Deprecated (On Hold Indefinitely)

Deprecated: Chapter Nine

“Deryn, there’s someone that I would like you to meet.” Kade brought me into another, even darker room than the previous one.

The heat of the room stuck to my skin.  The air felt hard to breathe in, so I stopped breathing all together. The usual pain that a human would feel after holding their breath for so long was replaced by a discomfort in my lungs.

“Hello, my dear. I have heard so much about you.” He gazed at me with bright cerulean eyes. I had expected them to be a dark red, but the blue was much more frightening, and a lot more unexpected.

I immediately stared at my feet.

“Look at me, Deryn.”

I lifted my head to meet his unbearable gaze, and I winced despite my attempt at self-control.

“I suppose you know who I am by now. I’m sure Kade has told you a lot about me,” he paused to glare at him, “or, at least, I hope he has.” He flashed his sterling white teeth at me and continued to introduce himself. “I am Lucifer, but you may call me Luc if you wish.”

I nodded, and Luc laughed.

“What?” I asked shyly.

“You still haven’t gotten used to your new lifestyle yet, dear. You’re still that shell of a girl you were when you were human.” He walked closer to me and grasped my hands with his icy ones, and I wanted to jerk myself away. “Break out of that shell. Be the girl you were before you fell.”

“I don’t remember who that girl was.”          

“Ah, but surely you do. Do you not remember enslaving over half of the male celestial race?”

“That wasn’t me.”

Luc leaned closer to my ear. “Oh, but it was. I could only imagine the kind of horror Kade must have felt when you enslaved them all to be at your service, but of course he knew that it was all part of his plan. Or should I say, your plan, since you were the one who created the idea in the first place.”

My fear of Luc was easily replaced by anger and abhorrence for him. How was he going to tell me who I was now and who I used to be? He didn’t know me then. Or had he?

“What else can you tell me about my past?”

“Luc, don’t.” Kade stepped forward and pulled me away from the ruler of the Everlasting Fire. “She’ll know everything when she needs to. Let her remember on her own.”

“I’d like to know now. I don’t want to take my time remembering, if I ever remember at all.”

“It’s not that simple, Deryn.”

I glared at him. “It was my life! I want to know everything that had happened to me or to anyone else that involved me. I want to remember the good and the bad. I want to know if I was the heroine or the villain.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “I want to know.”

He shook his head and pursed his lips. “Deryn, you can’t handle everything that happened to the universe around you. You can’t handle the things that you’ve done, or what everyone else has done to you. You have too much of a kind heart for that.”

“And what, I didn’t have a kind heart back then?”

He cracked a smile and shook his head. “Well, you were pretty ruthless.”

“A tyrant,” Luc added.

“You were the badass of us all,” Milena admitted.

I shook my head, beginning to feel uncomfortable in the current situation that I was in. “Not true.”