Chapter 81
EIGHTY-ONE
Lillien is so fucking beautiful and powerful, my cock hardens in my pants.
Light devours the ash around her, transmuting smoke into a halo that crowns her like a saint of ruin.
Her dress is no longer just a cloth of crimson and gold—it is a smear of blood and ember clinging to skin that radiates divinity.
The choker is gone, melted into a molten river of gold, running down her throat and chest like sacrament, like worship carved into flesh.
Everyone is gone—ash and smoke and ruin. Everyone except my brothers and our mate.
Her knees buckle, her body swaying like a flame about to gutter. For a heartbeat, the world stops breathing. Then Cassiel moves—swift as a blade drawn from prayer. He catches her before she hits the marble, gathering her against him like she’s made of glass instead of fire and fury.
A thin line of red slips from her nose, trailing down over her lips. It glows faintly in the light, holy and wrong all at once. My chest seizes.
“That’s too much power for you,” Cassiel rasps, his arm steady around her trembling frame. “Your body wasn’t made for angel fire like mine. We don’t know what it could do to you.”
She pants against him, breath ragged, the scent of ozone and blood curling through the air.
Sweat glints at her temples, her lashes wet.
But she smiles. That damned smile—soft, defiant, unbroken.
She lifts her hand, her fingers shaking, and pats his cheek with a tenderness that makes my throat burn.
Then she leans in, her lips brushing his, a fleeting kiss that tastes like iron and heaven.
When she pulls back, she whispers the words that split me open.
“I love you.”
Not just to him. To all of us.
Cassiel stiffens as he steadies her, helping her back to her feet.
That’s when I can’t hold myself back. My body doesn’t wait for thought. I cross the shattered marble in two strides, shards crunching underfoot, and rip her from his arms into mine.
“My mate,” I growl against her lips as I crush my mouth to hers. Her kiss answers with feral heat, with hunger that is both animal and holy. Her nails bite my skin, dragging me closer, deeper. “I love you.” I taste iron. Flame. Salt. Us.
My mate. My bride. Not his. Never his. Let all of Hell see what happens when they touch what belongs to me.
The thought flares through me like triumph, like rage, like something older than either. Not his. Never his. Let all of Hell see what happens when they touch what belongs to me.
The ruined chamber itself seems to tremble with it—until a sound cuts through the smoke.
Laughter. It threads into the silence like a blade through gauze. Soft, sharp, inevitable.
My father does not arrive—he is. The air reshapes itself to accommodate him, reality bending around the gravity of his presence. Lightning given form. Smoke curdling into shape. He is immaculate, smug, gleaming like sin wrapped in silk.
Lucifer Tenebris doesn’t walk into a room. He claims it.
“Now, now,” Lucifer drawls, his voice smooth as obsidian, cutting and endless. “Let me see what all the fuss is about.”
He nudges me aside without effort, the weight of his presence pushing me back more effectively than any hand could. He approaches Lillien, his gaze devouring her before his touch even lands.
Bastion growls low behind me, the sound reverberating like grinding stone. Cassiel slides into a shadowed arc, wings twitching as though ready to unfurl in open defiance. I plant my feet, every muscle coiled, watching their backs become shields. Shields I will not let break.
“Who are you?” she demands, chin lifted, her neck a line of fire-forged defiance.
Lucifer smiles—not kindly. He raises his hand and cups her face, palm spanning cheek and jaw as though she were a favorite toy he’s just discovered. The casual cruelty in the gesture freezes my blood.
I lurch forward, but his eyes flick to me—bright, amused, merciless. The look pins me in place.
“I’m talking to my daughter-in-law.” The words are a guillotine.
Lillien gasps, voice sharp. “You’re Deimos’s father?”
He nods, languid, his gaze turning back to her, inspecting her like a jeweler appraising stolen gems. “That’s right. And aren’t you a sweet little thing.”
“Father,” I warn, my voice raw, blood turning to ice, fists curling until bone grates.
But she rips out of his grip, snapping her face away from his hand with feral precision. Fire sparks in her eyes, and when she speaks her voice cuts like steel drawn across stone.
“I don’t have daddy issues,” she spits, “and I don’t go for old men.”
The audacity of it makes my lips twitch, laughter bubbling up despite the ice in my veins. I smother it quickly, glaring at her even as pride claws at my chest.
“Lillien,” I say, my tone grave, “this is Lucifer Tenebris… King of Hell.”
She gasps once, sharp as a blade drawn. But then—she steels herself. Her spine straightens, her chin rises higher. And the light in her eyes? It isn’t fear. It’s challenge. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
The silence after is electric, thick with the dangerous hum of a storm begging to break.
“Damn, Hellcat,” Bastion mutters from behind her, a dark laugh threaded through his voice.
Lucifer’s smile fractures, splitting into something almost predatory.
His words spill out like hot seeds spat into dry earth, meant to take root and burn.
“You’ve got the fire of Hell and the fire of Heaven coursing through your veins, girl.
And you’ve made a mess of one of my kingdoms. This kingdom is now without a Warden. ”
“And that’s my problem?” she fires back without hesitation, folding her arms across her chest. She is impossibly small and impossibly vast at once, defiance incarnate.
If there were ever a moment when I needed her to bite her tongue, it would be now.
“He tried to force me into a marriage and a bond I didn’t want. ”
I move. No theatrics, no flare of wings—just a line drawn across an old scar. I step between them, ash and iron sharp in the air, burned offerings thick in my throat. “Surely there are many demons vying for a Warden title. Pick one.”
Lucifer turns his head, gaze sweeping the carnage with idle detachment, as if cataloguing wreckage for art. He looks back at me, smile cutting sharper than steel. “You’ve made a fucking mess of this kingdom, Deimos. And you dragged your brother into it.”
“Raziel helped me of his own free will,” I snap, chest tight with rage. “Because we are family. Something you know nothing about.”
Lucifer laughs, the sound like glass scraped over stone.
He jabs a finger into my chest, and heat surges through me, scorching muscle, searing marrow.
My jaw locks, but I don’t move. “You’re an ungrateful piece of shit,” he snarls.
“I gave you everything. Princes of Hell, and you and your brother run like cowards because you don’t want the responsibility. ”
My voice is a blade unsheathed, low and dangerous. “Maybe we just don’t want the reminder of who our father is. Or what he did to our mother.”
The words hit. For the first time, something flickers across his face—pain, faint but real. He buries it with the ease of a man who has eaten storms whole and swallowed their thunder. His jaw tightens. His composure returns.
Lillien’s hand slips into mine—small, urgent, her fingers pressing like a rivet into my palm, keeping me from breaking apart.
“I assume you aren’t going to take over the kingdom?” Lucifer asks at last, his voice mild but edged with quiet danger.
I scoff, bitter and raw. “You know I have no will to rule anything.”
“Then get out.”
The words crack like a whip. His gaze slides to Lillien, and the contempt pouring off him is suffocating heat, poisonous and absolute.
“Take your overpowered succubus whore and leave. This is your only warning, Deimos—because you are my son. Because I’m feeling charitable.
If I find her or your brother in Hell again, I will kill them both. ”
The decree settles over the chamber like a death sentence carved into stone. My blood snarls, demanding steel and fire, demanding a thousand deaths to answer such audacity. But Lillien presses closer against my back, bracing herself to speak—and then he is gone.
A gust of smoke. The stench of brimstone. The cold bite of absence.
“Well, he’s pleasant,” she mutters tightly, brittle humor cracking her voice like glass.
I laugh. Because if I don’t, the silence will crush me. Because laughter makes me feel more human than any blade. Because mercy is a thing I can no longer afford.
I don’t answer. Instead, I turn and claim her mouth with mine, slow and consuming, a tether drawn in blood and will. When I pull back, she doesn’t look away.
A portal flares beneath my palm, a seam of humming gold ripped into the air. I don’t address my father’s threats. I will not let his poison nest inside us.
“Lillien,” I murmur, voice gathered, steady. “Come.”
Her gaze meets mine—so fierce I almost flinch from it. Then she steps into the light with me. Bastion and Cassiel follow like wolves that cannot be broken.
The world tilts. The throne room dissolves in a burst of cold wind and bone dust.
I steal one last look back as the marble vanishes beneath our heels. Then the seam snaps shut. And we are gone.