He needed an outlet for his wrath, and I was conveniently handy.
Gasping, I pulled my shaking hands back, curled them against my chest.
Oh, God.
The conversation about Azazel’s past came back in a flash, and a full-body tremble took hold of me. Lucifer had turned his fury on Azazel because the real target hadn’t been available, and so he punished Azazel by proxy.
And I…I just did the same. It wasn’t Azazel I was angry with. Not really. He didn’t do anything wrong. It wasn’t his fucking fault he had a sadistic psychopath for a grandfather, and this entire goddamn situation wasn’t his fault either. I was mad at Lucifer for his petty family feud that made it impossible to help my father, but because Lucifer wasn’t here…I lashed out at Azazel.
Just like Lucifer.
Something twisted painfully in my chest. My breath was little more than a wheezing shudder, and fresh tears sprang to my eyes, burning like the shame now creeping up my throat.
“I’m sorry,” I rasped, laying a shaking hand on his chest, my fingers trembling against skin I’d been hitting just seconds before. “I’m so sorry.” A sob punched its way out of me, and my voice broke. “I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry.” I kept on apologizing, crying, stroking his chest, in a helpless attempt at soothing the hurt I’d caused him.
He pulled me closer, his energy a raw, biting charge in the air. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse, at odds with the intended lightness of his words. “You barely tickled me.”
I couldn’t even smile at that, the heaviness in my chest snuffing out all amusement. Shaking my head, I stroked him some more with trembling hands, my breath hitching.
His hot breath fanned the top of my head as he kissed my hair. “You’re nothing like him,” he said in a harsh whisper.
I sagged against him, deflated, weary with the overload of feeling too much and nothing at all.
Azazel held me while I wept in silence. It wasn’t until much, much later, when he carried me out of the training ring, that I noticed the pattern of sand-turned-glass on the floor all around where he’d sat cradling me.
The kind only a fire of immense heat would cause.
In the week that followed, I moved through the days like a ghost. It was like a fog descended over me, a perpetual veil of numbness that separated me from life. Numbness that I clung to with both hands—because I knew with instinctual clarity that if I let one emotion in, all the others would come rushing in as well, the devastation about the situation with my father most prominent among them. And once I felt that again...I wouldn’t function at all.
So I went through the motions, there but not, knowing I couldn’t go on like this but unable to flip whatever switch needed flipping in my head to change it. Azazel tried to engage me as much as possible, and I tried to go along… Perceptive as he was, however, he knew my heart wasn’t in it, and when even his usually surefire sensual persuasiveness failed to draw me in, he stopped trying.
I fully anticipated him to back off completely, given my lack of enthusiasm for basically anything, but to my surprise—numbed by the fog that stubbornly lingered—he still came to me at night. In sleep, the veil I so clung to during the day would become fragile, tearing to reveal the horrors I repressed, and I’d wake from a nightmare of fire and pain and being a helpless witness to my father’s torture—and Azazel would be there, a solid, soothing presence next to me, petting me down from my panic.
During the day, he made himself increasingly scarce. His withdrawal would have seriously hurt me, if my own apathy weren’t the damn reason for it in the first place, and if my numbness had allowed for any emotion more acute than a slight sting. As it was, the fog shielded me from the roaring pain I knew loomed on the other side of this widening chasm, and all I could do was watch the distance grow.
Until that day Hekesha came knocking on my door, frantic in a way I’d never seen her.
“You need to come,” she pressed out, her face ashen.
“Where?”
“Just...come.” She swallowed and added, “Please.”
Something like worry pierced the fog. It was a rare moment when Hekesha would voluntarily offer such niceties. Usually she’d just glare or grunt.
“Okay,” I slowly said, following her out into the hallway. “What’s going