Something in Amelia seemed to settle, and she dropped her hands to her side as she studied me curiously. “Yes, you simplymuststay for the festivities now. Come with me and I’ll help you get ready,” she said, forcing me to look toward Beelzebub. I’d been so desperate for him to leave me in Purgatory, wanting to avoid this entirely in favor of the limbo that would not harm me, but now that we were here, I was terrified to leave his side.
He was the only constant I had, the only person whom I felt remotely confident wouldn’t take from me.
“You’ll be safe with Amelia, songbird,” Beelzebub said, leaning toward me to stare into my eyes as I willed my bottom lip not to shake. “She will see that you are taken care of, and she won’t leave you until she has returned you to my side.” He turned all thatattention to Amelia, to the woman’s face that was far softer than I could comprehend. “You should go and spend some time with your ancestor away from all of this, and I’ll speak to Asmodeus on your behalf.”
I forced myself to separate from Beelzebub, taking the arm Amelia held out for me and letting her intertwine us together as she led me to the doors leading into the building.
“Amelia?” Beelzebub called out as she pulled the door open. “If any harm comes to her against her will, not even Asmodeus will be able to protect you. Am I understood?” The warning raised the hair on my arms, the threat of violence on my behalf warming my chest.
Men had been violenttome, but none had ever been violentforme.
That distinction pleased me more than I cared to admit.
Amelia giggled in a low tone, but nodded her agreement. “She is safe with me, Lord of Flies,” she said, patting my arm gently and guiding me through the now open doors.
I immediately wished we hadn’t gone inside. The writhing I’d seen was so much worse without the glass to separate us, my eyes adjusting as Amelia made her way through the path at the center of the room. She headed for the stairwell at the rear of the building, completely unbothered by the sexual acts occurring all around us. To the left, someone moaned: a woman laid out on her side at the edge of an ottoman while a man fucked her. Just beyond that pairing, a man knelt before another man with his throat spread wide. People everywhere had split into pairs or sometimes groups, seeming to find enjoyment in the acts they committed if the pleasure and sounds in the room were any indication.
Pleasure I’d never even begun to feel.
I swallowed as we rounded the bottom corner of the staircase, making our way up the first few steps and putting some distance between us and the sex below. I looked back toward the doorway,feeling the weight of eyes on me. Asmodeus stood, talking to Beelzebub animatedly, but Beelzebub’s eyes were locked on me, his head tipped in thought as he watched me for my reaction to all that surrounded us.
He didn’t so much as glance at any of the men or women lingering in various stages of undress, nor spare a thought for any of those who walked by him like they might entice him to join them in such things.
His eyes were only for me, his gaze tracking me until we rounded the top of the stairs and moved out of his sight. It shocked me to realize how much of my comfort had slipped away, fading into anxiety the moment I lost sight of him.
Hiding beneath his concern for my well-being, his red eyes burned with a hint of restrained lust that sparked something low in my belly, that stoked the flames I hated to feel building within me.
It was just the magic, I reminded myself.
17
MARGOT
Amelia’s bedroom had dark textured wallpaper, golden filigree adorning it with antique furniture and accents along the walls. The built-in bookshelves were painted the same black, covered by books of all shapes and sizes and genres. Her bed was covered with pillows, a mix of red silken sheets and velvet throws making it look like an inviting haven of mixed colors and textures. There was a book tossed over the foot of the bed, the weathered cover and spine hinting that it had been read more than once. It felt like the kind of room that had been built to remind her of Crystal Hollow, of the gothic luxury I’d grown up in, but whereas most rooms designated to Red witches were overwhelming in the presence of the color of our magic, this had been done moderately with balance at the forefront.
“You have excellent taste,” I said as she guided me to the chair in front of her vanity. My face stared back at me in the mirror as I lowered myself to sit, the comfortable cushion absorbing my weight and taking some of the pressure off my feet and my ankle that had begun to ache since I’d twisted it in the sand. The mirror on the wall matched the vanity itself, hand-carved designs scrawled into the black surface and painted with a deep antique gold that had lost the shimmer that might have made it too gaudy to be pretty. I turned my gaze away from my reflection to run myhands over the art of the vanity, greatly preferring the beauty of craftsmanship to the face that would stare back at me.
A face that hadn’t brought me anything but pain.
“You are perhaps the first Red witch I have encountered who did not obsess over their reflection the moment I sat them in this chair,” Amelia said, toying with the ends of my hair where it met my shoulders. She fluffed the layers, and I felt the weight of her stare on the side of my face. It left me little choice but to meet her gaze in the mirror, to carefully skate over my own reflection to give her a small smile and a shrug before my attention shifted to the intricacy of the mirror itself. The border reminded me of the gate that had separated Hollow’s Grove from Hell, and I couldn’t help the tremble that came to my hands.
I held them tightly in my lap, hoping to disguise the moment of weakness so that Amelia wouldn’t see it.
“It is most ironic, considering you have one of the most objectively breathtaking faces of all the Red witches that have come to the Second Circle,” she said, raising a hand to wrap around me. She moved slowly, as if she were already aware of my skittishness. Her thumb and finger caught my chin, tipping them up so I couldn’tnotlook at my own face without drawing further attention to my reluctance to do so.
Upturned mahogany eyes stared back at me, burning like embers on the edge of being smothered. My cheekbones were high, my lips soft and plump without overwhelming the more delicate features of my face. My skin was ivory, the slight bronze of a tan gracing my skin that never seemed to go away. “I’ve heard that a lot,” I forced myself to say, nodding through the pain of that reality. When I’d been only a girl, the Council had identified me as the beauty of my generation, and for the Red witches who prided themselves on things like sex and beauty and attraction, it had been a victory.
A championship of excellent breeding. Someone to be paired off with a handsome man in the future so we could continue to grace the Erotes line with beautiful children.
It was the same proclamation and attention that had brought Itan to my door at night, seeking to own something that was never his to touch. A proclamation that had confirmed me to be my aunt’s eventual heir, and what I now knew had condemned me to the fate the Council chose.
The ends justified the means. My assault was simply an unfortunate consequence that they brushed off.
Amelia smiled, returning her hands to my hair. She sprayed it with water and applied product to it, beginning the process of braiding it into small sections to let the wave set and refresh after my journey through Purgatory. “When I was young, the minister noticed me. I believe it began as an attempt to arrange for me to marry his son, but he eventually fell in love with another woman and married her against his father’s wishes. I thought it would be done and maybe I would have a chance of choosing a husband for myself, as best we were allowed at the time anyway. I had no shortage of suitors knocking on my parents’ door, but the minister refused them all in favor of taking me as his second wife. My parents were thrilled,” Amelia said with a chuckle, but there was no humor in it. I found myself looking into the mirror of my own volition now, watching her face as she worked on my hair and the emotions that played over her features so plainly. It was such a stark contrast to the way the witches of the Coven worked to disguise any and all emotions as a sign of weakness.
“Did you have to marry him?” I found myself asking, thinking of how old he must have been to have had a son her age. The parallel between the minister and Itan, who had a nephew my age, wasn’t lost on me, and I found myself waiting for the moment she would give me a happy ending to the story that hadn’t ended well for me.
“No,” she said, giving me a rueful twist of her lips. “I’d gone to the church to pray one day, and he caught me there alone after most of the others had left for the night. He didn’t appreciate that I refused him that day, so he accused me of being a witch and theyput me in jail. I was there for two weeks while he waited for me to repent under threat of death before Charlotte made her deal with Lucifer. His children went on to accuse countless others after she rescued me and brought me to Crystal Hollow, and I’m sure they were all killed for similar reasons as me. Petty reasons. All those people who died during the witch trials, none of them were actually witches. My favorite fact of our history is had it not been for their petty jealousy and accusations, our kind would have never come to be…” She trailed off, allowing those words to sink in.
