cupid clearly hates me.

[ 26 ]

Without Eve, the hole felt colder, scarier and darker than it really was.

Part of you wanted to go back up to the Garden, where everything was blue and green and soaked in sunlight. You wanted to smell the damp grass, not this rotting dirt. The Garden of Eden was safe—it was a place you knew. Whatever lied in waiting at the bottom if this hole was something you did not know, and your instinct was 99% sure that it wasn't safe, despite what Eve told you.

As you climbed further down into the darkness, you began to doubt Eve. The same nagging sensation from earlier came back, the wispy thought that you were forgetting something. It lingered in the back of your head, just out of your reach, disabling you from remembering what you forgot. It was the same feeling that you got back at home, when you would go downstairs to grab something—like a pencil or a glass of water—then realizing that you had no idea what you came down for when you got to the bottom of the steps. This was that feeling.

You gripped the metal rungs harder beneath your palms. Your mind was reeling with memories that weren't yours, names that you never heard before. Behind the closed walls of your eyelids, you saw a city of brick, a man clad in red, a cabin in the woods. The name Rose, and the name Alastor, or something like that.

Pushing the strange memories away, you went down further.

It was starting to really feel like the hole was endless. When you looked down—or the direction you thought was down—you saw nothing but more darkness. No hint of a light source that would verify the nearing of a floor.

But you kept going down.

☆

It felt like hours before you saw light.

A warm yellow circle, from some distance below you. Light meant flooring. Light meant no more climbing down this ladder, no more staring at absolutely nothing.

You hurried to reach the bottom, where the circle of light sat patiently waiting. Little did you know, someone else sat down there, patiently waiting.

Waiting for you.

☆ Alastor's POV, present tense

Eve is scrambling to brush chunks of grass and dirt over something on the ground when I find her.

I immediately want to kill her, and that's how I know I'm going dark. Going dark is a term I use to describe the uncontrollable killing frenzies that occasionally take control of me, triggered by the sight or scent of blood, and intensified each time I kill someone. I haven't gone dark once since I saw (Y/N) that beautiful day.

I guess that frenzy-free streak ends now.

"Al," she greets me, brushing her dirty palms off on her thin green dress as she stands up. "What a pleasant surprise."

I chuckle, knowing that my appearance is neither pleasant nor a surprise. "Eve."

She stares at me, waiting for me to ask her where (Y/N) is. But I don't ask. I stare right back at her, waiting for her to be the first to speak.

Our staring contest ends when she says, "It's over. She's already entered the Chasm. Lucifer will be here shortly to take care of her—"

Before she can finish her sentence, I snap my fingers. She stands still for a moment, frozen in that beautiful moment between life and death. Her eyes widen, and she reaches a shivering hand up to her chest, where her heart can no longer be found.