Lucien had never truly slept.
He only lay still enough to pretend.
And tonight, while Isadora bled in the Garden of Teeth, awakening the children she never remembered birthing, Lucien stood before the mirror in the north tower, unclothed from the waist up, watching the scar on his back pulse like a heartbeat.
It burned.
It always burned when He was near.
The Devil didn't enter rooms.
He entered thoughts.
And tonight, he whispered.
> "You should have told her the truth, beloved."
> "She was never meant to remember."
Lucien's knuckles turned white as he clenched the obsidian dagger hidden beneath his cloak — the one carved from the tooth of the first angel who fell.
But the mirror no longer showed just him.
It showed Isadora in the garden.
And the children.
And the altar, now glowing red with old, sacred blood.
He dropped the dagger.
He ran.
---
Isadora stood with her back to him when he arrived.
The garden hissed at his presence. The children… paused, teeth chattering like windchimes made of bone.
Lucien stopped breathing.
> "Isadora..."
Her voice was not hers when she spoke.
> "You lied to me."
> "I had to."
> "You buried the truth in coffins made of silence."
> "Because I loved you."
She turned.
And her eyes were black. Deeper than night. Reflecting a sky that hadn't existed in centuries.
> "No, Lucien. You loved her."
> "The girl I was before He touched me."
> "Before you gave me away."
---
Lucien dropped to his knees.
He couldn't look at her.
Not like this.
Not reborn.
Because once, she had been his bride — in secret, beneath the blood moon, crowned in fire and kissed by the Devil himself.
He had taken her heart and sealed it inside the altar, trying to protect her soul.
He had betrayed her to save her.
But she had remembered.
And now… she was becoming again.
---
The children circled them both.
The Devil's laughter echoed from the vines.
And Isadora raised her hand — the earth obeyed.
Roots slithered around Lucien's wrists. The ground opened beneath him. He didn't fight it.
He couldn't.
> "If you must damn me, Isadora, do it with your own hands," he whispered.
"But do not become what he made you."
"Do not wear the Devil's name as your own."
Silence.
Then, she knelt before him.
Placed her forehead to his.
And kissed him.
Slow. Bitter. Holy.
And full of rot.
> "You kept my heart in a box," she whispered.
"Now I want yours."
---
And from the trees above, the crows scattered. The wind roared back into the world. The Devil growled from the shadows:
> "Good girl."
End of Chapter Ten.