Page 4 of The Cursed

“The plans can fucking wait,” I snarled, leaving the archdemons to wreak whatever havoc they wished upon the Coven. None of them mattered. None ofitmattered.

Only the witch in my arms.

3

WILLOW

One moment, there was only darkness. Only a hollow where light had once been. The vague vestiges of flames burned the back of my eyelids, taunting and teasing me as if my spirit readied itself for the pyre.

Then there was air, sharp and painful as it filled my lungs. My eyes flung open as I drew in a ragged gasp, sitting up so suddenly that my vision swam with dizziness. My lungs burned with the air that filled them, as if they’d been frozen in time, waiting for me to wake.

My mind was a mess, a maze I couldn’t find my way out of. My chest heaved with exertion as if I’d just run a mile; my breathing labored in the panic that consumed me. My hand crept toward my throat, grasping the skin there as I fought to remember how I’d come to be in Gray’s bed.

The moment my fingers touched my skin, the crack of my neck snapping burst through my memory. The darkness that came after and then the complete and blinding pain that overwhelmed my body.

I scrambled from the bed, getting tangled in the blankets as I flung my legs over the edge. Falling to the floor with a thump, I fought to free myself from the distinctive mess of them in my panic. Kicking and clawing at them as I shook my head from side to side, I crawled toward the bathroom on the other side of Gray’s room.

“Willow!” he yelled, but I couldn’t bear to turn my eyes to him. I couldn’t stand to look at him even as I felt him step into the open doorway to his private living area. I grimaced as I tried to stand, resisting the urge to scream when I couldn’t seem to get my legs out of the fucking blanket.

My chest throbbed with pain, and I touched my palm to it as a strangled noise clawed its way up my throat.

Gray moved, carefully avoiding my legs as he removed the blanket and dropped it on the bed. My legs were bare on the floor, only a black nightgown covering my intimate areas as I squeezed my thighs together. He lowered himself beside me, sitting on his haunches as his face came into view. “You’re alright,” he said softly, his voice deceptive and soothing. It called to me like the softest melody, a teasing taunt of magic that hadn’t been there in his Vessel form.

Sin wrapped up in skin, a body meant for luring humans to a place of endless suffering.

Tears stung my eyes at the notes of it that still reminded me of the man I’d known, of the one I’d somehow, foolishly, allowed to deceive me into falling in love with him.

The man who had never even existed in the first place.

I wrapped my arms around my stomach, my mind a whirlwind. I couldn’t make sense of all that had happened. I couldn’t understand the implications of what he’d done, of howlonghe’d been planning this.

“How did I get here?” I asked, swallowing as I pinched my eyes closed. I wouldn’t have willingly come to his bed, not after everything he’d done. There was a gap in my memory where I couldn’t remember anything.

I’d opened the seal and put Gray back into Lucifer’s body, but there was very little after that. “You need to rest,” Gray said, reaching forward to slip his hand beneath the curtain of my hair. His fingers brushed against my skin first. Then his palm cupped my jaw as he turned me to face him. His golden eyes shimmered as he stared down at me, his thumb brushing against my skin in a soft caress.

The sound of my neck cracking again pulsed through my mind, sending me scrambling back away from the devil himself.

I drew in a deep, shuddering breath, trying to quell the rising nausea in my stomach that came with the realization.

“I died,” I said, my voice barely a whisper as I stared at Gray, atLucifer. I forced myself to think, giving him the name he’d always owned. Separating the being who stood before me from the one I’d thought I’d known.

“Briefly,” he said, as if that absolved him of any guilt. His demon snapped my neck, taking me from the world I’d barely even gotten to see. But the acknowledgement was enough to realize that he’d done something even worse to bring me back.

“What did you do?” I asked, raising my hand to cover my mouth as my nausea worsened.

“Come back to bed, love. Your body needs more rest,” he said, ignoring the question entirely.

I groaned, getting my feet underneath me and rushing for the bathroom as guilt struck me in the chest that was already throbbing. My legs slipped beneath me, as if they weren’t my own. There was something sooffabout the body that had always been mine, something so strange about what I’d always called my home on this plane.

“Willow,” Gray repeated, following after me with slow, measured steps. He wrapped his arms around my waist, helping me get my balance as he brought me to the bathroom and let me drop to my knees in front of the toilet just in time for my stomach to purge itself.

Soft, gentle fingers coaxed my hair back from the sides of my face and from where it threatened to fall forward, gathering it into his grip at the nape of my neck as I vomited. “You’re alright,” he murmured, and I wondered if the words were more to convince me of it, or himself.

My stomach continued heaving long after I’d finished vomiting, my body seizing as it tried to expel what was no longer there. I raised my hand, wiping my mouth with the back of it before placing a hand on each side of the toilet and rising to my feet weakly. Flushing the contents down, I tried not to panic at the sight of the red liquid filling the toilet and moved to the sink to furiously rinse out my mouth.

“Don’t worry, Witchling. It’s not your blood,” Gray said, ever helpful as the sink stained with pink. As if vomiting blood was my biggest worry right now.

The reflection I saw in the mirror when I raised my gaze finally looked exactly as I remembered, as if there was no sign of the ways I’d changed so drastically. The only jarring difference rested on my chest, at the top of my cleavage, where a black circle stained my skin. Tendrils of darkness bled out from the center, carving through my skin like cracks in a windowpane that hadn’t yet shattered.

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