Brimstone Prince

by Barbara J. Hancock

  Some of the Rogues had run away, but most lay on the floor as rubble fell all around them. He had sold his soul to reclaim power for the Order of Samuel. It was the Order of Peter in his mind now, although no one had gathered to officially change the name. He was the one who would rebuild and rekindle their purpose to defeat all the daemons and claim dominion over the earth. He only needed Samuel’s daughter, and with her he would control Rogues and Loyalists alike.

  The shadow had devoured all the heat in the cave. Peter shivered and dropped to his knees as a great wing stretched toward him. He reached for the doll and cried out in pain as his hand closed around it. His vision blurred, but he thought he saw his fingers turn black as if the blood that flowed in his veins was instantly frozen to ice and no longer able to feed his extremities.

  When he fell, he fell far and long with the tiny kachina doll clutched against his chest.

  * * *

  The last murmurs of protesting earth faded away and Lily lowered her flute from her lips. She blinked and focused on Grim, lying by the enormous palace fireplace that made him a hulking black dog-shaped silhouette. Suddenly, her head grew light and her legs softened, but then there was a hand on her back. She didn’t even try to step away from Michael’s help. Unfortunately, accepting his chivalrous hand on her back too easily became stepping into his heated embrace.

  They were safe. For a time. And until Ezekiel responded to their arrival, they were also alone.

  Lily placed her flute in her hip pocket, and then twined her arms around Michael’s neck while he seemed to wait and watch to see what she would do. Once he determined that she wasn’t going to pull away, he strengthened his hold, pressing against her back with the palms of his hands to bring her fully against his chest. There was no reason they couldn’t allow their affinity to rise and Michael’s Brimstone to burn except for a million rational arguments she could think of if she allowed herself to debate the logic.

  She looked up and met Michael’s gaze instead. The leaping flames of the giant fireplace were no competition for the Brimstone glow in his eyes. All too soon he closed them, but it seemed to take forever for him to bridge the gap between her mouth and his. This time was slow. A steady claiming of this safe spot they’d found to fully explore her tender lips with his tongue. She gasped at the coil of heat that rose from her own depths to join with his Brimstone burn. But when he deepened his tasting past gasps and sighs to tease his tongue into her mouth, she wondered at his control over the fire in his veins.

  He was hotter than hot, but he didn’t burn her.

  Together, their affinity amplified, but it was his concentration that buffered his burn.

  While their mouths tasted and slid and sucked, Michael’s hands roamed down her back to cup her bottom and lift her against him where a rampant erection distended his low-slung jeans. Lily moaned into his mouth and wrapped her legs around his waist to settle her ache against him.

  His head fell back and he looked up at her from under hooded lids.

  “I’m beginning to find that the palace is a much more pleasant place than I remembered,” he said.

  Tension claimed Lily’s body and ice replaced heat in her veins. She pushed against his shoulders and he released her so she could drop to the ground. She backed away a few hurried steps to stand shivering by a fire that couldn’t warm her. Ezekiel had known exactly what he was doing to use her and her affinity to lure Michael into wanting the throne.

  “I’m dead on my feet. I need to rest and refuel,” Lily said. “And you’re the one who needs to deliver the wings to your grandfather.” She tried not to notice how the dancing light from the fireplace illuminated the perfect angles of his cheeks and jaw and his lips swollen from her kiss. He nodded, but his intense stare saw through her excuse. Her body and her affinity cried out to step back into his arms. He had to hear them. And she’d even hinted that her heart would like to be there cradled against him.

  She should tell him about Ezekiel’s schemes. She should confess that she was torn between resisting them or succumbing for all that they would bring to her.

  Instead, Lily turned and walked away.

  She hadn’t gone far from the light of the fire and the glow in Michael’s eyes when her foot tapped against something in the dark corridor that led to her rooms. She stopped and bent down to retrieve the object that had rolled from her foot to the base of the carvings on the wall. Her hand recognized the warrior angel kachina before her fingers closed around it. She gasped in surprise and lifted the doll to the soft glow of light fading behind her.

  The tightness in her chest eased as she saw the tiny doll hadn’t been damaged. None of the other dolls had come through the sipapu portal, but somehow she wasn’t surprised that this kachina had managed to follow her here. The light from the fire in the great hall didn’t illuminate the hallway very well. As she straightened with the doll in her hand, her eyes skimmed the riot of carved stone all around her. The walls and ceiling were covered in the faces and limbs and figures of condemned Rogues—some would say damned—and her pause to pick up the kachina had nearly given her time to bring individuals into focus. Fortunately, the odd shadows created by the shifting flames of the distant fire kept the faces indistinct.

  Lily shivered as one particular shadow passed near her on the wall. It was only the cold kachina in her hand that caused her chill, not the shadow. But she backed away from the wall, blinking, as the shadow seemed to grow larger and larger. It was only her imagination that gave the shadow a set of enormous wings beginning to unfurl. She blinked again and it became more of an indistinct blob once more.

  Clutching the precious kachina that had somehow found its way back to her, Lily hurried on her way. Her rooms would be warm and welcoming and shadow-free. She never felt comfortable near the carvings for long. The smooth walls of her bedroom called. She needed to recover before tonight. If she knew Ezekiel, there would be a dinner fit for a king to welcome Michael “home.” There might even be D’Arcys already at the palace in preparation for the Brimstone prince’s birthday celebration.

  She would meet the “daughters” Ezekiel loved for the first time, and one of them happened to also be the mother of the man she couldn’t allow herself to love. She had to bolster her nerve and brace herself. The tiny warrior angel doll wasn’t much to carry with her into a challenging evening, but it was better than nothing at all.

  Chapter 19

  Michael was able to find his usual suite without much trouble. He’d visited the palace every summer since his sixteenth birthday. Odd now to think that Lily Santiago had been here all along. Ezekiel had never introduced them. Of course, Michael had been younger and less able to control his Brimstone, and Lily had the strongest of connections to her father’s affinity as his only child. The affinity his mother and aunt had inherited because of Samuel’s Kiss and the affinity that flowed through him was nothing in comparison to Lily’s. It might have been a disaster if they had so much as touched each other’s hands when they were young and inexperienced. The idea that he might have harmed her with the fire that had horribly scarred him as a child caused his chest to tighten and constrict his lungs.

  He shrugged out of the burden he carried and discarded the wings on the bed. The room had that neglected air of a place reserved for someone who had no affection for it. The furnishings were fine but sparse and Spartan in design. The rugs on the marble floor were still plush and new because no one but the occasional maid ever walked on them. And yet the whole palace felt different to him now that he knew it was Lily’s home. Seeing it as her shelter made him warm to it in ways he’d never imagined he could.

  Her rooms had been filled with color from Southwestern elements her mother had brought from their former home—wall hangings, rugs, woven blankets, paintings and pottery—in reds, golds and soft umber browns. Not to mention kachinas of every shape and size on hand-hewn shelves of p
etrified pine. He’d made love to Lily there—and meant it—surrounded by color and light.

  This empty room seemed petulant now. A teenage rebellion against heavy expectations and dark designs. He’d done everything he could do to show Ezekiel that he wasn’t interested in being a king. And now that he was so close to delivering the wings and walking away there was a compelling reason for him to stay: Lily.

  She would never be safe outside of the hell dimension. She was the beautiful Firebird from his stepfather’s Russian fairy tales kept in a gilded cage. He’d always felt empathy for the bird in the tales. He’d been trapped in his own way by Ezekiel’s expectations. But he’d always known he had a choice in his future. To accept the throne or walk away. Lily’s blood gave her no choice. Unless to live or to die was a choice.

  He would do anything to keep her safe. The drive to protect her roared in his ears and caused his heart to pound as if there was an unseen foe in the room that had to be vanquished. Did doing anything include accepting a throne that seemed to repel him?

  Michael found the bathroom and wardrobe well-stocked as usual. The clothes had seemed to magically grow with him because he rarely saw a glimpse of the servants who changed them out with bigger and more mature choices as he grew. Everything he needed to prepare and dress for dinner had been left where he would find it. He donned the dark suit in the front of the closet in spite of the luster of the fabric. Ezekiel’s taste was more evident in the wardrobe than his own, but he couldn’t complain because he was certain he could have chosen whatever he’d wished if he’d participated in its tailoring at all.

  He did omit the tie and he left the white shirt open at the neck. He wondered at the perfect fit, but not for long. Sybil’s needle was evident in every perfect stitch when he eyed it closely, and Sybil was never wrong.

  When he came to the cuff links, he paused. They were bronze and stamped with a stylized L he’d seen often before. His uncle, John Severne, had a whole collection of brooches with the same emblem. He’d taken them from Lucifer’s Army, one by one, before he’d come to realize he fought on the wrong side. Thoughtfully, Michael added the fasteners to his cuffs. First one. Then the other. They glistened when he moved, each L highlighted against the white linen of his shirt. John Severne’s grandfather had sold his soul and the souls of his children and grandchildren for longevity and success. Severne had rebelled against the Rogues who owned him, risking his soul to save Michael’s aunt Katherine D’Arcy. He’d also helped to save Michael and his mother when Michael was only a newborn by ordering his hellhound Grim to Michael’s side forevermore.

  To this day, his uncle Severne was intimidating. Maybe because Michael always felt like he’d stolen his uncle’s dog. As a baby he’d had no say in the sacrifice, but he sure as hell wasn’t giving Grim back now.

  With Italian leather boots and belt, he was ready to face his grandfather. As if on cue, a tap sounded at the door and Michael opened it to reveal a young daemon boy in old-fashioned livery holding a silver tray. He thanked the child, who was probably older than he was, as he reached for the fine linen stationery note in the middle of the tray.

  The “boy” hurried away without waiting for a reply. Of course it was from Ezekiel. He was waiting in the throne room. The only response he expected was Michael’s attendance.

  The wings gleamed darkly in the low light of the room’s lamps when he unwrapped them from their burned covering. They would fit him perfectly if he placed them on his back, but he wasn’t ready for that just yet. Instead, he tucked them under his arm and carried them without ceremony to the man who would wear them first.

  * * *

  The daemon king wore his suit with much more aplomb than his grandson. His was not loose about the neck or anywhere else for that matter. Every inch of the fine silk, linen and brocade hugged him like a second skin, and the sheen of obsidian fabric matched his hair and the shadowed glitter of his eyes. His skin might be craggy and scarred from centuries of battle, but he wasn’t only a warrior. He was an angelic being who had chosen to fall and that self-dominion was evident in every graceful move his body made. He was hardened by battle and imperfect in every way and yet still so beautiful that every eye followed him when he moved through a room, including the damned eyes on the walls.

  “Michael, you return in triumph, I see,” Ezekiel said. He rose from the throne and moved toward his grandson with his arms outstretched. Physically demonstrative, daemons were often overwhelming in their intense affections. But his grandfather was also wise. He paused and waited for Michael to step into his arms before he hugged him ferociously. It was a conquering hero’s hug. Yet Michael felt niggling doubts about who was the conquered and who was the conqueror.

  “We almost died for these. Even Grim. I hope you appreciate what we went through to get them,” Michael said.

  “I was devastated by the necessity of the risk. I hoped it wouldn’t turn into a sacrifice,” Ezekiel said. Michael stepped back from his grandfather and dropped down to one knee. He’d been taught to be very careful with daemons and especially with the daemon king. But he’d also been taught to give him the respect he was due. He had reclaimed the hell dimension from Rogues. He had helped to save Michael’s mother and his stepfather from the Order of Samuel. Ezekiel wasn’t their enemy, even if a daemon king could never be trusted.

  “Lucifer’s wings,” Michael said. He presented the wings to his grandfather by lifting them up horizontally with both of his palms spread beneath them. Ezekiel paused for a moment, looking down at him with inscrutable eyes before he nodded his head in approval and reached to take the wings.

  “You bring me the wings, but...you don’t refuse the throne?” Ezekiel asked. “We had a bargain between us.”

  “I’m...not ready to refuse...yet,” Michael said. It was a mistake. He should close the deal between them now as he delivered the wings. To wait was to diminish the power of their agreement. But he couldn’t make the decision to abdicate the throne without talking to Lily first.

  “I accept the wings,” Ezekiel proclaimed. The universe paused around them. Michael’s chest squeezed as air moved sluggishly through his lungs. Now. Right now, he could say that he refused the throne and the deal would be done between them. It would have been a struggle to speak, but that wasn’t what stopped him. The taste of Lily’s lips. The glaze of passion in her eyes. The gleam of tears. Her hips welcoming him and meeting the thrusts as they joined together. The odd feeling of taking flight and finding home whenever he touched her hand. Those memories stopped him. But most urgently the feeling that she was in danger and she needed his help. The urge to protect Lily drove him mercilessly beyond the point where he’d originally intended to walk away.

  The moment passed. Oxygen filled his lungs. His body shifted to the side as the molecules of atmosphere loosened around him. And Ezekiel turned away, casually, as if deals were meant to be broken.

  “Your parents have already arrived. They’ll be at dinner. As will your aunt and uncle. And Sybil, of course,” Ezekiel said. Several servants had rushed from the shadows to help him with the wings. He had turned to allow them to place the wings on his shoulders, where they settled as if they belonged. There was no noise or flash of light, but Michael’s affinity felt the rush of ancient Brimstone power quicken the room. Suddenly, his grandfather was even more daunting than before. “And Lily.”

  Michael didn’t flinch when Ezekiel lifted the direction of his gaze from the cuffs he’d straightened to meet Michael’s eyes.

  “She almost died,” Michael repeated. It was an accusation. Probably one only a Brimstone prince—and a D’Arcy—would dare to throw at the daemon king. “She was badly burned.”

  There was an imperceptible flinch then. From Ezekiel himself. One that might have been missed if Michael had blinked.

  “She is my ward. I have protected her for fifteen years,” Ezekiel said. It wasn’t an apolo
gy. It was only a statement of fact.

  “You weren’t protecting her out there,” Michael said.

  “She saved you. She helped you retrieve the wings. And now you are back where you belong,” Ezekiel said.

  “She’s back where she belongs. Safe behind the palace walls,” Michael said. “Nothing is more important than her safety.” The desire to protect Lily burned hotter in his heart than his Brimstone blood. It was almost as if the need to guard her against harm fueled that muscle’s every beat.

  “Yes. All is well,” Ezekiel said. But his body was tense and his eyes seemed to search Michael’s for a mutual understanding he couldn’t find.

  “I’ll make my decision tomorrow night,” Michael said. He’d seen the flash of bronze on Ezekiel’s wrists, where cufflinks identical to his own starkly gleamed against pristine white. He still didn’t know himself what his decision would be. Lucifer’s wings. Lucifer’s throne. An entire realm to rule. Judge, jury and executioner as well as king.

  And Lily.

  She would soften the weight of the throne, but in a way, wasn’t she as trapped as the faces and figures that horrified him on the walls? Was accepting the throne actually the best way to insure her safety or would he only be turning the key in the lock of her beautiful prison?

  Chapter 20

  Sybil was the closest person to a loved one that Lily had in the palace. The daemon seamstress had been like a mother to her since her own mother had died. Where Sophia had been openly warm and demonstrative, Sybil was outwardly cool, calm and collected. Lilly saw the banked fires in her dark eyes, though. Her affinity couldn’t be fooled. Sybil was old and wise; her emotions were tempered and hard in ways that only intense burning in the past could have achieved. She’d been hurt. Badly. So she buried herself in her work. She cared with needle and thread, with lush fabrics and incredible designs. The passions she’d once allowed to rule her heart as other daemons did, were now completely expressed in the clothing she created.