Chapter Nine #3
I left the kitchen, my bad mood returning. Across the hall, Nik claimed a seat at a table farthest from the Sins Gang. In this case, distance indicated social status, and Nik was considered the bottom rung.
Thinking of the Sins Gang dragged my attention to the left.
Ronin was exactly where I expected him to be, but shockingly, he wasn’t asleep.
Even more shockingly, he was deep in conversation with Raven and Sauda, instead of barely acknowledging their existence while they humped and slobbered all over him.
All of a sudden he looked up and locked eyes with me.
In that moment, memories of the night before flooded my mind and heated my face and neck.
Ronin did things to me that no one had ever done.
Positions I never tried before. Kinks I’d long ago decided weren’t for me.
And as ridiculously, mind-blowingly amazing as it felt—
Rage burned in my chest, feeding the heat spreading through my body.
Every “stop” was ignored. Every “no” was discarded.
Every boundary I put up was knocked down.
The whole night, as Belphe had his way with me, Raven’s words taunted me—telling me his remark about making me his queen was a silly joke.
Laughing at me for thinking it meant something when Ronin said he belonged to me.
Over and over, Raven’s voice drove the point home—I was nothing to Ronin.
No more than a cum bucket in a long line of cum buckets, and I’d be discarded just like all the rest.
I tore away from Ronin, fixing on Nik. That’s why I can’t afford to put it off any longer. Ronin and his twisted brand of protection will be over the second he gets tired of playing with the new, shiny mortal. I’ll need my and Dora’s ride out of hell booked by then.
I headed in Nik’s direction.
“Oi, listen up, you ignorant empty-headed fucks,” Ronin called out. “I’ve got something to say.”
I was wrong. Sabrina wasn’t the top graduate of charm school. This guy was.
Ronin stood up, towering over us all. Amazingly, all the chatter, scuffling, and flirting ceased immediately.
“All right, so here it is,” Ronin began.
“By now, you’ve all heard word of a new alliance between Houses Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Lust, Gluttony, and Greed that will become the empire of sin.
You all want this,” he told them, not asked them.
“You’ve pledged to your different Houses...
” He gestured at the puffed-up, proud ladies behind him. “To make it happen.
“But it never will.”
The puff went out of those proud peacocks in a blink.
“What?” Raven screeched. “What are you talking about it won’t happen?! Why—!”
Ronin held up a staying hand, still grinning away. “It’s not that it won’t happen. It’s that it can’t happen because there’s one thing standing in our way—the exclusion of the House of pride.”
Whispers instantly broke out.
“What?”
“The House of pride?”
“Pomaris?”
“What’s Lucifer got to do with this?”
“Lucifer’s got everything to do with this,” Ronin announced, making the pig demon who said that jerk upright.
“House Lucifer already has the best trade deals with the fae and the wolves, and he has almost every vampire coven working for him as his personal spies. Because of him and his blasted deals, the Others go to him first to bargain for everything—gold, land, goods. It’s endless. ”
“Why should we care what the fucking mutts, leeches, and Others do?” Eris demanded. “What’s that got to do with us building our new empire?”
“It’s got everything to do with it,” Ronin said gravely.
He looked so serious, his expression held me fast, gluing me to the spot—stealing all of my attention for himself.
“Consider what will happen if we build our empire and cut House Lucifer out.
Will he take it lying down? Will he fall in line and kneel at our feet?
“No,” Ronin stated. “What that slippery, tricky bastard will do is collect on every deal, and tug on the string attached to every trade and negotiation, and stand opposed to us. What he’ll do... is create the empire of the Others.”
Ursula gasped.
“He wouldn’t!” Raven cried.
“He would.”
Maybe it was because I’d gotten to know Ronin more intimately than I’d ever wanted over the last few days, but looking into his eyes then I could tell... he was full of shit.
“The clue is in the sin,” Ronin went on.
“Lucifer is too proud to remain a lord while we rise up and take our destiny as emperor and empresses. So if we are to stop him from lifting up the lower creatures so he can build his own empire on top of their backs, we must unite the House of pride under our banner. All seven sins as one.”
“Unite?” Kama questioned. “What does that mean?”
“Unite?” Ronin repeated, holding his hand out to Kama. “I’ll tell you what unite means, my future queen. It means victory!”
“Yeah!” the crowd roared, making me jump out of my skin.
“It means domination!”
“Yeah!”
“It means taking back our world from the invading filth that dare to tell us what to do! Including the invading fallen angels!”
“Yeah!” “That’s right!” “Fuck Lucifer!”
“Under the empire of sin, Lucifer’s deals will be our deals! His unlimited food supply from the fae—ours! The first pick of the best weapons crafted by the master wolfsmiths—ours! Access to the hidden oasis—ours! The contracts for the best vampire spies and assassins—ours!”
Everyone was cheering, stomping, and carrying on so loud, I could barely hear Ronin.
But I heard enough.
“It’s time Lucifer started putting his wealth and resources toward the domination of the demons!” Ronin pounded his chest. “It’s time he and all of us send a clear message about who fucking runs things down here. It’s time we tell them who the fuck we are, and who are we!?”
“The empire of sin!” they roared back—Eris, Raven, Ursula, Kama, and Sauda loudest of all.
“Em-pire of sin! Em-pire of sin! Em-pire of sin!”
I could only gape dumbfounded as the chant kicked off, and then the dancing. I’d never seen demons this happy before. Why did it have to be because of a battle cry for world domination?
“Go forth!” Ronin bellowed. “Let every follower of Lucifer from the smallest snake to the highest-ranking pledge know that we will have all seven sins united under the empire of sin, or we’ll have war.”
“War! War! War!”
Ronin hopped off the platform and strolled over. “So, what do you think?” he breezed, tossing me a wink. “Did this go the way you planned?”
I choked, eyes bugging. All of this to shut down my idea and put the empire of sin to sleep—permanently. Of course Lucifer wasn’t going to hand over everything he’d built so that Ronin and the Sins Gang could play king and queens of hell! That was a nonstarter from the word go!
So effortlessly, so cleverly, so impressively, Ronin just shifted all the responsibility for the creation of the empire of sin on Lucifer.
Now, it wouldn’t be because he refused to marry the other princesses.
The problem will be Lucifer refusing to relinquish the one thing he never would: his pride.
Laughing his ass off, Ronin strolled out the door—leaving the chaos he created in his wake.
“Oh,” I muttered. “That bitter bitch is not going to like this.”
DORA AND I HAD JUST finished our breakfast when my phone went off. I answered on the third ring.
“—hell’s going on over there?!” He started shouting at me before I picked up the phone. “What the fuck is an empire of sin, and why does it have your name all over it!”
“My name?! Like you know enough about me to say what my name’s all over!”
Indignation was taking the sense out of my mouth.
“What I mean is,” I ground out, “why are you blaming this on me? I didn’t announce to a room full of demons that you’re the sole fallen angel standing in their way of total hell domination.”
Lucifer growled, his rage bleeding through the phone.
“My phone’s been ringing me deaf! Nonstop demands that I dissolve House Lucifer and join the empire of sin, and even more demands that I don’t!
If demons amass even more power, they’ll make life in hell more unbearable for the Others than they already do, and with all six lords of hell united against me, my subjects are no longer so certain I’ll be able to do anything about it—deals or no deals.
“So I’ll ask you again,” he hissed. “Is this because of you?”
I sniffed. “I may have mentioned something about it making the most sense for Ronin to marry all five princesses of sin—”
“Arrrrgggg!”
“—but I didn’t know they’d take my idea and run so fast with it!
” I finished. “You’re the one who told me that there is no law or order in hell.
There’s only a ruthless and endless battle for power.
You left me and Aurora completely powerless and alone in this place,” I snapped.
“Don’t think I didn’t notice that my super gaslighting ability and powered-up body went away. ”
“We never had a deal in the first place,” he snapped right back. “Why should I have continued to provide you with anything after the ruse was up?”
I tsked, shaking my head. “You don’t have to provide me with anything, Lucifer. You’re not my daddy after all.”
I sensed his mood shift as if he was standing right in front of me. “Is that what this is about?” His tone was chilly. “You’ve dumped this shitty heap on my lap because Mommy’s pissed Daddy isn’t giving child support?”
Gagging, I heaved at the very mention of me being the mommy to his daddy. “No, Lucifer. Like I said, you don’t have to do anything for us, because you’re many things, but you’re not my sister’s father.
“But while you’re all the way the hell over there, I’m here with my sister, doing everything I can to protect her. I’m playing the power game to keep her safe and alive. And while I am, you don’t get to bitch me out or question my methods.”
Silence reigned on the other end.