by KV Rose
For a few seconds, I just see Lucifer’s breath coming out in puffs of cold, his chest heaving with his restraint. But then he must decide to fuck it all, because he closes the space between him and Ezra, and instinctively, Atlas takes a step back and Cain takes a step forward. I stay right where I am, by my car.
“Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth. You think because your dad is leading this shit now that you get to talk about shit you don’t know about? I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you, but you clearly don’t have your head on straight. If you keep running your goddamn mouth, I’ll break your fucking jaw—”
Ezra lifts his fist just as Cain steps in between them, shoving them both hard in the chest, away from each other. “Relax,” he says quietly, looking at them both.
Ezra jerks away from Cain’s touch, tugging on his own jacket. Lucifer just keeps staring Ez down.
“We gotta stick together, alright?” Cain keeps talking. “This shit right here? We can’t afford that. Now let’s go inside and get this over with.” Then Cain’s coal black eyes turn on me as he drops his hand and Ezra and Lucifer keep their distance. “You decide what you want to do with your father—”
“Fuck his father,” Lucifer growls, his eyes meeting mine. “He’s fucked up both of your sisters, Mav. Let him fucking pay for it.”
And I fucked up my brother. Wouldn’t be the first sibling I let down if I leave my father alive.
I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say a damn thing. I hadn’t really planned what to do tonight, and I know that we’ll probably have some stupid vote and we’ll probably be expected to let my dad back in and forgive him his sins. But I don’t know what he knew. I don’t know what hand he had in Sid’s fate.
And my mother…my mother would never forgive me for killing him.
I could discuss this with Luce, but he’s not thinking clearly right now, so I just shrug, and walk past all of them, my shoulder knocking into Luce’s.
Fuck ‘em all. Right now, I don’t really give a fuck.
The circular stone table is already occupied when we get inside the meeting room. There’s no art on the walls, nothing but light grey paint, and sconces already lit, the only light in the room.
My father is missing.
Elijah Van Damme is at the head of the table, his hands clasped together and the 6 ring—a snake curved into the shape of the number—glinting from his dark brown fingers. Beside him is Callum Bonavich, Cain’s father, his mouth pressed into a thin line, his pale skin as white as Lucifer’s, like these fuckers keep to the shadows.
Atlas’s father, Adam de’ Medici, is on Elijah’s other side, looking the most relaxed of all of them. Atlas takes after his mother; obvious in Adam’s dark brown hair, light turquoise eyes. The only thing he shares with his son is that small smile playing on his lips as he watches us take a seat.
I sit at the opposite end of Elijah. Luce takes a seat beside Adam, Ezra beside him.
In the middle of the table, there’s a pentagram etched into the stone.
I glance at it, then stare at Elijah, slumped back in my seat like this Council is a waste of time. “Where’s my fucking father? Isn’t that why we’re here?”
“Salvete,” Elijah greets us, ignoring me. Hello in Latin. It’s a dead language, and yet the way we speak it here, I always forget that. Forget that it’s part of my strange life, but not the rest of the world’s. I like the way it sounds, the cadence of it on the 6’s tongue, especially. They’re much better at it than we are, although of course, I’d never tell them that.
I feel my blood boiling at the way Elijah brushes me off, but we mumble our response anyway. Elijah’s mouth presses into a line but he doesn’t comment otherwise. He runs a hand over his well-trimmed beard, cut close to his face, and his dark green eyes—a lot like Ezra’s hazel ones—sweep over all of us.
Then there’s a knock on the door, and it creaks open.
My father walks through, his eyes going straight to me. I smile at him. But he smiles back, and for some reason, that unnerves me.
He nods his head in greeting to everyone, then he takes a seat right beside me. I can feel the cold from outside radiating off of his body. The last time I saw him, I tried to kill him. I’ve got that same desire right now, but I fight it back.
I’ve seen some terrifying things at Council: blood spilled, Satanic chants, what I could’ve sworn was a fucking demon. This one is going much better than many others, so I keep my mouth shut.
No one at all speaks for a moment.
And then Elijah gets right to the point. “You’ve caused quite a mess.”
My father sighs, smooths down his dress shirt. “Good to see you, too.” I can practically hear the smirk in his words. “Since we’re diving right in,” he takes a breath, “you know I had no part in what happened with Lazar.” His eyes flicker to Lucifer, but Lucifer is staring down at the table like someone pissed in his cornflakes.
“You mean to tell me you didn’t know you cheated on your wife, knocked up your mistress, and had her give the baby away?” Lucifer growls, still looking at the table.
For some reason, I think about Ella at that trailer, alone on a Sunday night. It’s not that serious, and I know it. Her parents could be working. Away with friends. Anywhere in the world. She’s nineteen, and she’s done a hell of a lot in her nineteen years if her sexual preferences are any indication.
Maybe that’s why I think about her. About her mom. Dad. Who made her who she is.
Then my thoughts drift to my own mother.
I wonder what she knows about all of this. I wonder if she cares. Her and I have never been close, exactly, but she enjoys burying herself in a good book, same as I do. I know she spends most of her time in her study; the one my father built for her because he knew she’d never do anything else with her life. He wouldn’t let her do anything else; consequence of being a wife of the 6.
I think of Sid. Does she know how limited her life will become?
My father clears his throat and I don’t dare look at him. “I did,” he admits, and my stomach churns. “I did know my mistress was pregnant. I urged her to get an abortion.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see him shrug. And for some reason, Lucifer’s eyes flicker to my father.
Interesting.
But I need to know something and I’m annoyed Lucifer hasn’t asked yet. “What happened to her?” I ask my father, unable to hide the bite in my words. “Sid’s mother?”
My father looks uncomfortable when I say her name, but I don’t fucking care.
“I was told she passed away. Terminal illness.”
“You were told?”
His jaw clenches as he stares at me. “When she didn’t do as I asked, in regard to the abortion, I let Lazar deal with the…situation. And I cut off contact with her. I saw Sid when she was transferred to her guardians, but I did not see her mother again.”
“Did you know these guardians bought her?” I grind out.
“No,” my father snaps. “Lazar himself had taken care of his own bastard.” He trails off, looking at Lucifer. Then he sighs. “Forgive me,” he says with a nod in Luce’s direction. Lucifer is staring at my father as if he’s already dead. “I know this is hard for you to hear, and I regret that things went the way they did. I would never want my daughter to experience what…Sid…did,” his gaze turns back to Elijah, “but I had to reap the consequences of my actions. And now I’ve lost my best friend.”
I want to laugh out loud, but it’s Lucifer that acts first.
He sits up straighter and coughs, cutting off my father’s next words. “Excuse me?” he says in his gravelly voice, low and dangerous.
I shift in my seat, glancing between him and my father. This looks like fun. But it also looks like someone might lose their fucking head.
My father sighs, steeples his hands and presses them to his temple before he picks his head up and looks at Luce. “I know you think I didn’t suffer, or at least, not nearly enough, but if you think for one secon
d I don’t regret what I did—”
Lucifer laughs, cutting him off, and my father frowns but lets Lucifer speak. This is my dad’s trial, after all. He’d do best to be agreeable.
“I don’t give a fuck about your regret, Maddox,” Lucifer snarls.
My dad flinches. Lucifer is a man who killed his own father, burned an entire building full of hanged men; my dad should flinch. And I can admit it, this is kind of fun. I press back against my chair, exhale against the pain from my wounds.
Feels good.
“What I care about is that you let your own child get sold into the hands of fucking monsters,” Lucifer continues. He brushes his thumb over his bottom lip, and I see the vein in his neck jump as he drops his hand to the table. “And you didn’t stop there, did you?” He glances at Atlas and I know what’s coming. “You kicked Brooklin out of your house for fucking around with one of us, and by doing so, you let her find her way into the arms of Jeremiah Rain.” It’s not my imagination that sees him look at me.
I press further against the leather chair, relishing in the way my flesh feels like it’s on fire. I don’t want to think about my sister. Either one of them, actually, but especially not Brooklin. I can keep an eye on Sid. But Brooklin…since I saved Jeremiah’s life, I can’t keep an eye on her at all.
My father sighs and shakes his head, as if Luce is a petulant child that doesn’t understand the way things work. I guess that’s a little true.
I stay quiet, as does everyone else, watching this exchange with greedy eyes.
“You don’t understand the honor the women among us need to possess in order to stay under our protection.” My father’s eyes narrow, and he looks like he’s ready to fight fire with fire. “Obviously, since you willingly started a relationship with a paid whore, you have no idea what that—”
Lucifer jumps up from his chair, but it isn’t him that gets to my father first.
It’s me.
I don’t even realize what I’ve done until my fist cracks against his face, his shirt in my hand as I hit him again, shove him back against the wall, the light from a sconce flickering over the surprise on his bleeding face.
My heart is slamming in my chest with anger and I cock my fist back again, but someone tugs on my arm, wrenching me away from my father so hard I’m forced to let go of him. He stays standing, but he’s slumped against the wall, his mouth open, blood pouring from his nose, over his lips.
I realize two people are holding me and I see Lucifer, off to the side, staring at me with a smile on his face. As if he thought maybe we weren’t so close after all. As if he thought I’d let my dad disrespect his wife like that.
But it has nothing to do with Sid being his wife.
It has everything to do with her being my fucking sister.
I’m breathing hard and I glance back, realize Cain has one arm and Elijah has the other. Both of their fingers are digging into my skin, but it’s not until Elijah shifts his grip to my shoulder that it actually hurts, because he’s squeezing against several of my lacerations.
I tense, but don’t say a word as I lock eyes again with my father.
“That’s enough,” Elijah says. “Although I can’t say that wasn’t deserved, Maddox,” he adds quietly.
My father’s face contorts with rage. “You need to learn your place, Maverick.”
I jerk my arms, trying to get out of Elijah’s and Cain’s grip, but they don’t let go. “You need to watch your goddamn mouth.”
He brings his fingers to his nose, dabs at the blood. Glances at it under the light of the sconces around the room. I see the tips of his fingers, slick with blood, and again my mind goes to Ella.
Don’t think about her.
I jerk again, and again, I can’t get free. Cain and Elijah have me in a fucking vise grip.
“This is your father,” Elijah says under his breath, but we can all hear him. “Let him speak.”
I twist my head around to stare into Elijah’s eyes. “He doesn’t fucking deserve to speak.”
Elijah’s grip tightens painfully, and he claps one hand on my shoulder. I fight back a wince against the pain that lashes down my arm as his big hand presses against the wounds on my back. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he knows.
“We’ve given you and your brothers a lot of leeway, given the circumstances,” he says calmly, his eyes searching mine. “But this goes too far. You have Noctem in eight weeks. You want to be able to face yourself there, do you not?”
Get fucked.
I don’t say it, though. Let it go.
Let it fucking go.
I relax against his hold, and Cain’s. They release me and I turn back to my father, who’s staring at me with a smile on his bloody face.
“Sit down,” Elijah says sharply, commanding us all back to our seats. “We still have other matters to discuss.”
I don’t want to discuss shit. I want to drive back to that fucking trailer park and fuck Ella again, use her until she begs me to stop. I want to kill my father. I want to get out of this.
But even still, I do as Elijah says, as does everyone else. We’re all fucking cowards. Or maybe we’re just so brainwashed, we have no idea how to make our own choices.
I’m lost in thought, cracking my knuckles as my father tries to stop his nosebleed beside me with the back of his hand when I hear Elijah barking my name.
“Maverick,” he snaps again, clapping his hands as he does.
I jump, sit up straighter. “Yes, Dominus?”
“Where. Is. Ria?” he snarls, as if he’s already asked that question a few times now.
I swallow down my anger, trying to get myself under control. Ria. I need to think about Ria. Something I’ve been doing my best not to think about. “I don’t know.”
Elijah arches a thick brow. “You don’t know,” he repeats, but it’s not a question.
“You heard me,” I snap back. Wanting to fuck Ella’s brains out again and blow out my father’s is making me antsy. And angry. What is going on with me?
Elijah looks displeased. I don’t give a fuck. “You need to find her. We need to be absolutely certain she is not going to talk to anyone, about anything she knows.”
I see Atlas glaring at me and my thoughts go to Natalie. To his admission they got in a fight.
“Right,” I mutter to Elijah.
“And in the meantime,” he continues, “you’d do best to consider…branding her.” He clears his throat. “Coagula.”
I nearly break my neck, I look up at him so fast. “What?”
Elijah laughs, a deep rumbling sound that is totally at odds with how I’m feeling. “Oh, you had to know this was coming, didn’t you, Maverick?”
My entire body is tense. I clamp the edges of my chair to keep myself from standing to my feet and saying something very stupid. “No, actually, I fucking didn’t.”
“Watch your tongue,” Elijah scolds me. “I’m giving her a reprieve, considering she got into this through no fault of her own.” It’s clear, the way he’s looking at me, that he’s suggesting this is all my fault.
Don’t I fucking know it. If I hadn’t gone to my father with what she found, this could’ve all been avoided. I’d been trying to be loyal. Now I don’t know who deserves that loyalty.
“But in the end, she cannot leave AU without being…dealt with.” He leans back in his chair. “One way or another.”
I clench my teeth together, determined not to say it. To let it go. Because the more I push, the more we’ll have to talk about her, and I don’t want to. I also don’t want them to know where I’m hiding her. But despite my very best efforts, I can’t keep quiet.
“Weren’t you just saying my father deserved to be fucking hit in the face for what he did to Sid? To Brooklin? And now you’re calmly discussing killing another girl because she knows that we’re all a bunch of fuck ups?”
Lucifer is staring at Elijah. Atlas is staring at me. Ezra has his head buried in his hands, and Cain is looking at
the table, like he’s bored.
Elijah looks like he wants to kill me. Be my guest, I want to say, but I guess I’ve said enough.
“The 6 cannot have interferences. You know that. Ria Cuevas is an interference.”
“We’ve threatened her entire family. Unlike us, she actually gives a shit about her relatives. I don’t think she’s going to speak.”
Elijah shakes his head. “Oh, Maverick. I know what it’s like to be young and idealistic. But that won’t do. Consider what I’m asking you. From what I know of her, Ria would make a fine wife, and she would be allowed to live out the rest of her life in peace—”
I push to my feet, my fist against the stone table. “Do you fucking hear yourself?”
His mouth presses into a line and Ezra picks his head up, hisses my name. I ignore him.
“We’re going to kill an innocent girl because she knows we’re fucked?”
“Maverick, sit down. Your juvenile attempts at morality are amusing, but we both know you’re just as fucked as the rest of us.”
My skin crawls. My back aches. I think of Ella. How I want to hurt her. How it gets me off. How it gets her off.
We’re all fucked.
“Sit. Down.”
Atlas’s and Cain’s fathers are staring at me with hard eyes and I know I’ve crossed a line. With effort, I force myself to sit, wanting the entire time to turn to my father and bash his brains against the table.
“After Noctem, we’ll make a final decision regarding this,” Elijah says, warning lacing his tone.
That means I’ve got eight weeks to think about what sort of sadistic punishment they’re going to give me at the Night ceremony. Three nights of torture, and in the end, I’ll probably be begging for them to kill me. It’s like how the military takes soldiers apart to put them back together, so they’re all freakishly bonded. That’s Noctem. A dismantling of our minds, to make sure they stay under the influence of the 6.
Lucifer clears his throat, breaking the tension for a second. “Now,” he says, his eyes on Elijah, “let’s talk about when you’re going to burn this place to the fucking ground, Dominus.”
Elijah is quiet a moment, and I watch the two of them carefully.