A SINGLE NIGHTMARE
Uncomfortable glue stuck my lashes together. My vision was foggy. I stirred as if from a drunken stupor.
I was Hell’s Prince, and as such, could come and go from any court or location of the realm as I pleased. I expected cobbled streets. Architecture, old and new. I expected my palace, my home, my bed.
My title, my power, my being was older than mortal years.
The gods, as it was, were eternal. Their ideologies, squabbles, and partitions existed long before atoms split, and the physical universe rolled into organic life. Humans were late toys in the game of gods. It would be inane to anticipate anything out of the ordinary when stepping into my realm.
But this wasn’t my court.
My vision, my sense of smell, my thrash of heightened awareness spiked at once.
Thick opium, silken drapes, lungs full of involuntary oxytocin, and the endless pitch of onyx where walls should have been alerted me that I was somewhere I’d heard of but gone out of my way to never visit.
I knew my sister was to blame before I could articulate her role in my arrival. As half siblings, she came to the Royal Court for a reason.
I drowned in an ocean of thick, inescapable tar.
The blue-gray crackle in a cloud illuminated a cluster of snakes off to the left. Another thunderstrike illuminated a horrifying silhouette, this time of someone bound by chains and thrust into a bottomless ocean.
I knew where I was, and it was the last place in the multitude of realms I wanted to be.
The Court of Nightmares was for succubi, incubi, and things that went bump in the night. This wasn’t for fallen angels. This was for blood suckers, parasites, and creatures beyond and before the veil that struck fear into the heart of the mortals on whom they preyed.
Fighting for sobriety in a land soaked with sex was like swimming up from the murky depths of the deepest lake. I blinked to clear my head as I looked for the culprit.
A deep, disembodied purr seeped through the haze. “This is your fight.”
It wasn’t my sister. I was quite certain I’d never heard the voice. Given its gravity, I had a singular guess. Izi’s mother, the First Succubus, Queen of Nightmares, had broken through the haze.
“She’s talking to me,” Izi sighed.
I felt her before I saw her. She yanked my hand, pulling me onto a silken cushion.
The jump caught me off guard, but the shock had passed. I shook off the cloud to glare at her clearly. I was on my feet before she had the time to prop an elbow against the pillows and pout into her hand.
“You have ten seconds to explain yourself.”
“Consider this your intervention, Amagi,” she pouted. “You’ve failed.”
We’d surpassed sibling rivalry. I’d sooner start a war with her court than let her taunt me when it came to my Love.
“Nine. Eight. Seven.”
Her lower lip protruded. “The prophecy really bummed you out. I get it. Then for Heaven to hear about your human? Uff. They really forced your hand, huh? But then…” She sat up, gesturing to the isolated blackness around her. “You were handed an opportunity on a silver platter. Fulfill your duty a million miles away from Heaven’s touch. A willing bride. A human with open eyes. No one to stop you.”
I hissed through gritted teeth. “Four. Three. Two.”
“You aren’t going to do it. You think you weren’t watched? You think just because you were in the middle of the fucking ocean among gods that all eyes weren’t on you? You didn’t question once—notonce—why not asingleSamoan god showed up to confront you. When did you lose your curiosity? Fuck, love really does make you stupid, huh?”
Her timer had run out, but a new rage tethered me to the ground.
“What did you do?” I spit the question through my teeth.
“Me?” She batted her lashes, feigning innocence. “What did I do that hundreds of deities didn’t do? We interceded. We asked for a reprieve. We made promises. We bartered on your behalf.We let you fuck around under the oath that you would get the job done.”
I stared at this creature—the only being I’d ever deigned to call sibling—as the inky tendrils of her hair floated around her. The sultry chaos she offered the world focused on me.
