Chapter 2
I helplessly watched as Balthazar threw the bauble against the wall.
“No!” I screamed, reaching out for it, but it was too late.
The glass shattered and the Death Lotus burst into a cloud of ash the moment it met air.
Hadn’t we made a deal?
I dove to the ground and scrambled through the broken glass.
My black blood mixed with what remains of the flower coated the ground, making the two indecipherable.
Tears streamed down my face as I barely registered Kaito storming into the room.
“Out!” he roared.
Balthazar muttered his apologies, but he didn’t sound sorry at all.
Olivia wrapped her arms around me as I stared at my bloodied hands.
“What have I done?” I whispered, feeling the fresh weight of failure.
Should I have been willing to give the demon anything he wanted?
I only asked for my own life so that I wouldn’t put my mates through that again. I’d learned my lesson.
Being the sacrifice is the easy part.
Being left without someone you love is worse.
“You’ve done nothing wrong,” Kaito insisted as he knelt in front of me. A blue flame rushed over his skin as he dabbed away the black blood with a wet towel.
I hadn’t even seen him get a wet towel to clean me, but I dutifully stayed still as he worked.
The blood had somehow avoided my clothes, so I numbly allowed Kaito to guide me back to my bed.
“Promise me you’ll rest while I go figure this out, okay?
This home’s owner has acquired many useful books over the years.
I’ve taken some to an office I’m using. I know there’s something in them that can help. ”
For the first time, I looked up into his face. “It was a Death Lotus, Kaito. It could have fixed everything.”
He grimly looked back to the mess on the floor. “Balthazar has been planning this for a long time. I should have known better than to leave you alone with him. This is my fault.”
I started to tremble again. “I-I think I made a deal with him by accident.”
One where I did anything.
No clauses other than actual death.
No timeline.
No limits.
I’m an idiot.
His features went hard. “I didn’t hear everything. I only picked up the part where he explained where the Death Lotus came from. So that’s why I want to do some research.” His jaw flexed as he looked me up and down, finally settling on my scraped-up hands. “I can bandage that—”
“I got it,” Olivia chimed in.
Kaito flinched as if he’d forgotten Olivia was still there. “Okay, yes. The faster I research this, the better.” He nodded at me. “Are you going to be all right?”
“Go,” I said, even though I most definitely wasn’t all right.
But I could see how Kaito was itching to get out of here.
Not to mention, that strange light illuminated all around his aura and I wondered if I was seeing things.
But Balthazar had made a comment about Kaito, so perhaps I wasn’t seeing things.
Kaito finally left and I didn’t try to stop him. I had enough to digest without throwing more on my plate.
Because something was up with Kaito, too. Something big enough that he didn’t want to share it with me, likely until he thought I could handle it.
Plus, when he came back, I wanted to ask him if I could see Logan.
I wasn’t sure if I was ready for that yet, either.
Logan had marked me. Commanded me with his power as an alpha and had done unforgivable things.
My breast still ached with his bite that must have healed by now. But, the place still stung with his betrayal. It didn’t matter that he had been under the influence of Calamity—he hadn’t been able to fight it. I selfishly wondered if he’d even tried.
He was a wolf. Wasn’t it natural for him to fall back onto his ways as a shifter? In his world, alphas were in charge. I’d always ordered him around and he’d done a pretty good job being the sweet little mate in the background, always there when I needed him. Always the soft, gentle spirit.
When he had ordered me to kill Cole, that might have been influenced by Calamity, but I’d seen the truth of his desire. He, of all of my mates, had the hardest time sharing me with the demon.
Perhaps he didn’t mind the others. Dante, Orion, even Hendrik… they were part of his pack.
Cole, though, had never fit in as far as my wolf was concerned. And Logan had done the unthinkable by ordering me to kill him.
I wasn’t sure if I’d ever look at my wolf the same way.
If I went into his room, it wouldn’t matter if he was awake or not. Fear gripped my heart that whenever I looked at him now, I’d only see the alpha who had tried to control me and keep me all to himself.
“Hey,” Olivia ventured.
“Sorry,” I mumbled as I tried to pry myself away from my thoughts.
She rubbed my shoulder, not seeming to mind that her hand was inches away from the sharp talons of my demon wing. “Do you want to talk about it?”
That was a loaded statement. There were a thousand things to talk about.
But I knew what she meant.
Balthazar’s deal.
“Dante made a deal with Cole and that didn’t go so well,” I said to the air still lingering with green magic.
Olivia hummed in thought as she twisted one of her rings. She flinched and I noticed a trace of blood run down her finger. “But Cole followed through, didn’t he?”
I rolled my gaze to hers, knowing exactly what she was doing and what she was saying. She wasn’t going to give me bandages. She intended to magically heal me because I was too lame to heal myself.
And she also was going to try and convince me that I had done the right thing by making a deal with Balthazar. “Are you actually going to defend him? Cole made that deal before he knew better. He put Dante through hell.”
Quite literally.
Olivia shrugged, sending her white hair rolling over her shoulders. It had remained that color after she’d become a Light Mage, and still stayed the same when she sacrificed her soul to save me, returning her to Dark Mage status.
My knotted brow reflected in the prominent blacks of her eyes that took over her entire iris and left no white to be seen.
“I’m not defending anyone,” she said as she waved her hands over my palms. A faint tingling sealed my cuts together.
She smiled, even though I could see the energy it had cost her to heal me. She was a Dark Mage, which meant she used pain to perform her magic. I wasn’t sure where she’d found such a ring.
She leaned in. “I’m just trying to help you see that demons always uphold their end of a deal. It’s something to think about, given the circumstances.”
“Then why did he destroy the Death Lotus?” I asked, waving at the floor.
She shrugged. “Maybe that was a decoy? Or maybe there are more? Who knows with demons. I’m just saying, don’t lose hope yet.”
Hope.
The word rang through my hollow chest like a bad omen.
Feeling restless, I pushed the sheets off of my legs and frowned at the old bruises.
My silky pajamas were more like booty shorts, revealing a plethora of old injuries. My body normally healed quickly and Kaito had said that I’d been out for weeks.
Hell was taking a toll on me and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could sustain being the Princess of Hell while stuck in this realm.
I tilted my head as another thought occurred to me. “If Hell is feeding off of me to stay warm, and it’s hard on my body because I’m a realm away, why haven’t I been returned to Fortune Academy?”
Olivia’s blank expression gave nothing away, but that in itself was a tell.
“Kaito made me promise not to tell you yet.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Tell me what?”
She pursed her lips. “If I tell you, then I’m breaking a promise.”
“Kaito loves to keep me in the dark, Olivia. He doesn’t get to decide to withhold information.” I swept my legs over the side of the bed so that we sat next to each other. My wings still hung limply at my back, growing heavy, but I forced myself to straighten. “What is it?”
She chewed her lips and nervously fumbled with her fingers while I stared at her. Finally she blew out a long breath. “Okay. Fine. But you didn’t hear it from me, all right?”
I nodded, eager for her to continue.
She sighed again, as if debating telling me, then finally spit it out. “We’re prisoners. We can’t leave.”
My stomach dropped. “Lucifer’s prisoners?”
She shook her head. “Sort of, but worse.”
“Worse?” I glanced around the room, this time really taking in all of the finery for what it was.
This place felt familiar.
My breath caught, because I realized it was familiar. I’d been here before a long, long time ago.
“Olivia,” I said slowly, this time raking my gaze over the paintings, the gold trim, and the plush rugs. “Where are we?”
She stared at the doorway as if expecting someone to come bursting in any moment. “We’re still in Seattle. This is the Incubus King’s mansion.”
The freaking Incubus King.
We were imprisoned by my father.