Pain. But it was gone now.
Maia. Oh, God.
Emptiness and fear stilled him for a moment, then he dragged his eyes back open and looked around. Golden and red flames swirled and danced, heat seared him. His lungs burned, his eyes were raw. Beyond the flames, darkness loomed.
He’d died. He was in hell.
Where is Lucifer?
He’d seen Wayren for that one, odd moment…but nothing of the fallen angel.
Dimitri found that he could move, and he rolled over, his body weak and aching, but mobile. And then he saw her.
Maia, impossibly, still there, still in the same place. On the chair, still bound in rubies, the flickering light illuminating her face.
How could she still be there? How could the fire not have swallowed her up, choked the life from her?
She was watching him with a horrified expression that, as he staggered to his feet, changed into one of bewilderment.
And then wonder.
The same shock and strength rushed through Dimitri, even as he coughed and choked, the black smoke swirling around him. The heat raged and he felt it on his skin as if it sat there, branding him.
But he was moving. Toward her. The rubies seemed to have no effect on him any longer.
Yet, Dimitri stumbled, clumsy, coughing and choking so hard that he doubled over, clutching at his middle. What’s happening to me?
And then, suddenly, he realized he felt no pain. No pain.
Not even from the Mark of Lucifer.
Just the blazing burn of flames roaring around him. The gritty heat of smoke and soot.
With a sudden burst of clarity, he touched the back of his left shoulder. Although covered with grit and sweat, it was otherwise smooth. Unblemished.
The Mark was gone. The shock stunned him, paralyzing him as he stood there, doubled over, panting. He realized all at once the blessing…and the curse…of his realization.
Wayren. That was why she’d been there.
His covenant with Lucifer had been broken.
He was mortal again.
Mortal.
He kept on, and then he was there, gathering Maia to him, that sweet, smoky, soft bundle. Tearing at the ropes of rubies, he flung them away and pulled her completely into his arms as the dark smoke choked and enveloped them.
“Maia,” he said in a rough, smoky voice, then his breath was cut off by the smothering roil of smoke.
She coughed, sagging against him, and he bore them both to the floor where the smoke wasn’t quite as thick, wrapping her close to his body, wishing he still had his damp shirt to put over her face. She was kissing him, kissing his jaw and along his bare throat, and he found her lips, sooty and salty, covering them with a desperate hunger. His face was damp with sweat and tears, relief and warmth. And something good unfurled inside him. It was going to be all right. He had her now.
He was mortal again. Human again. He loved.
Maia. Thank God I found you.
She was saying something, and at first he couldn’t understand it. But then he heard it, felt the shape of his name on her lips: “Gavril.”
I love you.
He felt, rather than heard her say the words. Her lips formed them against his mouth, and he bowed his head into the floor, trying to escape the smoke. “I love you,” he said into her hair. How could I have been so foolish?
An ominous cracking brought him back to reality. “We have to…get out of here,” he said, then was overtaken by a fit of rough coughing.
When he looked up, he saw the wall of flames in front of them. Everywhere he turned, there was fire, raging and snarling. The smoke rose and filled the room, thinner but no less potent near the floor.
He looked again, twisting his body around on the floor while protecting her from the flames and smoke. A chill began, deep in his belly, and began to roll through his body, leaving him numb.
There was no way out.
The fire burned too tall, too hot, too encompassing. There was no way to get through.
Impossible.
Impossible for a mortal.
Fury and impotence raged through him, replacing the cold fear, and he looked down at her. Their eyes met and he felt the acceptance in her limbs as she relaxed into him, closing her eyes. Resting her smudged cheek on his arm. Preparing to die.
She knew it. She’d probably always known it.
No. There had to be some way.
He looked around again, seeking some break in the flames, some low rise that he could jump over, carrying her. But there was nothing.
Bitterness, oh, such bitterness.
If he weren’t holding Maia, Dimitri would have raged and thrown himself into the flames, wild with fury and frustration. He didn’t care about dying. He’d been ready for decades. It was Maia…it was all Maia.
He gathered her up, felt her arms curling around him as she shuddered a cough, trying to speak but unable to because of the heavy smoke. Closing his eyes, he huddled around her, positioning his large body to protect her from the falling beams and dancing flames.
Please.
The irony, the horror of the situation—that he’d obtained his deepest desire, that he’d finally freed himself from Lucifer but was now useless to save the woman he loved—brought harsh, stinging tears to his eyes. They fell into her hair, burning his dry eyes, salty as they trickled down his cheeks.
Damn you. Damn you.
Help me. Someone.
He thought of Wayren, her slight, elegant figure appearing in his mind, and her platitudes. Her meaningless platitudes that had come too late: But that’s why men are here. To be bothered. To feel. To live. To love. And…to be loved. That is what makes you different from every other creature. And that is what makes man ultimately more powerful than the Fiend.
Yes, he’d found love. He’d opened himself to it, just in time to lose it. Her. To lose life. The miracle had turned to a curse, and now she would die.
Maia would die, just as Meg would have.
If he had stayed immortal…kept the covenant…
The chill was back, the horrible knowledge that he had the choice. That he could save her, just as he’d saved Meg. It washed over him, dark and evil, even more potent than the fire raging against his mortal body.
He hadn’t known what it meant, before. When Lucifer came to him the first time. But now he knew. He fully knew the hell, the horror, the blackness of what that covenant meant.
He didn’t want to live it again. But he could.
Something snapped inside him, something widening into cold, then hot…and then deep, deep calm. An oasis, an island, in the fiery, terrible vortex of the fear and horror that battled within him, and without.
He could do it. He could save Maia.
“I take it back,” he shouted into the darkness, his voice rusty and barely audible. Tears streamed from his eyes as he made the decision. “Lucifer! Attend me!”