Through our travels, we’d done much more than rebuild hell. We had rebuilt ourselves together. In doing so, we forged an unyielding bond that could withstand against the disapproval of the celestials, the hatred of Abaddon and those loyal to him, and even time itself.
And so the angel and the demon fell in love.
But our romance was never meant to escape Hell’s dark embrace.
After Abaddon had let Lucifer’s vindictive brother into Limbo, I was kidnapped and murdered.
But that hadn’t been the end. I was then reincarnated. Lucifer said it had been his father to reincarnate me. If he hadn’t, the deal they struck on Lucifer getting his wings back if he managed to find his fated mate would have been dead in the water. But I wasn’t so sure. If I knew anything about the Almighty, it was that he didn’t give two rat craps about his son.
Not that it mattered now.
My reunion with Lucifer had been a fleeting one, though. Abaddon, ex-king of Hell and ex-mate of mine, had been waiting for the moment I’d gotten my memories back to strike.
And strike he did, the fucking asshole. He used my own sister, threatening her life if I didn’t go with him.
His plan was to kill me, of course. Now it all made sense why I’d been so apprehensive around the archdemon. Why he made my skin crawl and my stomach heave like a retributive night after a bad burrito. Our past was like something out of a dark and depraved myth of old. Although what had transpired between us was far from fantasy. The horrors he put me through had been very,veryreal.
It made me sick to my stomach just thinking about them.
On some level, I believed the monster thought he’d loved me at some point. But I knew the shifter wasn’t capable of love. He’d forced me to be his queen and mate in front of thousands, and he got off on my humiliation.
He got off on my pain.
That wasn’t love. It was a sort of intimate brutality that scarred me deeply.
He’d been waiting for his chance at revenge for me leaving him for Lucifer until I remembered the scars he’d given me. Just so he could inflict some more.
The thing was, I still wasn’t afraid of him. What I was afraid of was him hurting my sister like he’d hurt me. Demons’ souls weren’t anything like humans’. Human souls went to the nine circles, forever to wander after death. But demon souls were sentimental. When their host’s body ceased to exist, they would die with them. I didn’t want that for my sister. Not when I knew some part of her was holding out on the hope that the triplets’ father would return for her someday.
Better for Lucifer to continue on without me than for Nyx to be gone forever. He’d already gone this long without me. Still, it made my heart ache, thinking about just how many years he’d been searching the ends of the earth for me.
As I pulled myself out of Lucifer’s arms and made my way toward the elevator where Abaddon held Nyx hostage, I thought about all the strength I would need to leave Lucifer again.
I stepped beside the archdemon who once haunted my darkest nightmares, holding my head high so he could see the flames of defiance that still burned strong inside me.
As the elevator doors slid shut, I caught one last glimpse of my fallen angel, My Morning Star. And the expression on his face as he watched me disappear from sight broke me a thousand times more than Abaddon had or ever could.
1
“Bleeding Christ!”I bellowed, slamming my fist into a nearby pillar. The marble cracked beneath the force of the blow, and the crystal chandeliers clacked as they quaked in the wake of my ire.
Nyx stood beside me, gaping at the elevator with tears in her eyes. I’d swear upon a Bible—in spite of the irony of it—that I’d experienced much pain in my cursed existence, but I could hardly bear to look at the expression on Nyx’s face. The anguish carved into her features was too representative of the agony crushing my chest as if the Empire State Building had been ripped up and relocated to my ribcage.
The world beyond the nine circles had always been under the misconception that I could feel no pain. That I was a master of inflicting it, nothing more. I’d always been misunderstood. Feared. Hated. Except byher. Lilith had always seen me as a person no one else seemed to see, including myself. I’d fallen in love with more than her coy smile, her wry wit, and the inextinguishable fire in her eyes. I’d fallen for the world as she saw it.
And I was about to lose her all over again.
“Sire… Sherememberedme. She knew me,” the demoness whispered on a choked sob. “No sooner than she got her memories back, she sacrificed herself for me. I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye.”
I wanted to comfort her. But my mind had left the moment. My heartbeat was thrashing in my ear like a jet transporting me to another place. A dark place. A place where I couldn’t make out the details because all I could focus on was the fact that Abaddon was before me with the life slowly draining from his eyes as my hands slowly throttled him to death.
A place where I’d give him the sort of punishment worthy of humanity’s wild imagination. A punishment so brutal, tales would be sung of it for eons and for once, all the rumors about my depravity and my antipathy for mercy wouldn’t be an embellishment.
I would make Abaddon suffer the pain of a thousand deaths for taking her from me again.
Then after that, I’d punish myself.
Because this was all my fault.
