“If the council never created the Realm of the Damned, I’d never have needed to trap anyone.”
Onyx shook his head. “Creating Hell didn’t mean you needed to trap us there. What the fuck, Lucifer? The council didn’t make you do shit. Their decision was questionable at best, and yours was even worse.”
Could Luc ever make Onyx see?
Back then, his brothers might have believed he’d taken the fall for a fellow demon. He should have told them what he’d done before it all went bad.
But his arrogance had gotten in the way. Why consult them when he’d already decided?
When Nox came to him and confessed that he’d fathered a half-human child, Luc feared the Eternal Realm’s wrath. Noxdidn’t deserve to be punished for loving a human who wasn’t his mate, so Luc took responsibility.How much more could the council hate him? He’d led the fall. He was already their number one enemy.
But he wasn’t the one punished. Witches were. They were banished to Hell after death for the crime of being born. And the other demons hated him. They saw having that child as a betrayal of their quest for mates.
Luc should have told the truth then.
But the first step away from being a trusted friend had already been taken. Once everyone’s anger had become clear, Luc suspected they’d no longer believe the truth, and Nox wasn’t backing him up, too afraid to be the one cast out.
Nox had more offspring, and others saw no point in resisting. There were no consequences to their actions, and there was no fear when the Eternal Realm punished the resulting witches. Luc’s pleas to do the right thing fell on deaf ears. They all considered him a hypocrite.
Only one way to mitigate the damage had remained.
Demons didn’t need to hear how their mates were out there. They didn’t need to feel seen and sympathized with in their heartbreak. Luc had tried for centuries, and it had done nothing but lead to the current mess. Demons needed to be forced to do the right thing.
There needed to be consequences.
“Creating Hell didn’t mean I had to trap you. You’re right, Onyx. But the Eternal Realm punishing witches for what we’d done meant someone else needed to punish us. I couldn’t let magic completely overrun humanity. If we’d stayed on Earth and demons had offspring left and right, how long would it have been until magic infected all of humanity and completely stopped the cycle of reincarnation?”
Onyx took a step backward, his feathers ruffling. “I don’t know. We wouldn’t have all had children.”
“That’s not the point, and you know it. Things were going wrong, the consequences reaching far beyond us. Falling should have hurt no one butus. We were ruining things we never should have touched, damning innocents to Hell. I asked demons to stop and think, and no one bothered to listen.”
Onyx stalked forward, jabbing Luc’s bare chest with a finger, the touch disproportionally painful. “Why would they listen to you? If it wasn’t you who started it, you should have said.”
“That was a mistake, but I can’t take it back!” Luc heaved a breath. He was yelling and had to rein it in. “If everyone had to hate me—fear me—to ensure humanity wasn’t destroyed, then that was the price I had to pay as the one who led you all here.”
Onyx’s mouth fell open. “Why didn’t you say that? Why didn’t you come to me? Why not confide in Ash or Dante? All you did was spout bullshit about a prison.”
Luc’s tail thrashed. “It wasn’t bullshit. We had to be imprisoned to stop the spread of magic. To stop more souls from being banned from the Eternal Realm. I said that. The logic was sound. This time, it was you who didn’t listen, like I didn’t listen to you about not wanting to fall. You, Ash, and Dante cried about was how unfair it was to imprison those who hadn’t procreated.”
“It was unfair.”
Luc’s fire sparked, his eyes itching as they burned. “So I should have weeded out the guilty demons? How? After that first demon came to me, no one else would confess. I tried to figure it out and asked for cooperation. It didn’t work, so I did what needed to be done.”
Onyx clenched his jaw. “What needed to be done. That’sone hell of a way to say you violated me and stole a piece of my very essence.”
“I know. And you might never forgive me for what I did to you. That’s your right. But I need you to know that I’m sorry. I regret it. Hurting you, Ash, and Dante was a line I never should have crossed.”
Once he’d crossed it, nothing remained sacred, and there seemed to be no point in doing the right thing. Luc was bad, and he leaned into it. He had to embrace being the enemy to control the enraged demon population. There was no room left for kindness, and no one would have believed it was real if he’d tried.
“I don’t know what to do with you, Luc.” Onyx seemed to deflate, his wings drooping. “Even if what you say about not fathering the first witch is true, it doesn’t make the rest okay.”
Fuck, there was no fixing this, was there? No apology would undo the harm he’d caused the three men he loved most in all the realms.
“Give me more time.” Luc couldn’t help begging. “Let me talk to you like this again.”
“I don’t know.” Onyx swiped a hand over his face. “Even if I can get my head around the reasons you didn’t ask for help, stole my magic, and imprisoned me, that doesn’t excuse what you’ve done since returning to the Human Realm.”
“Onyx, please?—”
