“Why?” Penny asked, needing an explanation for the sudden lead weighing down her gut. Her temperamental third eye throbbed with danger. “What’s the matter?”
“That was Lucifer, right?” Emery asked Darius.
“Yes,” Darius replied, staring after them. He pulled back, his eyes downcast, worry etched in every line on his face. “He is showing her the empire, and he trusts her enough to allow her and her…helper to ride dragons, without any kind of additional escort. He trusts that she is not a flight risk. Cahal’s body language suggested that he disapproves of the situation. He’s lost ground. His opinion no longer matters to her, or Lucifer wouldn’t let him be there at all.”
Penny crawled out of the bush and into the canopy beneath the tree, a little too exposed for her taste, but they were leaving anyway. She packed up her backpack.
“Okay,” she said, uncomfortable pressure on her chest, “but Reagan is just pretending. Of course she is. She knows the timeline. Never bullshit a bullshitter.” Tears clouded her vision. She swallowed down the lump in her throat. “She always says that. Remember, Emery? In the Flush? She’d know how to get one over on anyone. Even Lucifer. She’s a survivor. She respects Cahal. She would never hurt him.”
“No, but she would push him away, maybe tell him to get us to safety.” Darius’s face transformed back to its usual granite, empty of emotion. He was locking all the fear inside. “She isn’t lost yet. He is still with her. As long as he is still with her, there’s hope. We have precious little time.”
Penny stood, ready to go, feeling the urgency even as her brain recoiled. “I can’t believe it.” Anger flash-boiled her blood. “I won’t believe it. She would never give up her freedom to stay down here. She only did it on the island because she loves Darius, and that we all knew that wasn’t going to last forever.”
“It doesn’t look like she is giving up her freedom,” Emery said softly, directing Penny after Darius.
“No. Lucifer is allowing her a nice, long leash.” Darius started out of the rest area at a quick pace. “So long that it probably doesn’t feel like a leash at all. He’ll have spies everywhere, posed as assistants. As friends. He is winning. We must hurry if we want even the slimmest of chance to…take her back.”
The question rose in Penny’s mind even though she would have preferred to keep it trapped in her subconscious.
What if Reagan didn’t want to be taken away? What if she was truly happy down here, with her remaining parent and a royal family line? She was a princess. She probably had a huge house and unimaginable riches. She wouldn’t need Darius’s money. Darius’s people. She’d have her own. Should they really ask her to trade all of that if she didn’t want to? Could they?
Seventeen
I couldn’t believe I’d known Archion for only three days. It was insane. I felt connected to him in a way I hadn’t felt connected to many others. And he wasn’t even human! Although…neither was Lucifer. And neither was Darius. And Cahal…and, well, me.
Okay, being human meant nothing.
I threw my leg over his neck and hopped down to the ground. Before heading toward the castle, where Mr. Boobs waited at the bottom of the steps, I glanced back at Cahal, who was getting down off Coppelia. Both of them were mad at me—Cahal for putting him in his own apartment, and Coppelia because she was a united front with her rider. Very prickly, those two.
“At least you got to go for a ride, though,” I told Cahal as he ran his hand over Coppelia’s shoulder in goodbye. He was allowed to ride as long as I was with him—Lucifer’s rules. He needed to be picked up at the castle steps and dropped off at the same location.
I, on the other hand, could ride whenever and however far I wanted. My restrictions were slowly being peeled away. If I wasn’t followed by skittering demon assistants all the time, it would be perfection.
“Your royal heinous,” Tits McGee said, hands behind its back. I lifted my eyebrows, waiting patiently and not giving in to my sudden desire to give it a little shove and see if the enormous boobs finally sent it toppling. “Your father awaits you in the eatery.”
“Dining room, remember? It’s a dining room,” I reminded it.
“Yes. That. Your father would like to dine with you this evening.”
I glanced up at the decreasing light, faux-day giving way into the eternal darkness of the cave we were in. A huge cave, much larger than made logical sense, but it was a cave all the same. The Brink would be really weird after this, with its grounding in physics and its smaller color palette, changing depending on the day or season.