Lucille
Chapter
Fifty-Two
The gates of Hell creaked with a whipping warm wind, foreboding and wrong. My Infernus whispered in my ear as I stared at the tall black bars. Their music was one. Their songs a nudge. I approached, and my music grew louder, the itch under my skin overwhelming.
I’d never felt this before. But the last time I’d been through the gates was the last time they opened, and I had been unconscious, bleeding from the wounds carved by Tsal-mawet.
I knew what I had to do, but my chest squeezed for what it’d do to them. The last thing they needed was more pain.
“Princess,” Ichi whispered, reminding me why we were here.
I turned, and we got to digging.
My arms ached and shook by the time we finished the trenches. Mud coated my boots and ran up my legs. The damp night air crawled down my neck, making me wish I were back in bed curled up with Ronen.
“Your turn,” I said to Ichi, throwing down my shovel.
She sent water rushing through the giant pentagram, and I took out a knife, muting the bond and cutting my palm.
I squeezed my blood into Ichi’s water, watching the red flow through the six-pointed star.
Then I squeezed it into all six runes. Once I felt like there was enough blood, I froze Ichi’s water, and the blood pentagram was made.
Now all that was left was to cover it.
We patted down the mud, then luscelered back to the castle without a word. Inside the arena, I stopped Ichi before she returned to the barracks.
“There’s one more thing.”
She waited.
“There will come a point where I’ll need you to do whatever I say, no matter what you see. No doubts. No questions.”
Ichi stared at me in that quiet, knowing way of hers, and I swore she knew what I was up to. She bowed.
“It would be my honor.”
When she straightened, her one honey eye carrying the same solemn weight as her tone, I had to ask, “Why?”
She nodded to the dragon necklace peeking from my uniform. “My soul, my power, and my will all rest with you.”
This time, I bowed to her, overcome with boundless gratitude and warmth.
It hummed through me, a quiet resonance—soft, sweet, and whole, as if my body remembered a melody my mind had yet to learn.
It was the only appropriate response, and when I rose, I knew it held more meaning than I could ever comprehend.
Both of her eyes glistened with disbelief, a small smile curving her lips.
But it wasn’t just disbelief at my action.
It was the clarity and color that had returned to Ichi’s blind eye.
Even the burn marks marring the side of her face had healed.
In the eyes of whatever power still lingered in this circle, Ichi’s soul was ready to be redeemed.
And yet she wouldn’t be.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Don’t,” I said sadly.
We both knew the only person with the power to send her soul anywhere else was the one we had to kill.
Ronen
I woke up to a cold bed, her supple body no longer pressed into mine. I’ll admit it was the worst way to wake up. But falling asleep had never been easier. If she allowed it, I’d make her spend every night with me from now on.
There was the issue of Oliver. I wasn’t about group sleeping. Especially since what happened last night would be repeated frequently, if not daily.
The next thing I noted was that the other female in my life wasn’t in my bed either.
Rune?
She answered by opening the visual connection. They were in the arena. Her, my hellion, and Ichi.
They were both in full uniform, which didn’t present as odd in and of itself. But the mud on their boots, and how early it already was, made me suspicious.
The hellion shot a glance at Rune, whispered something I couldn’t catch to Ichi, and handed her eight envelopes.
Rune, get closer, I ordered.
But she didn’t listen. She stayed far enough away that I could hear the hisses of their whispers but not the words.
Rune!
What the hell was she up to?
Ichi bowed lower than I’d ever seen, then retreated to the barracks.
The hellion finally turned and walked over to Rune, squatting in front of her. She met Rune’s gaze, exhaustion plain on her face.
Did she get any sleep?
“I’m okay, Ronen,” the hellion said, sensing my frustration and concern. “I need your help. I need your feather. It’s to carve the rune to release Aspen.” She grabbed Rune’s muzzle. “And before you worry too much about whether I can use it, I’m half your soul. I can.”
Tell her yes, Rune. I’ll bring it.
Rune dipped her head.
The hellion smiled.
Seven Hells. How I wanted to capture that smile with my mouth, brand it into my skin—my mind.
The hellion’s resolve flickered, a sharp stab of grief hitting me.
“The infection has almost eaten all of the Eternal Forest. There is a sliver left. They’ll be here in hours, not days.”
It’s time.
Rune tilted her head back and dragged the shadows taut between us. We unleashed our power through the castle and barracks, saturating every stone, every sleeping soul and blood-banded, in our darkness.
Rune howled.
The cry shuddered through our shadows—the first note of war.
Lucille
Ronen, Aspen, their Soulhounds, and I led our military to the juncture of the Eternal Forest and Verdant Forest. Mud splattered our boots.
Our weapons rattled with our movements. The Spinewalkers shook the dreary dead land.
The weight of Hell’s future pressed down on our shoulders, silencing our words and honing our attention.
MJ and Alexei were at the far ends, directing our flanks and the archers in the sky.
Oliver, still healing from his wound, thankfully was forced to stay back and help Sam with incoming patients.
A small part of me wondered if Sam had purposefully slowed Oliver’s healing so he wouldn’t step foot on the field. If he did, I’d owe him one.
Oliver and I only had time to exchange a quick hug and our phrase. I gave myself a moment to love my best friend, to feel his comfort. One selfish moment.
As the thump of their steps vibrated through the earth and they marched toward us in the distance, I went over every decision, every step, a hundred times. Everyone was in the dark except me.
My squad, newly healed, knew to listen to my orders and only my orders. Aspen knew to follow me wherever I went, for the sake of my plan and the guardian bond. Ronen, Oliver, Alexei, and MJ all knew I had some kind of solution.
They trusted me.
They shouldn’t.
The only person who had an inkling of what I was up to was Ichi.
She never asked questions when I asked for her help.
She never doubted me. Whether it was because of the oath she made to me or the steely determination that sharpened with my every order, I didn’t know.
But she helped me carry out the first part of our plan.
The last would be the hardest—an act of a lifetime.
This was our only shot.
This was what we were created for.
Not caring who saw or heard, I grabbed Ronen’s gloved hand.
He looked at me as he kept his body facing the incoming threat, his eyes black and dangerous, but no less magnetizing.
I fell into them, letting them capture me, letting them fill me with a promise I could have.
Home never felt so close and yet so far out of reach.
I did my damndest not to let my lies bleed through and allowed my heart to swell with my unspoken emotion. I let it touch my eyes and gentle my voice.
“The night will always be a safe haven for the stars.”
He pinched my chin, tilting my face up, and kissed me in front of everyone.
“For all the days I breathe, and every silence after,” he declared against my lips.
I viciously blinked away the incoming ache.
Ronen pulled back, surveying my face as if he felt the sharp stab I tried to hide.
Before he could ask the question furrowing his brow, a large thump vibrated through the ground. It sent a shockwave of reality up my spine, calling to my Infernus and Glory. They itched and danced beneath my skin, and violence sang in my ears.
We both turned.
The last line of towering trees slowly shriveled.
The Eternal Forest was gone—the graveyard desecrated.
Lucifer stepped into view, Ridigar at his side, and behind them a line of dark destruction.
There had to be at least fifty Spinewalkers that I could see.
“Leave my father to me,” I ordered Aspen and Ronen.
They both stiffened, and Ronen’s worry shot through our bond.
“He’s not your father anymore, Hellion.”
I lifted my chin. “But he was. And Oliver’s my best friend.”
Nothing would sway me. Nothing would stop me from doing what I was born to do.
They saw the steel in my spine and conceded.
Lucifer grinned, Melanie slipping through the cracks of the facade. She wanted me as badly as I wanted her.
I never told our military about the threat waiting beyond the gates. I couldn’t risk the possibility that Melanie knew we knew. That I knew.
Use what she wants against her.
Lucifer raised his arms, and his eyes flashed. A winter storm erupted around him, his smile vanishing behind a sheet of white. Ice and snow swallowed them whole. Hidden.
I stepped closer to Aspen, the guardian bond humming with urgency. A line of lighting split the clouded sky, Alexei signaling to our flying archers.
Then the storm surged toward us.
Ice shards glinted in the whipping wind, whistling as they flew. I unleashed my Glory, the white flames colliding with blue and black shadows. Our barrier stopped the storm cold.
Too easy.
It wasn’t an attack.
It was a distraction.
Thousands of infected luscelered into our barrier, sacrificing themselves. But why…
Our flames shuddered. Ronen’s shadows lightened. Sweat beaded on my forehead as I shoved more heat into my flames, about to pull on my Infernus.
“Don’t,” Ronen barked. “Reserve it. Release on three.”
I tensed. “Stay close,” I said to Aspen and my squad.
“One.”
Rune and Hadrian prowled closer to the flaming edge. Blades unsheathed. Power rumbled behind us. The air pulled taut with tension and anticipation.
“Two.”
Aspen and Ronen held up their swords. My heart pounded with nerves.
“Three,” we chorused.
Our weakening barrier dropped.
Ronen redirected his shadows, slicing necks and infiltrating minds. At least a thousand infected dropped. Every fire elemental nearby unleashed their power and burned the bodies.
Melanie wasn’t even fazed or surprised.
She knew we found immunity, just like she knew she had the numbers.
Another thousand infected and blood-banded filled their spots. Ronen silenced them too, quick and efficient. We burned the bodies.
Their spots were filled.
They just kept coming.
It was nothing I could’ve ever prepared for.
We drilled. We faced other squads. Our fights were brutal and sometimes lethal, but not to this extent.
Powers flew left and right, hissing, whipping, colliding.
Bodies luscelered in every direction, blurring and converging.
Flaming arrows shot from the sky with expert precision, downing infected long enough for fire to finish them off.
Aspen sent out shockwaves of blue flame, incinerating infected in seconds. Dusty pinned them with his vines. Zera sent knives into their eye sockets. Ichi captured them in her sword. Rissa beat them unconscious, and I took care of the bodies.
We worked as a team, much like the squads around us.
We recycled so many infected, killed blood-banded. But there was always more to replace them.
More horns. More hissing. More black veins.
More powers I’d never seen before. More chaos.
More.
I had a difficult time keeping an eye on Aspen when all I could focus on was my next opponent. The guardian bond fluttered inside me, warning that he was in danger, attempting to dig in its claws. But it couldn’t, not since Ronen accepted our bond.
I touched one infected, completely encasing him in ice, then sent an ice spear into his chest, shattering his soul as I dodged a knife.
An infected with long red horns threw knife after knife at me. I didn’t understand how he had so many until I realized he could duplicate the weapon in his hand. He dodged every fireball I volleyed back.
Both of us luscelered out of the way while attacking.
Until one of us couldn’t.
The ground loosened, and I sank into the mud to my knees.
Another infected helped him.
I tried to send lusceler into my legs, to rip myself out of the quicksand, but I was stuck.
The infected’s knife landed in my shoulder.
I hissed.
Rage shot through my bonds.
I lurched to the side, missing his next knife.
They weren’t kill shots.
And while the other infected kept my squad busy, he walked toward me with empty eyes.
Melanie controlled him.
She didn’t want me dead.
In a split second, the infected burst into blue flames. Gone. Nothing.
Then every demon around us dropped, blackish fluid seeping from their orifices.
Aspen took care of the bodies, and Dusty helped me out of the earth before we were overrun again.
It was then I realized that I had a problem.
Melanie’s infected would never be able to take me. No matter the numbers Aspen and Ronen faced, they’d die before they let her drag me to the gates.
And if I told them to let me go—really told them—she’d know.
No.
I had to pursue her.
I had to look reckless, so overcome by rage that I’d follow her anywhere just to kill her.
That part wouldn’t be difficult.
I was enraged.
She possessed my father. She threatened my kingdom. She threatened the people I loved.
A battle roar ripped from my throat, and I sent my Hellfire and Glory into the incoming horde. Their bodies ate themselves, dissolving into a disgusting mess before dotting the mud with their tainted remains.
I did it again.
And again.
Clearing a path to Melanie, who grinned with my father’s face and waited.
She thought she had me.
I let her think that.