Chapter 1
“I hereby claim you in the name of Lucifer,” the demon Haniel said.
And as if to underscore his words with fateful finality, magic seemed to lock around me, the snap of invisible shackles echoing through my soul.
“No,” I rasped in spite of the power that brimmed along the newly forged connection between Lucifer’s proxy and me.
“See, that’s the thing.” Haniel casually stepped closer. “You don’t really get a say in this.”
I shook my head and stumbled back, almost tripping over a pile of rocks. My heart beat so fast, so hard, it threatened to break out of my ribcage. “I’m not coming with you.”
I’d wait here for Azazel, thank you very much. Or rather, I’d run away and hide, seeing the determination on Haniel’s face. Unless I managed to ditch him, he’d really drag me to Lucifer with him.
“Fallen angels are fair game to us.” Haniel raised his hands in a shrug. “And whoever is here first gets to call dibs.” He made a show of looking around. “I don’t see your boyfriend here, do you?”
“Husband,” I hissed.
He clucked his tongue. “Till death do you part. And correct me if I’m wrong, but you did die, didn’t you?”
My mouth was suddenly as dry as desert sand. The threat of this demon claiming me for Lucifer aside, was it true what he’d just said? Had my bond with Azazel really been broken? Fissures of pain cracked my heart. I hadn’t even considered that.
Not that it meant we couldn’t be together, of course, but that marriage, the way it’d defined the weird start to our relationship, it had meant something to me, and I hadn’t realized how much until now. Not to mention there’d been an actual bond tying us together, a tangible connection beyond the love we felt for each other.
The thought of having lost that caused a deep ache within me.
“So,” Haniel said, his dark gray eyes glittering, “what’s it going to be? Are you coming along like a good girl, or do I need to drag you with me kicking and screaming? I’m fine with either option, just to let you know.”
I only stared at him for a second.
Then I ran.
Or, to be more precise, I tried.
But considering that my body was broken in more places than I could count from my crash landing on Earth, and given that I wasn’t yet healing as fast as I would as an angel in Heaven—or a demon in Hell—I was currently as nimble and swift as a sea lion on land.
I only made it about two feet up the incline of the crater, my shattered bones screaming at me as I scrambled up the rubble, before Haniel was on me. I still fought him like a wildcat, but the combination of my injuries from the fall, my power being weakened from having God’s grace stripped from me, and the fact that I was exhausted and not at my best after the shit I’d been through resulted in Haniel overpowering me in no time.
After punching the crap out of me, he grabbed me by my hair and proceeded to drag me along the ground like some barbaric caveman of yore. I screamed bloody murder and clawed at his hand holding tight to my strands while the sore spots on my back where my wings had been fired volleys of pain through me from being hauled over the rocky terrain.
“All right, that’s it.” Haniel stopped and faced me with an expression of utmost annoyance. “I can’t fucking take the shrieking anymore.”
And before I could so much as twitch, he drew a dagger, swung, and planted it right in my heart.
I grunted, choked, pawed weakly at the blade protruding from my chest, and then everything went dark.
When I came to again, the heat of Hell pressed against my skin.
And it felt wonderful.
That was the worst, best, weirdest feeling.
It felt like coming home.
And not just because this was the realm I’d been meaning to get back to because I wanted to live with Azazel, but because…I now drew energy from the very land itself. I breathed in the air, and it nourished me. Every beat of my heart fed strength through my veins, pulled directly from the fabric of this world.
I felt this realm and all the creatures and plants like an extended part of myself, just like I’d done in Heaven when I’d been an angel.
My eyes flew open at the realization of the latest transformation I’d gone through, this time from fallen angel to…demon.
Holy shit.
I was a demon.
Of course, I’d known I’d become one as soon as I’d recovered my memories and realized that I’d have to fall and be claimed for Hell in order to be with Azazel again, but that had been a rational understanding.
It hadn’t really sunk in at the time.
It did now.
During all my time spent in Hell, I’d been this comparably weak creature, a human, always one step below demons, always aware of just how much power and strength I lacked. In my more quiet moments, the ones woven through with a subtle kind of despair about facing an eternity of this, I’d sometimes fantasized about what it would be like to be able to become one of them. To have wings, to have power flowing through me with which I could hold my own.
And now, those fantasies that had seemed so impossible had actually come true. I was a full-blooded demon, even more powerful than a half-blood.
How absolutely mind-boggling.
Blinking, I took in my surroundings.
I was hanging over Haniel’s shoulder, swinging limply with his steps, my arms dangling down his back. My gaze snagged on the skin on my hands, all the scrapes and bruises from my crash now healed. My once broken bones had set themselves right, my face no longer feeling swollen. Between my shoulder blades, the spots where my wings had been didn’t quite burn anymore. They hurt, but this pain felt different. There was a healing quality to it, the promise of wholeness. And they fucking itched like crazy.
Because I was growing new wings.
I sucked in a breath, elation rushing through me.
Which was immediately dampened as I recognized the style of the hallways Haniel carried me through. The polished marble floor had lost some its shine, the elaborate curtains framing the high windows hung in tatters, the statues once framing the walls half destroyed, and yet I knew these corridors, remembered them from the last time I’d been here.
We were in Lucifer’s palace.
A full-body shiver took hold of me, fear icing my stomach.
“Let me down,” I said, my voice shaking.
“I’m not in the mood to chase you again.”
“I won’t run,” I bit out.
And I meant it, because what was the point? It was too late now anyway. I could feel not only the connection to this realm as a newly minted demon, but also a faint tether binding me to this particular territory. Lucifer already had his claim on me, staked by proxy through Haniel.
And I knew how these things worked down here. Once a demon’s allegiance was set, there was no deserting, there was no free choice, no way to leave and pledge one’s loyalty to another without permission from the current liege.
A higher-ranking demon could conscript someone from a lower-ranking lord in his service and thereby change that demon’s direct allegiance, similar to what Azazel had done with Caleb when he’d pulled him out of the sub-territory of Caleb’s father. But that wouldn’t happen for me…because Lucifer was my direct liege, and no one outranked him.
Haniel dropped me on my feet, and I swayed for a moment, my legs shaking.
“What does he want with me?”
Haniel gave me a bored look. “How should I know? My orders were to fetch you, nothing more.” He turned to walk on. “Our lord is not in the habit of explaining his reasons for anything he does.”
Following him, I let out a raspy breath, my fingers turning numb. “So he knew I’d be there? At that time? He knew when I’d fall?”
I could tell Haniel rolled his eyes even though he had his back turned to me. “Obviously. Not the precise moment, though. He had me staking out the place for a few days already.”
I almost stopped in my tracks. Naamah’s words echoed through my mind. I promised him. I owe him this much.
My thoughts all stumbled over themselves.
Oh, my God. She’d been talking about Lucifer.
I’d thought she’d meant Azazel, even though it hadn’t made sense, and it had felt wrong, and now I knew why. I’d known deep in my heart that Azazel wouldn’t go over my head like this, that he wouldn’t disregard my request for more time to say goodbye to my mom.
Gah, I’d been mad at him for no reason when I should have had more faith in him, when really, the person I had all the reason to be mad at was Naamah, and her alone. She’d basically sold me out to Lucifer!
Anger and betrayal made my skin flush hot, and a growl worked its way up my throat.
I’d thought she was my friend. I’d thought she cared about me, but all along, she’d been planning to sabotage the timing of my fall from grace so that Lucifer would be the one to snatch me up.
And why? What did he want from me?
A thought struck me, and this time, I really did stop walking, my bones icing over.
What if…he wanted revenge because he thought I’d been involved in Lilith’s murder?
Of course, I had been involved in it, albeit unknowingly and unwittingly—Destatur had roped me into her plan without telling me, convincing me to take Lilith to Earth, the one place where she could be killed by angels, which would then prompt Lucifer to cancel the truce and start Armageddon.
And I’d been so naive, so trusting, I’d just gone along with it, thinking I was doing Lilith a big favor by escorting her to Earth and playing tour guide.
My grief over her death and my role in it was now only eclipsed by the fear striking its talons in me about whether Lucifer thought I’d been in cahoots with Destatur, and now wanted payback. Was that why he’d claimed me? Did he want to torture me in retaliation?
The floor threatened to tilt under me.
My only hope was that the kernel of Lilith’s power that I apparently still carried within me would keep him from causing me physical harm…though it wouldn’t prevent him from exposing me to psychological torture, as I well knew.
“Keep up!” Haniel barked from a few paces ahead of me.
I flinched and hurried after him.
But come to think of it, Lucifer wanting revenge was unlikely, wasn’t it? If he believed the lie which Destatur and Enaia had wanted to dish up, namely that Azazel and I had been the instigators of the conspiracy to murder Lilith, then Azazel wouldn’t be alive and walking around freely. He’d either be dead or suffering eternal punishment chained to the subfloor of Lucifer’s entrance hall.
So, the simple fact that Azazel was alive and well meant that Lucifer had somehow learned the truth, which in turn meant he would know that I had been a mere pawn in Destatur and Enaia’s game.
The relief flooding me was tempered by the nagging, terrifying question of what—if not revenge—Lucifer wanted with me. This uncertainty left me reeling. If I knew what he intended, I could at least prepare myself, trying to find ways to mitigate or to form a plan of how to deal with whatever loomed.
As it was, I was walking into this completely blind, and it scared the fuck out of me.
Maybe this was just another way for him to hurt Azazel? It would fit his style to make a grab for me in order to keep Azazel and me apart as well as use me to lash out at Azazel by intermittently hurting me and letting Azazel know.
And, much like the time I’d broken my vow to Lucifer and faced suffering the consequences, there’d be no legal way to get me out of it. I belonged to Lucifer now, and with the steep hierarchical and feudal setup of Hell, Lucifer could do whatever the fuck he pleased with me, and I couldn’t even quit and join another archdemon’s territory instead.
As we walked through the hallways—Haniel stopping here and there to inquire about Lucifer’s current location with one of the staff—I noticed some things that gave me pause.
I’d been in Lucifer’s palace only twice before, but each time, everything in here had been spick and span, the luxurious furnishings in tip-top shape, the floors polished to a shine, the gold and silver adornments of the decor gleaming in the light of the torches and chandeliers. Even at the Fall Festival, when there’d been a good degree of chaos with the masses of guests milling about, there’d still been a general sense of orderliness underneath it all, a feeling of strictly held control that temporarily allowed some leeway for the crowds partying at the festival.
Now, though…the overall impression I got was one of neglect.
The floors had lost their shine. Furnishings were torn in places, some of the curtains ripped, and no one seemed to care to fix them. There were cracks in a few walls, and I spotted what might be rat droppings in the corners. Only half of the chandeliers or torches appeared to be lit, providing just enough light to not bathe the entire room in darkness.
A dread-filled sense of doom gripped me as my gaze roamed over the obvious signs of decay and negligence.
Here and there, either in the hallways or visible through an open door in an adjacent room, we came across other demons, some of which looked harried and hastened to run past, whereas others seemed to entertain themselves with various raucous games or lavish feasts.
We were just walking past another of those open-door ballroom-like chambers when shrill shrieking caused me to wince and pause. Peering into the room, I spotted a group of three male demons standing around something on the floor.
One of them laughed and gestured to the bundle on the ground. “Again, again!”
The tallest of them, a dude with long, silver-white hair, flicked his hand, and flames erupted over the thing on the floor—which started shrieking again, convulsing in pain.
Horror rolled through me, squeezing my stomach.
That thing on the floor was a hellrat. Burned, bleeding, mutilated, but alive.
And they were torturing it for fun.
“Stop!” The shout was out of my mouth before I’d registered the impulse to say something.
It wasn’t that I liked hellrats all that much. In fact, considering the fact I’d almost been killed and eaten by one, I certainly harbored no warm feelings for the large rodents. They were a pest, and when I’d been a human, they’d posed a real threat to me, which was one of the reasons I’d been in need of a guard dog like Vengeance to keep me safe.
But that didn’t mean I wanted to see them suffer. I’d gladly let Mephisto or Vengeance hunt them to keep the population controlled, but at least they weren’t cruel about it.
Well, that was mostly true for Mephisto and his ilk, because cats did like to play with their food a bit.
That was the difference, though. For cats and dogs, the rats were food. There was a purpose to the violence of killing them.
For these demons, on the other hand, the cruelty and violence was the purpose. Not to mention that a single cat hunting a rat that was half its size was a hell of a lot fairer than three adult demons ganging up on one rat. The rodent here didn’t stand a chance, whereas with cats and dogs, the rats often did get away. Even the best predators in the wild only had about a fifty percent success rate in hunting.
At my shout, the tall silver-haired demon paused his attack and glanced my way. The other two demons also looked up. As soon as their attention was off the rat, it scurried away, impressively fast for the amount of injuries it had suffered. Its fur was scorched, the skin blistered, the tail half missing, and it was bleeding from several open wounds.
My chest drew tight, hot anger pulsing underneath my skin. What these demons had done to it was beyond barbaric, and I was glad the rat had gotten away. No matter my feelings about these rodents—no animal deserved to be hurt that way.
“We should go,” Haniel muttered from beside me, a note of urgency in his voice.
But it was too late. I’d caught the attention of those bastards.
“And who would you be?” the silver-haired demon said, sauntering over to me, his two cronies trailing him.
He stopped in front of me, his power a cold shock against my senses. Like all of his kind—my kind as well now—he was ethereally beautiful, his features perfectly aesthetic, an enthralling blend of masculine hardness and smooth elegance. Yet whereas Azazel’s beauty stoked a fire deep within me, making my knees go weak with awe, this demon’s good looks caused something inside me to recoil. The hairs on my arms and neck rose in primal warning even before he reached out a hand to snag my chin. Revulsion pulsed through me at his touch.
I yanked my chin out of his grasp and wanted slap his arm away, but he caught my wrist with the speed of a striking snake.
“A new demon, hm?” His lip curled into a mockery of a smile as he squeezed my wrist hard enough to hurt. “And claimed for this territory, I see.”
I had no idea how he could tell all of that. Maybe something in my energy?
He spoke again before I could ruminate on it further. “Wait, aren’t you that human? The one from the Fall Festival?”
God, that shit would haunt me forever, wouldn’t it? I cringed remembering just how much of a fool I’d made of myself under the influence of amrit.
“But you’re not a human any longer,” the demon mused, still holding my wrist in his grasp. “Curious.” He leaned in, the feel of his power making my skin crawl. “But even if you’re now a cherub, I still outrank you, and you should have greeted me with the proper respect. Not to mention you just lost me my current entertainment. Seems only fair that you’ll replace it.”
Wait, what? A cherub? That couldn’t be right. I’d been a throne in Heaven. How—
Next to me, Haniel cleared his throat. “Lord Samael, I request that you unhand her.”
I froze, my eyes widening.
Samael. The charts and family trees Azazel and Azmodea had made me learn before the Fall Festival flashed before my inner eye. In preparation for my presentation before Lucifer, they’d insisted I’d study the hierarchy of his court to know who was who and how they all related to each other, lest I get into trouble by not greeting someone properly or speaking out of turn to someone I should avoid.
Samael had been pointed out to me as such a someone to avoid.
He was Lucifer’s son.
One of three, to be precise, but the only one who was part of the Devil’s court. The other two lived with their mothers, in other archdemonacies. Samael was a powerful seraph, his mother the archdemon Ashtaroth, and from all I’d heard, his penchant for cruelty more than matched his dad’s.
Family connections down here among demons were complex and muddy and super important all at the same time. From Lucifer’s six children—all with different mothers—only three lived in his own territory. Or rather, had lived.
Naamah, after all, was famously gone.
Besides Samael, the only other offspring residing in Lucifer’s domain was Safrit, his daughter by the seraph Fureas. That alone showed that they held Lucifer’s favor more than the others, though no one had ever come close to how much Naamah had meant to him.
As Azmodea had explained it to me, it wasn’t that he didn’t care about any of his other kids at all, but they simply ranked a bit lower in his regard. Some, apparently, were even a bit estranged from him, and boy, could I understand that.
Samael, though, held a high position on the list of relatives, and he’d been part of Lucifer’s inner court back when I’d had to prepare for the Fall Festival. I hadn’t seen him when I’d appeared before Lucifer, but he must have been among the crowd for him to have recognized me.
And now he was right in front of me, staring at me with the kind of unsettling attention of a bored kid who’d just spotted a bug to harass.
Still holding onto my wrist, his grip painful, he said, “I don’t take orders from you, Haniel.”
“That order isn’t mine,” Haniel retorted, “but your father’s.”
Samael’s eyes—their color an unnatural deep red—flicked from me to Haniel.
“His Grace has decreed that she is not to be touched,” Haniel said. “He has claimed her as his ward, and she is to be brought directly to him. If any harm comes to her, you will have to answer to him yourself.”
Samael’s gaze swung back to me, and his eyes narrowed. His power seared my skin, and for a moment, he tightened his grip until I thought my bones would snap. Then, he released me and gave me a smile that was chillingly hollow.
“Run along then, little mouse.” His wine-red eyes glittered. “Give my father my best.”
I glared at him as Haniel grabbed me by my upper arm and dragged me forward.
Oh, I could definitely see the relation between him and Lucifer. That apple didn’t fall far from the tree. In fact, it might still be stuck to it, rotting at the core and all.
“If you want to make it here,” Haniel hissed, pulling me around the next corner, “then you best keep your mouth shut and your head down. Especially around him.”
I blinked at him. Genuine advice? From Mr. I’m just here to deliver you to Lucifer?
“Wouldn’t Lu—” I caught myself and corrected, “Wouldn’t His Grace’s decree of protection keep others from harming me?”
I remembered how Lilith bestowing her favor on me had been considered an almost fail-safe armor against any attacks.
Haniel clucked his tongue. “Would have. Once. Things aren’t…what they used to be. If I were you, I wouldn’t rely on that to keep my head on my shoulders.”
Dread curled in my stomach. I felt like I’d been thrown into raging waters with only a rickety raft to clutch on to.
Haniel took me further into the palace, and I recognized these particular hallways from the time Lilith had taken care of me and ordered me to straighten up her and Lucifer’s personal library. This was the more private wing of the residence, with Lucifer and Lilith’s chambers that were farther from the receiving rooms used for audiences.
My heart ached at the realization that Lilith wasn’t here anymore.
She’d been such a warm, kind, beautiful presence, a light in a sea of darkness. I felt her absence keenly as we walked through the wing that had once been her home, as if the walls and floors themselves grieved her passing. A real note of desolate sadness clung to the air, and it settled heavily on my chest with every breath I drew in.
With each turn we took, the hallway got progressively darker. Fewer and fewer candles were lit, gloom suffusing the corners and veiling the ceiling. Incongruously with the nature of Hell, cold seemed to crawl over the floor, like the chill whiff emanating from a tomb.
In fact, it felt like walking through a mausoleum.
“Should we light some more candles?” I whispered, not daring to raise my voice.
It wasn’t that I had trouble seeing, since my vision as a demon was near perfect even in the dark. But this gloom was creeping me out, and adding some more light might just help chase the chill from the back of my neck.
“I like my limbs all in place, thank you very much,” Haniel said. When I blinked at him in bewilderment, he added, “The last few folks who have lit more of these candles have found themselves without hands for a couple of days.”
I shivered.
Finally, Haniel stopped in front of a door, knocked and then opened it. Not going inside, he bowed deeply and said, “Your Grace. As you requested, I have claimed and fetched the new demon Zoe for you.”
And with that, he slapped his hand on my back and shoved me inside the room, closing the door behind me with a thwack that reminded me of the sound a lid might make when slamming down on a coffin.
It was even darker in here. And colder. So much colder. With my eyes able to see within the gloom, I could tell that my breath was frosting before me.
Frosting.
In Hell.
My heart beating like a drummer on speed, I scanned the room, noting the shreds of furniture, the ruins of what once might have been sofas and end tables, the tears of fabric on the walls indicating where tapestries used to hang.
A single candle illuminated the suffocating darkness, and there, just out of reach of its glow, slumped on a half-destroyed armchair, sat Lucifer.
I sucked in a breath.
His hair was still black.
Whatever effects had turned that once golden blond of his head to unrelenting obsidian in the wake of Lilith’s death, it persisted, same as the haggard look on his face and the pure midnight of his eyes.
Gone was the turquoise of his irises, that stunning hue that had reminded me of Caribbean lagoons, the same color that adorned Naamah’s eyes.
If this were the time to joke, I’d say that he’d turned into an emo-goth version of himself.
But it wasn’t a time for jokes, of course. More like an I’m jumping out of my skin with terror kind of time.
Because though I’d been afraid of Lucifer before, intimidated by the sheer amount of ancient power pouring off him, wary of his unpredictability, there’d still been a thread of…normality about him. I’d recognized him as a demon—immensely powerful, yes, but in the end, a being like all the others I’d met.
This creature before me didn’t feel in any way normal. It felt like something that had crawled out of some other dimension and barely fit into this world, breathing cold and darkness and the musty gloam of death.
Lucifer rose from his seat, and my soul recoiled in horror. I stumbled back a step, heart thumping against my ribcage, watching with wide eyes as he came closer until he stopped right in front of me.
For a moment, he stared down at me, the black of his eyes so absolute, like I’d imagine the primordial darkness before the creation of light. His power washed over me like an icy breeze, making my fingers numb from the cold.
Then, he sank to his knees, wrapped his arms around my middle, and hugged me.
Chapter 2
My brain stuttered. My thoughts all derailed.
What the fuck?
I stood there with my arms held half raised, loath to touch him, paralyzed by shock, while Lucifer, the supreme overlord of Hell, First of the Fallen and antithesis to God, hugged me like he’d just recovered a long-lost treasure.
There was nothing sexual or suggestive in the embrace—thank fuck—just a world of relief and affection—ew—mixed with despair and heartache.
His face still pressed against my belly, his shoulders began to jerk, almost as if—
The sound of a sob broke the oppressive silence of this tomb-like room.
My eyes widened. I drew in a sharp breath through my nose, my mouth shut tightly so as not to make a noise.
He wept.
Lucifer knelt there before me, grabbing me in a disturbing kind of hug, and cried into my stomach.
Help. Someone help me. How had I gotten into this situation? How had I ended up as the Devil’s comfort blanket?
And how could I get out of it?
After an awkwardly long moment of near silent sobs, during which I stood there with my hands still hovering half raised, pretending Lucifer wasn’t currently wetting my bruised and battered fighting gear with his tears, he pulled back a little, his expression so agonized it pierced my soul.
Closing his eyes, he laid one hand on my chest, just over my wildly galloping heart—the touch remaining non-sexual—his power flowing into me, as if seeking.
Deep inside me, that kernel of Lilith’s essence she’d gifted me responded with a warm glow.
The anguish of his expression gave way to a relieved kind of joy, a profound, blissful contentment, like someone relishing the warmth of a crackling hearth after wandering through a blistering snow storm. I’d seen the same expression on footage of people rescued from being adrift at sea.
Then, agony carved lines into his face once more, and he laid his forehead against my chest, right where his hand had felt for Lilith’s spark.
For the last part of her that was left in this world.
This time, his sobs tore my heart to shreds.
When he finally let me go, my eyes were burning. He got to his feet, abruptly turning away from me. His shoulders heaved, his hands balling into fists at his side. With a flick of his fingers, he summoned a tissue and wiped it over his face with angry, jerky movements.
A moment later, he tossed the tissue to the side, and it went up in flames, the ashy residue falling to the floor.
“Take a seat,” he said, his back still turned.
I glanced around the ruined room, trying to figure out where I could perch my butt without something crumbling beneath me. I wouldn’t sit in his armchair, that was for sure.
He waved a hand, and an entire sofa appeared, thankfully in one piece and seemingly good condition.
I gingerly sat down, twisting my hands in my lap.
A small table plopped into being before me, decked with a steaming mug of tea and a platter full of delicacies. I stared at it with the same suspicion I might bestow upon an unknown cat presenting me her belly for rubs.
“It’s not poisoned.”
At Lucifer’s dry remark, I looked up at him. He’d settled onto his armchair again, that otherworldly, eerie note of his energy now a bit less noticeable. He seemed a touch more like the demon I’d known him to be, rather than an eldritch creature slithered in from another dimension.
The emo-goth look remained, though.
“It’s not that, Your Grace,” I responded carefully. “It’s just that the last time I ate food you offered me, you made me puke it out again not long after with your psychological torture.”
One corner of his mouth twitched up in a half smile, there and gone again in a second.
Look at me, amusing the Devil by reminding him of how he used to hurt me. Good times.
“You don’t have to worry about that,” he said quietly, his face a cold mask.
I cleared my throat, my brows rising. “Oh, really?”
“I have something else planned for you.”
My stomach twisted itself into knots. That was about as ominous as the dreaded We need to talk in a relationship.
“What is it, Your Grace?” I asked, forcing my words and tone to be polite and respectful.
“You’re going to find her for me.”
I blinked. Tilted my head. Shook it a little to get rid of the befuddlement caused by his weird statement. “Excuse me, what?”
He summoned a glass with an amber liquid in it and took a sip. “That spark of her inside you,” he said with a nod at me. “You will use it to find her reincarnation on Earth.”
My jaw dropped, and I sat there for a good few heartbeats of stunned silence, staring at him in disbelief.
“Not to repeat myself,” I said eventually, “but—excuse me, what?”
“I see that the transformation to angel and then demon didn’t do anything for your intelligence.” His black eyes glinted coldly.
My nostrils flared. “I just…” How to put this delicately? “Lilith was human. Humans don’t get reincarnated. So, after her passing, she’d…”
I paused, suddenly struck by the realization that I had never considered what might have happened with her soul. As a human, she ought to have either gone to Heaven or to Hell, and seeing as she’d been just as bound to a demon as I’d been, her soul would not have been eligible for Heaven, which only left Hell as her destination.
But surely, if her soul had come down here, Lucifer would have taken her into his care, making sure she’d never feel a single second of torture. And if he had her soul here with him, he’d be…happy maybe wasn’t the right word, but…less depressed-looking?
Given the oppressive weight of grief that lay upon this palace, though, it was clear that Lilith wasn’t here, not even as a damned soul.
“Now those wheels are turning,” Lucifer murmured and took a sip of his drink. “Do let me know when you’ve figured it out.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Just because her soul didn’t end up here doesn’t mean she got reincarnated. That only happens to demons and angels.”
“When that blade cleaved through her neck,” he said with surgical precision, an abyss of sorrow looming behind that chilling tone of his, “what happened?”
I gulped. “She, uh, she dissolved into particles of light,” I said softly, new grief gripping me at the vivid memory of that scene.
“And that usually happens at the death of whom?”
“Demons and angels,” I whispered. “But…she wasn’t one, was she? A demon?”
He shook his head. “Nor was she human any longer.” His gaze fell to the liquid in his glass. “Not after all this time.”
I processed that for a moment, trying to understand just what he was asking of me. “How…how am I supposed to find her?” I waved at my chest. “This isn’t a radar. Or a GPS tracker. It’s not like this’ll let me pinpoint her location.”
“Her essence will call out to you.”
I threw my hands up. “Over thousands of miles, all around the world? We don’t know where she got reincarnated—if she did at all—”
He glared at me, and the lone candle in the room flickered precariously, while a morbid chill whispered over the floor and crawled up my legs.
I cleared my throat. “Um, yeah, without deets on her absolutely for sure factual reincarnation that totally happened, I don’t even know where to start looking. And I doubt I’ll be able to trace her essence from the other side of the world, so…”
“You’ll feel a kinship when you’re near her.”
I opened my mouth and closed it, narrowing my eyes and raising my hands to ball them in frustration right in front of me. With a deep breath to gather my composure, I straightened my fingers. “So, do I understand this right? You want me to comb the entire Earth for her?”
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes briefly and pressed my lips together, hoping that when I opened them again, I’d be dealing with a less unhinged version of Lucifer.
Alas, he looked just as insanely determined as before.
“This is madness,” I whispered.
The smile he gave me was something out of a horror flick. “You haven’t seen madness yet.”
“Do you know how many people there are on Earth?” I sounded just as aghast as I felt.
“Eight billion one hundred three million seven hundred fifty four thousand and sixty-three.” He made a pause. “Sixty-eight.” Another pause. “Seventy-two.” A second later, “Seventy—”
“All right, all right!” I waved my arms. “Point made. But also—you can’t honestly expect me to go looking for her in such a huge crowd. It’d be easier to find the proverbial needle in a haystack.”
“Searching for her,” he replied with icy calm, “will be your only purpose from now on. You will scour the Earth for her until you find her.”
“But—that could take years! Decades, even!”
“Then I suggest you hurry, because she doesn’t have decades.”
I stared at him, my mouth hanging open. “What do you even intend to do when I find her? Bring her back down here?”
“Precisely so.”
My brows drew together. “But…you do realize that living in Hell made her—”
I broke off at the terrifying speed with which his expression darkened, inky veins spidering out from his obsidian eyes.
“Made her what?” he asked in a deathly quiet whisper.
I clamped my mouth shut with a squeak. I would not be the one to break to Lucifer that his beloved wife and soulmate had been miserable living in his home realm. Nope, no, not gonna happen.
I knew the fate of the bearers of bad news.
Lucifer’s focus on me narrowed to that of a cobra zeroing in on a mouse.
“Pray tell,” he murmured, and at the same moment, pressure clamped down on my throat.
Not to strangle me—that would not be possible seeing as he was unable to hurt me physically. No, this pressure was of a different sort.
It pulled the words from my throat. All those I’d just bitten back.
“Miserable,” I choked out, the word ripped from me against my will. “Sad, depressed, withering, forlorn, numb, unhappy, fading, dispirited, downcast, dejected, despondent—” I stopped and hauled in a huge breath, my heart threatening to beat out of my chest. “Oh, God, did you have to make me recite the whole fucking thesaurus? Geez.”
Lucifer’s eyes were black chips of ice.
The room temperature dropped so sharply, the liquid in his glass froze, same as the tea on the table in front of me. My breath misted in the air, the chill of death creeping into my bones. Frost crawled over the floor, spreading out from Lucifer’s chair into the corners of the room. I couldn’t feel my fingers, or my toes.
“If I die from hypothermia,” I whispered, my lips barely able to move, “I can’t find her for you.”
The frost receded, the chill drawing back into him, and I sucked in once-again warm air to thaw my lungs. My hands and feet tingled to the point of itching.
Lucifer sipped from his drink, the contents of the glass no longer frozen. “Demons can’t die from cold.”
I rubbed at my arms. “Are you sure? I mean, our home realm is a fiery one, we’re all used to heat, how do we know we can survive freezing temperatures? Have there ever been any demons in the Antarctic? Like, did you guys do an expedition to test—”
“You’ll spend three weeks on Earth searching for her,” Lucifer interrupted my nervous babbling, “and then one week down here to recharge your energy, after which you’ll go to Earth for another three-week term, and so on.”
I sat up straighter as a thought struck me. He was sending me to Earth…the place I hadn’t been able to go to for the past eight years, even though I still had two people there I’d been visiting regularly while I’d been living in Hell with Azazel. I could finally see Taylor and my dad again! And maybe I could check in with my aunt, Cora, as well. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to talk to her, but I’d love to see her after all this time.
Surely, Lucifer wouldn’t even notice if I spent some of my trips to Earth to hang out with my human loved ones.
And Azazel could join me. I refused to entertain the thought that I wouldn’t get to see him. I’d made it back to Hell, I was a demon now, and we should be able to finally be together again—even if being under Lucifer’s control meant I couldn’t live with him. Yet. I’d find a way to make that possible.
And until then, Azazel and I could meet on Earth as well as here in Hell. Maybe he could even come travel with me?
Lucifer tilted his head as he regarded me, his gaze far too perceptive. “You’ll be assigned an escort to make sure you’re actually traveling around looking for her, and not just frolicking among humans. And no, that escort will not be Azazel.”
Well, shit. There went that idea.
I narrowed my eyes. “If I do this for you—”
“There is no if.”
I gritted my teeth and drew in a sharp breath through my nose. “Seeing as I’m doing you a big favor here—”
“I am your king and direct liege, and my orders to you are not favors the fulfillment of which depends on your whims, but commands that you have no choice but to obey.” Shadows pulsed around him, the temperature of the air sinking again. “Remember your place.”
I took a moment to rein in my rising anger and resentment. I’d never been good with respecting authority. But to antagonize him was not a good idea—even my weird brain understood that.
“Your Grace,” I began, adding a sweet note to my voice, “I humbly request that you consider allowing me a day or two during each three-week stay on Earth for visiting my loved ones. I will be much more highly motivated to conduct my search if I get to spend time with the people I care about.”
He swirled his glass, his disturbingly dark gaze on me. “Like your father’s soul that you stole from my Pit?”
I froze. Oh, shit, right, there was that. He knew. The memory of that moment when he’d taken me down into the bowels of his palace to witness the torture session and had revealed that he’d long figured out that we’d freed my dad’s soul from his clutches came careening back, and my breath stuttered out of me.
“That look of panic is priceless,” he muttered with a chuckle and sipped from his drink.
I’d kill him. One day, I’d actually murder that cruel son of a bitch.
“Let that be your motivation,” Lucifer said, and for a second, I thought he meant my fantasy of killing him. But then he added, “The fact that, at any moment, I could order your father’s soul to be dragged back to Hell where he belongs, and have him tortured right here in the palace for you to witness.”
Oh, yeah, there’d be a murder in my future. Involving this horrible bastard.
“During my week down here,” I said, stuffing my violent fantasies far down lest they show on my face, “will I be free to move around?”
If so, I’d ditch this place and hightail it to Azazel’s for the entire duration. If he wasn’t permitted to join me on my trips to Earth, then maybe I could at least see him for the whole week that I would be in Hell.
“That will depend on your conduct.”
Murrrrderrrrrr.
I clenched my jaw so hard I felt a muscle pop. I had to get out of here before did act on those urges to attack the Devil. “Is there anything else, Your Grace?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
He stood and came over, depositing his drink on my table. My pulse skyrocketed, my limbs twitching with the instinctive urge to jump over the back of the sofa and put as much distance between us as possible. Whatever he intended couldn’t be good.
“For your search on Earth,” he said, his power charging the air to an almost painful level, “you’ll need wings.”
I peered up at him, wary beyond measure. “They’re already regrowing.”
“Not fast enough.” He pushed the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows, and my stomach made a dive for the ground. “You’ll find I have no patience for further delays.”
Before I could jerk back, he grabbed me by the shoulders, and the next second, his power punched into me. Pain erupted all along my nerve endings, shooting through my body like a tidal wave of agony, and my back bowed as I screamed.
Between my shoulder blades, it felt like someone pierced me with hot pokers. On and on, pain pumped through my blood, from the tips of my toes and the top of my head to my back, as if there was a network of paths of pain that all led to the spots where my wings would grow. It burned.
I was awash in a sea of agony, lost in fiery waves that consumed me, my vision blinking in and out of focus. All the while, I screamed and convulsed, though Lucifer’s grip on my shoulders never wavered.
Eventually, the pain ebbed, until there was only a faint pulse of discomfort, a twinge between my shoulder blades, and the weight of new wings pulling at my back.
My face was all wet from crying, my throat raw from screaming, and I’d ripped the fabric of the sofa with my nails as I’d held on for dear life. Trembling all over, I sat there, weak beyond measure, when Lucifer released my shoulders and stepped back.
“There,” he said, casually pulling down his sleeves again. “I saved you at least four days of painfully slow regrowth.”
Sniffling, my sight still a bit blurred from my tears, I raised my gaze to him, rage simmering deep within me. “Like this wasn’t painful?”
His smile was pure malice. “You’re welcome.”
“I thought you couldn’t hurt me,” I bit out. “What with that precious spark inside me.”
His eyes glittered as he gave me a sly look. “Oh, but that wasn’t meant to hurt. I touched you with the intent to heal.” He laid one hand over his heart, the picture of sincerity and innocence. “I wanted to make you whole. That the process of speed healing happens to have extreme pain as a side effect is an unintended bonus.”
I fucking hated him.
“You may take one day to rest and recharge,” he said, returning to his armchair. “And then you’ll report to me for the start of your search. You are not to speak to anyone of your new purpose. The knowledge about the search is on a need-to-know basis, and there are only very few who do need to know.” He glared at me for a moment and then waved at the door, which opened to reveal a demon standing at attention who bowed deeply at the sight of his lord. “Gilarion will show you to your rooms. Do not leave them until called.”
I rose and bowed, spreading my wings in a sign of deference, the new muscles twinging slightly. When I straightened again, my smile at him might have shown too much teeth. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
Before I turned away, Lucifer pinned me with a look and quietly said, “I don’t understand what she saw in you.”
I paused, holding his stare. Then I curled my lip and snarled, “Likewise.”
Pivoting on the balls of my feet, I marched out of the room.
***
Curious to read more? Not much longer to go until you can find out what happens next! All’s Hell That Ends Well releases in November, and you can preorder it here already: All’s Hell That Ends Well.
