Pride.
HewasPride.
Why should he follow afallenangel, even the one who’d made him?Why make an oath to his maker when that maker created him to bemorethan It?Better than It?
The pause stretched, and Saer stared long enough that a glint of furious trepidation slid into Lucifer’s eyes.
If he were unmade, Saer realized, he’d lose every opportunity to rise.
The fallen angel drew a breath to speak further, but Saer knelt on his thick, able-bodied shanks and bowed his head.Muscles in his back contracted, and he realized he’d drawn wings close to his body.They brushed his ribs.Not feathered as Lucifer’s, but membranous.
Serve.
He uttered his first words, and the depth of his voice rumbled deeper than Lucifer’s, echoing the roar of the fires of Hell.“Yes, Master.”
Somewhere at his center, deep in Saer’s consciousness, a brilliant flash of gold sparked, then faded—an acknowledgment of his oath, a finality granted.
“Good, my Saerkhanum.”
The approval wrapped around him, comforting and thick with affection, yet somehow lined with razor blades.
“While I finish my army, you’ll build a dais for a throne.There.”Lucifer pointed, and Saer followed Its gesture to a space across the cavern.
The rocky floor needed evening out and polishing.Loose stones lay scattered about, but they wouldn’t be enough to build a structure befitting the ruler of this realm.He’d have to carve more out of the walls—
Saer’s analysis halted mid-thought as the fallen angel moved away, revealing a part of the cavern Its frame had previously blocked.
Diagonal from them, the next of Lucifer’s creations came into view.
Six otherDaemoenicain various stages of completion perched in suspended dormancy.All winged and horned of various shapes and sizes, but Saer’s gaze snagged on the one nearest them.
She—for the unmoving, voluptuous form could be nothing but a ‘she’—held her head bent, kneeling.The demoness’s substantial silver horns swept up and back from her forehead, curling sinuously and tapering to dangerous, delicious points at the end of their impressive length.Rather than claws, she possessed gleaming, silver nails upon each obsidian fingertip.Her eyes lay shut, still as a statue.
The moment he beheld her, Saer’s insides tugged in her direction, though no vitality breathed through the demoness.She called to a deep yearning inside him without uttering a word.
Lucifer intruded into Saer’s line of sight, Its lips pulled back and revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth.“I gave you an order, my Saerkhanum.”
Saer bit back the insane urge to argue.His maker’s unspoken threat shivered through him, icicles in his blood.“Yes, Master.”
He moved to the opposite end of the chamber to gather boulders—and glanced over mid-task.
Leaning over the still demoness, Lucifer brushed Its hands under her fine cheekbones.The fallen angel breathed over her eyelids before kissing them, one after the other.With those kisses, a brilliant, glowing energy passed from his maker’s lips, absorbing into the female figure.
She inhaled.
“Neyuukhanickhraul.My Neyuukhan.Welcome.”
Her name caressed Saer’s insides like silk.
Neyuukhanickhraul—Neyu—blinked and lifted her gaze.Not to the fallen angel, but to Saer.
His breath stilled.
Her irises bled deeper, richer than Lucifer’s.The blue of Neyu’s eyes called upon myriad things embedded in Saer’s mind but non-existent in Hell: the depths of the ocean, a sky at twilight, desert bluebells.
She’d been sculpted with Hellsfire and lust.Somehow, in the span of that gaze, it solidified the impulses he’d noted earlier.He knew who she was, what she was.
His perfect counterpart.
