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MAGGIE'S POV

Laudon and I make small talk while working our way through Lucifer's office.

As I empty out the drawers on Lucifers desk, Laudon busies himself by speedily reading through his father's massive bookshelf. I can't help but smile while occasionally peeking up at him, finding it cute how engrossed he becomes when he gets a good book in his hands. He'll quietly mutter to himself every now and then while reading, and when he's done, he moves on to speed read another. I wish I could adopt that ability.

"I take it you're a bit of a bookworm," I tease Laudon while taking a seat in Lucifer's massive chair. "Sorry. Are you not familiar with the term?" I ask after he gives me a puzzling look, shaking his head. "Being a bookworm simply means that you love to read."

"Ah. Then I suppose I am one." Laudon chuckles, giving his attention back to the book in his hands. "Find anything interesting over there?"

"Hard to say when I can't decipher your language. Is there no spell to fix that?" I joke. Laudon only smiles.

I finish cleaning out the drawers on Lucifers desk, having found tons of handwritten letters and tattered looking scrolls that, after tossing one to Laudon, apparently contain spells that Laudon claims he has never heard of before.

"Hey, I think you should take a break from those books and come over here to see what secrets these letters may contain. I'm willing to bet at least one of them holds some valuable information."

Laudon agrees. He places the book he'd been reading back on the bookshelf before walking over to stand next to me.

As much as I try, I can't ignore how my body reacts when we're this close together. I suddenly get hot all over and turn into a blushing mess, the desire to reach out and touch him gradually becoming more intense as the seconds pass. It's fucking weird for me to deal with considering when we first met, I wanted nothing to do with him.

"There are so many letters... I'm not sure where we should start." I randomly pluck one from the pile and pass it to Laudon, hoping for the best. "One day, you'll have to teach me how to read in whatever the hell your demon language is called. I feel useless just sitting here doing nothing."

Laudon smiles again. "If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have been able to get in here, so please, never call yourself useless. You're far from it."

"If you say so." I awkwardly clear my throat and break eye contact first, trying to pretend that these feelings bubbling inside me are just another side effect of my powers getting stronger.

Yeah, that has to be it. A side effect. It would totally make sense for me to have some sort of chemical or even a hormonal imbalance after Kalleste's powers activated inside me. What else could explain my twisted attraction to Laudon, an otherworldly being that is the opposite of good for me?

"Her name is Neira," Laudon speaks softly while reading. "I believe this is a love letter from my mother."

"Shit. This is what I was trying to tell you earlier!" I stand to give Laudon my story. One that I never would have uncovered had his mother and I not met. "Neira came to me in a dream not too long ago. I've actually spoken to her twice, and she told me..."

Laudon doesn't take his eyes off me while I speak.

His expression never changes. He doesn't move. He doesn't interrupt me. He listens attentively. And even after I tell him about his curse and the warning that his mother had wanted me to pass along to him, Laudon remains still. Quiet.

I'm aware that I just dropped a lot on him, most of which I'm sure he hadn't been mentally prepared for, but the silence and his lack of a reaction makes me more anxious than relieved that he finally knows the whole truth.

"Laudon." I carefully remove the letter from his hands, replacing it with my own. "You're scaring me. Say something. Anything. Please..."

I slowly raise one of my hands to his face, cupping his cheek. His skin feels one hundred times hotter than mine, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Either way, he closes his eyes at my touch, inhales deeply, and then exhales.

"I'm sorry for not coming to you sooner about this. It all happened so fast, and then Zul and Krista..."

"My father is coming back," Laudon interrupts, opening his eyes. The color is no longer solid black. "My mother didn't say when?"

"No, but going off how panicked she sounded, I can only assume she meant soon."

Laudon sighs again, turning away from me to stare off into space. "Not only have I apparently already met my soulmate, but in less than five hundred days, I will be marked for death. And you... the soul of a deity's child lives inside you. This is all so—"

"Insane?"

"Exactly. When I sought to learn more about my past, I never imagined that I'd receive the answers for which you've just given me."

"I'm so sorry, Laudon."

"If anyone should be apologizing to me, it ought to be my worthless father."

"Stop. You don't mean that."

"I do. Or are you saying I should feel something other than fury and disappointment for what he's done?"

"I can't tell you how to feel. What I can say is that this situation is extremely complicated. You have every right to be upset! And I'm not trying to make excuses for Lucifer, but in a fucked-up kind of way, I think he was simply trying to protect you."

Laudon scoffs. "Protect me?"

"Yes, because had he told you the truth about your mother, you would've done everything in your power to destroy God. You would've ended up getting seriously hurt, or worse, killed."

"Perhaps it would have been for the best seeing as how I'm set to die in less than two years' time," Laudon mutters, running a hand over his face. "Regardless of the pain, I'm glad to finally know the whole truth. That is far better than being left wandering around clueless in the dark."

My heart breaks for him. I can't even begin to imagine how I'd handle this situation if I were in his shoes. I'm surprised he hasn't spazzed out and punched a hole in the wall. If I had his strength, I definitely would've trashed this office by now.

"Hey, wait..." When he goes to pick up another letter, I try to stop him. "Maybe we should get out of here and take a breather. It might do you some good to take a step back and decompress."

"I'm not leaving until I've read every letter, scroll, and book in this office. Tell me now if you'd like for me to take you home; otherwise, please step aside."

I refuse to leave him alone like this, so I quietly step aside.

Laudon takes a seat at his father's desk and continues reading through the letters. For my sake, he reads them out loud. I listen while walking around the office, touching and observing things that Lucifer probably wouldn't want a human being touching and observing.

Through the love letters that Neira had written to Lucifer before God discovered their relationship, Laudon and I learn how bonds are formed between soulmates. An ancient ritual involving a blood oath is performed. It links you and your soulmate's souls together as you both promise yourselves to each other until the end of time. The making love afterward is optional. Laudon, for obvious reasons, skimmed over the parts where his mother went into (too much) detail about how badly she missed Lucifer physically.

"Do you remember when you asked me for the story behind Brinton Forest?" Laudon speaks after a while. I meet his gaze and nod. "Well, according to my father's records, I'd been there as a child."

"Really?"

"Apart from the love letters, my father seems to have been documenting his life on paper. Can you fucking believe it?" Laudon asks, holding up a thick black book. "I found this hidden in the back of one of the drawers, had a cloaking spell on it. I previously told you how the land of Brinton Forest became tainted, right?"

I nod again. "Lucifer had gotten into an altercation with a group of angels and ended up gravely injured. To safely retreat from the fight, he used blood magic to create a portal to Hell to escape."

"Right. And according to his word, that battle is when God had sent his angels to kill us—my father, my mother, and me. Apparently, during that battle, I had been there with them."

"Wait a minute... I just now remembered that Neira told me something similar! She said after her relationship with your father had been exposed, a dangerous battle ensued on Edreial. She begged God to spare your life before she was taken away and punished. He listened."

"Only because he knew he'd later get the chance to kill me after I found my soulmate."

"Yes. That was the unfortunate catch."

There's no use in trying to hide the sadness in my voice. I'd only come across as fake if I tried to pretend that Laudon's situation wasn't depressingly tragic beyond belief.

"What else have you found out?" I ask Laudon after walking back to the desk. I stand beside him, one hand on his shoulder. "Anything positive?"

Laudon shakes his head. "Not exactly. But my father did go on to reveal why God cursed him with immortality. Instead of killing my father for breaking the law and bonding with an angel, God cursed him with immortality, wanted to force him to live the rest of his days in torment knowing that my mother is still alive and that he'll never be able to rescue her or be with her again."

"Fuck. That is so messed up."

"Yeah, and now I know where my father gets his sadistic streak from."

Laudon finishes going through the rest of the letters and Lucifer's little black book. Near the end of it all, Laudon discovers an unsent letter from his father. We guess that the messenger Lucifer and Neira had been using could no longer do their job.

"He's telling my mother that he'll never stop fighting for her," Laudon says, his brows furrowing as he reads the rest. "He promises to free her from Heaven, and he says regardless of their broken bond, he will never stop loving her."

"As sweet as that is, I don't see how Lucifer will be able to do such a thing when demons can't even get past the gates of Heaven. Trying something like that solo would be a suicide mission."

"Not if you had an army behind you," Laudon whispers, staring off into space again.

"An army?"

"Yes. I've had suspicions that my father has been creating an army. Over the last several years, more and more demons have been getting released from their prisons and sent to Edreial to corrupt the wicked. I couldn't understand why my father would do such a thing, but now it all makes sense... He plans to wage war against God."

"To free your mother," I conclude, thinking out loud. "Oh, no. This isn't good."

"How do you figure?" Laudon stands to face me, his expression cold. "My father has a plan to help free my mother. As much as I despise him for lying to me all these years, I may just forgive him for everything if he's successful and doesn't fuck this up."

"You're not thinking about the bigger picture here, Laudon. Edreial belongs to God, and knowing how Lucifer operates, I bet he isn't going to leave Edreial standing if he somehow succeeds in destroying God and Heaven."

"Your point?"

"I live on Edreial, remember!? And so do millions of other innocent human beings. We can't become a casualty of war due to your father destroying everything that God has ever created."

"Fuck. You're right." Laudon sighs, unconsciously grabbing my hand to hold. "This isn't good at all."

. . .

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