Chapter 37
Four Hundred and Fifty Thousand Aeons Post-Great War
In a rare shaft of light descending from the dark clouds, Adrianna streaked the crumbling rock wall with an imperfect line of black paint; it clumped in spots and refused to stick in others.
The paint dried quickly on her fingers in the parched air, and where paint flicked into her matted hair, there it stayed, matting her hair further.
Her brush rasped against the rough wall, the only sound in the dark alleyway, though far off she could hear the wind howling and the inhabitants of Hell terrorizing each other in the darkness of their decrepit dwellings.
Tomorrow, graffiti would cover the painting.
The next day, the entire building would give way, collapsing beneath the weight of its rot.
But there was no end to Adrianna’s grief.
Her guilt. Like the Void, it ever encroached.
The only thing that had lasted aeons in this pit of accelerated decay was the debt she owed Eva.
Pulling her brush away with a jerk, she wiped it on her filthy, threadbare black jeans, then stuck the brush in her back pocket.
She’d been trying to recreate the Great Hall’s stage, but she couldn’t remember it properly anymore.
Not that she would have had the colors to paint it if she did.
Her paintings were nothing but dark stains on dirty stones, and that shaft of light couldn’t make them anything more.
Kicking over her cracked pot of paint, Adrianna shoved her hands into the pockets of her black leather jacket.
She stepped out of the alleyway and glanced up at Lucifer’s distant tower.
A light shone there too, dim through the smog.
A sign that he was up there, pacing about and clawing his hair while he surveyed his wretched kingdom.
The humans had different names for him, the angel who’d brought death and destruction to their world. Prince of Darkness. Father of Lies. Leviathan. Dragon. Devil.
Most reviled him. Some worshiped him. All feared him.
But to Adrianna, he would always be Luc, her former classmate who’d finally taken his ambitions too far and gotten in way over his fucking head. He was more broken than conceited now, but no one asked Adrianna. No one asked if the demons in this world existed more in Luc’s mind than anywhere else.
What mattered was that Luc had more power than the legions of humans and demons inhabiting this realm combined. He was the only being who could exit Hell and come back, though he couldn’t re-enter Heaven. Or Earth, for that matter.
Here, there was no way to defeat him. He could rip an angel to ribbons with a glance, and his horrible world was the only reason any of the rebel angels—now known as demons—had survived falling into the Void, so of course they obeyed him.
On the surface, at least.
Adrianna was no longer one of them. She preferred wandering among the humans, acting as Luc’s eyes and ears, to associating with the angels who had cut down their own kind with swords, and for what? A show of force?
How foolish she’d been to think it would have only been that. A show, like one of Eva’s plays. Just pretend. Just acting.
Those souls rising into the aether…all that blood…It hadn’t been acting.
No one knew where the souls had gone. Humans who died either went to Heaven or Hell, but the angels…? Where else would they go? They were lost to the aether. Or lost to the Void. Just lost.
Like Lila.
Adrianna paused by the statue in the middle of the square in front of Luc’s castle.
A few devoted worshipers had left offerings at its base.
A marble carving of Lila’s likeness, the statue was the only structure in Hell besides his castle that Luc renewed daily so that it had minimal wear and tear despite the climate.
The plaque at the statue’s base read: Queen of Night, Architect of Earth.
Luc’s connection to Lila had caught Adrianna by surprise. That her friend had partly designed Earth was less shocking. She’d always known Lila was clever and capable of much more than her status allowed. But on that count, she could see why Luc would have been drawn to her.
When he’d learned of Castor’s death at the hands of one of the fallen angels, that was the first time she’d truly feared him.
She would never forget the horrible crunching of the angel’s bones and his terrible shrieks as Luc closed his fist around nothing but air, yet crushed the angel’s skeleton into tinier and tinier fragments.
He’d burned away his skin until nothing but powder remained.
It blew away with a violent wind, and then nothing of him was left.
Those present hadn’t even seen a soul rise.
The darkness in Luc’s eyes had been blacker than the Void then. If any angel had thought to avenge the death, they quickly forgot it. From then on, Castor’s name was never spoken, and Lila’s was only spoken with reverence.
Adrianna couldn’t say that she blamed Luc for being so angry. She knew his pain because she also felt it. The pain of knowing that her loved one was permanently, irrevocably, too far for her to reach.
At least, Eva was alive. Adrianna was alive, so she had to be.
But Adrianna could no longer sense her emotions.
She didn’t receive glimpses of her thoughts, the way they used to send them to each other like coded messages.
Whether Hell was too far from Heaven, or Adrianna was too far from Eva, she didn’t know, but she couldn’t deny she deserved it.
What right could she have, after all, to listen in on the thoughts of the angel she’d abandoned, aeons and aeons ago?
Skirting cracks in the rocky path leading from the statue to the base of Luc’s castle—a not-quite-identical replica of the Great Hall built out of dark, craggy rock—she arrived sooner than she wanted to.
The gray aether surrounding the castle recognized her, and its doors swung open.
She entered, and they closed behind her.
“I wouldn’t go in there if I were you. He’s in a mood.” The soft voice next to Adrianna would have spooked her if she hadn’t glimpsed Braun when she’d arrived. He stood off to the side of one heavy inner door, shrouded in shadows.
So…Luc was not in his tower, as she’d suspected, but in the ruined atrium that served as his throne room, beyond the next set of double doors.
Wherever Luc went, Braun followed. He kept watch, still as a statue. Like he could do more than cry for help. Braun wasn’t a bad warrior, but he wasn’t the best either. Even four hundred and fifty thousand aeons in Hell hadn’t given him a taste for blood. The humans had a name for that—freak.
Personal guard to Lucifer himself? Pfft.
Adrianna was the real muscle. Luc guarded Braun more than the other way around.
Like now. He’d probably kicked him out of the throne room because he was about to do something gory even by Hell’s standards.
He kept him for two reasons: Braun was ridiculously loyal, a quality in short supply, and Luc felt guilty for dragging him down to Hell, even if he never said it out loud.
Adrianna could have told Luc that he hadn’t made Braun leap after him into the Void, accompanied by Luc’s fabled sword. She could have pointed out that Braun would have been cast out of Heaven anyway with the rest of the rebels. But the humans had a saying—misery loves company.
Luc’s misery complemented hers.
“Braun, you know how, on Earth, humans keep animals as pets? They feed the pet. It follows them around. Sometimes, they let it stay inside their house.”
“Uh, yeah?”
Adrianna smiled.
“What are you worried about? You’re Luc’s pet. The most he’ll do is kick you out into the courtyard.” She patted his cheek.
Braun swatted her hand away. He drew himself up in his rusted armor, indignant, fist clenched around his tarnished spear.
“I-I’m not a—” he stammered, but the doors shut behind Adrianna and cut him off.
Inside the throne room, Luc stood at a far window, looking out, while a male human pleaded pitifully, kneeling on the charred stone floor in the chamber’s center.
From the human’s groveling, she surmised that another attempt had been made to steal Luc’s blood for the power that lay within it. A few of the fallen angels’ names tumbled from the human’s lips—not their true names, of course, but the ones they’d given themselves after aeons of living in Hell.
Luc appeared unbothered. With the attempt. With the human’s pleas. When he spoke, his voice low and cold, he said nothing of either.
“Do you know what happened to the angel who slaughtered the Queen of Night?” he asked.
“Of course, Master Lucifer,” the human replied. “E-everyone kn-knows the story.”
“Then you know what happens to those who take what is mine.” Luc turned, facing Adrianna and the prostrate human.
Violence pulsed in his cold eyes, his terrible sneer.
Some humans said his soul was frozen, and that was why his eyes were the color of the glaciers on their world.
This was inaccurate, of course—Luc’s eyes had always been silver-gray, a strange color among the angels—but his blood was black because it had been poisoned by the Void long ago.
He’d taken pains to tattoo his body in such a way that the veins looked like part of a design rather than a symptom of his affliction, but the veins remained.
Adrianna, who knew every inch of him as intimately as her own skin, could map each one.
Luc was currently swathed in sumptuous but tattered silks—a knee-length, high-collared black tailcoat trimmed in silver, a black waistcoat with intricate silver threading over a solid black shirt topped with a neatly folded cravat, and black trousers tucked into thickly laced black boots.
In these dark, layered clothes, only the tattoos curling up his neck were visible: a cloud of black fire swirling along his throat and two dragon wings arching up the sides of his neck, their tips pointed toward his chin like twin daggers.
Hidden beneath his clothing, the body of the dragon rested in the center of his chest, its mouth open and fangs exposed, ready to devour anything in its path.
Luc saw Adrianna in his periphery. His loyal servant, at least for now. He’d cycled through many.
He stretched forth his hand, and the human’s skin peeled away from the meat of his flesh, curling as it burned to a crisp.
His screams filled the chamber, but Luc dedicated himself to his task all the more, rending skin from flesh, then flesh from bone.
Most everything washed over him now, leaving him numb, but he felt a dull spark of delight when he was tearing someone apart, so he did it slowly.
This was the only real use for a power such as his, and was destruction not also creation, in its own twisted manner?
The human had stopped screaming. His bones were crumbling away. A golden flame had risen from the disintegrating cavern of his ribs, and Luc captured it in his hand.
He studied the floating soul hovering above his open palm, out of disdain rather than curiosity. Human bodies were more fragile than angel bodies, but they were also more dispensable, being in unlimited supply, which was why the fallen angels sent them to do their dirty work.
Still, stripped down, angel souls and human souls looked identical. A fragile ember, easily snuffed out.
Luc closed his hand. The soul let out one final gasp.
Then all was dark and silent.