Chapter Twenty-Two

 

 

 

After Lucifer had left them, all of Rome became a madhouse. Medical workers, authorities, locals and tourists flocked to and from the ruins of the Colosseum in a blind panic. Had the pandemonium been in full swing the entire time Lilith’s army had laid siege? Invi didn’t know. She felt she was wandering in a daze through a land that looked like the one she knew, but came equipped with different rules. The humans outside had to have been in a panic—nothing like this had ever occurred in the modern world.

Or what was left of the modern world.

The bodies of the fallen Hell Demons had vanished. A bit of magic, most likely, on the devil’s part. That much provided a cold measure of comfort. If Lucifer didn’t want to leave evidence behind, he hadn’t fully given up on Earth.

Given up on Earth. The concept was too much for her tired brain to dissect.

The others filed out rather quickly following Lucifer’s departure, though Invi wasn’t sure whether this was out of obedience or a desire to avoid public scrutiny. She’d never known the devil to give an order that no one contested, so to see her brothers and sisters and extended family pop off without a word left her feeling exposed and vulnerable.

Another in a long line of firsts.

Then it was her turn. Her turn to leave the world behind, and everything in it.

Everything including Roman.

Goddammit.

The second they were alone, Invi turned to her Guardian and offered him a watery smile. “Come on,” she said, extending a hand.

He frowned, then reached for her. “Where are we going?”

“Back where you belong.”

She closed her eyes, then willed them back to where this had begun, or as near it as she could manage. While the Sins couldn’t just manifest beside the Seal itself, she could at least take him to the caverns that networked around it.

Though when she opened her eyes, she found she’d been mistaken. Perhaps the rules changed once a Seal had opened, for that was where they stood. At a scene much the same as the one she’d left in New York. Slabs of shattered rock amid fallen rubble. The golden Seal, ornate in design and marked with her native language, deceptively at rest. Rusted brown blood stained its elaborate carvings. The abyss in the center, the pathway to Hell, was quiet, black and endless. A gateway now for any creature to come through.

Invi seemed to recall talk of setting up extra security measures at all the opened Seals to prevent an overflow of demons below from escaping notice. She saw no such measures in place now, and wasn’t sure what to make of that. Perhaps she wasn’t meant to see them…or perhaps Hell’s resources were otherwise engaged. No sense trying to protect the world if they couldn’t save it.

Invi’s heart began to gallop, her mind a storm of uncertainty, torn in a thousand directions. A part of her wanted badly to go with Campbell—the same part that knew she would never shake the image of him strewn across the ground with his side torn out.

Another part of her was pissed that Lucifer was shutting them out of the fight. For as much as Hell was home, Earth was their birthright. Given the choice between the two, Invi would set up camp Earthside any day, and she knew she wasn’t the only one. None of the Sins liked being cooped up in Hell, and avoided it whenever possible.

Earth might be Lucifer and Big J’s pet project, but it was where Invi belonged. To not throw her weight behind the battle for its survival left her feeling stripped and weak.

She also wasn’t ready to admit how badly she didn’t want to say goodbye to Roman. It was stupid, she knew, and her strangled emotions were likely the result of her overtired brain not knowing how to respond to everything else that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.

Twenty-four hours. She’d barely known Roman for a day. Not nearly enough to justify the tightening in her gut when she thought of leaving him on doomed soil as she returned to the comforts of home. He wasn’t anything to her—not really. When all was said and done, and despite what she’d told herself, he’d been the guy she’d taken to bed because she didn’t want to think anymore.

She wasn’t supposed to feel. By all means, she shouldn’t.

Invi pursed her lips. “Umm… I don’t know what to say here.”

When she looked up, she found Roman staring at the opened Seal, his expression stony.

“I don’t want to leave it like this,” she continued.

“Then don’t,” he said, not looking up. “Don’t leave at all. The fight is not over.”

“You heard what Lucifer said.”

“He is concerned for you,” Roman agreed. “After what occurred, I cannot blame him. But Lilith cannot win. That is—”

“By taking us out of the equation, she won’t.”

“Lilith hid behind her stolen army before,” he said, at last meeting her gaze. “Banded together, you and your brothers and sisters would—”

“She almost killed one of my brothers, Roman.”

He nodded. “With the untold masses she had at her disposal. Masses she no longer has.”

“We don’t know that. Seriously, we don’t know much of anything, and that’s the point.” Invi licked her lips, a hard tremor rushing through her body. “Cassie was held by Hell Demons Lilith had recruited, not those she’d liberated. We don’t know how many are loyal to her out of more than just gratitude. She’s had this in the works for a long freaking time.”

Roman cocked his head. “Then why assume anywhere is safe? If traitors are indeed anywhere, you have nothing to lose.”

Invi’s throat worked, and she balled her fists. She hated that she didn’t have a good response—that there was no good response. Playing devil’s advocate, especially for the devil himself, was not her strong suit. If anything, moving the Sins off the cosmic playing field seemed like a giant wave of the white flag. She knew Lucifer was worried, and she knew he had every reason to be, but letting Lilith see that was a sign of weakness when he couldn’t afford to be weak.

More to the point, Roman was right. The only people she knew for sure she could trust to not be in Lilith’s pocket were her family—blood-related and extended alike—Pixley and Roman.

Roman who was to be left here, who was to wait for the world to end so he could join it.

“It’s not fair,” Invi whispered.

“What’s not?”

“You. Your whole existence.” She made a face, realizing how that sounded, and held up a hand. “I mean that… You and the others were given life. You were given a task.” She waved at the Seal. “And that’s it. You’re here. And then you’re not. You die. That’s your life. And you’re expected to just accept it.”

“There is no accepting it or denying it,” Roman replied. “It simply was this.”

“Your whole existence here.” Invi inhaled and took in her surroundings, looking hard for the first time. There was so much on Earth she took for granted—the constants, the ever-evolving societies, the things she could get when she wanted, things she lamented having fallen as casualties to older civilizations. So much had occurred upon this ground, and a part of her, foolishly, had thought it would always be this way. She would surf through eternity, hopping from society to society, reaping the benefits bought by humanity. The cities would change, the technology, but the fruits of Earth would remain forever.

Demons were not innovators. Nor angels, come to think of it. Everything in Hell was as it always had been, save those implemented advancements that were entirely due to humans having thought of it first. What the mortal race lacked in power, they more than made up for in everything else. Imagining life without this—without the ground beneath her feet and the heartbeats of seven billion and counting above her—was devastating.

Invi gave herself a mental shake. The only thing worse, she thought, was spending all of her days right where she stood, only to be given a taste of what real life was like.

It hit her, then, as it hadn’t before. She wasn’t just at the Seal. She was in Roman’s birthplace. The only home he’d ever known. The rocky walls encompassing them were the walls that had been his only company for the bulk of his existence. The jagged slabs that made up the ground were his slabs. An entire life confined to these walls.

He’d only been a part of the world he’d been created to defend a few days. Now he was expected to die with it.

Had things gone to plan, Roman would never have experienced any of the fruits from above. In Lucifer and Big J’s ultimate design, in their idealized universe, Roman would still be here—right here—and he wouldn’t know her at all. He wouldn’t know the taste of pizza or the joy of a simple shower. He wouldn’t have touched skin that didn’t belong to him, or discovered the thrill of sex. He would simply be here until it was time for the world to end, time for him to die.

It wasn’t fair.

“Invidia.”

She swallowed, starting a bit at the way he’d voiced her name. Her full name. Aside from Lucifer, Roman was the only one who did that. She’d always found that particular trait of the devil’s rather annoying. With Roman, though, every syllable he pronounced was with such care, such awe. As though he were sampling her in the letters.

She would miss that when he was gone.

She would miss him.

“Invidia,” Roman said again, and she realized she hadn’t looked at him. When their eyes connected, he offered a small smile. “I do not regret it.”

“Regret what?” Invi replied, startled to find her voice strangled, choked really. Then she felt the cool, unmistakable tear tracks on her cheeks, and realized she’d been crying. Just standing there, crying. She would have been embarrassed, but something about Roman robbed her of her insecurities. She didn’t feel vulnerable or exposed with him. She felt liberated, as though the self she was when alone and the self she was with others didn’t have to be two selves anymore.

At first, she’d thought that was due to the fact that she didn’t give a fuck what Roman thought. He’d been the traitor when they’d first met.

Now he was the guy she was going to leave to die. The guy who had been with her true self and hadn’t asked anything of her, hadn’t been intimidated by her power, hadn’t done anything but…

Fuck. She was reading too much into their time together.

Wasn’t she?

“Any of it.” Roman took a step forward, then another. “Not even the things… Not even this.” He waved toward the bloodstained tribute to his failure. “The Seal opened due to my weakness, but my weakness brought me to you. I know I should regret—I should regret everything. But I don’t.”

“Yesterday—”

“Was a lifetime ago for me. I changed. You changed me.”

Invi inhaled deeply, a rush of something she couldn’t name bubbling up her throat. “We… That makes no sense. We barely know each other. How could I have changed you?”

A small, heartbreaking smile played across his lips. “How could you not?”

“We barely know each other,” Invi repeated, holding onto that truth. They’d been together for a handful of hours, spent most of the time at odds and the rest of the time in bed. Perhaps that had been the appeal—the knowledge that she shouldn’t want more, shouldn’t have more, yet had reached for more nonetheless.

Or perhaps the chaotic nature of her thoughts had her seeing something in Roman that didn’t exist. Invi wasn’t just run down, she was bone-tired. Losing the world, nearly losing Campbell, and the surge of adrenaline following the battle above had her mentally pulled in too many directions to follow.

But the thought of leaving him here made her gut twist and her chest ache. She didn’t want to. For the first time in eternity, she had been with a man she liked and she’d been completely herself. Not emulating Luxi, not demure like Ava, not desperate. Just…Invi. And Roman seemed to like her.

He seemed to…

“You changed me,” he repeated, closing the space between them.

Then he was close—god, so close. His breath, familiar and warm, fanned her lower lip, and her body flared to life.

“Invidia…”

“We can’t—”

But then his lips were on hers, consuming her, and she didn’t give a fuck. The tightening in her gut and the ache in her chest didn’t have to make sense when he was kissing her. Invi bade everything else away the second she threw her arms around his neck. She loved how tall he was, and how effortlessly he lifted her. He was the first man who towered over her yet somehow always seemed to be looking up when he gazed into her eyes.

“I love touching you,” Roman murmured, cupping her ass as she entwined her legs about his waist. “You are so warm, Invidia. So warm where I have been cold.”

Her back met the stony resistance of the cavern wall. His tongue slipped between her lips, caressing hers with fiery, eager strokes. In seconds, he had discarded her pants and was working the clasp of his fly. She barely had time to seize a breath before he had plunged his cock deep inside her pussy. Invi’s head rolled back. She clutched him to her, hooking her ankles around him and hugging him to her.

“Oh god,” Invi whimpered.

“You make me warm,” he repeated, peppering soft kisses along her throat. “You make me forget. I want to forget for a little while.”

Yes. God, yes, so did she. Just a little while longer. They had pretended this morning. She had knelt before him and sucked him into her mouth, then ridden him until there’d been nothing to do but pass out in a sex-induced coma. Before three more Seals had opened and the world still stood a fighting chance.

She wanted to forget everything, especially that she was leaving Roman here to die because that was the way his creators had made him. No matter what, he wasn’t supposed to live.

It was so damn cruel, it broke her.

“Do it,” she urged, rolling her hips and flexing her vaginal muscles around his cock. “Fuck me, Roman. Fuck me until we forget.”

He pulled back, his hard length sliding along her inner walls and leaving her so vacant she nearly screamed. Then he slammed inside again, rocking her back hard enough that air was forced out of her body. It was more than she thought he’d give, but just what she needed all the same.

“Yes, yes.” Invi dug her nails into his shoulders and bucked against him. “Like that. Again. Do it again.”

He did. He dragged himself away only to ram his cock home, and the pace exploded from there. That aching sense of emptiness shoved aside for exquisitely full. Invi bit back a sob and hung on for the ride. The stone wall scraped at her, the cold stung, but she didn’t feel anything but the hard tug and pull of Roman as he worked his cock in and out of her pussy.

“Yes,” she whimpered. “Oh yes.”

“I want to keep you.” The words were belied by the harshness of his strokes. He thrust into her in a frenzy, one she understood. It wasn’t nice or slow—wasn’t cautious. He didn’t treat her like she was going to break. He moved inside her with furious hunger, with irrefutable need, with a driving thirst that couldn’t be denied.

“I want to keep you, Invidia. Now and always.”

Invi closed her eyes, her heart constricting. “Roman…”

“I know… I know…” He pulled back, and his eyes were shining. “I know I can’t. But I want to.”

“Roman—”

“Is this love? Is this what love feels like?”

The words unmade her. White noise crackled in her ears and her vision blurred. Her tired, emotional minefield of a brain fought for something to say, but she came up empty. All she could do was hold him to her, bury her face in his neck and moan her pleasure as he pounded. A cold sheen of sweat gathered across her skin, her breaths crashing hard against her chest.

He felt so good. Her gentle giant. Her Guardian.

Is this what love feels like?

Invi swallowed and sank her teeth into his shoulder, digging her fingers into his skin. Shit, once upon a time, she would have leaped at that. Would have seized the blanket those words offered and rolled up until it didn’t matter if they were true or not. In this case, she knew it couldn’t be love, but she wouldn’t mind if it was. Being loved by a man like Roman was all she’d ever wanted. To have him so close, to have that chance taken away from her before she got to explore it…

So goddamn unfair.

What they had wasn’t love, but it might have been. Someday. Even just a few more days. Days where they weren’t chasing themselves in circles to survive. Not love, but something sweet. She cared for Roman more than she understood, given their limited time together, and she didn’t know how to face those feelings, especially on the heels of what they’d just survived. This goodbye was all she had.

And that was what it was. A goodbye. Before they’d gotten a chance to see if this was anything. The fact that she thought it might have been, or could have been, wrenched her in two.

“I don’t want to say goodbye, Roman,” she whispered, clutching the back of his neck as his body rocked against hers. Fuck, he felt good. He was a big man in every sense of the word, yet he fit so perfectly inside her. Every time he slid his cock back into her cunt, it felt like something that was hers had been returned.

“Stay with me, then,” he replied, his words breathy and desperate. “Fight with me.”

She felt his hand wandering between them, and knew what he was looking for. The pressure inside was mounting, swelling to a fever pitch that would explode if he nudged her just right. Invi whimpered and seized his hand, then directed his fingers to where she needed his touch. “Right there,” she said. “Oh…”

“You feel so good.”

He nudged her clit with his fingers, softly at first, then with greater insistence. She bucked and clenched her pussy around him, desperate to hold on.

“So good, Invidia. My Invidia.”

She nodded. “Like that, yes like that. Oh…”

“I found you too late, didn’t I?” Roman fluttered a kiss across her lips, then skated his mouth down her throat. “I’m sorry, Invidia.”

He tapped her clit once, twice, then she broke. The tension mounting in her contracted and exploded, sending her reeling down a spiral of pure, empty ecstasy. Invi mewled and thrashed, desperate to hold on yet unable to keep her grip. Then she felt him shudder and spill inside her. She managed to hook her arms around his throat before blinking—to her horror—eyes blurring with tears up at his perfect, haunted face.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, his body still rocking, though his cock had begun to soften.

“Why?”

“For being selfish. For wishing I had found you sooner.” He pressed his brow to hers, panting. “Because the reasons I wish it are selfish.”

“You’re entitled to be selfish, Roman.” She sniffed and fought back a sob. “It’s not fair. None of this is. Why should you have to die?”

“I always understood that was my role.”

“It’s stupid.”

“Perhaps, but I never resented it. Until now.” He wiped away a tear she hadn’t realized had escaped. “Fight with me.”

“What?” Invi swallowed hard. The words were repeated—he’d asked the same just moments before—yet they sounded different in this context. Or perhaps she hadn’t understood what he’d meant the first time. “Fight what?”

“It isn’t over yet. We can still—”

Invi scoffed and shoved him off. He didn’t resist. Her feet hit the ground the next second. It took a few beats for her trembling hands to readjust her askew clothing, and for her legs to stop wobbling, and even longer for her exhausted senses to translate the reasons his statement had struck her as offensive. She was strung out and hyperaware, yet sluggish at the same time. Part of her revved and ready to battle, the other aching for a century long hibernation.

When she felt she had some control of herself, she said, “Fight where?”

“There is only one Seal left,” Roman replied, tucking himself back into his pants. “Fight with me.”

Invi stared at him for a long moment. “Lucifer and Big J—”

“Lucifer has given up. He would not have sent you and your siblings away were it not the case.”

A rush of hot loyalty stormed her insides. She felt herself flush. “Lucifer doesn’t give up. He sent us away so she can’t use us again. He’s worried, sure, but—”

“He has given up,” Roman said, his voice soft but insistent, his gaze filled with compassion. “And I understand. He has much to lose, and he has determined the gamble of your lives versus those that are destined to one day perish anyway is not worth it.”

Invi swallowed, her eyes stinging again. That couldn’t be right. Could it? “Lucifer doesn’t give up.”

“Fear is a powerful motivator, as is love.” He raised a hand to her cheek. Strange how a man’s touch could become so familiar in such a short while. “I am not going to live beyond this world’s end, but I do not wish to wait here for death. If the world is to end, it will do so with me fighting until there is no fight left in me.”

The tightness in her chest drew in. Invi had to remind herself to breathe. Nothing about this situation seemed real. As if she could wait it out until her life—her real one—started again. Until this nightmarish break came to an end and she could go back.

How had things gotten so bad so quickly? They couldn’t even afford the luxury of ignorance. Lucifer had known what was happening from the start. Had they been overconfident, or was Lilith truly that much smarter?

And beneath all that was a truth uglier than anything else she could have confronted. The thing that had beat against her chest the moment she’d seen Campbell lying still, bleeding and broken on the ground. All of her cried for him, but a part of her—a hideous part—was struck with terror so profound she could barely breathe.

The terror that it could have been her.

And even more grotesque was the relief that it wasn’t.

Invi hated herself for that, and she somewhat hated Roman for making her face it. Because if she did what he asked, if she fought, she’d be putting her neck on the line again. What good was the world to her if she died while saving it?

Death had always been an abstract. Something she knew happened, but to other people. Other Hell Demons. Not to her or her family. The Sins defied death, even when the odds were against them. Ava, Luxi, and even Cassie—who was a Sin by proxy—had faced odds so seemingly insurmountable, yet come through the other side stronger. That made death somewhat mythical, like the threat of being grounded by negligent parents.

What had happened in the Colosseum had forever reshaped death in Invi’s eyes. She thought it had happened before, but those prior epiphanies had been weak and fleeting. Even when she’d thought Ira dead just hours earlier, a part of her had known he would wake up. The part of her always on fast-forward, mapping out what would come in the next moment. She’d been terrified, yes, and relieved when he’d returned to the land of the living. But in her mind, it couldn’t have happened any other way, because the Sins just didn’t die.

Except now she knew they could. And as a result, she was completely aware of her own mortality.

She didn’t want to die, and she wasn’t sure she was brave enough to risk her life, even if it was the right thing to do.

Yet here was Roman, looking at her with those compassionate eyes, beseeching her to help him do this selfless thing in order to preserve a world that would otherwise reject him. A world he did not get to enjoy but was prepared to defend. A world that wasn’t his and never would be.

Invi stared at him, her chest heaving. “I’m not a good person,” she said at last.

“What?”

“I’m not the kind of person who puts herself on the line for others. I never have been.”

“You fought tonight.”

“Yes, alongside my family. I’d fight for them, even if there wasn’t a chance. This is different. This is…”

Roman considered her, then nodded, his features tight with disappointment. The air grew thick with the burden of things left unsaid. And Invi knew what he was thinking. With her legs still trembling from having been wrapped around his waist, and her body humming with the aftereffects of the orgasm he’d given her, she could read him as easily as she could herself.

He would not challenge her on the point, wouldn’t ask what made fighting for her family different than fighting for the world, because even if he didn’t understand the difference, he was smart enough to know there was one.

That wasn’t what struck her, though. It was the self-awareness in Roman’s gaze. The thing that reflected his deflating self-worth—that he didn’t have someone who would fight for him regardless of the odds, and he couldn’t ask her to fill that role. No matter if he would do the same for her.

And he would. That hit her next, square in the chest. Something she understood, grasped, without any sense of doubt. Roman would fight for her. Her lungs emptied and her head felt light enough to detach and float away. Her gut twisted, her heart thumped, and she felt herself edging near a heretofore unseen cliff.

“Why?” she whispered, her voice hoarse.

The question had no context, but he didn’t seem to need it. Roman stepped forward. “Because I love you.”

Invi’s knees threatened to buckle. “You can’t love me. You don’t know me.”

“I do. Do not ask me to explain it.”

“No, you don’t,” she repeated. “Roman, we barely know each other. You can’t know you love me. Hell, you can’t even know you know what love is.”

Her mind flashed back to his words, spoken feverishly just moments earlier as he’d pounded his cock into her body.

‘Is this what love feels like?’

“Perhaps not,” he said. “Perhaps I don’t know what it means in your world, Invidia. But for mine, the world I come from—”

“This world, you mean?” She sliced her arm through the air, waving at their surroundings. “This world taught you about love?”

“It is not something I need time to understand. I have had time. I’ve had nothing but time. The past day with you has had more living in it for me than all the days that came before it.”

“You got laid,” she retorted. “You’re not the first guy to get all moony-eyed about the woman who introduced him to sex. We’ve spent most of our time fighting and the rest of our time fucking. How can you possibly know—”

“I am not asking for you to believe me,” Roman said. Though his tone was calm, fire flared behind his gray eyes. Fire and something else, something she didn’t want to consider for how much it hurt. “Nor am I asking you to love me in return. It’s simple for me, Invidia. Perhaps it’s not the way things occur in your world. Perhaps I am a fool, but I know I love you.”

Invi stared at him, her chest heaving, her ears buzzing from his declaration. His impossible, stupid declaration that made her heart do things a heart ought not to do for a man with a death sentence. Again, her mind dragged her back to the one thing she knew without question—that their situation was damned unfair. If not because of what he was asked to sacrifice, then for what they might have been. Maybe Roman did love her in whatever way he knew, the limited scope of love permitted to someone just discovering the world. That the words felt genuine, closer to any truth she’d convinced herself of in the past, smarted more than it should. That Roman was the kind of man she’d want to love if given the chance doubly so.

She couldn’t give him love. She couldn’t accept the love he wanted to give her.

But she could fight for him. With him. She could throw everything she had behind him. She might fail, but if she didn’t, then they’d have more time. If the world didn’t end, if Roman wasn’t destroyed along with it, maybe she could learn what real love was alongside him.

She could let him convince her he knew what he was talking about.

Invi expelled a low, steady breath. Her nerves danced and her heart thundered, but where she expected herself to cower and flee, she felt nothing but a rush of calm. A soothing cadence that thumped through her body at odds with her racing pulse. It was nice and unexpected, and she hoped to hell it lasted long enough for her to do whatever was needed to redeem her unredeemable ass.

“I’m not a good person, Roman,” she repeated, her voice hoarse. “I’m a selfish, jealous fraidy cat. I’ve tried to change, tried to deny it, but that’s who I am. I’m not someone you should love.”

“I disagree.”

She offered a watery smile. “But I’m willing to try. If there is anyone whose love I could ever earn, I’d hope it be yours. So…” She reached for his hand, her skin humming.

Light flickered behind his eyes. “Yes?” he whispered, threading his fingers through hers.

Invi nodded. “If there’s ever a time to change, it’s at the end of the world, right? They’ll write some epic poems about me.”

Roman smiled and kissed her, and for one glorious second, she could pretend all of eternity would be like this. That she wasn’t racing off on a suicide mission. That Roman meant what he said, and that she found the same within herself. That she could love him as wholly as he deserved.

If they lived through Lilith, anything was possible.

“All right,” Invi murmured, smiling against his lips in spite of herself. “Let’s do this.”