emotion I couldn’t name had risen within me.

From the moment they had burned away, falling to ash on the floor as the wolf exploded from within me, I’d thought this essential part of myself was lost forever.

And all she’d done was broken Asmodeus’s chains and revealed them again, as if they’d never been truly gone at all… only waiting.

Forher.

I stood up slowly, my sense of center mass feeling unusual and unbalanced, my wings dragging behind me.

It was slow, but as I strained muscles long disused, my wings slowly began to respond. I raised them, each feather trembling from the effort, and lowered them again.

They were real. I was barely breathing as I managed to draw them up and tuck them behind my back, the way all Fallen held their wings when they weren’t flying.

This changed everything. As long as we left Infernal Court territory, if I could strengthen them… I could bring Lilith anywhere.

Even back to the Fallen Court, where I could shelter her with the might of my own people behind me.

We had a fighting chance now, and all because of her power.

“Lucifer?” Lilith’s voice was shaking a little. She looked up at me, her eyes reflecting the light glowing in her hair. “Talk to me.”

I couldn’t stop myself from unfurling my wings again. Refolding them.

Unfurling.

Refolding.

“Lucifer, I swear, if I have to ask you to tell me what’s going on in thereone more time—”

I let my wings drop, lunging forward and scooping her up.

---