PROLOGUE #2
The vial warmed in her hand, to the point where it felt like it was burning. The air gusted around her, lifting her blood-crusted hair off her neck and blowing it around her face.
And then, there he was.
She opened her eyes and found her addiction standing before her.
Belial was in human form, his long, pale hair blowing about from the residual magic of the spell. Even in this form, he was enormous, towering with height, his shoulders broader than most doorways, his hands so large they could easily encircle her entire upper arm.
He was cruel and cold, but his temper burned hotter than the hellfire he could summon at will.
Even Asmodeus, the once-great Prince of Lust, who lived with him in his castle and shared his territory, feared him when he was lost to his rages.
He was merciless and unbending, and his might on the battlefield was legendary.
There were none who dared cross him. It was well known that even Lucifer feared him.
As he should, the miserable cretin.
Belial was possibly the deadliest being in all of Hell, yet he looked like an angel, and that was because he had once been one. Long, long ago, he and Lucifer had fallen from Heaven together and battled for dominion over the underworld.
Or so the stories told. Belial claimed he’d never wanted to rule. Lucifer had never believed him. And thus, their rivalry continued.
At the sight of him, relief filled Naiamah so great, her knees felt weak. She didn’t have to fight alone anymore. He would take her away from her and spare her from Lucifer’s wrath.
“Belial,” she gasped. “Remove the knives. Quickly, there is little time.”
He didn’t move, instead looking around the dungeon she was held in. “What is this?” he demanded, his voice a deep growl. “Where am I, and why did you call me here?”
She waited for him to rush to her, to demand to know who did this to her, to swear to avenge her. Surely he would. He belonged to her. She had given him what she’d given no other. She alone could control him.
“In Lucifer’s lair,” she said when he did nothing. “I snuck past his wards and infiltrated his lair, but I was captured. He has sworn to kill me. You must help me escape.”
Belial looked around, his face hardening. Why wasn’t he coming closer?
“Remove the swords,” she urged, more fervently now. Her heart was beginning to pound with something that felt strangely like fear. “He’ll return soon. We must go.”
“You broke into Lucifer’s lair? That is where we are right now?”
“Yes!” she cried, losing patience. Why was he wasting precious time? “I’m certain he has been hoarding some forbidden power source. I was trying to discover what it was so it might be destroyed.”
Belial shook his head, his eyes flashing. “You called me straight into the heart of Lucifer’s lair.”
“I had no choice. He’s going to kill—”
“You know he’s been looking for an excuse to start a war.” His voice was a deadly growl. “You know that I don’t want any part in that, and you brought me right into the middle of this regardless.”
“I didn’t have a choice,” she gasped. How dare he question her? How dare he delay when her very life was on the line? “If there was any other way, I would have—”
“If I take you from here, Lucifer will know it was me. He’ll already know I was here. He’ll have sensed my presence the second I crossed his wards.”
The fear pulsing through her bloodstream with each beat of her heart began to make itself known. Why wasn’t he helping her? “I swear,” she pleaded, though the tone of her voice disgusted her. She pleaded for no man. She begged for nothing. “I had no choice, no other—”
“I should never have taken this vial.” His voice was low. His fury was evident in the hellfire obliterating his eyes. “I should have known you would abuse your access to me.”
A knot formed in her chest where her heart should have been. It was hard and firm. Like a stone. Simultaneously, she felt a sinking feeling, like her very organs were drowning in deep, dark water.
“He’ll kill me,” she said, skin crawling at the beseeching tone of her voice. “He has promised to torture me until I lose my mind, and then he will kill me.”
“And I’m supposed to care?” Belial snarled. He was bigger now, falling into a rage. The air sparked around him, heat waves distorted the air around his enormous body. His long pale hair gusted about. His eyes blazed.
Normally, she reveled in his fury. While others fled before the sight of him in all his demonic glory, she savored it. His deadly power awed and aroused her, and she would often do whatever she could to make it unleash itself.
But this time … fear made her blood run cold. Blood that was racing and pooling on the floor at her feet, running in rivulets over her skin and soaking into her ruined clothing.
“Summoning me here has given Lucifer a reason to attack my territory.” His voice was a thundering boom. Chills raced along her skin. “I’ve been trying to avoid a war for millennia, and I’m not about to stop now.”
“He’ll kill me,” she repeated in a hoarse whisper. His eyes narrowed. She saw nothing but loathing. No hint of warmth, not a trace of regret.
“That means nothing to me.”
Coldness overtook any remaining warmth in her heart.
He truly didn’t care that she was impaled and vulnerable, facing horrible torture and death. He was just as cold and unfeeling with her as he was with everyone else. He only played along with her games because of her usefulness to him.
How dare he use her that way? How dare he treat her as some possession for his entertainment and then discard her when it no longer suited his fancy?
“Is there nothing I can do to get you to help me?” she whispered. Her pride told her to yell and screech, to make him pay, but right now, she was desperate. Her life was on the line, and he was still her best chance of survival. “I’ll do anything.”
Her pleading nauseated her. Later, I will make him pay. Now, I must survive.
Belial’s eyes narrowed as he considered her. She stood before him, her body full of knives, her wings torn to shreds, helpless and weak. Never had she felt so humiliated. The unidentifiable warmth had withered into something cold and cruel. Something that craved retribution.
“One thousand favors,” Belial said.
She blinked. It took several seconds for his meaning to sink in, and even then, she didn’t believe what she’d heard. “What?”
“If I liberate you now, you will owe me one thousand unspecified favors.”
Her eyes widened. Her heart stopped. “One thousand? That’s absurd!”
It was normal for demons to owe other demons favors, to use them as a currency of sorts. If one got in a tight spot and called in help from another, it wasn’t unheard of to agree to owing an open-ended favor.
One open-ended favor. Not one thousand. To even demand such a price was an insult of the highest order.
“You’ve lost your sanity if you think I would agree to that!” she shrieked, hatred filling her blood. The chill of her cold fury had turned white-hot, into the kind of heat that made a woman go on a murderous rampage. She had never wanted to behead someone more.
“Then we don’t have a deal,” Belial replied. His face was flat. His eyes still burned.
“He’s going to kill me!”
The corner of his lip twisted cruelly. “Then I suppose you’d better agree to my terms.”
Forget the pain of a dozen knives impaled through her body. This degradation, this abasement … This was worse.
“One hundred,” she countered, unable to believe she was even offering such a ridiculously high counteroffer.
But he shook his head. “One thousand, or I leave now.”
One thousand favors. It could take a millennium for Belial to use that many favors.
Or longer. She would have no say in what he asked her to do, no option to refuse the task, no matter how awful.
If she agreed, he would be able to summon her at any time or from any place.
It would be indentured servitude. A form of enslavement.
It was that or die.
She would not accept death. Not when she had vengeance to exact. Which meant she had only one choice.
“Fine,” she bit out.
“One thousand unspecified favors,” Belial stated again, hellfire eyes flashing with the light of victory. “At any time or place. Whatever I want.”
“Fine!” She ground her teeth and stared into his hateful eyes and disgustingly beautiful face.
“Swear to it now.”
“Get me out of here first, and I’ll swear to it.”
He shook his head. “Swear now, or I leave you here. You’re in no place to negotiate.”
Her face contorted with rage, but she painstakingly lifted her palm again. The same palm that had reached so hopefully toward her heart mere minutes ago. That heart was cold and dead now, and it would never awaken again.
There was no need to cut her palm to make the blood vow. It already pooled in her hand from the hole pierced through it. She took a breath and then said the words that would alter the course of her life forever.
“On my own blood, I vow it.”
Belial’s lips curved ever so slightly, and then he finally stepped forward and began extracting the knives from her body. As her limp, broken form crumpled into him against her will, the relief she’d imagined was so far away, she was certain there was no such feeling.
I will make him pay for this.
She might owe Belial a thousand favors, but she promised herself then and there that she would make every moment of that debt insufferable.
She would make him feel everything she felt—that was her vow to herself. She would make him hate himself as much as she hated herself for allowing him to humiliate her.
Her heart had returned to the cold stone it had once been.
Never again would it soften or warm for anyone.
She would dance in the blood of male sacrifices and laugh at the feeble cries of weak men who fell prey to her seduction and then paid for it with their useless mortal lives.
She would laugh in their faces as they died before her.
And Belial …
He would rue the day he had betrayed her.