Honestly, he would have far preferred to utilize Gremory for this mission, who’d commanded legions at Sammael’s side for as long as Azazel had fought by Gadreel’s. But Gremory had never been so foolish as to serve the Dark Angel of War, unlike the sentient, sword-wielding lump who’d dripped coffee onto Sammael’s second-favorite armchair.
“Do you understand?” he said when he’d finished.
With each word he’d spoken, the archduke’s thick brows had crept lower, until they hooded his eyes like twin awnings. “Yes. But—” he protested.
Sammael had had enough palaver for one day. The day was not over, after all, and to deal with what came next, he required silence, solitude, and a stiff drink, none of which he intended to share with present company.
Besides, there was much Azazel did not know about what lay before them. Much Sammael had not shared with anyone, a crucial fact he suspected none but Lilith knew; and she was not in a position to share it. And that fact might be enough to win the war.
He snapped his fingers again, and Abahoth dashed for the double doors, throwing them open with a flourish. “Thank you, Archduke Azazel,” Sammael said, giving an imperious nod. “Do my bidding, and then return and tell your soldiers to stand ready. You are dismissed.”
After imbibing a brandy cordial for fortitude and holding a one-sided conversation with the statue of Lilith for inspiration, Sammael strode down the hall toward Elena’s bedroom door. He paused outside it, beneath the crystalline chandelier in which he’d embedded the tears of those he’d bent to his will, preserved like insects encased in amber.
Thanks to Azazel’s loitering, the sun had already begun to set. It streamed through the stained glass windows that lined his hallway, setting the chandelier alight, as he traced his fingers over the klyuchi runes he’d placed on Elena’s bedroom door. Unlock, he thought at the door, which creaked in response as if even it thought this was a bad idea, but obeyed.
Inside, he found Elena reclining on her four-poster, still wearing that infernal wedding gown. Next to her lay a tray with a picked-over brambleberry tart and a bowl of half-eaten stew.
He shut the door behind him, reactivating the runes he’d undone to enter, and cleared his throat. “Hello, Elena,” he said. “How do you like your new home?”
The Vila didn’t answer his question. Instead, she snorted, eyes fixed on the bed’s canopy. “How kind of you to grace me with your presence.”
Sammael did not respond. It had been several days, true, but he’d wanted to give her time to muse upon her actions. Time during which he’d hoped she’d come to her senses. He’d had food brought to her thrice daily, and there were ample changes of clothes within her closet, not that she’d chosen to take advantage of those. Still, she had hardly been suffering.
“Do you plan to keep me here forever, then?” Elena demanded. “What happened to your plan to give me all that I’d lost, to let me wander the streets of your makeshift Kalach and eat what I pleased, and come home to a lovely cottage with a fire crackling in the hearth?”
Sammael had prayed for fortitude and inspiration. Perhaps he should have prayed for patience, instead. “You did not seem to appreciate those things, as you never left the cottage, nor remarked upon its beauty. When you wished to come here, to my palace, I imagined it might be a new beginning for us. But instead, you chose to start a small tsunami in my scrying room. So”—he shrugged—“I thought you might prefer the home I had originally prepared for you, instead.”
Elena sat up, smoothing the wrinkled dress over her lap, and swung her legs off the bed. When she turned to face him, dark berry-stains marked her lips and chin, as if she’d been gnawing on small animals rather than enjoying the finest delicacies his realm had to offer. “A home ceases to be a home when you cannot leave it,” she spat at him. “It becomes a prison.”
Sammael scoffed. “You must not be acquainted with many prisons, if you believe they offer accommodations such as this.”
He swept his hand across the room, indicating the opulent four-poster, mosaic mural, and floor-to-ceiling windows with their view of the lava-cracked slopes of Mount Woe in the distance. The sun hung low over the mountain’s peaks, bathing them in crimson, so that the streams of lava that pierced the obsidian rock ran like molten blood. At the base of the mountain glimmered a lake of solid ice, over which the wind never stopped blowing. Even Sammael never ventured here, for it was rumored that should a demon set foot on Lake Wraith, the surface would crack like glass, imprisoning them forever in its depths.
Still, the view was lovely. There was no disputing that.
He turned his attention back to Elena, who had risen to her feet and was toying with the frayed ribbon of her bodice, her lips quirking upward and her eyes glinting. It was an expression he’d never seen on her face before, one he could only describe as cagey. “You’d be surprised what I’m acquainted with,” she said.
What was that supposed to mean? “Look,” he said, striving for calm, “it gives me no pleasure to keep you locked up in here. I intended this room to be your sanctuary, a place where you might do the things that once gave you joy: sewing, daydreaming, reading poetry. Not your prison.”
The Vila gave a high, tinkling laugh that sent chills through Sammael’s bones. Beneath it lurked the sinister weight of the Darkness itself. “Is that what you think I dream of now?” she said, pulling the ribbon free and shrugging the bodice off her shoulders. The dimming light of the sun spilled through the windows, painting her skin a thousand shades of red: burgundy, vermillion, carmine, and all the hues in between.
“I dream of much,” she crooned as she stalked toward him. “For there is an emptiness inside me. I will fill it one day with my Shadow, when he takes his pleasure between my legs once more. When he seeds the children of the Darkness in my womb. But for now, you will do, Sammael. Take me, if you wish, and use me as I will be using you. For I am empty, I need, and I must have what I want.”
Sammael stumbled backward, sickness churning inside his gut. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Oh, I do.” The dress fell to the floor, and she stepped out of it, standing naked before him. “I have weapons you will never dream of. It is only a matter of time until I kill Katerina Ivanova, a task I can accomplish from this very room. You may have imprisoned me here, but I can leave, in mind if not in body. I can travel.” She traced a lazy finger down his chest, and demons help him, he recoiled from her touch.
“Borne on the back of the Darkness, I have risen from the Underworld to find my Shadow,” she hissed. “Where he goes, there I will be also. Where he sleeps, there you will find me. In the hollows of the trees, in the crook beneath the crow’s wing, in the corruption that seeps through the earth above, I hide and I watch. And I act, for where there is envy and unrest, where there is fear and doubt, there is room for me.”
Sammael’s back hit the door hard enough to knock the air from his lungs. She stood, unmoving, a small smile lifting her rose-tinted lips. Her tangled golden hair streamed down her back, and the crown of greenbriars he’d gifted her still perched, tilted, atop her head. The setting sun lit her body afire, but the flames that blazed up in her eyes were black, as if the Darkness itself stood in this room with him, wearing the body of the Vila he’d loved.
He’d wanted only to cherish her. To give her everything. But what did she want? For him to take her body as she fantasized about another. To use him, Sammael, as a placeholder to slake her lust, until she could drag her Shadow into her bed once more.
Perhaps she even intended to bed Niko Alekhin here, in the four-poster Sammael had had made for her by the finest craftswomen in his realm. Perhaps she lay here in that damnable wedding dress each night, not considering the error of her ways, but instead imagining a future in which Alekhin’s whelps scampered through these very halls. And if that were the case, what was Sammael’s future role? Did she intend to lock him up as he’d done to her?
Did she intend to kill him?
Elena spoke, breaking the silence that had fallen between them. “I frighten you, do I not.” It wasn’t a question. “As well I should. But this is all your own doing.” She wagged a finger at him in admonishment. “You were the one who found me by that ruined chapel, when I was naught but a weak and weeping girl. You were the one who put power in my hands. The Darkness moves through me now, for I belong to it. It is my weapon, and I shall not lay it down.”
