The sword was far too heavy for him to brandish. The best he could do was place it carefully back in its stand. At least no one had seen him. Whoever had worn the armor had been one righteous badass. Respect.
He shouldn’t have disturbed the dust on the sword. It was some kind of tribute to a fallen warrior. Like a memorial or something. But the sword wasn’t why he’d come to the throne room. There was something here that was meant for him. He was supposed to be the heir to the throne.
He turned away from the armor and stepped back to what had brought him here in the first place.
Then, he sat.
It wasn’t a choice or a statement. He just wanted to see what it was like. “Hard” and “cold” were his first thoughts.
“Off with their heads,” he said, but the joke seemed lame even with no one around.
The stone leeched all his body heat until even his Brimstone, which required constant subconscious vigilance to tamp down, was out cold. He shivered. It should be nice to have a break, but his insides felt hollow, as if a part of him was gone. Tamping it down and completely losing it were two different things.
Grim watched him. His eyes ignited by the fires inside him. Michael rose and pretended he was only interested in looking closer at the carvings on the nearest wall rather than admit that he couldn’t handle the throne.
He came face-to-face with a life-size carving of a man whose face was contorted in an angry scream. His eyes were closed. His mouth open wide. Michael forced himself closer, again pulled by a vague memory even as he was repelled by the expression on the carving’s face. He stopped when his nose was a hairsbreadth away from the stone nose of the carved man. Far above, the torches that still burned barely illuminated where he stood. He wasn’t sure if an undetected breeze suddenly caused the flames to leap and cast a great dark shadow over the wall, but he was completely certain of the movement when the carved man opened his eyes.
Michael jumped back, too startled to play it cool. The carving’s stone irises were exposed and now he stared at Michael with a blank gaze that chilled him to the bone.
“They are the Rogues who weren’t claimed by heaven or Oblivion when they fell. And the humans who helped Rogues to plot against heaven.” A voice broke into his shock and he backed up several more steps from the wall.
An older daemon woman had come into the room without him noticing. She came closer to him and suddenly he knew “older” didn’t begin to estimate her age. She was easily as old as or older than the daemon king. And she was familiar.
“It’s been too long, Grim. You rarely come to see me anymore. I suppose this young man keeps you busy,” she said. “I thought I’d find you here. Do you remember me? I’m Sybil. I took care of you when you were a child.”
He remembered. Her great sewing kit he wasn’t allowed to touch. Needles. Fabrics. Scissors and thread. Her smile. Long since he’d heard his mother refer to it as a “Mona Lisa smile.”
“You watched me sew your mother’s wedding dress. And your aunt’s. I’ve dressed Adam and John a time or two as well. But Ezekiel keeps me busy these days and has for half a dozen years,” Sybil said. “I’m still sewing. And I find it easier to avoid the mortal realm. There comes a time when even a daemon’s heart becomes full and finished.”
“The damned,” Michael said. He looked back at the man in the wall. At all the men and women and children on the walls and ceiling high above them.
Dark memories had flooded back to join the pleasant memories of his former nanny. His daemon father had been trapped in a prison like this. The Rogue Council had imprisoned all the Loyalists they’d captured in a frieze on the walls of l’Opéra Severne. They’d been freed when the opera house burned to the ground, but some—like his true father—had sacrificed themselves to drag Reynard into Oblivion.
“A king who rules here must rule in darkness. But is it actually darker than the world you know or is it only different? Here darkness is displayed for all to see. There is beauty in justice. A king must mete it out. Especially a king of the damned,” Sybil said. She had reached for Grim and he had come to her hand, snuffling like a puppy.
“My mother says different, not damned,” Michael said. For some reason Sybil’s smile and her words caused his heart to pound painfully in his chest. She was ancient. And she seemed so...resigned. Full and finished. It hurt him. His remembered affection for her felt heavy in his heart.
“Well, it’s a choice for all of us to decide which, isn’t it? And daemons must make choices often in their long lives,” she said. Grim didn’t mind her gloomy words. He snuggled against her, no doubt remembering her love from long ago and far away.
“You’re wrong. And this is wrong. I don’t think this is justice. This is revenge. There’s a difference,” Michael said. “If this is what comes of Brimstone blood then I’ll pass.”
Michael looked away from Sybil’s soft smile. He stared at the man in the wall once more. These Rogues might deserve to suffer the same fate they’d chosen to inflict on others, but every soul deserved an impartial judge, and he knew his grandfather was far from that. There was corruption in this. A deep wrongness that offended the sense of true justice he’d inherited from his heroic stepfather. This was horror, and their suffering reminded him that this is what his daemon father had endured... Michael’s heart still pounded but now it also burned.
His Brimstone flared in response to his distress.
It wouldn’t hurt him. Not anymore. He was older and wiser. The scars on his arms and legs and chest were only reminders of how vulnerable he’d been as a half-human baby with no practice in controlling his Brimstone blood. But even though the only ones who might be harmed in the room were an ancient daemon woman and a hellhound spawned in the pits of hell, he exercised the control he’d begun to learn when he was a smaller child.
He tamped down the panic. He fisted his hands. Grim left Sybil and came to press against his side, absorbing some of his master’s heat. The Rogues in the walls and ceiling writhed in response to his suddenly revealed presence. He’d been almost invisible when he was cold. His human half in control. Now he gleamed brighter than the torches to their dulled senses. They roiled and cried and gnashed their teeth. Michael backed away.
“I’ll never be king of this place,” he said. He set his jaw against the sulfuric burn in the back of his throat. He swallowed the heat back down to his core even though it burned as if he’d swallowed one of the torches that flickered on the walls.
Sybil looked from the wall to her former charge.
“Never is a very long time for a person with Brimstone blood,” she warned. She continued to smile, but her smile was one of the tragic ones that didn’t reach her eyes.
Chapter 11
Ezekiel was a hardened warrior king, but he was a being who had walked on the golden streets of heaven itself. Lily couldn’t go to him in rags covered in ash and hope for a favorable audience. Not now when her reception would be trickier than ever because of Michael’s close call with death.
She had almost killed Ezekiel’s beloved D’Arcy heir.
Quickly and quietly, she worked to improve her appearance without calling maids for help. She was loath to disturb the strange heavy silence that reverberated out in the palace corridors. Truthfully, she and her mother had always lived simply in their wing as if she wasn’t the ward of a king.
Lily drew a bath and washed away the remnants of the battle. She didn’t take the time to dry her thick hair. She plaited the wet strands into a long braid. Then she dressed in clothes very unlike the worn jeans and tees that had been her desert staples for months. The dress she chose was a simple silk shift, long and white. Her matching slippers felt insubstantial after weeks in sturdy boots and practical sneakers.
She was here. She’d always been here. She wanted Ezekiel to know she accepted her position. This wasn’t about rebellion. All she as
ked was that she be left a heart when all was said and done.
Leaving the sanctuary of her rooms was difficult. Sophia had brought in comfortable furnishings and Southwestern fabrics and textiles to create a haven for them. On shelves throughout the room sat all of the kachinas she’d spent a lifetime carving. They had been like family and friends to a girl who’d had to grow up without real siblings. Lily had placed the warrior angel on her nightstand where a small faded spot indicated its usual position. After she dressed, she put it in the pocket of her dress. She placed her flute in the other pocket. She was unarmed, but she wasn’t entirely alone. She held her head high, but her heart pounded.
She stepped into the hallway and immediately she was dwarfed by the immense width and height and depth of the palace around her. The building was an architectural masterpiece of supernatural size and scope. Its dark baroque beauty was complex, constructed with carvings and details no one human being could ever explore. Crafted of the deepest black marble, the walls and floors shone in perpetual candlelight and the purple haze of an atmosphere mortals would find strangely gloaming-like in the day or night.
Lily headed to the throne room. She’d been quiet. Her arrival hadn’t been heralded. Ezekiel would still be waiting. His grandson had almost died for her. Because of her. She’d almost killed Elizabeth’s grandson. It wasn’t until she was nearly there that she caught a glimpse of her reflection in gigantic mirrors that rimmed the outer chamber. She was only a tiny figure in the lower corners, furtively flitting from one glass to another, but the brilliant white of her dress shone like a star. She’d meant the dress to serve as a parley flag. Not one of surrender, but one of peace and compromise. Now she saw it as a pristine rebellion against her life trapped in shadows. It was a strategic mistake she’d have to overcome. It was too late to turn back.
* * *
Michael woke to the soft cool kiss of the night breeze on his face. He hurt. It had been a hell of a fight. Literally. But he could already feel the Brimstone burning steadily beneath his skin knitting and healing his injuries more speedily than any wholly human person could expect. For once, the reminder of his half-daemon blood didn’t bother him. He would have died without the Brimstone. He would have been useless to Lily against the Rogues.
Lily?
His senses lasered into focus on the woman he’d last seen covered in ash and blood. He rose with a gasp and a groan as his worst injury was jarred. He would have a new scar by the looks of it when his stomach healed. Grim’s Brimstone had cauterized the wound and saved his life. He remembered that too even as he squinted to look around him.
Grim?
He wasn’t just alone. He was all alone. And Grim would never have left his side while he was injured unless the circumstances had been extreme.
As soon as he saw her father’s sword, the bottles of water and protein bars left readily beside him, Michael knew Lily was gone. Where and why wasn’t as readily apparent. He reached for the water. He forced himself to take the time to open and drain it before he picked up the sword and tried to walk even though his heart had begun to pound. Every moment that passed strengthened him, but when he saw the Firebird nearby, Lily’s absence went from a concern to alarm bells clanging in his head. She couldn’t have gotten far on foot. If she’d gone for supplies she would have taken the car and she would have known that seeking medical help for him was useless.
Had Rogues attacked again while he was unconscious? Had Lily and Grim been taken? Michael staggered out from under the leaning metal canopy of the deserted drive-in where Lily had parked the car. The defunct restaurant was off of the main road and below a rise. There was nothing left of its sign but a rusty pole. She’d managed to get them this far, but what had happened once she’d left him on the makeshift bed? His protective instincts didn’t care that he wasn’t operating at one hundred percent or that his Brimstone was busy healing his body. They flared and he groaned against the fury and concern burning in his gut.
Then Grim materialized from the starlit darkness of the desert night.
Michael stood in stunned silence as the hideous hellhound stalked toward him surrounded by the smoky haze of his solidifying fur...but also by the scent of pure Brimstone that could have only come from one place.
The hell dimension.
His loyal hellhound had been to hell while he was sleeping and he’d come back with the glow of flames flickering in his eyes.
“Where’s Lily?” Michael asked. He straightened. He dropped his free hand from the wound on his stomach. His pain hadn’t stopped, but he ignored it now. He knew Grim. Though the hellhound couldn’t speak his walk, his stance, his smoky hackles all told Michael what he dreaded to hear.
Lily had gone to hell.
He’d been afraid that Rogues would hurt her by their endless hungry hunt, but he hadn’t been worried about the greatest threat of all...his grandfather. There was no one hungrier than the daemon king. And for some reason Lily Santiago had gone to face his grandfather alone.
* * *
Doors swung open on either side of an intimidating statue of the long-dead Lucifer that graced the cathedral-like antechamber outside the throne room. She paused at its feet. White, trembling, determined to burn in her own way in her own time. She looked up, way up, at the wings. They stretched out from both of his mighty shoulders. The tips of the wings created the frame for the massive entry doors. Large enough to welcome an army or a plague of angels. They waited for one petite ward to stand her ground.
“He’ll wear those wings. They’re meant to be his. But he’ll also have the sun and his song,” Lily pledged. “I won’t be used to keep him in darkness.”
No one heard. The chamber was too large for her voice to echo against its impossible reaches. It didn’t matter. She heard and she meant every word.
Lily braced her spine and placed her hands in her pockets. The flute and the kachina were cold comfort. Ezekiel was angry. She could feel a hint of his Brimstone unbuffered and that had rarely happened before. Their bargain was for her to help Michael retrieve Lucifer’s wings. She’d almost boiled his blood instead. She had to face Ezekiel’s fury before she could even begin to bargain for her heart.
She’d immolated an army of Rogue daemons, but she was afraid to face the daemon king. Her love for him was a horrible, unrequited weight on her chest. She could barely draw breath against it.
The throne room was empty as the whole palace had been save for the lone figure of the daemon king on Lucifer’s throne. She was accustomed to the empty suit of armor that stood “guard” to the right of the throne so she wasn’t fooled. The armor had always been empty. No one spoke of the daemon who had once worn it as Guardian of the king. Torches replaced candles here. They flickered with dancing light in Gothic sconces that lined the walls high above her head. Their light created an ambient pathway that glowed along a length of scarlet carpet, the only color that softened an otherwise gray-and-black room. Only the stone frieze that lined the walls and columns and even the ceiling far above created any other relief from the marble floor’s flat obsidian shine. Torchlight illuminated the carved faces and figures and caused movement to appear where there could be none save leaping shadows caused by flame.
Lily didn’t hesitate or wait for a gesture of welcome. There would be none. She moved forward on feet forced to be steady and sure by nothing but an iron will. Hadn’t she always been a tiny figure tossed into a black sea on a life raft of a king’s whim? The carpet was more solid beneath her feet than her position in the palace had ever been.
She did pause when Ezekiel stood. She paused and then stutter-stepped to movement again, refusing to be afraid. He would never harm her. Not physically. Never. But he would never love her enough, and that was harm in and of itself.
“I didn’t mean to hurt him. I had no choice,” Lily said. The daemon king headed toward her slowly and surely. Her speech didn
’t stop him. He gave no indication that he’d heard her at all. “I acted instinctively. I didn’t know they would...burn.”
The carpet was no longer the only color in the room. Ezekiel’s eyes glowed with dancing crimson flames that rivaled the torches with their light. Had she been wrong? Would the only father she’d ever known punish her for her mistake?
She wasn’t prepared for the daemon king’s embrace when it came. She braced for fury. She wasn’t braced for the move that swept her off her feet and into his fierce arms. Her breath left her body, shocked and squeezed from her lungs.
“They almost had you,” he said against her ear. His voice filled the room even as a whisper. “It happened so suddenly. Your affinity went from a compelling whisper to a scream. I didn’t expect it to happen so fast.”
“But you knew my affinity would call to Michael. You knew it would be amplified once we were together,” Lily said. She didn’t pull herself from his arms. Not right away.
“Yes. I knew. This was my fault. Entirely. I never should have let you go alone,” Ezekiel said.
He wasn’t angry with her. He was angry with himself. That’s why his eyes glowed and his Brimstone burn wasn’t as hidden from her affinity as usual. For a second she allowed his arms to warm her. She hugged him back. But her warmth and relief was short-lived.
“I might have ruined all our plans with my carelessness,” Ezekiel said.
Our plans. He hadn’t been concerned about her. He’d been concerned his throne would be vacant and his kingdom left for Rogue decimation.
“Elizabeth’s grandson deserves better than a burning death in the desert,” he continued.
Lily pushed back from his broad chest and the daemon king let her go. Now she noticed he was dressed in an impeccably tailored suit minus only the tie. No armor. No royal accoutrements.
“He’s alive. I think he’s going to be okay. Thanks to Grim,” Lily said. She placed her hands back in her pockets. The flute and kachina doll were still there. “I’ll still be able to help him retrieve Lucifer’s wings. And maybe that means he’ll wind up on your throne.”
Brimstone Prince Page 10