by Meg Xuemei X
Asmodeus and Leviathan had never demanded I return the swords, and I had every intention of keeping them.
I had decided on my first rules for Hell: claim what you want, never apologize for it, and never fucking thank anyone.
“Did we get Grandpa Smoky today?” I asked, growing restless at this slow pace as he glided in the air. “It’s like riding a balloon. I bet he’s properly napping at his old age. We could get there faster if we just walked.”
The horse snapped his head at me, his crimson eyes glaring in displeasure. I prepared to duck behind Loki as soon as Smoky shot a stream of smoke at me.
“Smo—Picasso, quit it,” Loki reproached. “You should not get riled up so easily. Behave while I have a word with the princess.”
The prince turned to me and lunged. Before I could pull out my sword to stab him, his hands had clutched my head, the heels of his palms pressing into my temples.
All of a sudden, I was staring into the face of the most darkly striking woman I’d ever seen.
She had a pair of short, silver horns. However, what snagged my attention wasn’t her seductive, lethal beauty, but the toddler in her arms.
The toddler wiggled until she stared straight into my eyes—no, Loki’s eyes.
He was the one who faced the woman and her child.
I was inside a memory he’d invited me into—more precisely, that he’d forced me to see.
The toddler had hair the same shade of purple as mine and eyes that were greener than anything I’d ever seen.
A realization hit me.
She was me.
I staggered back, but Loki held me in his vise-like grip.
Easy, Celeste, he said in my head. I blinked, and I was with him again.
“Take my daughter. Do as you promised, Loki,” the woman said.
“I’ll make sure she lives,” Loki said. “She’ll end his reign, Queen Lilith.”
She gave him a feral smile and pushed the toddler through a liquid mirror that suddenly appeared between them. Loki took the baby and held her carefully.
He gazed at the green-eyed girl with a broad, doting smile.
She regarded him with curiosity, then got bored, and struggled in his arms, twisting her little body around to seek her mother. When she found only a black stone wall, she wailed, realizing her mother was gone.
“Momma!” she shrieked.
“Shush, Celeste. You must be quiet,” Loki cooed. “Everything will be all right. I’ll take care of you, and you’ll live and stomp the Heaven and Earth.”
Her eyes burned with rage as her tiny nostrils flared. When he started to grin at her ferocity, she rammed her small fist into his left eye.
“Ouch,” he cried, nearly dropping her. “You do know how to hit hard, little hellion. Your momma bound your Titan power, but she forgot to rein in your temper.”
The toddler cried as if knowing and afraid of what lie ahead of her.
The pressure in my head was suddenly gone. Loki released his palms from my temples, and I was back traversing with him across Hell’s sky.
I wheeled to him, staring into his bottomless, abyssal eyes. If I kept looking at them, I might not find a way back, so I blinked hard.
The horse picked up speed. We were now gliding above a dark, satin-like lake.
“Now you’ve returned to me, Celeste,” Loki said softly. Instead of holding my gaze, he looked ahead, staying alert. “And we’re going to finish what we started before your birth.” He paused for a second. “We can speak freely within these two hours in the sky.”
Which meant Hell’s prince was being watched and his castle was rigged. I didn’t even need to ask him to confirm it. We were living in the age of wars.
“Tell me about—my mother,” I said.
“I can only give you a brief version as we’re running out of time. Queen Lilith was Lucifer’s sister and queen. They fell from Heaven together. In human mythology, he was once named the brightest morning star, but in fact, she was brighter than him. Even in the story, they robbed her of her glory.”
“Because she’s a woman,” I said.
Loki glanced at me appreciatively. “History was all written by males of every species in every era. They still try to do the same. No matter, they’re insignificant. Lucifer adored Lilith yet envied her for her power and talent to no end—even though she chose to fall with him to build their version of a kingdom and to pursue freedom. But she didn’t have a submissive bone in her body and wouldn’t accept a position as his second. She fought to command their army as his equal, but he suspected that she wanted the throne to herself. Her fatal mistake was to fall for him, setting love above all, as many women do. He fell only for power. Lusting for ultimate power and glory in the universe was the reason why he’d been banished from Heaven.
“When she realized that he had become the Father of Lies and Betrayal, it was already too late. He struck before she did, leading her inner circle to betray her. He tricked her, robbed and stripped her of her power. She then fled into the Void, where he dared not follow.”
“I was born in the Void,” I whispered.
Loki nodded. “The Void is where the Titans have been imprisoned since the ancient times, long before humankind started to emerge in the universe. In the Titan king’s prison cell, your mother mated with your father and bred you.
“It was an impossible deed. But Lilith was Lilith, the true Queen of Hell.” Admiration dripped from his voice. “She understood what must be done. She challenged the laws of the gods. Such a mating between a demon and a Titan is forbidden. A child from this union is deemed an abomination of the universe, aberrant to all natures and laws.”
“Who are they to play jury and judge?” I sneered. “I’m no more an abomination than they are. The gods are but leeches and dicks.”
“That was what Queen Lilith said,” Loki said. “You’re your mother’s daughter. There is a prophecy about you. Once you fully blossom into your birthright, you can unmake anyone. You’ll unmake the gods and all the worlds.”
“That’s why the two fuckers tried to cut me open again and again for months, thinking they could steal my power.”
“They failed,” Loki said with a cold smile. “But they won’t admit their failure. They’ve enacted their backup plan, and it started with getting you into Hell’s Academy.”
“Right,” I said, cold fury buzzing over my skin. “To try and see how they can break and own me.” I turned to peek into his eyes. “But why do you want to risk your future helping my mother and me? What’s in it for you?”
Loki shrugged. “Simple. If I help you beat them, I get Hell. I don’t want to be merely an heir forever. And I have some brilliant ideas about how to properly run the realm.”
He was only telling me half of the truth. I sensed his ambition beating in his veins, but there was more than that. There was a personal reason that he wanted to bring down his father, but he’d buried it deeply in the dark cave of his emotions.
He’d pulled me into part of his memories, and I wanted to see more. Since my mates had fed me in the Dreaming, I was strong enough to attack Loki and dive into his memory bank by force.
I latched my magic onto the dark prince’s mind, just as I’d once gotten into Ares’s. I needed a peek into the prince’s dirty secret to see if I even wanted to deal with him.
A boy of roughly eleven was chained, pierced, and spread-eagled. His bony body didn’t have an inch of intact skin left.
The sound of iron whips landed on his back again and again. He bit into his bottom lip, bleeding it, trying not to cry out. He tried to be brave, but in the end, he screamed. Shameful tears flowed down his bloodstained face.
His tormentor moved to the front and stared down at him in rage and disdain.
It was his father.
“Boy,” Lucifer said, the thorn whips in his hand dripping with his son’s blood. “I do not dirty my hands to discipline any others, but if you want to be my heir, you have a lot to prove, especially when it
comes to absolute obedience and loyalty. I asked you to carry out a simple task—to kill your birth mother—and you hid the weak, unworthy bitch. You disobeyed me....”
Utter fear, helplessness, and hatred vibrated in every bone of young Loki’s body.
A black wind pierced my skull like knives, slamming my head back, and I was thrown out of Loki’s darkest memories.
A powerful hand grabbed my throat, lifting me until my feet dangled in the air.
“Never, ever, do that again, Celeste,” Loki snarled, his eyes turning completely black.
I stared back at him, yet I did not counter with my hellfire.
Lucifer’s heir hated more than anything for anyone to see his weakness and vulnerability. After all these years in Hell, he still had an ounce of humanity in him, for he could still feel grief. For that, I’d work with him and finish off his father.
I wasn’t a fool either. I had no illusions about his predatory nature. He wasn’t exactly a good guy, unlike my demigods. Demons would always be demons, even a half-blooded one. They’d always prey on humans and other weaker beings. But compared to his father, Loki was an angel. I could deal with him, and Earth could tolerate him.
I eyed him, saying silently, Are you going to dangle me here forever? You said we didn’t have much time.
He let me go, and I landed beside him.
“You’ll never be safe either, Loki, heir or not,” I said. “As soon as someone else comes along who’s stronger than you, he’ll discard you. He might even ditch you for me, if I do his bidding. My bloodline is stronger than yours.”
“You won’t be a threat to me, princess,” he said, a faint, mocking smile tugging on his sensual lips.
“Sure,” I said. “I have bigger fish to fry. You showed me a memory of my mother because I passed your tests. I haven’t broken under torture, and I’ll never bend for my enemies. You saw that I was fearless when I attacked Lucifer in the pit. No one dares to oppose him in Hell, but I didn’t give a fuck that he is the ultimate devil. I’ll kill him and the war god.”
He gave me a sideways glance while I grated my teeth thinking of my immortal foes.
“I only hope you’ll use a better strategy than blunt force, my hotheaded cousin. Think before you attack. Be smart if you can.”
“Certainly, it’s ideal to stab them in the back. Who doesn’t like to play dirty? But no one can stab those two fuckers in the backs. It’s not like I haven’t tried, but they’re sneakier and more powerful than anyone.”
“For now,” Loki said. “You need to blossom into your power at lightning speed.” He paused for a second. “I noticed that your sparks have returned. You met them in the Dreaming before I woke you up, and they fed you, right?”
My heart rammed against my ribcage. If he ratted me out—
“Always distrustful, Celeste,” he said mockingly. “You and your mother share the same talent. It can be very useful. Your mother used to reach me in the Dreaming. That was how we kept in touch and arranged to get you out of the Void.”
“She’s never come to my dreams.”
“You’re on the surface of Earth. There’s no leyline from the Void to Earth.”
“But there’s one in Hell?”
He didn’t answer. He was holding out on me. No surprise there. Loki was Lucifer’s son, and he’d inherited his father’s suspicious nature. He’d never give up all his cards, even though he wanted to use me, even though he considered me an ally.
“Show me one more memory of my mother,” I said with longing. I didn’t care that she was the Queen of Hell and that none of the tales about her were any good. She was my mother. She’d gotten me out of the Void when no one else could escape it.
“I don’t have many,” he said. “She came to me in the Dreaming a few times. The last time she showed was to arrange the logistics of smuggling you out of the Void, then out of Hell. We’ve been very careful. We can’t leave any trace behind.”
They had to be careful when facing an opponent who was the devil himself. Lucifer found out that Loki had hidden his birth mother instead of killing her. He’d outsmarted my mother and robbed her of her power, even though she’d been more powerful than him. He’d dragged me to Hell right under my demigods’ noses.
“My father has been dying to know how you were made and how you escaped the Void since no one else has ever made it out,” Loki said. “He searched every corner of your mind, but you didn’t have any memories of your mother or me.”
I couldn’t recall anything about myself before the age of seven. All I remembered was living on the streets, fighting and surviving, until Vi took me in. I became her ward and lived with her in the abandoned library, until one day she took off and left me.
“Did you raise me until I was seven?” I asked.
“I wished I could keep you and train you,” he said softly. “But I had to get you out of this realm in three days or risk having him find you. Your Titan father, the once most powerful elder god, helped place a seal on your power to disguise you as a human. The seal also blocked your memories for seven years. Your parents took extra measures to make sure if anyone scanned your mind, they could only see your years living as a human.”
“Why did they send me out of the Void?”
“Would you rather have lived in the Void?”
“They bred me as the ultimate weapon, didn’t they? They had their own agenda for breeding a hybrid child forbidden by all the gods.”
He shrugged, and I shot him an annoyed look.
He smiled then. “Cronus’s eldest children—Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon—can still manage to travel to the Void and get back out once every thousand years when the realm of the Void is in recess for a day. You weren’t safe in the Void either. The only safe place for you was in the human world, in a forgotten corner controlled by the demigods.”
So he’d put me in Crack, where no demons or demigods would visit. Not until my last day in that town.
“So you just dumped me on the street, all alone by myself? What kind of person are you?!”
“You started on your own when you were three years old,” he said. “You had to pass all sorts of tests. You had to survive through your smarts and resources. You weren’t supposed to be surrounded by roses, honey, and lies. Being a pretty, little, silly human was never your path.”
“You should have just left me alone,” I hissed.
I’d never have suffered so much without the dark prince’s meddling.
“I liked being a little, silly human,” I added viciously.
“You were born with a purpose,” he said, “though you might not like it. And you were never alone. I had my most trusted guardian watch over you from the shadows.”
“I never saw your shadow people, though I’ve slain many bad dudes since I was seven, and none of them were demons, until my last day in Crack.” Then it dawned on me that he might be the one who tipped off the Dominions to get me. “On that day, both a demon and a demigod showed up. Did you arrange for me to be dragged away from my good hunter life, too?”
I’d wanted to cling to my old life, to Circe and Jasper.
My tone was bitter, but I also knew that I’d never have met my demigods if I hadn’t been forced to the Half-Blood Academy. I’d only truly lived, no matter how brief the time, because of the demigods. And I made great friends—Nat and Yelena.
“Vi was the guardian I sent to you,” Loki said softly.
I staggered back.
“Vi trained you for three years before she had to leave you,” Loki said.
“Because you summoned her back and took her away from me,” I said, my voice dripping with cold bitterness.
Vi had always been his. She’d never been mine, to begin with, and she’d deceived me. They treated me as a pawn on the chessboard, probably since before I’d been conceived. I sneered. This pawn might just kill the kings, the queens, the devil, and the gods, and be done with it all.
As if hearing the echo of my dark thoughts, Loki turned to
me, unfazed. His hand reached out to touch my cheek, but I swatted it away.
I only wanted my demigods to touch me.
“When you reach your full power, you’ll have the ability to unmake worlds, Celeste.”
The landscape beneath us shifted again. We were flying across domes of sand. I hadn’t expected to see a desert in this realm. I’d thought Hell was all about lakes of fire, black mountains, and endless dungeons for tortured souls.
“Vi had to go where she was needed to set things in motion,” Loki continued. “She’d taught you everything you needed to learn at that point. She laid the foundation, but she couldn’t teach you magic. We couldn’t afford for you to be discovered before you matured. You managed well on your own. You even took in two wards.”
“Where is Vi?” I demanded.
I’d once thought she was the only family I had before Circe and Jasper came into my life. Now, thinking back over it, I’d been no more than an assignment to her.
“You met her again at the Half-Blood Academy.”
I narrowed my eyes.
Loki sighed. “Esme Von Rouche, the headmistress.”
“That’s impossible.” I sneered. “You think I don’t know what Vi looks like?”
“Illusion. Esme is the grand mistress of illusion. She came from the most ancient witch line, as did I. She also has Olympian blood. I raised her both here and in the human world.”
She was his spy in the heart of the demigods’ territory—and I’d thought Ares was the biggest mole.
“Ares should have discovered it,” I said, “but he’s an arrogant fool.”
“As I said, illusions. The gods can’t detect the most ancient Earth magic that glamours Esme.”
Everything about the headmistress flashed back—how she’d looked at me, how she spoke the demonic language without an accent. I could speak the same ancient demonic tongue—the fallen angel’s language—because I was the daughter of an archangel. It was a genetic thing for me. It was in my blood. But Esme had learned the tongue from Loki.
Deceptions, lies, danger, and manipulations had been surrounding me earlier than I’d realized. The game had started before I was born.