by Meg Xuemei X
Loki bellowed in rage and pain as he struggled in vain.
I tried to push my crimson light toward Loki to cover him, but it didn’t move an inch.
“Let him go, Lucifer!” I shouted.
I didn’t know what else to do to release Loki from the binding or the agony, so I shattered my cocoon to apply my new ice magic to counter Lucifer’s power and aid Loki, hoping ice could cancel out fire and the heated purple light.
My ice magic didn’t break the purple chains that bound the prince but sent him colliding against a large rock reeling outside our circle.
“I’m sorry,” I called frantically, cold sweat forming on my nose. “Hang in there! I’ll figure this out.”
“Save yourself, Celeste,” Loki called back. “Get out of here now. He has a dark plan for you.”
“Pathetic,” Lucifer said in disgust, flicking a wrist and sending a bellowing Loki flying backward.
In a blink of an eye, Loki vanished as if he’d been dragged into some phantom realm.
“Where did you send him?” I demanded. “If you harm him—”
Lucifer tore open the fabric of the air, and I peeked through the hole into another dimension.
The prince was in the same dungeon in the Seventh Hell where he’d been chained and tortured as a little boy. I’d seen that part of his memory.
The purple light had morphed into heavy iron chains. Their ends pierced Loki’s body and strung him up, spread-eagle style.
Lucifer waved a hand impatiently, and the fabric sealed, leaving Loki in the dungeon.
We’d underestimated Lucifer. I’d thought his primary power was hellfire. I hadn’t factored in that he’d been a formidable archangel before his fall, and he had also stolen another extremely powerful archangel’s power—my mother’s.
That was why he had the two-toned hellfire that was way more powerful than Loki’s and mine.
“Let him go, you monster,” I snarled. “He’s your son!”
“You think I care that he’s my blood?” he said, his voice dripping with contempt for me. “Thinking like a weakling defines you as a weakling.”
I smirked. “Yet you fail time and time again to break this weakling. What say you of that, dude?”
“Don’t call me dude,” he snapped. “And for all the grief you’ve caused me, I’ll kill your precious mates in front of you, and then I’ll take you. Your whore mother humiliated me, and I’ll violate you in every way before I send your pieces back to her.”
He didn’t even want to use me to crack open heaven’s door anymore. The devil had lost faith in me. Great. I was way more trouble than I was worth for most people. He wasn’t dumb. I’d give him that.
“Spoken like a cunt,” I said.
He roared. The room trembled at the devil’s power. Everyone who had lesser power seemed to want to bend their knees. More rocks plummeted from the ceiling; the place was breaking apart.
I ducked a rock hurtling over my head as the devil’s purple light slammed into me again in waves, and this time, his two-toned hellfire and something else joined the mix.
I summoned my shield in a panic, and it came, but my opponent’s power punctured through my crimson cocoon, dispersed it, and slithered up my body like an invader. The purple light bound me like chains, just as it had gotten Loki. Only the chains on me were tenfold more potent and nastier.
It paralyzed me.
I heard Héctor’s roars of fear and fury as he tried to pull away from his own battle to reach me.
“Go! Go! Guard my Cookie,” Axel shouted. “I’ll hold this motherfucker.”
“No, don’t come for me!” I yelled at them in desperation.
Héctor and Zak peeled off the line the four demigods held against Ares and zoomed toward me, leaving Paxton and Axel vulnerable. The four of them needed to band together to keep the God of War at bay, but they’d chosen me over their own safety after they saw me lose my shit.
Zak tossed his lightning, which wasn’t half as potent as when he was on Earth’s surface, at Lucifer and lunged at the devil with his blazing sword.
“You won’t touch my woman!” roared the sky demigod.
Héctor sent his death light to me to wrestle away the chains of purple light that bound my every inch but to no avail. He then murmured an ancient Olympian chant.
Zak and Lucifer locked in battle.
A black whirlwind reeled around Lucifer, and when the wind was gone, the devil had transformed into a nine-foot-tall monstrous being with vast red wings, great sharp horns, bladed claws, and long fangs.
His eyes blazed red fire and his mouth shot out hellfire at Zak.
Zak, who had many wounds already from fighting Ares, rammed into Lucifer—steel, lightning, and himself.
When they broke apart, Lucifer was missing a horn, and Zak fell backward, his chest cut open.
I screamed in horror and wrath. I was losing a mate right in front of my eyes. I couldn’t bear it.
“No! No!” I screamed again.
The devil was in his mutant form of both an archangel and a devil. He was too powerful. I had to lead the fucker away from my mates.
In my desperation, I tore myself from the protection of Héctor’s wings and death light and teleported out of the room.
In the slipstream, before I reached my destination, I gazed down at the unmoving Demigod of Sky in grief. The devil had opened the insides of my beloved, and I could see his heart still pumping. Soon, it would stop.
Yet I couldn’t allow myself to grieve. I’d failed him. I couldn’t help him, but I must save the rest of my mates.
I wouldn’t lose any more of them.
“Where did the little whore go, Lucifer?” Ares roared. “We had an agreement. She’s supposed to be mine—mine to punish and mine to possess.”
“She figured out how to teleport within my realm,” Lucifer hissed.
“But you bound her!” Ares said. “Or is your chain no longer effective?”
“She’s growing in power,” Lucifer said, irritated. “We must combine our forces again to subdue her. I won’t allow her to roam free in my kingdom.”
Just as I’d expected, the devil and the god followed my trail. They’d never give up their hunt. The duo even landed a nanosecond earlier than me in the Seventh Hell.
I touched down, staggering, and faced Loki, who was pierced and chained in the middle of the cold, dark dungeon.
He stared at me as purple chains recaptured me, then at the god and devil behind me.
“No,” he whispered, then closed his eyes as all hope and light bled out of them. “It should not end this way.”
CHAPTER 21
__________________
I was exactly where I needed to be.
All the fighting had been a smokescreen to lead my foes here. Only I hadn’t expected it to cost me a mate. Seeing my beloved Zak, who’d given me everything, lying there with his chest open and his blood pooling beneath him undid me.
Yet I had to turn off my grief.
I had a job to do—bring down the villains.
And the devil and the god were exactly where I needed them to be.
I regarded Loki in front of me. He’d given up, believing our worst fate was sealed.
And now he couldn’t even bear to look at me.
In the chariot driven by the Hell stallion, I’d stolen into the prince’s memories and seen him brutalized by his father as a young boy. He’d cast me out of his head and cursed at me, but he hadn’t realized that my magic was more powerful and sneaky than he thought. It had lingered and watched the scene of my mother’s first visit to him.
Lilith had opened the temporary portal between the Seventh Hell and the Void. Though she couldn’t cross the threshold, she had talked to him through the doorway.
She had come to see if Lucifer’s heir was worthy of being her ally. In his darkest hours, she’d been there for him, offering him hope, comfort, courage, and a future. She promised him a chance at revenge on their common enemy.
Loki worshipped my mother and would do anything for her, and she’d granted him the power to open the portal if he ever needed to flee his father.
The second time she’d visited him, she’d brought me to him so I could be raised, trained, and come to power outside the Void. I was the only one who had the power to pass back and forth between realms.
“Look at me, Loki,” I ordered.
The prince flash opened his eyes, pain shining through them with his humanity, which was why I’d chosen him. He would never destroy Earth.
“I’m sorry, Marigold. I didn’t protect you. I brought this on you.”
He hadn’t called me Celeste.
Shut up and listen, I said in his head. My mother graced you with a gift. When I call you, use it.
He snapped to focus, his whole being swirling alive like a shark smelling fresh blood. He understood what I planned to do, and he knew there was no other way.
He swallowed, staring at me intently.
Promise me that you’ll take care of my witch friend and her half-blood and mage friends who fought for us today, I demanded. And you’ll help Lisa L Kinsley’s sister.
He blinked his agreement. Anything.
I stepped back, inching toward where the portal was supposed to be.
“How can she still walk around while your chain binds her?” Ares said, studying my moves.
“She can’t break it,” Lucifer said. “That’s what matters.”
“Are you sure?” Ares said. “That little vixen is most conniving.”
Lucifer shrugged. “Let’s check, then, if you feel insecure.”
The god and the devil stalked toward me, certain I was their prey.
“Don’t come any closer,” I warned.
Ares chuckled sinisterly. “There’s no place to run, little minx. My son loved to call you minx, didn’t he? What a lovely pet name, but that little shit couldn’t save his own hide.”
My heart sank. What had the sadistic god done to my Axel before he tracked me here? I should have led them here earlier, but I was waiting for Loki to get here first.
“No one can save you, Celeste,” Lucifer said. “After I’m done with you, you’ll wish you had never been born. You shouldn’t have been born. You’re an eternal eyesore to me.”
“Leave her alone!” Loki called out.
“Shut him up already,” Ares said. “Your son’s such a weasel.”
“Let him watch,” Lucifer said. The chains on Loki yanked harder, and blood poured from his wounds. “And then he’ll truly know what fear is.”
“Wait.” I staggered backward toward the portal. “Let’s not make a rash decision that everyone will regret. Let’s not do anything stupid.”
“You’re a stupid girl,” Ares said, his golden eyes holding lust and contempt for me at the same time. “Now you’re afraid? You brought this on yourself. Even I can’t talk Lucifer out of this now. You’ve gotten him more agitated than anyone since your mother.”
I guessed he might be right since Lucifer had stayed in his true devil’s form, his crimson eyes half-mad.
“You’ve made me angry, too, Marigold,” Ares said. He was more talkative than Lucifer, fond of expressing his feelings verbally before he resorted to violence. I learned that from our first encounter. “For that, you’ll suffer my wrath. I’m not a very forgiving god, but there’re reasons for that. I didn’t have a happy childhood, and no one gave a shit about me. My father is a bad man—”
“You mean Zeus, the King of Gods?” I asked, backing up farther as they advanced on me.
“Ares,” Lucifer said, annoyed. “Less melodrama please.”
“I need to get this off my chest,” Ares grated. “I have one more thing to say: Zeus is a tyrant. Back to business. I warned you that you’d be mine alone and I would come to collect you. I warned you to behave and gave you a chance in Hell, yet you still went ahead and fucked the demigods, regardless of my feelings. You stink of them even now, so I’m going to have to scrub their scent off your little pussy—”
New power pulsed in me.
It was now or never.
My half-formed Living Flame sundered the enemies’ dark spells inside me and blasted out of me. I shrugged off Lucifer’s purple chains.
“You two old cunts bore me,” I said.
Lucifer and Ares widened their eyes incredulously, as did Loki, looking over their shoulders at me.
The Living Flame—the Flame of Rainbows infused by powers of ice, storm, death, and lightning—dashed toward my enemies.
“What the fuck?” Ares shouted.
“Impossible!” Lucifer hissed.
The devil’s hellfire and the god’s Glory, the combined powers that had once held me captive and rendered me helpless in the Ever Realm, crashed into my flame with the force of a hurricane.
Ice and fire storms, death light, and lightning gifted by my mates through our mating bond hissed, ready to peel off to attack the enemies and defend me.
No. I called and leashed the powers. We attack as one. Together, we’re stronger.
My new powers growled, but obeyed me and infused back into my Flame of Rainbows, strengthening it.
“All this time that little whore has been holding out on us,” Ares cursed.
Loki giggled in vicious joy as my rampaging flame broke through our foes’ defenses and caged them.
For the first time, I saw fear in my enemies’ eyes.
Lucifer and Ares bellowed and tossed all they had at my wild flame to snuff it out, but their powers only fueled it. It seemed that the Living Flame grew stronger when attacked, but I knew that it couldn’t take down Lucifer and Ares before it reached its full power.
“Loki!” I roared. “Now!”
A thin trace of my flame reached him and broke his chains.
The dark prince roared with me, the powers of Hell and rage bursting out of him. He threw up his hands and tore the portal open behind me—the one-way ticket to the Void.
“What the hell are you doing, Loki?” Lucifer growled.
Even as King of Deception and Lies, he had never learned that his son had the power to open the portal. Not even the devil possessed the ability to shift worlds. He’d taken great powers from my mother, but she hadn’t let him take them all.
Lucifer and Ares, trying to break through and escape, attacked my flame with their might as it flashed with lightning, death light, ice magic, and firestorm. My flame flickered but still held for the moment. I zoomed in toward them. One grab and I’d take them to the bowels of the Void with me.
Once in the Void, they’d be done—trapped there with me, suffering the wrath of the Titans. I didn’t even want to think about how long the Titans had been imprisoned there and how angry they would be.
I shuddered for both Ares’s and Lucifer’s sakes.
Lucifer darted behind Ares and shoved him toward me as I hurried toward them. I grabbed the war god, and Lucifer used the momentum to steal one of Ares’s powers. With it, he phased out of the barrier of my flame.
Ares howled in a black rage.
“Feel good being betrayed like that, dick?” I asked. He’d betrayed my demigods and Earth just the same. “You’re a tad slower than Lucifer,” I added, rubbing salt into his injury.
Ares rammed his fist, which could dent steel, into my chest. Pain blossomed in me, but I held on and flew backward until I’d passed through the threshold of the Void.
“No!” Ares screamed in horror and rage.
“Yes!” I roared in glee, wiping blood off the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand.
Gravity tried to suck me into the depths of the Void. I grated my teeth and fought to remain at the doorway. I sent the god farther in. I could no longer hold him captive, but I didn’t need to.
The Void took him. The war god was gone.
But I’d missed my chance to take out the devil.
Shit storm!
How could I fail?
I’d fucking planned this for months.
<
br /> I was so furious I was out of my mind.
Waves of Void power—familiar and alien at the same time—battered my body. Sweat broke out all over me, but I managed to stay where I was.
I was, after all, a Titan’s daughter.
I wouldn’t be able to stay in the eye of the storm for long, though.
I stared at Lucifer, who stared at where Ares and I had been.
“Celeste!” Loki shouted in desperation.
Just when I was about to answer him, Lucifer growled. “Where is she?”
It dawned on me that they couldn’t see me. It wasn’t like when Lilith had visited Loki; they could chat like friends at the entryway of the portal simply because she’d allowed him to see her.
Mom’s teaching of mind over matter and bending reality rushed to my mind.
“She’s gone,” Loki said sadly. “And you’re to blame.”
Father and son glared at each other. Lucifer’s eyes promised a severe punishment, and Loki’s held defiance and fear.
“Did you open a portal to the Void?” Lucifer drawled. “No one can return from it. How could you even open a portal?”
“It isn’t the portal to the Void, Father,” Loki said with a shrug over Lucifer’s suspicious look. “It’s somewhere else you’ve never explored. Celeste has the power to roam the worlds. When her flame freed me from your chains, she drew my power and used my hand to open a portal that I had no idea was there.” The prince stared down at his hands and flexed them in confusion. “Why did she even use me? But she took the power back with her when she left. She’s something, isn’t she? I hope she comes back and you’ll be nicer to her, or I’m gonna miss her. She’s like a long-lost little sister to me, you know.”
“You’re more pathetic than I thought and a huge disappointment,” Lucifer snarled. “Shut your hole and let me think. I’ll deal with you later.”
Loki shuddered before he snickered. Then he pointed at the invisible portal.
“Father, what is that?” he squeaked.
A mist rolled in, and the scent of night flowers—my mother’s perfume—permeated the air.
Lucifer sniffed and stiffened, a wishful look fleeting across his hard, cruel face.