Chapter 45
Chapter Forty-Five
Nina
The demons stood before me, the former masters of Hell, now my court. I could feel their unease and resentment coiling in the air like choking, suffocating smoke.
Madalena was the first to break the silence. Her cruel, beautiful face twisted, her lips curling back in something between a snarl and a sneer.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she hissed.
A chorus of cries rippled among them.
“She was a mortal.”
“She was a Champion,” they hissed.
“She is a thief.”
The word sank into my skin, wrapping around my bones.
“You were all very much like us Champions, once upon a time,” I said. “You were all mortals before Hell remade you.”
A hiss of satisfaction slithered down my spine. The whispers of Hell were still in my mind, purring with pride.
The demons all gazed ahead at the newly formed archway behind me.
The eighth domain.
A domain of my own.
“We could overthrow her,” Alexei mused, almost absentmindedly. “She’s still fresh and untested.”
Dimitri, standing off to the side, nodded once. “It wouldn’t take much.”
I could feel their thoughts twisting together, their treacherous planning, their quiet scheming.
Leander exhaled sharply. “I want no part in this,” he muttered, and before any of them could speak again, he turned on his heel and vanished, the shadows swallowing him whole.
Salazar laughed. Not mockingly. Not cruelly.
A rich, deep, genuine sound that echoed through the vast expanse of Hell, sending an involuntary shiver down my spine.
“My Queen,” he murmured, stepping forward, his golden eyes gleaming with a strange sort of amusement.
Unlike the others, he looked pleased. “Well played, Nina.”
Then, with an elegant bow, he stepped backwards into swirling clouds of smoke and disappeared. Likely back to his own domain, where he’d been absent for too long.
I turned to the others and grinned.
“Looks like today, there will be no overthrowing. You cannot do it without the power of all other domains.”
Madalena screamed like a banshee. Cressida, standing with her arms folded, simply watched me.
Alexei was looking around in a panicked kind of frenzy. “We cannot allow this, you stupid fools,” he cried. “She is damned. Not worthy of this power.”
Yvette was the only one who dared to whisper. “She is our queen.”
The murmuring halted, and all eyes turned to her. She met my gaze, something flickering in her colourful eyes that bounced from green to black to gold before settling as a purple hue.
Heat surged through my veins, a slow-burning fire, something ancient and consuming. I felt Hell itself responding to me, feeding me, guiding me.
I raised a hand, and a thread of purple power grew from my fingertips. It whipped around me before wrapping around Alexei’s throat.
He choked, his hands flying up instinctively, but he couldn’t break free.
I pulled him forward, the fire tightening, twisting, until he was mere inches from me.
“Go on then,” I murmured, my voice softer than a whisper. “Tell them again how easy it would be to overthrow me.”
Alexei’s lips parted, but no words came.
The flames flickered and burned brighter, the heat rolling off them, sparking against my skin.
I had power in the Heart of Hell because I had control of the entire realm.
The whispers grew louder.
“Take their power. All of it. Strip them bare. Make them kneel.”
Another day, I told them. The whispers hushed. However, I could still feel their hunger, barely kept at bay.
I loosened my grip on Alexei. He stumbled back, rubbing his neck, his glare enough to kill a mere mortal.
But I wasn’t mortal nor was I a Champion.
Hell was mine and I would decide how to rule it.