Lucifer snorted. “Yes. I wouldn’t risk that—assuming he actually knows how to use his prick.”
“He knows,” I assured him, as any Nephilim would. “The question is, whether she’s strong enough to carry the babe.”
“She is.” The dark certainty in Lucifer’s tone made my skin cold.
“May I ask… Can you identify the women whose bodies and minds are certain bets? If so, it would be greatly helpful—”
“That isn’t your concern,” Lucifer said, sitting up quickly and taking another sip from his goblet. “All paths have been lighted. Now it’s up to my grandson to fulfill his role as royal stud. Therest is in the hands of… well, God, I suppose,” he smirked like he’d made a joke.
“And his queen?”
“What of her?”
I kept my expression blank and breathing easy. “Will she live? Gall is very attached. If he loses her—”
Lucifer shrugged and flapped a hand, as if the question were hardly worth thinking about. “I suppose we’ll all find out together, won’t we?” Then my lungs turned to ice as Lucifer, the Fallen Archangel, turned his eyes to me.
There was something incredibly unnerving about the eyes of an immortal. Humans said the eyes were the windows to the soul—but what of the soulless? Staring Lucifer down, was staring into the abyss, and in my experience, it never got easier.
The Most Fallen tipped his head like a bird. He wasn’t smiling.
“Is there a problem?” I asked.
He huffed. “I find the humanity in all of you… frustrating.”
I scoffed. “I’m no human. Pit me against any one of them—”
“Except your females.” Lucifer wrinkled his nose and his tone grew disdainful. “They are your bleeding hearts in this world—this desire to protect, to shelter—”
“To possess. Tocontrol,”I muttered. “The women are ours to use and hold. It’s only natural that we hold them away from the others—we don’t have the benefit of your insight. We have to make certain the lineage passed on isours.”
Lucifer took another drink from that blasted goblet. “That too,” he conceded casually. “Yet… how would it be, Jann, if your female wastaken?Harmed? You would be weakened by her hurt, I believe.” The casual warning of those words was chilling.
I took one, jerking step forward, then froze like I’d caught myself, snarling.“Bullshit.If anyone harms her or my offspring, you’ll see just howweakI am.”
Lucifer smiled at me over the rim of his cup. “I hope that’s true. Your mind remains a fog.”
“I told you, those Fetch are insidious little creeps that can reach into an unguarded mind. I have to keep my defenses up or they’ll see where I am.” I gave him the cocky smile I usually reserved for young bucks who thought they could ambush me and still win, but a bead of sweat trickled down my spine.
Lucifer didn’t respond to my claim. “Jannus the Halfling. The half-known.”He hesitated and locked eyes with me. “The half-man.”
I sneered. “I have little purely human blood running in my veins, and make no claim to it, whatsoever.”
Lucifer regarded me thoughtfully. “No, it’s true, you are far, far darker than those you call friends and allies.Brothers,even.”
My body wanted to stiffen, but I forced myself to relax and pretend I hadn’t heard the implication of his words. My mother died, as so many of them do.The thought made chittering fear rush through my veins as a vision of Diadre, sweat-soaked and screaming, writhing on a birthing bed, flashed in my mind.
“I have no brothers by blood,” I growled.
Lucifer didn’t answer. He kept staring.
I frowned. “Do I?”
Instead of answering, Lucifer got to his feet and strode past me, his body as vital and strong as the largest of our youths in his prime, though he had lived millennia. As he passed me on his way to the door, he lifted a hand to pat my cheek a touch harder than necessary. “As I said… we’ll find out together, won’t we?”
Then he left me standing there, stunned and uneasy, as he opened the door behind me, then disappeared.
When I followed a moment later, he was gone.
