Chapter 97 Everything Lost
Lilith found a tower room that looked abandoned and locked herself inside. She pulled a sheet off a chair near the window and sat, staring at nothing while her hands shook.
A knock came almost immediately.
“Lilith?” Sera’s voice. “Are you in there?”
“I need to be alone.”
“Are you sure—”
“Please.”
Footsteps retreated.
She looked down at her hands, at the tremor she couldn’t control, and felt something like pride cut through the exhaustion. She’d actually done it. Stood in front of the Devil himself and told him he was wrong. Where had that even come from?
She’d spent months being careful, diplomatic, trying not to make waves, and then she’d just… stopped, she stopped pretending, stopped trying to make everyone else comfortable with choices that were hers to make.
The pride was real, but underneath it, something else was building.
She was supposed to be planning her coronation.
The thought arrived quietly but hit hard.
This month she’d turn twenty, she would have taken the throne officially after a year of preparation. Her advisors had spent months teaching her governance, trade agreements, how to read a room full of nobles all wanting different things.
She’d known exactly what her life would look like. Queen of her kingdom, married eventually to someone politically useful, children who’d inherit after her. She would have lived a normal royal life.
Then Malachi arrived.
One conversation and everything she’d planned evaporated. She wasn’t just a princess. She was Seraph, the last of her kind, and her parents had traded her future before she was born. The bargain was absolute. Non-negotiable. Her kingdom, her coronation, her carefully planned life—all of it belonged to someone else now.
What did her people think happened? Were her advisors scrambling to establish new succession? Did her kingdom even remember her or had they just moved forward without the princess who vanished overnight?
Another knock. Different rhythm.
“Lilith, it’s Azrael. Please open the door.”
She didn’t answer.
“I can hear you breathing. Just let me see you’re okay.”
“Go away.”
Long silence.
Then footsteps, slower than Sera’s, like he was giving her chances to change her mind.
She didn’t.
Lilith stood and moved to the window, pressing her forehead against the cool glass. Her parents had done this. Seraphina and Azareth, the divine beings who’d looked at their infant daughter and decided she was the price for their people’s survival.
She understood why.
Intellectually, she understood. Their kind was being slaughtered. One child could save what remained.
The choice was horrible but it was clear, but understanding didn’t make it hurt less.
They’d stolen her life, her kingdom, her future, her right to be just a princess doing her duty. Now she was here, bleeding from visions nobody else saw, telling demons that prophecy meant something everyone said it didn’t.
More knocking.
“Lilith, it’s Cain.”
“I’m fine.”
“You were bleeding from your eyes—”
“It stopped. Leave me alone.”
Cain’s presence lingered outside the door. Lilith could feel her deciding whether to push. Then footsteps, finally retreating.
She returned to the couch and lay down, staring at the ceiling. Tomorrow she’d have to face them again. She would have to research the binding ceremony, prove her interpretation was correct, and fight for what she knew was right.
Tomorrow she’d be strong.
But tonight, she is going to let it all out.
For the coronation that would never happen.
For the kingdom she’d never rule.
For the normal life her parents’ bargain had taken.
For being nineteen and so far from everything she was supposed to be that she couldn’t even see the path back.
She cried until exhaustion won and sleep pulled her under, restless and full of dreams about thrones she’d never sit on.