Page 34 of To Crave Deeply
By the time Rae and I got to the kitchen, Jasper and Fenris were nowhere to be found. That was odd; where had they gone? We’d clearly been too slow because Saskia wasn’t there, either. Dang it. Now I’d just have to wait until they’d all got back from wherever it was they’d disappeared to. I was hoping that whatever it was would distract me from my internal debate about how much of a clusterfuck my life was.
My stomach chose that moment to let out an obscenely loud grumble.
“Damn girl, when was the last time you ate?”
I looked over at my best friend and cringed. I didn’t even know what fucking day of the week it was, let alone when I last ate. “Um… yesterday maybe?”
Rae snorted. “You’ve got no clue, have you?”
She knew me too well.
“Right. Sit down and let me see what I can find.”
I did as I was told. The look she had given me made me fear the reprimand from her if I didn’t do as she bid. And now I knew that she was a witch, I feared her reprimand might be a little bit more on the creative side.
I still couldn’t believe that I’d worked alongside her in a bar for years and never known she was a witch. She’d been sent to keep an eye on me by de Santis to see whether any of my demon traits showed up, but they hadn’t made an appearance until I’d been brought to the Conclave. Then, Lucifer had shown up in my dreams, masquerading as some high-class demon, and we’d been bound together for eternity.
The mark on my chest prickled. It was itchy, almost like it knew something was wrong. The moment I’d died on that ballroom floor, the connection between us had changed. Lucifer and I were bound so that if one died, so did the other.
I cast my eyes down to the mark that I now saw as part of me, the mark that was the union of Lucifer and me. Two crescent moons faced each other, one slightly larger than the other, and they were surrounded by a collection of stars that formed the constellation Orion. I smiled wistfully as I remembered the name I had chosen when Lucifer had refused to give me his name. When we’d first met, his charm and persona had been so bright and wondrous that I’d named him after one of the brightest constellations in the sky, Orion.
It was only after I’d named him did this old magic come into play, binding us together heart and soul. The Enochian symbols that Levi had managed to translate read: A heart entwined, A soul combined, Together lives as One. We literally couldn’t exist without the other, which meant that when my soul had been claimed by Camael and his stupid sword, Lucifer had fallen into some sort of coma. I hadn’t completely died, so neither had he. But I wasn’t alive, either, and I had no idea what this magic was doing to keep him alive, or if he would even be able to stay alive much longer.
I hadn’t heard anything from him since that moment when Iveri was trying to destroy my soul when I’d returned from the afterlife. He’d sounded lost and confused and all I wanted to do was go to him. I knew Torsten had gone to Hell to visit him, and I was aching to find out what was happening. I needed to know what was going on. I felt all at sea, adrift in a storm and unsure of which direction to go.
“Here you go,” Rae said musically as she dropped a plateful of food in front of me, dragging me from my inner turmoil.
My mouth watered. I hadn’t realised how hungry I was until I saw the collection of delectable morsels on the plate in front of me. I moaned at the sight of it.
Rae let out a chuckle as she sat down opposite me on the island. “Babe, it’s just a sandwich.”
“But it looks so good.”
“You must be starving.”
I took a bite and moaned. Food had never tasted so good. I literally inhaled the sandwich at an alarming rate. The indigestion later would be totally worth it.
I’d just finished licking the crumbs off my fingers, and was almost debating the pros and cons to licking the plate clean like a savage, when Rae asked me a question I had no clue how to answer.
“What’s dying like?”
I mean, where do you even begin to answer that?
“Sorry. Ignore me. I shouldn’t have asked that. It was stupid.” She was flustered, but I suppose that to know what awaited you on the other side was only natural. Everybody feared death. Well, I feared it a little less now, but it was still scary as fuck.
“I imagine it’s a different experience for everyone,” I murmured, my voice unsteady as I thought back to everything I went through. “Dying for me was quiet. The pain was gone, and all that was left was silence and a sense that, for a moment, even though I knew I was dead, everything was going to be okay. Then there was a pop, and it felt like my soul was being jerked and pulled on a rope. I woke up in the afterlife with a Southern Belle patting my translucent hand and telling me everything was going to be okay. That was probably the weirdest thing about it. Oh, and I met your grandmother.”
“Really?” she asked sceptically.
“Yeah, she scared the shit out of me. She looked like a severe version of you, and she was not impressed with your lack of a coven.”
“That sounds like Sybil.” She grinned widely at me. “She was always a bit of a tough cookie.”
“She said you needed to buck up your ideas and start your own coven if you weren’t going to join one. She thinks you’re a rebel.”
Her grin widened and she let out a chortle. “I am a rebel, and proud to be so. We Tramareons are not rule followers and Sybil was one of the worst. Did you know she once hexed her entire coven because they wouldn’t let her dabble in necromancy? And another time, she turned this one witch into a toad because she’d called Sybil a craven, sour-faced harpy. We are not supposed to turn anyone into toads, even if they deserve it.”
I laughed at the image Rae’s words conjured in my mind. I could definitely imagine Sybil doing that just because someone rubbed her the wrong way. I certainly wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of her.
