Cato’s eyes flashed from brown to black, silver sparks gleaming in their depths. It was there and gone so fast, I almost thought I imagined it. Angels’ eyes usually erupted with flame when emotional, not… whatever that was. But then again, how would I know? General Ronen’s eyes shifted to swirling shadows, so maybe it was a Throne thing.
He stepped closer, and I leaned back as far as I could in my chair, intimidated by the quiet severity of the Throne boring down on me. “Your father didn’t gamble with your life.”
Right. And Michael didn’t carve me open either.
Cato’s gaze sharpened, clearly reading my disbelief. “Your father knew about you the moment you manifested your Infernus. Or rather, he suspected, when he sensed someone outside his domain using the icy powers of Hell—a power only he should have. Lo and behold, when he had General Ronen connect your minds, he found a young female living with his cordistella and fighting off the same male she left him for,” he continued, his voice firm. “He knew you wouldn’t die in that river because he knew you were his daughter.”
I froze, barely breathing. Cato’s words hung in the air, and I stared at him, searching for the lie. I wanted to argue. I wanted to rip apart every word he’d just said. To me, the king had always been callous and cold-hearted. Once he sent me into that river, I’d assumed my life meant little to him—just another game piece to play or discard. But Cato’s words… they made me hesitate.
I’d almost forgotten that moment—the cold, commanding voice that had infiltrated my mind and helped me freeze Michael. The king had saved our lives. I didn’t know it was him at the time, but I remembered feeling strange gratitude toward the mysterious male. And if that wasn’t enough to make me question everything, I’d seen his love for my mom. She was his cordistella—his soulmate. It all made sense now. Every glance toward his bedroom door, like she’d disappear on him if he didn’t check every few seconds. The raw, helpless fury he unleashed on his room when he learned what Michael had done to us.
He loved her because she was his other half.
The memories, combined with Cato’s words, slithered into the cracks of the steel fortress I’d built around my opinion of the king, forcing me to reconsider who he was.
But if they were cordistellas, why did she leave him? Why did she end up with Michael?
So many questions swirled in my mind, but the ones that escaped my lips felt like the words of a small, shriveled child clinging to an unfair past she couldn’t understand. “If the king knew about us—if my mother was his bonded—why didn’t he ever come for us? Why didn’t he ever save us from Michael’s abuse?”
How different would our lives have been if I didn’t have to hear my mother’s cries, the sickening slap of skin against skin, or the clattering of furniture? If I didn’t have to feel the cold blade split open my back, or?—
I swallowed hard, forcing the ache down, and pushed aside the memories of Michael.
“The king isn’t allowed to leave the Redemption Circle,” Cato answered, his tone somber. “Even before Hell’s gate issues.”
What about his military? He couldn’t have sent someone to find us?
Bitterness slapped the back of my throat. I was wallowing in self-pity, and it’d do me no good. “The past happened,” I snapped softly to myself. “You can’t change it.”
He considered me for a moment more, then nodded to the book I had yet to open. “You’ll be meeting with your father in the morning. It’d be wise of you to brush up on what you know about him and your Infernus.”
“You know about my Infernus?”
“I’m a Throne,” he deadpanned.
Right.
“What do you know?”
He turned his back on me, swishing his robes as he did, and padded away. “Read and find out about them.”
“Them?” I called after him. He faded into an aisle of dark shelving and books, ignoring me. “For a Throne, he’s really choosy with what information he gives me,” I grumbled beneath my breath, flipping open the book onThe King of Hell.
The opening paragraph explained the creation of Hell and the need for balance in the celestial world—an opposite to Heaven. The passage continued, saying Hell had once been without a ruler. But then the following paragraph discredited that information, stating Hell was created when the council chose Lucifer to be its ruler. It didn’t add up.
But that was nothing compared to the blacked-out paragraph at the end of the page. Was the author trying to hide a mistake? Or had someone deliberately erased it?
I held the page to the light, squinting to make out anything beneath the thick ink. Whoever had blacked it out had been thorough.
I skimmed the rest of the history, finding more blacked-out pages, and noting the celestial world’s obsession with balance, then moved on to the section about our Infernus. I spent hours reading, absorbing everything I could, until my eyes grew heavy.
Our powers came from the Seven Circles of Hell: Redemption, Temptation, Glaciation, Hallucination, Suffocation, Scission, and Immolation. Each circle contributed a piece of itself to the king—and, by extension, me. The book didn’t clarify what powers we received from each circle. Still, it mentioned that the king had once possessed immense power until he willingly divided it, giving parts of his power to the lords of the circles to ensure their obedience—and to maintain balance and a connection to each dimensional circle.
I pursed my lips, a begrudging respect for the king creeping up inside me. To once hold such power and give it away took strength. Sacrifice. Michael would’ve never done that. He wanted to murderme for prestige and to regain my mom’s wings—wings she never once mentioned to me. She seemed content without them.
Maybe Cato was right. Perhaps the male who fathered me wasn’t as bad as I thought. He obviously cared for my mom—without hesitation or conditions. Maybe he just wanted me to be stronger, to teach me the ways of his world.
But something still nagged at me. Why put me in an elite squadron when I wasn’t ready? Why demand I read thousand-page books in a day?
