Chapter Three
RATHIEL
I’d never hoped to set foot on this battleground again.
Time had changed the terrain—ten years would do that—but it still looked the same to me.
Beneath the ash, scorched ground, and new craters, I saw what it had once been.
I saw our forces lined up behind Lily, our allies at our back, ready to defend her at all costs.
I saw Lucifer’s army across the field, twice the size of ours and just as ruthless.
I saw the march, the clash, and the bloody end when every single soldier lay dead on the field.
And I saw Lucifer’s hand crushing Lily’s throat as he tore her wings from her back. Like she was nothing.
So, I’d cut off his hand.
I still remembered the feel of my blade hitting his bone.
The resistance. The snap. The hot spray of blood.
I remembered his scream—more rage than pain—and his threats.
He hadn’t expected my attack. Perhaps he’d forgotten what I was.
What I am. Maybe that was why he’d taken such pleasure in tormenting me for the last decade, as payment for what I’d stolen from him.
Well, it was my turn now. I owed him so much more than pain. I owed him death. And I’d be damned—again—if I didn’t deliver.
I turned my attention to Lily, who stood a few paces ahead, surrounded by her team of misfits.
She’d tied her hair back into a no-nonsense braid, though a few strands had fallen loose to curl around her cheeks.
She wore a dark tunic and leather-hide pants, both coated in a thin layer of dust, but the look suited her, as did the dual swords hanging at her hips.
She looked strong and complete now that she had her memories back. Like the Lily I remembered.
She would never admit it, but she belonged here.
The realm responded to her. Welcomed her.
She was its true ruler. Or would be once we took the throne from her father.
Where Lucifer ruled with fear and pain, she would rule with empathy.
With every fiber of my being, I believed she would restore Hell to its rightful state.
As though to prove my inner thoughts, Gorr stepped up next to her and butted her side with his massive head. Lucifer had designed ravagers to rip, shred, and destroy anything that stood in their way. I’d never seen one bond with anyone before.
Yet, here they stood, side-by-side, a princess and her loyal hellspawn.
Without looking, Lily reached up and slid her palm between Gorr’s horns, her fingers finding the soft hide behind his ears. Gorr leaned into her touch with a contented huff and sat, his tail thumping the cracked ground hard enough to jostle a few loose rocks.
As though the sight of them together offended Mephisar, the massive wyrm slithered over, nearly knocking Eliza off her feet.
He coiled around Lily’s legs, placing himself squarely between her and Gorr, who hopped aside to avoid being squished.
A low, guttural growl slipped past the wyrm’s quivering lips, one that Sable echoed.
They grumbled at each other, speaking in the guttural, wordless language they shared.
Lily, unfazed, patted Mephisar’s side and soothed him with a quiet shush.
She’d always had an affinity with Hell’s creatures.
I’d once chalked it up to instinct, but lately, I’d begun to wonder if something deeper wasn’t at play here.
She’d opened Hell’s gate without so much as breaking a sweat—something neither Lucifer nor I could accomplish.
The last time I’d opened the gate, it’d taken me two days and a massive blood donation to recuperate my strength. But Lily had simply willed it open.
That was the moment I’d begun to believe that she truly was the prophesied one. I hadn’t wanted to believe it before. But there was no ignoring it now.
“You guys remember this place, huh?” Lily murmured to Mephisar and Gorr.
Gorr’s fur bristled, and he lifted his lips in a displeased sneer. I completely understood his reaction. We’d all fought here. We all carried the unpleasant memories. Returning to the scene wasn’t anyone’s idea of a good time.
“I know, I feel it too,” she said.
She pulled her hands back from both beasts and wrapped her arms around herself. I stepped forward, wanting to comfort her, but Mephisar deliberately slid his tail between us.
I stopped just short of his coils. The wyrm didn’t frighten me—very little did. But I also knew better than to force my way between a hellwyrm five times my size and the person they believed was their master.
“What do you feel?” I asked.
Lily didn’t look at me when she answered. “I don’t know how to describe it,” she said, her voice quiet. “It’s like the air is whispering to me, speaking my name. I can’t hear the words, not specifically, but I feel them. I think… I think it’s their voices.”
I didn’t need her to clarify who she meant. We all knew. It was why we were here, after all.
“They’re all here,” she said. “I feel them all.”
I couldn’t imagine how that felt. To feel the souls of your most loyal soldiers whispering to you all at once. From the pained expression on Lily’s face, it must have hurt.
Levi approached Lily from the other side of Mephisar. “They’re waiting for you.”
Levi believed Lucifer had trapped the souls here as punishment for betraying him. It wouldn’t surprise me. I knew from personal experience what Lucifer did to those he deemed traitors. He didn’t kill us—he bled us. Tormented us. Broke us. Our screams were music to his ears.
And now, Lily stood in the center of it all, listening as they whispered to her. Begging her for help, most likely. I couldn’t hear anything, but that didn’t surprise me. I wasn’t Lily.
Levi braved a couple more steps toward Lily, but Mephisar rose between them, his body a wall of scale and muscle. He lifted his massive head and levelled a glowing glare at the angel, then let out a deep growl that clearly said back off.
Levi—who could shift into snake form himself—chuckled and gave the wyrm’s thick neck a casual pat.
I couldn’t fault Mephisar’s protective instincts.
Mine were no better. After ten years apart, I wanted nothing more than to shield Lily from all of this.
How I wished I could whisk her away and take her somewhere—anywhere—safe.
I wanted her to remain on Earth but Lily had refused.
Lucifer had breached the gate once, and Lily knew he would do so again in search of her.
Remaining on Earth would simply drag the humans into this war.
And she refused to let that happen. In her eyes, it was her job to protect Earth from her father, to keep him from harming a single human.
“Alright,” Lily said, nudging Mephisar’s side. “Move, you brute.”
Mephisar refused. Instead, the massive wyrm curled tighter around her in open protest. If he were any other hellwyrm, I might have worried about him suffocating her, but Mephisar and Lily had been through a great deal together.
He would rather die than harm her. And when he laid his massive head against hers, I almost laughed.
It was the closest thing to a draconic snuggle I’d ever seen.
“Okay, Mr. Clingy,” Lily murmured before giving his scaled side what she called a scritch. “Give me some space, please. I have work to do.”
With some coaxing and a bit of nudging, she finally managed to scoot him aside—though not without a disgruntled grumble. Gorr trotted away too, seating himself next to Calyx—who blinked, clearly surprised by the ravager’s choice.
Lily separated from the group and ventured deeper into the field.
I followed at a distance, close enough to intervene if needed but far enough to give her space. She didn’t need me hovering over her every step.
She stopped at the edge of the chasm where Lucifer had fractured the ground so deeply it had split from the rest of the landmass. The rift was narrower than I remembered, though it still yawned wide enough to expose the gurgling magma below.
The memory of Lucifer forcing her to her knees on the other side of the chasm as he made her watch him kill her soldiers one-by-one surfaced. I almost hadn’t reached her in time to save her, and that knowledge would haunt me the rest of my eternal life.
Lily crouched and brushed her fingers across the blackened ground.
“Have you ever seen Lucifer create hellspawn?” I asked Levi.
He shook his head, then glanced at me. “Is it painful? The merging?”
I almost laughed. Once, I would have said that painful didn’t begin to cover it. But thanks to my time spent in Lucifer’s tender mercies, I measured pain on a new scale.
Creating hellspawn required three elements: a body, a condemned human soul, and the essence of a fallen.
Lucifer never used his own essence—the bastard was selfish like that—but he had no issue taking ours.
He’d take the condemned soul, stuff it into a freshly made body, then merge the two together using our essence.
The nature of the fallen he chose determined the hellspawn’s form.
My essence bred the sanguinari—aka vampires—while Ezrion created the brimlords, Gremory the netherons, Miriel the plaguebearers, Raelia the venerath, Gavrel the vexori, Tavira the ravagers, and Calyx the umbrari.
As for Levi’s question—whether or not the merging was painful—I merely shrugged.
His gaze softened. “Then I’m sorry. But I feel this is necessary. She needs an army.”
Yes, she did. We all had sacrifices to make in order to win this war.
“I haven’t explained the merging process to her yet,” I said.
Levi watched Lily for a moment, then said, “Don’t. If you explain Lucifer’s process, she may mimic it. Let her discover this magic in her own way. Bond with it. She needs to feel it for herself and understand how it works.”
His reasoning made sense.
I gave a curt nod. “Then we let her lead.”