And then there was the moment that turned me into the true Prince of Hell.
I realized then, that my life was not a three-act play. There was, in fact, an encore. And the fourth act would be bloody.
I was the demon of lore, the thing of fangs and poison and horror. I was the bringer of torment, the final tribulation, the pain from which they’d never awaken.
She was four months old.
One hundred and twenty-one human days.
She’d been alive for fewer than three thousand hours.
They wanted to draw me out? They succeeded.
A mortal could die of exposure, of lack of nutrition, of disease, of failure to thrive.
These were tragic, and I would have mourned, and I probably would have killed her parents and the village doctor and anyone else who’d failed her, but they were not unspeakable horrors that deserved true wrath.
Some things are too heinous for repetition even in the mind’s eye. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t be bothered to monologue, to explain myself, to reiterate what or why or precisely how they’d earned my fury, but I made Hell’s stance for the kingdom.
Mortals were not alone to blame.
I razed their gods, their fae, their creatures of night as I raked them over the coals, declaring open season on anyone who touched my human from that moment forward. Pantheons held council to which we were not invited. I would give them a war on all fronts.
Summits were called. Gods and their beings gathered from all corners to hold counsel with my father, demanding accountability against his terrorist of a son. I’d committed unforgivable crimes to which retribution was demanded.
Hell’s courts united, begrudgingly as it were, as the realm prepared for battle.
Casualties were expected in war, however, and the enemy of one’s enemy is quite famously their friend.
Those I killed—human and immortal alike—were unfortunate, so word came down. Losses were tragic, but they were nothing compared to prospective victory. It was noise, an acceptable loss, if Heaven fell. If the Prince and his human facilitated the prophecy, all would be forgiven.
The disgusting summit of minds and powers made it sound so simple.
My punishment was worse than my head on a spike. I was free on one condition: I return to my human, and I play my part in this unholy legend.
The screaming matches within my father’s throne room were privy to none but Hell’s innermost sanctum. No fight had divided the realms like this, and the courts cracked at our disregard, our selfishness—myselfishness.
All was forgiven, so long as I brought about the end of the world.
Go back to the surface, he advised. Embrace the human, just as I desired. Find her. Woo her. Love her. Together, create a child of two realms; one who might take down the enemy that united us all.
They were wildly unsatisfying terms.
“Son,” my father had said beneath his breath. “You will never receive a proposition better than this. The rest is on you, and I will stand beside you. It’s this, or your head.”
“Death or torture?” I’d repeated, the hate of my words sticking to the back of my throat like tar. “That’s meant to satisfy me? This treaty is an insult. It’s a spit in the face. It’s?—"
I could feel my sister’s wrath from across the room. She stood, and it was enough to make me bite off my tirade in a snarl.
The Queen of Nightmares, Mother of Succubi, must have had opinions of her own, but unless we learned she hadnotsent her daughter to speak on her behalf, I had to assume the worst. The Nightmare Court, as with the others that crafted Hell’s many factions, preferred the shadows, knowing they’d prevail from Hell’s victory one way or another. The other pantheons saw their active role in conquest when it came to triumphing over a pantheon expanding with rapid colonization, appropriation, and erasure. If I held the key to the global tyrant’s undoing, they’d work with me.
And that’s how I won the war of gods while feeling like I hadn’t won anything at all.
Chapter Fourteen
TEN INFERNAL MINUTES
The impending conclave was a tomb of marble and power. The coliseum of black, glistening stone, shimmering, ornately-carved seats that could fit tens of thousands, eternal lanterns flickering blue at every outpost, had been crafted for precisely this moment.
