45. Max #2
“Don’t huff and puff, dragon.” Lucifer smiled, all teeth and nothing nice in it.
“Get in line. He comes after my heir without cause, and I’ll cut his army to pieces.
Then I’ll take every soul outside the Zodiac Covenant.
I’ll break every forbidden law ever cut into stone and turn the mortal world God treasures into Hell proper. ”
The light in the observatory dimmed while he said it, and the cold came up out of the black crystal under my boots.
“That’s not what we want,” I said, and cut the thread before it carried him any further into his own darkest corner. “I meant to ask you about the other side of the DarkVeil. What do you know?”
“New York stands. New Hampshire stands. Both Carolinas. Inland too. Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia, Michigan, Alabama.” He read the names the way a man reads survivors off a manifest. “Even Florida stands.”
Somewhere behind that wall of shadow, thirty states had gone on living. And somewhere among them, in some town I couldn’t name, were the two people who’d raised me down a mineshaft and left when their contract ran out.
I couldn’t put words to this revelation, and my eyes shone with tears.
Drakken sucked in a breath, and I grabbed the hand that still held his fork. He let it go, turned his hand over, and clasped mine, and we held on to each other.
We needed to get this news to the other heirs as soon as we possibly could.
“Here’s what you’ll want to weigh, General.
” My father shifted his attention to Drakken.
“When this war opens on every front, when the Pallid Court and the Haven both arrive at your gates at once, and they will, you’re going to need the army of the East Coast. The east isn’t your west. Nobody had a White Witch at their throat over there, so they had the luxury of uniting.
One union, coast to mountains. One kingdom, the way the old United States held them. ”
“How would we even reach them?” Drakken asked. “Nothing crosses the DarkVeil going east and comes back.”
Lucifer tipped his head. “Didn’t you and my daughter get in?”
“We got this far and no further.”
He didn’t say the rest of it. Coming here had been necessary. He wasn’t spending me on anything else.
“Lucky for you, dragon boy, you mated my daughter. You’ll go a great deal further with her than without her.” Lucifer looked at me. “Now that Max Trivia Morningstar has her status as my heir, a portal will open for her when the time comes. No road is closed to her. It’s all hers by birthright.”
He set the glass down.
“The other reason I sent you away was to give you a life outside my influence. A life, not a role. No inheritance dropped on you before you were old enough to refuse it. No father like me leaning over your shoulder telling you what you were for.” He looked out at the burning water.
“I wanted you to start clean and walk your own road, wherever it took you. Even if it took you nowhere near me.”
“And for that, I’m grateful,” I said quietly.
He nodded and rose. Then doubt moved across his face and stopped him where he stood.
“And four crowns must kneel.” He turned to Drakken. “Tell me, dragon. Does it strike you as fair, four powerful men bonded to one woman? What do you imagine people will say about four heirs sharing a woman of two unorthodox bloodlines?”
I went still.
That question had been sitting in me a long while. I’d never put it to the heirs, and I’d never managed to get rid of it either.
“If you’ve got the slightest doubt about my daughter,” my father said, “walk away sooner rather than later. Before you break her heart the rest of the way.”
Too late for that. If Drakken had walked before the rite, before the bridge, I’d have been in pieces anyway. The ache I’d been carrying around had already told me that much.
“I’m no saint,” Drakken said. “Neither are my brothers. We all come with baggage and a long list of women behind us. Aelindor aside, the three of us shared one more than a few times. Drank ourselves stupid and fucked until we forgot our own names.”
I tried to take my hand back. He didn’t let go.
I knew all of it belonged to the past. Jealousy poured acid into my stomach anyway.
“And if we’re comparing notes on fair,” Drakken went on, “Max could throw all four of us out for not saving ourselves for her. We didn’t know we had a fated mate coming.”
He turned his head toward my father, and his voice went flat.
“The rules were never the same on both sides. A man with a harem gets envied. A woman with four men gets a word for it. An older woman takes a younger man and the whole street stands around waiting for him to come to his senses and dump her.” Contempt all through it.
“My brothers and I went over every bit of that before we agreed to commit to Max.”
I blinked. They’d had that talk? When?
“We don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks,” Drakken growled.
“What happens in our bed, what we do with our own bodies, is nobody’s business.
Anyone who wants to press their high moral standards on us can go fuck themselves in Hell.
” He gave my father an apologetic look for cursing his realm. “No offense, sir.”
“None taken.” Lucifer chuckled. “Hell always keeps a place for hypocrites. They’re not a favorite. We feed them to the main engine, and they don’t last.”
He raised one finger.
“One last question. You’ve told me about commitment. Do you love her? Do you love Princess Max Trivia Morningstar?”
Drakken had never said the word. The last thing I wanted was him cornered into it.
“Dad!”
And there it was, out of my mouth for the first time.
His whole face lit like the sun had come up in Hell. “Yes, daughter?”
“That’s between him and me.” I stared him down. “Butt out.”
“More than my life,” Drakken cut in. “And I’ll vouch for my brothers. They’ve loved her longer than I have. I was the last one aboard.” His hand tightened on mine. “I didn’t say it, because I’d rather show you.”
More than my life. From the man who’d built a dragon fire to burn me out of his academy.
Warmth spilled out from my sternum, down my arms, into my fingertips where they lay against his, filling every fiber I had.
My eyes stung. I held them open and didn’t blink, and I made the tears stay where they were.
I’d always be his Spartan girl.
I turned my hand over under his and laced my fingers through.
“Words are nice too, dragon,” Lucifer lectured, his voice gentling a fraction.
“Most mortal love dies. Feelings go faster than farts in the wind. But when my heir, the heir of the brightest Morning Star, bonds with all four of you, this one holds.” He looked between us.
“Even so, I want you boys learning how to love my daughter properly. Tell the other heirs. Or I’ll come knocking. ”
“You will not!” I shouted. “I can handle myself. I’m a big girl.”
Literally. The biggest woman on the continent.
Lucifer gave me an indulgent smile. “When this war of yours is over, I hope you’ll visit more.”
“Maybe.” I wasn’t promising him anything. “And you should know I’m not inheriting Hell. Not ever. I’ve got enough problems upstairs.”
The smile didn’t move. “Then in between, allow me to visit you.”
I gave him a long look. I wasn’t going to hide who I was anymore.
“I’d like that, Dad.”
His eyes shone.
The food had gone cold, and the clock we’d both stopped hearing started ticking again.
“No strings attached, though,” I said. He was my father, and he was also the thing whose name mortals wouldn’t say out loud. Terms first. “And no monkey business when you visit.”
He laughed. “Of course. You need to learn to trust your father.”
And then the fallen archangel was gone, out of the space where he’d been standing.
Lucifer wasn’t big on goodbyes.