This time Lily did stumble, but the daemon king didn’t let her fall. He saved her from the missteps her surprise had caused, and with effortless strength he placed her back on her feet.
“Perhaps you didn’t know that Samuel’s gift came from heaven itself. What is the affinity if not the ability to tune in to the music of the universe? Love is the language of the stars, my child. No doubt Sybil created your dress for this evening as a nod to your ability and where it came from,” Ezekiel said. “Those of us who’ve walked those pathways don’t speak of it often. Even as we make a place for ourselves apart from our creator, we miss that connection. That’s why those tuned in to it call to us. We remember. We long. We ache. Even as we’re determined to live independently in this dimension.”
“I thought the desert sky...” Lily said softly.
“Entire galaxies in the palm of his hand...and people think I’m intimidating. But I see that my grandson is eager to reclaim his place in your arms.” Ezekiel led her off the floor with deft turns and several smooth strides.
“I never knew. I thought my father’s affinity was a random freak of nature, an arrangement of chromosomes or an accident of birth,” Lily said.
Several servants had converged on them with trays when they’d seen their king leave the dance floor. Ezekiel plucked two glasses with a regal nod of approval and handed one to her. She sipped the cool dark liquid and an explosion of flavors from the Turov pinot noir caused her to close her eyes in pleasure.
“This wine is an accident of birth. It’s also the careful result of love and obsession. Random and planned. Such is life. Such is ruling a kingdom...or the universe,” Ezekiel said. “You came into my life like a song. Love on two gangly legs. I had been planning for your arrival my whole existence without knowing when, who or how. Have a good night, Lily. Don’t worry too much about daemon deals and sacrifice. Blood will out.”
Ezekiel moved away and Lily watched him as the crowd parted like the Red Sea for Moses. Though she doubted Moses had ever worn a shimmering tuxedo that rode a man’s muscles like designer armor.
Her resolve hadn’t wavered. No matter the daemon king’s talk of heaven and hell or her as a young girl. He’d sounded almost...affectionate...but she knew better than that. He had been a distant authority figure at best. A frightening unknown creature at worst. She had loved him and still did in spite of his manipulations. But he had never loved her. His treatment of her mother had been her greatest warning that he preferred D’Arcys. Kindness and care wasn’t love. He had held them at a distance because there was no room for them in his scarred heart. Perhaps he grew sentimental because he thought she would marry Michael and become the closest thing to a D’Arcy she would ever be.
The thought made her ache. Worse to be so close and yet so far from her guardian’s love.
Fortunately, she saw what Ezekiel had seen and the sight completely distracted her from old pain. New pain sliced through her, hollowing out her gut and causing her hands to clench.
Michael stood near the wall of the ballroom. He propped one foot behind him and balanced his guitar on his knee. She wasn’t surprised to see his guitar. It was as much a part of him as his legs or his hands. A different sight froze her in place and chilled the blood in her veins. Behind him a larger frieze than in any other room besides the throne room roiled with unnatural movement. The carved figures came and went from the surface of the marble as if it was as malleable as mud. Their mouths opened and closed as they silently shrieked. And a giant shadow had unfurled its wings on either side of Michael’s broad shoulders.
The ghostlike entity that Victoria claimed was Michael’s father had just cast its vote for the new daemon king. What stabbed at her heart was that she didn’t disagree. He would make a fine king. She would like nothing better than to share the only home she’d ever known with him. Only her affinity stood in her way. She couldn’t be the chains—no matter how seductive—that bound him to the throne. He could never truly love her if he wasn’t free to travel and sing and walk in the light. The highlights in his hair would dim. His voice would grow rusty. His heart would be shuttered to her forever.
He didn’t know it now. Maybe he would even welcome a weighted choice rather than a free one. If he chose for her, his own conscience could be clean. But she couldn’t let him choose the darkest of fates because of her. She’d grown up with the souls on the walls. She was used to the coming and going, the torment and the occasional loss when a soul winked out either to Oblivion or... She watched as Michael remembered that it wasn’t a bare wall behind him. She watched him drop his foot down and move away.
She saw the walls as a necessary pause, more of a purgatory than damnation. She could tell that Michael didn’t feel the same way. Could she blame him? His real father had been trapped in walls like these at l’Opéra Severne before it burned. Victoria and Michael had almost died.
He saw that her dance with Ezekiel had ended and he placed his guitar against the wall. His father’s shadow had diminished to nothing, hidden in the shadows of the dancers that shifted across the wall. No one else had seen anything unusual in the shifting shadows, but, then again, most avoided looking directly at the walls. A new waltz had begun.
Lily drank her fill of Michael as he moved toward her. As with the daemon king, the crowd of guests parted almost in unison to let him pass. He didn’t notice. He was far too focused on her face. She could feel the flush on her cheeks. As he came closer and closer, his Brimstone heat caused her temperature to rise. Maybe. Or maybe she could have reacted to his sensual grace if he had been wholly human without a drop of daemon blood at all.
Finally, he stood near her. Nearer than necessary, but not near enough. She wanted to be alone with him. She wanted their midnight-blue garments to be piled together on the floor, a sparkling heap intertwined. Suddenly, she was exhausted from merely planning to run away. She didn’t want to go. She wanted to succumb to his kisses and experience the slide of their naked skin together again.
“You look as if you’re done with dancing,” Michael said. He touched her cheek and her whole world stilled. Dancers spun around them. Her heartbeat thumped slowly in her ears.
“I need to be in your arms,” she confessed. His fingers slid down to tease along the line of her jaw and she tilted her chin to meet his gaze. His eyes had narrowed. He knew something was amiss.
“Ezekiel upset you,” he guessed. He was wrong. The turning of time upset her. They were closer to midnight on Michael’s twenty-first birthday, which meant they were closer to the decision he would make that would drive her away. And she was upset that she was too close to all she’d ever dreamed of before it would get ripped away.
“I’m used to your grandfather. He doesn’t bother me,” Lily said. But she stepped against Michael’s muscular chest even though he hadn’t opened his arms. If he was surprised, he recovered quickly. His hand dropped from her face to her waist and his other hand reached for hers on his chest.
“You’re used to Ezekiel and to hell and to this palace,” Michael said against her forehead. His lips were hot. Her skin seemed hotter. He said it like he didn’t understand how she could be even with years and years of practice.
“It is my home. He’s the only father I’ve ever known,” Lily said.
Michael pulled her away from the dance floor. The waltz was a slower tempo than the one they’d danced before. The sound of the music filtered out through several sets of French doors that led onto a stone terrace. He pulled her through one doorway as if he followed the delicate vibrations of music on the night air that teased into the stuffy ballroom, beckoning partygoers outside.
The terrace was lit by colorful silk lanterns. They had been crafted with intricate designs cut into the fabric. Light spilled through myriad shades and shapes, creating kaleidoscopes on the stone as the breeze stirred them to gentle movement. The dark purple sky above them didn’t
provide much light. But the soft glow paired with the lantern light was enough to urge Michael into the more private shadows created by the skeletal trees that formed a ring around the terrace. They moved close together and yet she was still jealous of the hairsbreadth of air that came between them.
“You’re home to me,” Michael murmured into her hair.
She wanted to sink into the warmth offered by the sentiment. It was every bit as warm as his embrace. But she couldn’t indulge in the fantasy his murmur seemed to offer.
“You never wanted to come here. You made a deal with Ezekiel to deliver the wings. You intended to buy your freedom with them. I can’t let you be influenced by my affinity. It isn’t fair,” Lily said. “I never meant to manipulate you the way the daemon king has manipulated his loved ones for centuries.”
Michael stopped. He drew back to look down at her face. She was at a disadvantage. The lantern light fell on her face, but it was behind Michael’s head. His face was in shadow. She could hide nothing from him while she stood in what might as well be a spotlight. She willed away the flush that heated her cheeks and the emotion that must swim in her eyes. There was a soft halo around the golden tips of his hair, but his features were hidden. At best, there were deeper shadows that outlined his angular cheeks and his strong jaw. She couldn’t see his lips—whether they were hard or soft. She couldn’t see his eyes—whether they were cool or full of flames.
“You’re right. I never wanted to come here, but I also never gave this dimension a chance. I defined it by what my preconceived notions had been. I was repelled by the carvings on the walls and by Ezekiel’s expectations. It isn’t your affinity that has changed that. I’m not being manipulated or influenced,” Michael said.
His hands had been holding her for the waltz, but he moved them now to cup her face. Lily shivered beneath his gentle touch and the pleasant roughness of his calluses against the sensitive skin of her cheeks and neck. He brushed his thumbs along the sides of her mouth and she moistened her lips with her tongue. Then he held her more firmly, as if she was capable of slipping away. He leaned toward her and she was rooted to the spot—waiting, longing, craving.
“You’ve opened my eyes, but it isn’t because I’m unable to control my Brimstone. If you told me to let you go, right now, I would. I would stop if you didn’t want my kiss as much as I wanted to taste you. Our connection is compelling, but I’m strong, Lily. I’ve had to be my whole life to handle my daemon blood,” Michael said.
He paused as if he waited for her to protest or plea. She held her breath, but she slid her hands up his lapels to the hot skin of his neck, then she buried her fingers in his hair. It was the permission he’d needed to softly press his lips to hers.
She gasped in reaction to the sudden thrill of contact, and he took advantage of her open lips to deepen the kiss, slowing and thoroughly teasing and tasting the silken depths of her mouth with his tongue. She pressed closer against him and it was her movements that became hungrier. He tasted of wine and wood smoke, flavors that would forever cause instant arousal because they reminded her of him.
Her heartbeat quickened, but her blood seemed to warm and thicken. It flowed languidly through her veins to spread heat and tingling awareness throughout her body. Her legs grew weak, but his body was hard and fully capable of supporting her weight as she sagged against him.
He was strong. Sybil had said he was the strongest man she’d ever known and Sybil had known the daemon king for an eternity. She’d known Severne and Turov. She’d known Lucifer and Michael’s father.
Lily gave herself to the kiss, completely succumbing to the pleasure of swooning in Michael’s arms because she felt the glimmer of hope stir in her breast for the first time.
Maybe he sensed her capitulation. He gentled his mouth. He lowered his hands to her back. He pulled his lips from hers and buried his face in her neck, where he nuzzled the delicate skin beneath her ear while she tried to steady her breathing and her feet on the ground.
“You have to give me the chance to prove that I’m clearheaded in this decision even as I’m far from clearheaded over you,” Michael said.
Chapter 24
The atmosphere had changed. He wasn’t the only one who noticed. More and more entities around him—daemon and damned—began to press out from the walls that held their souls in limbo. He was well ahead of their frenzied efforts. All but one of his legs were free. He ignored the state of his new body. It was more marble than man, with gruesome striations of stone rendering his form dark and mottled in the dimly lit hallway. In the distance he could hear music and laughter. But the Rogues who broke free from their prison filled the shadows with guttural moans as if they were the undead returning from their graves.
Peter grasped at his lifelong obsession because his mind was vague.
Samuel’s daughter. Samuel’s daughter. Samuel’s daughter.
It was her amplified affinity that called them from the walls. Hers and the combined call of others with the same gift, albeit in lesser degrees. The affinity and the weakening hold of a daemon king preparing to step aside for his successor.
His mind might be sluggish and striated with stone like the rest of him, but he knew one thing...the throne must remain vacant for the Rogues and their human slaves to rise. His fellows must have known the same because they struggled to free themselves from the friezes. He sank down to the floor on his knees. He needed to summon the strength to make his way toward the throne room and he needed to wait for an army of Rogues to join him. It was a diminished army. A gruesome army disfigured and deformed. But he was one of them now. The Order was no longer his driving force. To tear down, to destroy, to corrupt—these desires consumed him.
* * *
As midnight approached, the party became a crush of revelry. Champagne and stronger spirits had flowed heavily throughout the night and there were no partygoers more passionate than a hall full of daemons preparing to welcome their new king. Lily was swept up in an atmosphere thick with a joy that edged on desperation.
Love us. Lead us. Save us.
Near-immortality made the fallen more desperate than most for strong, steady leadership. They had survived the loss of heaven, the persecution of human hunters and the battle for hell and now wanted more than anything to live in peace. Lucifer had promised his followers autonomy, but he hadn’t promised them it would be easy.
Lily danced with Michael off and on throughout the night. But she also danced with his stepfather, Adam Turov, whom she found almost as hard and scarred as the daemon king. He was a genuine hero, a man who had sold his soul to escape from the Order of Samuel and then spent his long, long life saving others from the enclave that had kidnapped him and nearly killed him as a child. She found him to be fascinating, intimidating and a fit match for one of the women who had loomed larger than life over her own childhood.
And then there had been John Severne. He still burned in spite of reclaiming the soul his grandfather had sold to the Rogue Council when he was a mere boy. Ezekiel had gifted him with a hint of remaining Brimstone for helping Katherine D’Arcy save her sister from Rogues and the Order of Samuel. The slight burn suited his brooding Parisian good looks and Baton Rouge charm. He deserved the title of Master of l’Opéra Severne. But there was a mysterious edge to his artfulness that flustered her when they danced. Michael’s aunt Kat was a brave woman to have explored those mysteries. Nevertheless, he was a Southern gentleman who spun her around the dance floor with a masculine grace just shy of Ezekiel’s own.
So she faced the D’Arcys and she survived.
Even though their eyes followed her all night long. She feared that Victoria’s and Kat’s affinity would certainly lead them to understand that she wasn’t celebrating with the rest of the crowd. She feared that Adam Turov’s and John Severne’s prolonged lives would lead them to read her secrets in every glance and sigh.
A late Viennese waltz had her gasping for air in a dizzy whirl around the room. She focused on Michael’s eyes. They glowed with flames outlined in darker green, all hazel burned away. She held his shoulder and his hand with ferocious grips, but he didn’t protest. He was more than strong enough to take it. He took the weight of her whole body, propelling her over the marble floor effortlessly, their gazes locked. The rest of the dancers were blurs at the corners of her eyes.
She was in flight. With Michael, she always flew even when her feet were on the ground.
But midnight loomed and the daemon king was well aware of the passage of time. He was suddenly there, tall and immovable in their path. They stutter-stepped to a halt. Michael caught her to his broad chest so she wouldn’t trip and fall.
“The decision is yours, but it’s time for it to be made. Our deal has weakened my hold on the throne. As midnight nears my hold grows weaker and weaker. The walls are restless,” Ezekiel said.
The music had ended as abruptly as their dance. All the other couples on the floor and around the great ballroom faced Michael D’Arcy Turov. They watched and waited. Silence had claimed the whole company. And in that stillness a new sound rose, the rustling and moaning of the walls. Beneath the candle chandeliers, the walls that shivered with the shadows of thousands of tiny flames now also moved with hundreds of figures straining their arms and hands and faces out and away from the wall. The sight illustrated what must have happened in other parts of the palace. It explained the distant sound of tramping feet.
Brimstone Prince Page 22