The war was no longer Heaven versus Hell.
If the King of Heaven had his way, it was Heaven versus everybody.
My days of speeches and diplomacy were coming to an end. Centuries of building connections across the globe had built to a moment we’d hoped would never come.
I never traveled unarmed, but a visit to Hell’s armory ensured that whether I needed steel to slay a member of the fae, or something stronger to end a god, I was ready.
Hell’s Prince was now on the frontlines. The kingdom braced ourselves for our new reality: life would never be the same for demons. Now, it was kill or be killed.
Distant gods allied themselves with Hell at unprecedented rates.
Inter-deity relations thrived like never before.
My father was overjoyed. He looked at me with new eyes, ones that brimmed with hope and pride and compassion. My human, once a source of royal shame, was now Hell’s greatest treasure.
I felt as though I was gripping at the thinnest part of a waterfall as I tried to take hold of a flimsy prophecy, to battle it, to fight against it. I didn’t want it. I didn’t believe it. I wouldn’t accept it.
Though I’d loved my human fiercely before, my need to protect her expounded a thousandfold. Prior to this, I’d feared her exposure to the world. Now, her soul was left to ravenous wolves, and many of them had fates in mind far worse than death.
The gods had their prophesized demon.
The only thing they needed was to make his human a whore.
Chapter Thirteen
112 ADE, 140 ADE, 149 ADE, 155ADE, 156 ADE
My knuckles were bloodless from centuries of gripping the throne, unmoving.
I would not participate. She was safer if she was no longer my human.
I wouldn’t let them turn her into a bargaining tool, a method for leverage, a pawn.
I had remained in Hell for hundreds of years before, and I’d do it again. I’d shove Love aside. Every excruciating minute of every day was spent in relentless rejection of the prophecy and its gods-dammed ramifications.
Superstitious deities had banded together to ruin my existence and the lives of my human? I wouldn’t let them play the role of puppeteer. Trafficking Love into unwilling cycles of whoring was fruitless if there was no demon to impregnate her.
The only thing more painful than staying away from her would be knowing I was responsible for her destruction. Without me, she was just another woman, free to live a normal, mundane life.
I would grind my teeth into a pulp.
I would clench my jaw so tightly that the knot never released.
I would clutch the arms of my royal seat until my fingers cracked the stone beneath them.
I would remain among thick velvet curtains and marble pillars and latticed windows of my tomb. I would glower at feasts, each forced bite turning to ash in my mouth, as I paid no mind to the world of men. I would hold audiences with ambassadors, carry out my duties, and not sully myself with the ways of mortals.
I. Would. Not. Let. This. Prophecy. Happen.
True to my word, I remained amidst the cities and incense and royal obligations of Hell.
I did not return to the surface for my human’s next life, nor for her death. I’d hoped no one would identify her. That they wouldn’t know which soul had come and gone from the mortal plane. I’d prayed my secret of the mortal with the mother-of-pearl aura would remain locked in the vaults of Athena and Nanook and Brigid. I remained in the underworld, shoulders forward, face a mask of indifference when news came of her death.
It would have been a mistake for anyone or anything who crossed my path to report who she was, or how she’d died. I would give them nothing to work with. My apathy was my gift to her. The forced cold of an uncaring façade would give her a fighting chance at normalcy, untainted by gods and their folly.
Word came again.
A member of my legion—the fractal of my energy charged with my bidding—heard the word of Love and her passing disseminated among Hell’s citizens. Knowing word was on its way, they opted to tell me before someone of higher rank arrived to provoke me with the information.
