Slade
The summons arrives the way all hell-summons do—burned into reality itself.
A thin ribbon of smoke unfurls near Piper’s windowsill, coiling through the morning light. The scent hits first—silver, ash, and a faint sweetness that always clings to Lucifer’s magic. The parchment materializes a heartbeat later, embossed with the Ninth Realm sigil, humming faintly as though it has its own pulse.
Piper freezes mid-step, eyes wide. I feel her magic contract, a startled inhale beneath her skin.
“Don’t touch it,” I say immediately.
She touches it anyway. The scroll warms under her fingers, then unravels itself with a dramatic flare I know Lucifer added purely to irritate me.
Her eyes flick back and forth as she reads. Her breath tightens. Her jaw sets.
I step closer. “What is it?”
She holds it out with two shaking fingers. “He knows, this letter confirms it,” she whispers.
A rush of heat spikes low in my spine. “And?” I ask, realizing she isn’t telling me everything.
“He wants me to come to the Ninth Realm,” she says softly.
“To question you.” My voice turns colder than winter steel. “About what you touched. And what you read.”
Her gaze lifts toward mine—uncertain, but not afraid. I think she stopped being afraid of hell the moment she opened Veda’s grimoire. I wish I could say the same.
“He can’t hurt me, right?” she asks.
The truth rises like a blade I wish I didn’t have to hold. “He won’t,” I say. Not that he can’t. Because he absolutely can. But he won’t, not while I fucking breathe. “Get your coat,” I murmur. “We’re going.”
She hesitates only long enough to slip her boots on. Then, she stands, her curls spill down her back like dark fire as she pulls on her jacket.
I watch her. I always watch her, because I can’t stand to miss a single second. And the curse watches me, pulling us closer every time she breathes.
We step into the hall, taking the back exit and descending down several flights of stairs to the basement entrance. I don’t hesitate, hand waving as my magic calls to the Ninth Realm of Hell.
The portal opens with a low groan of stone and stars. The Ninth Realm presses in the moment we step through—warm, luminous, humming with the kind of magic mortals aren’t built to feel all at once.
Lucifer waits for us at the foot of the obsidian bridge like he’s been expecting a parade. Tall. Effortlessly regal. More starfire than man. His smile is an insult. “Slade Athalar,” he says with that smooth, infuriating silk he’s perfected over millennia. “AndlittleBellamy.”
Piper bristles. “Don’t call me that.”
He ignores her entirely, eyes sliding to me. “She opened the grimoire.”
I step in front of her without thought. “That isnoneof your concern.”
He tilts his head, his burning with fury. “Everything involving Veda Bellamy ismyconcern.”
Piper stiffens behind me. I feel it like a tremor through the bond—anger, grief, the lingeringache of a wound given to her bloodline five hundred years before she was born.
Lucifer smiles faintly, amused by the tension. “She has her ancestor’s fire. Veda used to get that same look when she wanted to burn down the world.”
That does it. Piper slides out from behind me, chin lifting with a fury that crackles like embers. “You would know,” she snaps. “Sinceyou’rethe one who broke her.”
Lucifer goes utterly still. The entire bridge seems to hold its breath. I step forward, prepared to end this with violence if I have to. But he…laughs.
A low, indulgent sound. Feral at the edges. “Oh, little Bellamy,” he says, leaning back with infuriating grace. “Veda wasn’t broken. She was misguided. And I am not responsible for her choices.”
Piper’s voice trembles with rage. “You rejected her.”
