He was looking for a challenge.
“God have mercy on the poor woman the new king sets his sights on,” my sister muttered beneath her breath beside me, clearly in the same headspace as me.
“God doesn’t care for what dwells below his precious gardens on the surface, Nyx.”
I cast a sideways glance at my pregnant sister, the lavender skin of her beast form peppered with little droplets of sweat. Thousands of us had been standing out on the magma rock planes for what felt like an eternity, where we waited for our new king to show. Thick curtains of steam wafted from cracks below, the sweltering heat making my own peachy flesh perspire.”
“You better shift,” Nyx advised me through a frown, disapproval mixed with worry making her eyes flash as they ran down my human form. “You’re going to stand out like a mouse among wolves if you don’t. If you’re not interested in being queen, standing out isn’t a good idea.”
“There are a million women here, Nyx. There’s more likelihood of a star falling down here than the king looking twice at me. I’m more worried about you.”
My gaze dropped to the curve of my sister’s swollen belly. This was no place for a pregnant woman in her third trimester. “It’s too hot out here. You should go back home.” Home was just a cave in a network of hundreds in the southern mountain ridge called Devil’s Head. But at least there it was, cool and safe—safer. I would have insisted she stay there, but the king’s grunts had done a sweep of the entire circle, poking and prodding demons and even some souls from their hidey holes to all pay their respects to the new king and bear witness to his claiming a queen.
“No.” She shook her head, her black as death hair swirling around her shoulders with the movement. “They’ll notice me sneak away now and today is not the day for a woman to stand out from the crowd.”
My mouth curled into a bleak smile devoid of any mirth. “At least you’re already claimed. The king won’t want a mated, impregnated demoness as his queen.”
Nyx mirrored my somber smile, but the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes were etched with pain. She had been claimed and mated by a male some months ago, an archdemon by my guess. She had grown quite fond of him. She’d even thought he might be her true mate. But I knew there was no such thing as fate in the Underworld. It was all random chance. Only the lucky survived for a short time. And the strong could last forever. Erebus had been as mysterious as a cool breeze through this arid pit of Hell and had disappeared to wherever he’d come from just as quickly as he’d arrived.
My sister had a tight belief he would return, that she would forgive him for leaving the moment he made his way back to her.
But I wouldn’t forgive so easily. Not when he’d left my sister pregnant and alone.
Thinking of the handsome as sin male made my head swim with fury. I hated that suave, enigmatic demon for the way he’d managed to sweep into our lives and make me believe for just a moment that male kind could be more than selfish monsters. But the moment I’d let my guard down, he’d turned and left her like she was nothing.
All we had was each other until our luck finally ran out.
That’s all we ever had, was each other. Our mother had died in childbirth, and our father had pried us from her dead arms and threw us out no sooner than when we’d been wiped clean of our mother’s blood.
Some would call it a miracle that we’d survived this long. But miracles didn’t happen. Not in Hell, and especially not in the Eighth Circle.
We’d managed to make it this long because we were strong, and nothing could break us.
“I still think you should shift,” she muttered with a grave shift of her head.
I didn’t bother responding this time because my answer would be no different. I was not exactly “at one” with the demon spirit inside me like all the other shifters. For them, they seemed more monster than man, and their humanity sat in the backseat. My beast was the passenger in this outfit. She was my way of protecting myself in emergency situations. That was it.
“Resentful, much?”she growled in my ear. Like I did most of the time, I ignored her.
Skimming my gaze over the crowd, I was aghast by the sheer numbers that had gathered. Thousands stretched so far the bodies blurred far into the horizon where the black magma rock melded into the mountains.
“So many,” I muttered, shaking my head in disbelief. The king’s guards had shoved all the women to the front, but even so, there was a one in a few thousand chance of being the one picked.
My stomach knotted as I watched so many females, pushing and shoving to get to the front. Most of them would kill for the honor of being queen. The title came with power and protection. It was the best most women down here could hope for.
To me, the thought of serving as the premier fuck-hole for the most brutal being in all the Underworld wasn’t worth it. Maybe I would have softer feelings for this new brute if the ritual to select a mate was different. Consensual. But this new king was no different than the last if he insisted on plucking out a stranger from the crowd to subject her to such humiliation.
“Where is he? I want to get this over with,” I whispered to Nyx.
“Looks like he’s coming...” my twin answered back, her grim expression tilted up toward the cliffside where a cluster of several guards had appeared. Wild whispers and frantic mutters ripped through the crowd as the group of guards parted, allowing a new figure to appear.
My jaw dropped, my beast almost as stunned as me as we angled our heads to gap at the demon who stepped over a crack in the igneous rock, the curtain of steam coiling around bulging muscles wrapped in silvery flesh.
There was a ripple of murmurs over the crowd as we all laid eyes on our new king.
As expected, he’d chosen to make his appearance in his true form. And unholy hellfire, what a first impression it was.
While there were some breeds of demons who were small in size, such as imps and some satyrs, most males were fairly large. Large males weren’t uncommon, but this fiend wasmassive, standing at least two if not three heads over most of his men. He had the stature of a titan, with mammoth thighs that were easily the girth of my waist. He had black leathery wings and giant black horns with razor-sharp tips. His skin was covered in dark ink, his flesh marred with a mural of ancient runes I couldn’t decipher.
