I needed to know he couldn’t touch me, couldn’t hurt me for me to be willing to lose my magic, to drive his need higher and higher until he became a plaything for the Second Circle, feeding the offering it required of me.
The door slammed open, Beelzebub’s stormy face filling the doorway. His chest was covered in shallow scratches, his eyes murderous as he took a few steps into the room and surveyed the situation. The rope held in my hand felt suddenly heavy under the weight of that gaze, but it turned away from me just as quickly. His steps took him to the center of the room quickly, not even giving me time to shout a warning as he grasped either side of the man’s head in his hands. He’d turned to look at Beelzebub over his shoulder, staring his death in the face as the archdemon twisted his head sharply to the side, the resounding crack filling the room as I dropped the rope to the floor and scrambled forward.
The corpse swayed to the side, toppling off the chair and falling with blank, unseeing eyes as it stared up at me, twisted at the neck to face the wrong direction entirely as I swallowed the vomit threatening to rise up my throat.
“What iswrongwith you?” I asked, the shrill sound of my voice bringing Amelia to the door.
She stared at the body on her bedroom floor, a grin of absolute glee spreading over her face. She leaned into the doorway, crossing her arms over her chest as she surveyed us. “This is about to get very entertaining,” she said, earning a glare from Beelzebub as he spun to stalk to the door. He gave Amelia a gentle push, swinging the door closed in her face as I gaped at him. When he turned back to look at me over his shoulder, I couldn’t breathe.
“Tell me, songbird,” he said, twisting his body to stroll toward me, feigning a casual ease we both knew was fake. I backed away, wincing when he took the other man’s place on the chair, kicking the body to the side with a disgruntled sneer. “What exactly were you planning to give him?”
20
BEELZEBUB
Margot fled up the stairs with the man she’d chosen, leaving me to stand in the center of a circle of women she’d used her magic against.
It shouldn’t have bothered me so much that she was capable of turning them on me and walking away. It shouldn’t have haunted me to know that I could never have done the same, because the very idea of her being behind closed doors with another man made everything in me tighten into an ache. My jaw clenched as I grabbed one of the women by the wrist, pushing her back without preamble in my rejection as she dragged her nails over my chest.
Her touch was wrong. It left me feeling cold and callous, holding none of the traces of warmth that filled me the moment Margot’s skin touched mine. I snarled at the next woman who moved to touch me, her face twisting with shock at my revulsion.
Burying my hands in my hair, I tugged at the edges where it was pulled into a messy bun at the back of my head.
This had been her choice, and I had to respect it. I had to honor the fact that she’d been so willing to chooseanyonebut me, that she’d done it to save me from what her touch would have done to the enchantment she’d placed on me.
“You’re just going to let her go?” Amelia asked, waving a hand to dismiss the women who lingered too close. Who were too determined to put their hands on me and use touch to convince meto play with them. Any other time, I might have taken them up on it.
“She made her choice,” I said, my voice as dejected as I felt. The anger was nearly all-consuming, taking the lust dancing over my skin that Margot had stoked into roaring flames and twisting it into the other side of passion.
Wrath.
Wrath that couldn’t be explained outside of accepting that it was just another consequence of her song.
“You disappoint me,” Amelia said, her voice quiet as she studied me. “I thought you cared too much to allow her to do something that she’ll regret.” She sighed, pursing her lips as if she was so exhausted with the way demons constantly disappointed her.
“I don’tcare,” I snapped, baring my teeth at the witch who was so like the one I wanted to be with in that moment. “It’s just her spell. I heard her sing and I’ve been trapped in this fucking hell ever since.”
Amelia froze, taking a step closer to me with a scoff of disbelief. “You fucking idiot,” she said, sinking her teeth into her lower lip. “You are an archdemon. Your soul is already owned by Gluttony so fully that there is no room for any other sin. You cannot be controlled by the magic of lust. If you could, you would not have been able to resist the call of Asmodeus’s magic in this place. You would have already found a partner and joined the festivities.”
“You’re wrong,” I said. The magic of the witches had to be different from that of the demons. I could be immune to the darkness of Asmodeus’s magic but still be pulled in by the lightness of Margot’s.
Right?
“By all means, demon. Continue to tell me how my magic works. It’s not like I have spent centuries here, or tried to pull you and the other archdemons under my spell for my own entertainment when I’m bored. What would I know?” Amelia asked, her face twisted in anger at my dismissal.
“But that’s not possible. I heard her sing, and I haven’t been able to leave her alone since. I’ve been obsessed. I stalked her when we were still in Hollow’s Grove! I have done everything I can to keep her safe since we fell through the portal to Hell. Why would I do that if I am not under her spell?” I asked, my frustration growing as I tried to wrap my head around her claim.
Amelia grinned up at me, reaching out with a single hand to touch her palm to the center of my chest. She pulled it back, drawing a swirl of thin red tangles out from my skin. They danced in her hand, twisting and writhing in a round mass. “Margot may not be capable of recognizing the magic of love when she sees it, but I am,” she said, her words making me snap my stare away from the red tangle to her eyes.
No.
That was impossible.
“Obsession is a form of lack of self-control and the desire to overindulge in something, or in this case, someone. That isyoursin, Beelzebub. Not hers or any spell she has placed you under. You are obsessed with her because your magic recognizes what you have yet to admit to yourself. You love her,” Amelia said, keeping her words low enough that Asmodeus would not hear them. Protecting Margot and what my feelings for her could mean if any of the other archdemons knew. They would see her as my weakness, use her against me at every turn.
“I can’t be,” I said, arguing the point even though the truth of it had already settled into me. Amelia had touched me, theoriginalErotes witch, and I’d felt absolutely nothing. No call to act on the magic of lust that surrounded us all in the Second Circle.
There was only Margot for me.
