“I’m afraid that won’t do him much good, love,” a man’s voice said, his footsteps loud as he made his way along the path. He waved a hand at the souls waiting at the edges for me to stop singing, to stop commanding them away. Reaching into the pit, Satanus grasped Beelzebub’s scythe and plucked it from the carnage. The blade was covered in blood, a mess of death and destruction that Beelzebub had left in his wake. He’d fought against the undying, struggled to keep me safe even though he had claimed not to care for me.
I refused to take my hands from Beelzebub’s throat, staring up at Satanus’s red-tinted skin. His horns, sharp and deadly weapons, curved up to the sky, and he tested the weight of Beelzebub’s scythe.
“You have to help him. Please,” I begged, staring up at theother archdemon who had been propelled into Hell with us in the battle with Michael.
The most monstrous-looking of all the archdemons tilted his head to the side as he studied me, that lingering yellow gaze lowering to Beelzebub. It trailed over the blood covering him without emotion, seemingly uncaring for the state of the man who should have been like a brother to him. Beelzebub’s warning about the relationship the archdemons shared was loud in my mind, Satanus’s body language all the confirmation I needed.
They didn’t care about one another at all.
I clenched my teeth tightly, feeling Beelzebub’s pulse slip away. His skin was too slick with blood, making it nearly impossible to hold my hand on his throat steady.
“Please,” I begged again, a strangled sob catching in my throat. I couldn’t lose him, couldn’t allow him to be torn away from me.
Not like this.
My hands throbbed with the pressure I used to try to keep his lifeblood from spilling out, the tension spreading to my wrists. My forearms throbbed with the force of it, a tightening happening at the joint where my hand and forearm connected.
I thought the bones might snap if I pushed any harder, if my desperation reached any higher. I couldn’t imagine making my way through Hell without Beelzebub at my side any longer, but even worse than that, I couldn’t imagine returning home without him.
And now I was going to lose him at the same moment I realized there was nothing this strange, new feeling could be except a single truth.
I was falling in love with the archdemon.
“What will you give me if I help him, little witch?” Satanus asked, stepping closer. He closed the distance between us, catching me under the chin and forcing my attention away from Beelzebub’s prone form. I swallowed, my face twisting with pain and disgust.
I knew where this would go, knew what favor he would ask. I’d lived this reality one hundred times over, seen the way that the cruel twisted situations to get what they wanted from the women who revealed their weaknesses. I hadn’t wanted to have one, hadn’t wanted to acknowledge what the butterflies in my stomach meant every time I looked at him.
Hadn’t wanted the world to know there was a way to hurt me.
A way to make me a willing victim.
I nodded, tears streaming down my face as I looked back down at Beelzebub. He was so peaceful beneath the blood, so quiet, like he merely slept. I should have just let him go, shouldn’t have forced him to stay here with me against his will.
But I couldn’t.
“Anything,” I croaked, my hands trembling on Beelzebub’s throat. I looked back up at Satanus, determination making me raise my chin. “I’ll give you anything if you help him.”
Satanus reached out, dipping a single finger into the wound on my thigh. I groaned as he pressed it deep, swirling it around in the laceration, and then raised it to his mouth. He tasted me, watching me intently before he placed his free hand on my shoulder. His other hand curled, his thumb and middle finger pressing together.
I cried out as my wrists twisted. The ropes that had become an invisible part of me for so long winked into view, coated in Beelzebub’s blood. They’d tightened on my skin to the point that my hands had turned purple, the flesh starved of blood flow. “Please,” I repeated, my voice a hoarse whisper. This plea was not spoken for Satanus where he watched, but for me. For relief from the tightness in my hands and my chest, the pain arching through me as Beelzebub’s pulse weakened with each breath.
The ropes around my wrist frayed as moisture wet my eyes, the sob unable to claw its way up my throat. It shifted into a cry, into a scream of pure agony as those ropes snapped in two.
A torrent of magic slid through me as they fell to the groundaround Beelzebub’s neck. It slammed into me so sharply it chased away the numbness I’d clung to for so many years. My hollow filled with warmth, with all the emotions that came with the lighter side of the Source as she rocketed through my veins. She did not hesitate to fill each and every cavern within me, sucking the overflow of dark magic and lust from me and offering me something different.
Giving me somethingmore.
Understanding was immediate, coming with a rush of pure agony. Emotion made my tears fall freely, the loss and grief of all that I stood to lose in those moments the most cruel torture.
I hadn’t known how I felt, hadn’t been able to grasp the depth of this connection until the bonds were released.
The snap resounded through the clearing, my body going weightless as I felt like I’d been turned inside out. It lasted only a moment as my organs rearranged within my body, everything cramping, and just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore…
I landed on a soft surface, a bed beneath me as a woman pried my hands from Beelzebub’s throat. I blinked past my disorientation, watching as she tied a bandage around his throat to replace my hand. She stepped away when it was done, vacating the room and leaving me with the two archdemons. Beelzebub’s eyes remained closed, his body lying flat on the surface of the bed as I rounded to look at Satanus.
“You said you’d help him!” I shouted, rising to my feet. I left the bed, approaching the bastard who showed not a hint of emotion. He wasn’t pleased by Beelzebub’s condition or the fact that he’d trapped me into a deal I wouldn’t have made under any other circumstances, he was merely… empty.
There was something lacking within him as he curled a brow at me, shrugging—a piece of him that should have been there and wasn’t. “And help him I did,” he said, nodding toward the bed. “I brought him to a safe place where he can heal. The rest is up to him.”
