Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
I know I have fallen for Kaiden over the past few weeks, but it suddenly feels much deeper than that—as if I’ve been in love with him for years. No, that’s crazy! He’s a demon. Plus, I’ve just met him. I should end things before one of us gets hurt, but I can’t. Only the thought of being away from Kaiden sears like acid in my veins. He asks me something. However, it passes right over my head since I’m too busy freaking out on the inside. “Huh?” I mumble.
“I asked if you’re not hungry.”
“Yeah, I am…I um, I got lost in my thoughts for a second there.” I bite into a taco. He got my order to aT, down to theextra avocado and Oaxaca cheese. It’s delicious, but it’s hard to swallow through the knot in my throat. Still, I finish it because I need my strength back, and I can’t even remember the last time I ate something.
“Sam mentioned Malik went after Adramelech,” I tell him.
Kaiden nods and swallows his bite. “Yeah, he did a location spell, but it was a dead end. By the time he and Dominic arrived, Adramelech was gone, and they weren’t able to pick up his trail anymore. A dark witch probably helped him disappear. He owns a few houses all over the country. They’re checking each one before coming back.”
I scarf down the second taco before saying, “What if they don’t find him, and Lucifer learns we kidnapped his chancellor? Have you thought about that?”
“It crossed my mind once or twice,” he responds, as composed as ever.
“Well, what if he retaliates? What are we going to do?”
He lifts an eyebrow. “Wewill not do anything becauseI’mgoing to take care of it, and you’re going to rest and heal.”
I scoff. “How will you take care of it?”
“I’ll go to Hell and search for him.”
“Oh,” I murmur. “But I don’t understand how he got away. The basement in your building is safer than the freakin’ Pentagon.”
“He manipulated two of the wolf shifters working security—Adramelech’s serpentine eyes have the magical ability to hypnotize people. I forgot to tell you about it because his influence doesn’t work on lightborn or me, so I didn’t deem it important at the time. But my head of security warned the wolf shifters before bringing in a…different prisoner not to engage with him or throw a look his way. However, the bastard lured them to his cell regardless of their precautions. All hell broke loose. He got his hands on a knife and sliced their throats. Not before compelling them to spill all the security codes to accessthe locks and the elevator.”
“Fuck. Did Malik erase his memories, at least?”
Kaiden’s jaw clenches. “No. We were afraid it would affect his long-term memory, so we wanted to wait until I was sure I couldn’t get anything more from him.”
I gulp. “So now, on top of everything, I have to look over my shoulder for that bastard, too. I imagine he’s not too happy I gouged out one of his magical eyes.”
“Iris, I would never let anything happen to you. Trust me.”
There’s a pause as I absorb his words because I do trust him, even if I shouldn’t. Heaving out a weighted sigh, I say, “We need to find out what the prophecy says. We need an oracle.”
Before Adramelech escaped, he gave up information about a prophecy and that the seraphim had put a secret clause in the Celestial Treaty that obligated Lucifer to banish the umbra into the farthest corner of Hell. He also implied my mother’s death was not caused by a demon because her name was never written in some stupid ledger Lucifer keeps in his Hell palace. This reminds me that the first thing I need to do when going back to the compound is search for my mother’s file.
“I agree,” he muses, sliding his empty plate onto the coffee table. “But it’s not going to be easy. Oracles are fae, and there hasn’t been one in the human realm in hundreds of years—that we know of, at least. However, now that the war is driving the fae back here, maybe we’ll get lucky. I already put feelers out.”
Kaiden’s right. The only oracles known to history were fae. Even hellseekers are aware of this fact. Because of their highly addictive blood, vampires hunted the fae almost to extinction. So, five hundred years ago, they fled back to Faerie. However, according to Ophelia—the fae woman I met when the vampires kidnapped me—a war started about fifty years ago between the Seelie and Unseelie courts. Trying to escape its harrowing consequences, some of the fae crossed back into the humanrealm. So, I guess the only thing we can do now is wait and see what Kaiden’s contacts find.
After a few beats of silence, I’m not able to hold back my curiosity. “What is Hell like?” I ask. “The Order didn’t teach us much about it aside from it being split into the Kingdom of Shades, the City of Ghosts, and the Desert of Despair.”
“Well, first off, it’s hot as fuck, but it’s the kind of dry heat that seems to scorch your lungs from the inside out before coating them in tar. I fucking hate going there. The sulfurous smell still clings to you for weeks on end after you cross back to the human world. And it’s like the topside’s dark mirror, so you can also find cities and mountains, a sea, and a desert. But the buildings are ramshackle, and they’re brimming with vermin and various demons. Also, the sky is a deep crimson—as if made of a river of blood.” There’s a pause as he gathers his words. “You already know that Lucifer is the ruler above everything and everyone, except the City of Ghosts. His gargantuan gothic castle sits right in the middle. Then, the lands expand from there like spokes on a wheel toward the nine citadels that form the Kingdom of Shades. Each of them belongs to a king of Hell. It’s in the Kingdom of Shades I do my business.”
“Have you ever been to the City of Ghost or the Desert of Despair?”
He flicks his gaze to the floor, then drags it back to me. “No. The City of Ghosts is off-limits since it’s ruled by Azrael, the Angel of Death, and filled with fallen angels and infernal spirits condemned to eternal damnation. It’s situated right at the border to the bridge over the river Acheron—where the fate of souls is decided. And the Desert of Despair is just that, a desert formed by wastelands. So there was no point in ever going there. No one even knows how far it expands.”
“Where are you going to look for him? Are two days even enough?”
“A day here is a week in Hell, so that means I’ll have two weeks at my disposal. It’s not enough time to request audiences with the kings, but I will start in the citadels where I know Adramelech had contacts and work my way from there.”
My eyebrows drop. “Aren’t you going to be in danger, though?”
“Let’s just say I’m not going to be well received. My position within the Conclave is coveted, and Lucifer hasn’t shown his face to allow demons passage to the human realm in a long time, even though he was supposed to. But I don’t believe I will be in immediate danger.”
