shifted my gaze away. Christ, was it that obvious? I shook my head again, irritated and embarrassed even though the rational side of me knew I had no reason to be either, but Roth was asking if it was wise if I went out there alone.
My earlier fears resurfaced. There was a big, bad world out there I couldn’t see.
“I don’t see well,” I muttered. “Actually, I don’t see very well at all.”
Roth was quiet for what felt like an eternity. “God is ironic, isn’t He?”
I curled my lip. “Why do you assume God is a he?”
He laughed. “God’s actually a being beyond a biological sex, but calling God ‘it’ just seems offensive.”
“And why would you worry about offending God?”
“Just because I don’t answer to God doesn’t mean I don’t respect Him.”
Roth was such a strange demon.
A grin appeared. “The Boss hates the fact that God is beyond the whole biological sex thing, which is why the Boss always changes appearance. It’s not like humans who identify with a different gender. The Boss does it to be more God-like.”
“When you talk about the Boss, you’re talking about... Satan?” I asked, shivering when I said the name out loud. No one who knew beyond a doubt that Satan was real spoke the name.
His lips quirked. “The one and only, but if Lucifer ever heard you use the name he was given after being kicked out of Heaven, he’d turned your insides out.”
“But...he’s an angel.” Confusion swamped me. “Or was. Whatever. How can he change what he appears as?”
“What damned Lucifer in Heaven is what powers him in Hell,” he answered. “Pride.”
“Pride?”
“Yep. He’s basically The Little Engine That Could.”
Now the image that statement provided was something I could never unthink.
“The Boss operates purely on the mantra of ‘if I think I can, I will.’” His lips pursed. “He’s like the first motivational speaker, if you really think about it. Well, the first scammy one, but aren’t they all?”
“Uh...”
“Anyway, I digress. The texts got a few things wrong. For starters, Lucifer is still an angel, which leads to another thing that’s usually incorrect. Questionable timelines. He was the first to be cast from Heaven, and since God had no experience when it came to booting angels off their lofty clouds of self-righteousness, he didn’t strip Lucifer’s wings. He still has his grace, and it’s just as dark and twisted as you can imagine.”
I really didn’t want to.
“Of course, God learned after that. The rest who fell lost their wings and their grace.”
Those fallen angels might have lost their grace, but based on what I’d learned about them, they made demons, even ones like Roth, look like fluffy puppies.
He slid me an amused glance. “Good thing the Wardens wiped out the Fallen eons ago, eh?”
“Yeah.” I had no idea how we’d gotten on this topic. Something about God being ironic?
Roth chuckled as if he knew something I didn’t. “Will you do me a favor, Angel Face?”
“Does it involve breaking your nose when you call me that?” I asked sweetly.
“No. Even better.”
“Considering what I just did, not sure I want to do you any more favors.”
“This is nothing like that. I want you to ask Zayne what happened to the Fallen.” Roth lifted a shoulder. “Or ask one of the Wardens that raised you. I can’t wait to hear what they say.”
I knew what had happened to the angels that had fallen. The Wardens killed them. Hell, it was why Wardens were created in the first place, because no mortal could fight a Fallen. Duh.
“Anyway, you ending up with shit eyesight sounds like some kind of messed-up thing Lucifer and God agreed to.”
I blinked at the swift switch back to the topic. “They...they still, um, talk?”
“You have no idea.”
My mouth opened. Then closed. My brain was starting to hurt.
“Why don’t you just use your grace? Whether you see well or not, anything that gets near you won’t survive that.” I was having a Hell of a time following this conversation. “Why stress yourself out or put yourself in danger by trying to compensate for your eyes in a different way?”
That was a good question, but answering it might reveal too much. Roth was the damn Crown Prince of Hell, but I...
God.
I actually trusted him, which probably meant there was something drastically wrong with my abilities to make reasonable life choices.
But Zayne trusted him as well.
Well, that might change if Zayne found out about today. Which was never, ever going to happen.