Chapter 3
Being pulled away from her mate after just arriving to the haven of his cabin was bad enough, but landing ass over teakettle in one of the torture dungeons of hell was worse…way worse. And the hits just kept coming…
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. You have been a very bad little poppet, my sweet,” Adramelech sing-songed as he stood in front of her still dressed up from the party.
A British accent today? That’s new.
A barely discernable tick in the scale-like skin around his yellow eyes told Audrey all she needed to know…there was going to be punishment and it was going to be bad and she was going to be on the receiving end. As if reading her mind, the Chancellor lifted his right hand and snapped his fingers.
Magic instantly filled the chamber as Audrey was yanked from sitting on the cold stone floor to hanging from huge iron shackles with just the very tips of her toes touching the ground.
It was a familiar position but one the princess had avoided for several decades.
Hanging her from the ceiling and teasing her with pain used to be one of the Chancellor’s favorite pastimes.
However, it had gotten old when she yawned during one of his tirades about her insolence for doing only the good Lord could remember what.
After that, he’d found new and inventive ways to discipline her.
Looking at her captor, Audrey watched him pace to the very edge of her peripheral vision first on one side, and then the other.
It didn’t take a crystal ball to know that Adramelech was deciding exactly how close to the brink of death he could bring her without actually killing her.
It was the first time Audrey truly thought he might go through with it.
He might actually kill me…
She wanted to smile. There was actually a chance she might escape hell. Of course, it would be in the jaws of a hellhound, but beggars can’t be choosers and at this point, any escape was worth the price. Audrey was done being a prisoner.
She thought of her mother’s favorite gypsy saying—?ngropa?i-m? ?n picioare, mi-am petrecut ?ntreaga via?? ?n genunchi. It sounded prettier in Romanian but more to the point in English—Bury me on my feet, I have spent my entire life on my knees.
Audrey’s anger threatened to boil over. It was the cold hard reality of her life.
She was about to be one-hundred-and-nineteen years old and about a hundred of those had been spent serving a demon.
No, not just a demon, but a Demon Lord. Not just a Demon Lord but the Chancellor of Hell.
If her only hope of ever getting out of the messed up life she’d been thrown into was as hellhound chow, then she was more than ready.
As if they knew she’d thought of them, in skulked the Chancellor’s pack of hounds, led by Bás and Balor, the two almost always at Adramelech’s side.
It was hard to tell their gender but Audrey was sure they were both male.
It did appear that Bás, who was just a wee bit taller, was the leader and Balor, whose chest was as broad as a barn door, his second.
Audrey thought of the stories her grandfather told about the werewolves the villagers thought were stealing the children from their community when he was a child and knew the elderly man could’ve never imagined the beasts now standing before her.
The pack of seven circled where Audrey did her best imitation of a ballerina on pointe while being suspended from the ceiling.
When they were all in place, Bás growled.
As one cohesive unit, they sat, staring at her as if she was a big yummy doggie treat.
Adramelech smiled as he said something in Latin she couldn’t quite make out and Balor jumped to his feet.
The hellhound trotted to Audrey’s side and stopped. His shoulder touched her hip, reminding the princess exactly how big he really was. She’d seen the entire pack stand on their hind legs, and even the smallest among them was at least an inch taller than her five-feet-eight inches.
He nudged her as instructed by his leader, making her feet lose contact with the floor and her wrists and shoulders to shout in pain. After swinging for what seemed like forever, she was once again stable and surprised the hound remained at her side.
Audrey’s skin itched where his coarse black fur poked through the fabric of her frock.
She was shocked to look down and see the hound staring at her.
Even more surprising was the expression in his blood-red eyes.
It was one of sadness, almost despair, and in direct opposition to his usual threatening demeanor.
He seemed to be trying to communicate with her.
Or maybe he just knew what was coming and felt remorse for his part in her punishment.
That didn’t fit with what she’d seen from the pack in the past, but nothing was ever as it seemed in the Underworld. Everything constantly changed. Either way, it was disconcerting and something she’d never noticed in all the time they’d spent in the Chancellor’s service together.
Another command from the Demon Lord had Balor baring his teeth and growling.
The hound’s actions were ferocious but dampened by the forlorn look in his eyes that remained no matter how loudly he snarled.
It was obvious that Balor was simply going through the motions because he had to.
He did not have the free will that Audrey did.
The poor dear was simply an animal doomed to serve Adramelech for a lifetime, with no options but to obey or die at the teeth and claws of his own pack mates.
Before this moment, the princess had truly thought of all the hellhounds as little more than mindless beasts, but now she had to wonder.
Her pondering was cut short when Adramelech uttered his third command.
In a flash, Bás was on her other side mimicking Balor’s actions but without any of the misgivings she’d seen in his counterpart’s eyes.
No, the larger, crueler, leader of the pack was ready to do whatever the Demon Lord commanded without thought, and Audrey knew without a doubt that it did not bode well for her.
Bás had always looked at her like a piece of meat and the glint in his red eyes said he was imagining bits of her sliding down his throat at that very moment.
Now, isn’t that a pleasant thought?
“So tell me, princess, exactly where have you been this evening? Or more importantly, who have you seen? Could it be a certain suitor who after all these years still pines for your favor?” As if matters weren’t already bad enough, Adramelech sauntered toward her as he spoke, an evil sneer on his lizardy lips and a torturous glint in his eyes that made his fake British accent all the more annoying.
When she didn’t answer, he stopped right in front of her and huffed like a petulant child who’d been denied a cookie.
Refusing to acknowledge the Chancellor, Audrey braced for what she was sure would be the severe consequences of her actions.
But instead of hitting her, Adramelech stretched his claw-tipped paw and with the tip of his talon strategically placed under her chin, lifted her head until they were eye-to-eye.
Grinning as if he’d heard a good joke, the Demon Lord chuckled. “Cat got your tongue? Or should I say dragon got you?” His laughter echoed through the chamber, making the hair on her arms stand on end.
Audrey tried not to react but knew the Chancellor had seen the tremble of fear she’d been too slow to hide.
It mattered not. There was no way she would let him hurt Rian.
The princess would do whatever she could to keep her mate safe and topside, away from the evils her captor was notorious for.
Rian was the only thing good she had in her life.
The only thing Adramelech had not taken from her or destroyed right before her eyes.
The Dragon Leader the Universe had given Audrey to love would stay whole and untouched.
Only over her dead body would the Demon Lord touch her dragon.
Taking a quick breath, Audrey lifted her chin just above Adramelech’s nail as a show of defiance, and to let him know she still had her own mind.
She then feigned a confidence she didn’t feel and lied her pleasantly plump butt off.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.
I was in the Pits. The party was so much more than I ever could’ve imagined.
I was too keyed up to sleep and needed to walk. ”
Fury sparked like fire in the Chancellor’s eyes.
He lunged forward. The claw instantly punctured her tender flesh.
Warm droplets of blood slid down her neck as the Demon Lord struggled to regain his calm, cool facade.
It took every ounce of courage and control in Audrey’s body not to cringe, but if there was any chance Adramelech was going to buy her story, the princess had to sell it… big time.
She watched cautiously as the Chancellor slowly stepped backward, stopping only when he was right outside the black circle she hadn’t seen painted on the stone floor until that very moment.
Dread slithered up her spine as Adramelech carefully kept eye contact.
He had a plan. She could see it sitting there, festering in the depths of his insidious mind.
There was no doubt it included her shedding blood, if not several layers of skin and a few semi-vital organs.
The Demon Lord wanted her to pay for her insolence; he just had yet to decide to what degree she should suffer.