by Meg Xuemei X
But should I even be a student again? I could take down any power on Earth easily. I was the biggest shark in the pool now. But maybe one more year would be worth it just to sit through class and hang out with my friends.
I yanked back my hand, which appeared rude, but I didn’t want the sea demigod to have a chance of producing a ring. I’d better take precautions with these demigods. Immortals were unpredictable when they weren’t crazy. And I didn’t want my other mates to follow suit and drop to one knee or something.
“Demigods!” Shouts rose all around us while Paxton still knelt before me.
A company of Dominion soldiers rushed toward us like hard waves from all directions.
Paxton jumped to his feet, drawing his sword, and bared his teeth. He was battle ready in an instant.
My mates leapt into a protective formation around me.
Zak and Axel brandished their blades in front of them, growling, eager to cut down anyone who came close. Héctor whooshed out his massive obsidian wings, which turned steel hard, and his death light hissed on his flaming blade. Their power rolled off them, charging the air with terrifying electricity.
We’d been in various enemy territories this whole time. We’d forgotten what it was like to have our own army around.
The Dominions halted their advances as one, stunned at their leaders’ hostility and level of craziness, and then they made the smart move—they all dropped to one knee in surrender and renewed their fealty to the demigods.
And if I wasn’t mistaken, I believe I caught a glimpse of One-eighth, the first-year privileged rich girl who bullied my friends, constantly picked fights with me, and tried to land one of my demigods, among the kneeling soldiers.
“Demigods?” a leading soldier asked uncertainly. “You’ve finally returned?”
I recognized him—the lieutenant of the Dominion of Gods. His hair was still military short and brown. He wore the same uniform with a three-bar badge and an insignia of an eagle piercing lightning—the symbol of the Dominion army.
“Cameron.” I grinned at him. “Where is my old sidekick Marie? Are my friends Nat and Yelena around? Could you bring them to me?”
My grin dropped as I thought of my friends. Last I saw through Mom’s spyglass, they were sent to fight at the most hazardous frontline. I needed to either join them or pull them back soon.
Cameron’s hazel eyes squinted at me. “Marigold? We searched everywhere when you disappeared, and then the demigods went after you.”
“Princess Marigold,” Axel corrected him in a hard tone.
Cameron blinked. He hadn’t expected that.
“Uh, seriously, they don’t need to call me Princess or anything.” I sent Axel a warning look before turning to the lieutenant. “We’ve been through a lot of battles, so we’re jumpy. But I’ve brought your demigods back. I think I should get a war medal made of gold or something.”
I didn’t really need gold. If I became poor again, I could just go get Dad’s hidden treasure in the hidden galaxy where only I had the coordinates.
“Report, soldier,” Zak barked at the Dominions, sinking back into his role as the Ruler of Half-Earth.
The soldiers all looked relieved as the demigods leashed their powers and sheathed their swords. The army stood at ease while the lieutenant delivered his report.
“After you were gone, demigods,” Cameron said, “The God of the War and the King of Hell also took off and left Earth. Hell is under the jurisdiction of Loki and his dukes.”
My mates and I traded a quick look. We wouldn’t say anything about Mom beheading Ares. Earth still worshipped the gods, and the masses couldn’t handle the truth that they had no god anymore.
“War broke out everywhere in your absence, revered demigods,” Cameron continued. “The generals also fought each other to grab more territories.”
“We held the last fort in the Academy and waited for your return.” A captain who served Héctor chimed in. “We had faith that you’d come back.”
His elite team that used to be my shadow guards all came forward and bowed to the death demigod.
“Well done, soldiers,” Héctor said. “We’ll clean house and resume orders. There’s a lot of work to do. Right now, we need to tend to Princess Marigold, our mate.”
I sighed. We’d talked about not revealing my Titan goddess status, but it seemed my mates insisted on me being a princess.
“You can also call me Icy Dagger,” I told the soldiers. I had to try.
Cameron’s eyes widened. “That was you, the notorious—sorry, famous Icy Dagger from Hell?”
Marie, my old bodyguard, showed up just then. “I’d bet all my money that Lucifer is still kicking himself in the nuts for even taking you to Hell,” she said, regarding me, and I could tell she’d missed me. “Anyone would if they don’t want their house burned down.”
She had no idea.
A wild wind with sparks of fire initiated by Axel pushed around us, and we teleported.
CHAPTER 21
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My mates didn’t need to lift a finger to clean house as they’d promised. The generals all came to them and repented as soon as they heard the news that the demigods had returned. They knew very well that the demigods could crush them easily. My mates exacted some punishments to set an example, and within a week, Earth fell into the beginning era of the Great Merge.
All that remained was the old conflict with our first enemies—the demons.
Lucifer wasn’t the head of Hell anymore, and Loki and I had a history. So a new round of negotiation between Earth and Hell resumed.
Loki sent his dukes to hammer out the terms, and my mates sent their generals, with Esme as a mediator. The dukes fought for the rights of the demons, and the generals wanted equal rights for humans and supernaturals in the demon-occupied regions. Actually, my demigods wanted all the demons to retreat to Hell.
Loki wasn’t power-hungry. He was also half-human. Sometimes he could be quite laid-back if he didn’t feel threatened, and he liked Hell just fine. But as the new King of Hell, he couldn’t allow anyone to perceive him as weak, so he wouldn’t give the occupied territories back to the demigods, even though he didn’t care much about the Great Merge—a deal made between Lucifer and Ares.
Also, he was currently busy with quenching the force of the demon rebels who were still loyal to Lucifer.
I kind of missed him, but I wasn’t going to visit Hell. I still hated that fucking place. And I hadn’t asked his dukes how Loki was doing these days, as I didn’t want to give the demigods’ generals the idea that I consorted with the demon king.
The demigods had pulled my friends back from the battle frontline. They were under my protection now, though I wouldn’t display much of my power, for everyone’s sake.
Yet I couldn’t stop being vain this one time as I was showing off my blue wings to my friends in Héctor’s Manhattan apartment where we hosted a small party.
“Did the demigods give you wings?” Circe, my former witch ward, asked with widened brown eyes. She had once been convinced that she’d be way more powerful than me in a year since she thought I was merely a human.
“They don’t need to. I’m an angel.” I grinned at her and let my wings vanish.
“You’ve done well, Marigold,” Jasper said, pride beaming in his eyes. He was another one of my former wards. The wolf shifter had grown bigger with more hard muscles. While we were separated and shipped to different academies, he had found a new pack, and his alpha, Clayton, was Circe’s new crush.
Her eyes wandered between Clayton and my demigods, and she gazed at Axel with hunger. My mates mingled with our guests, and I also invited the shifter pack from the Other Academy. The Olympian descendants—the half-bloods— previously did not mix with other supernaturals, and the demigods did not entertain anyone, but things changed because of me.
Héctor poured drinks for Nat and the shifters with his gloved hand, and Zak nodded at their jokes. Axel said so
mething and laughed at his own humor, and Paxton kept darting his gaze at the loft where my friends and me hung out.
I knew what he wanted, but what kind of friend was I if I ditched my old friends just to sneak out to fuck the Demigod of Sea?
“I can’t believe you landed four demigods. Four!” Circe cried. “Maybe you should give other girls a chance, Mari? And look at this place. It’s like a palace.” She waved a hand at the lavish Central Park view through the full windows. “Do you know how much the rent is for a suite like this? And you can crush here. You hit the jackpot, Marigold.”
I just smiled. If she knew I was actually a hybrid of Titan and archangel with a vast treasure stocked away in a galaxy, she would faint. I’d thought she would finally grow out of the idea that I was her competition and that she lived in my shadows. Time and distance hadn’t helped change her perception. She would just have to grow up on her own now. She and Jasper were no longer my responsibility, and I was no longer the Marigold who lived with them in the Crack.
Sometimes, you just had to let go and allow those you loved to grow apart from you.
“Mari isn’t in it for the money,” Yelena said. She and Nat were my first true friends in the Academy. They’d watched my back. “It’s true love, and the demigods went to Hell for her.”
“Icy Dagger saved my sister and me,” said Lisa L Kinsley, my witch friend from Hell. She never got tired of telling the tales of my fighting the demons in the pit.
Her little sister, a mousy-haired girl, sat quietly on a fluffy chair, eating cakes and watching us. I’d kept my promise to Lisa and brought the siblings to demigods-controlled Half-Earth.
“You watched my six,” I said. “Just like all my friends here.”
We drank a lot of wine and ate a lot of crème brûlée.
My friends left after midnight, and the demigods rushed to me like hard, warm waves.
Axel grabbed me before Paxton, despite the sea demigod eyeing me like candy all night. Axel carted me to the master bedroom. Héctor had redecorated this room to my liking and added a lovely vanity set for me. I had a walk-in closet of dresses and shoes and drawers full of lingerie. This was meant to be the bedroom for Héctor and me, but my other mates regarded it as a common room. Héctor was annoyed, but he hadn’t driven them out.
Yet he did put a foot down on some boundaries—he didn’t allow other demigods to put their stuff in this room. Their stuff went to the guest bedrooms, and he demanded they clean up after themselves. So much so that my other mates were planning to purchase another apartment in the same building.
Axel traced his eager lips down the column of my neck, eliciting a sigh and a moan out of me. He was about to put me down in the vast bed but changed his mind when he spotted my other mates striding into the room. Giving them a frantic glance, he scooped me up and headed toward the bathroom in a hurry.
I knew that he’d kick shut the door as soon as we got in, not considering the consequences; my other mates would simply blow off the door to reach me.
Before that happened, a blast of dark light and heat exploded around us, and all of my mates snarled in fury, ready to kill. Lightning from Zak struck at the dark light. Ice crystals from Paxton coated the ceiling while ice spears hovered in the air, seeking a target. Axel’s wild wind howled, and Héctor’s death light twirled around me in a solid shield.
We had an intruder, and I knew who it was.
The devil materialized in the center of our bed, his hands in the air in a surrender gesture, a lopsided smile hanging on his sensual, ironic lips.
“I’m unarmed,” Loki purred. “I’m coming to see my cousin. I missed Belle Marigold Celeste, and I bear a gift for her.”
The former Hell’s prince was practically family. He and I had come a long way to where we stood now. He’d tried to kidnap me, for the sake of my safety, and I’d misunderstood him as pure evil. When Lucifer and Ares dragged the near-dead me to Hell and tormented me, Loki had made sure I survived and freed me.
He was like a dark angel carved out of dark gold. He was half-archangel anyway, like me.
He wore a dark shirt and washed-out jeans. He still carried the vibe of a bored human billionaire instead of the King of Hell. But the potent Hell power rippling off him couldn’t fool any high-powered supernatural.
“Tune down your voltage and wipe that smile off your face, Loki,” I said. “There’s no one here for you to seduce, and your devil power doesn’t work on us. Why the hell waste your energy?”
Loki could rewrite the definition of seduction. But we weren’t his crowd, and he knew it.
The King of Hell laughed in delight. “I miss those fun days with you, Marigold.”
My mates growled, still eager to attack him, and Loki quirked a long, sharp brow at them, darkness that was destined to devour all light swirling in his eyes.
“He’s okay, guys.” I rubbed my chin and said to my mates in a hurry. “He’s kind of like my big bad brother, and he came here to talk.” I narrowed my eyes at Loki again. At this point, I’d wiggled out of Axel’s embrace and stood with my own feet. “Get off my bed, Loki. We changed the sheets just yesterday.”
“Fine.” Loki jumped out of the bed and landed five feet from us.
“How did you breach our ward?” Paxton growled.
“How dare you!” Axel hissed.
“Relax,” Loki said with a lazy smile. “We’re family now, despite our difference in religion.”
“You don’t have a religion, demon king,” Axel said.
Loki grinned. “You might be surprised.”
Zak frowned at Loki. “We were in the middle of something.”
The sexual tension between us was still thicker than butter, and their arousal permeated the air.
“I apologize.” Loki sniffed in mockery. “I had to swing by before you got started. Once you get it on, it can go on forever. You boys are insatiate for my lovely cousin. I admit I’m not a man of patience. And there’s so much to do in Hell and so little time.”
My face flushed at his mentioning of our sex feast. My mates and I usually went for hours.
“Did you spy on us, Loki?” Héctor demanded.
“It’s the power of observation I happen to possess,” Loki said.
“You could have just made an appointment or knocked on our door,” I said. “Didn’t you keep Lucifer’s old suite in this building? My mates are jumpy these days. Next time you pop out so dramatically, you’ll for sure get stabbed. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Loki smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind, Princess Celeste.”
“Refrain from saying that name,” Héctor snapped. “My Lamb isn’t safe even on Earth. We don’t want any knucklehead gods from some galaxy to come looking for her.”
“Some already came while you were having fun in the Void,” Loki said. “The most notable visitors included archangel Michael and the Olympian war goddess Athena. She wore full battle armor in blood-red and looked murderous, kind of like Ares.”
My heart skipped a beat and my mates tensed.
We could take down any assholes and their armies, but we didn’t want to turn this planet into a battlefield. We didn’t want the people we cared about to get hurt. We were Earth’s defenders.
Then a spark of ember pulsed in my mind.
We didn’t need to fight on Earth. With my Living Flame, we could go to any world. We would bring the fight to the hunters’ homeworld and see how they liked it.
“Michael and Athena asked a lot of questions,” said Loki. “I caught up with them and told them there wasn’t anything to do on Earth unless they wanted some entertainment in Hell. They declined to come to Hell and I took it offensively, but then I understand every power is weaker in my realm except for Lucifer, Lilith, Marigold, and me of course.”
“We’ll pay attention to future visitors,” Zak said, lightning flashing threateningly in his blue eyes.
“Thank you for looking out for me, Loki,” I said.
“You know I�
��ll always guard you,” he said softly.
He’d been ready to give up his life for me to protect me from his father in Hell. Although my mates loved to snarl at the new King of Hell, they didn’t really regard him as an enemy. Just a pain in the ass.
“You say all the sweet things now,” I smirked at him, “because you’re dying to know what happened to Lucifer. Admit it, Loki. I’m the only source of the information.”
“Don’t tell him anything,” Axel advised wisely. “The intel is invaluable.”
“What did I do in my past life that I deserve to deal with you demigods?” Loki gave Axel an exasperated look. “Family is overrated.”
I could hear the rapid rhythm of his heartbeat at the mention of his father. Lucifer had terrorized his heir for centuries even though Loki had earned the title with blood and scars in order to survive.
“We need to finalize the truce between you and my demigods,” I said. “Your pain-in-the-butt dukes have been dragging it out for too long.”
“They missed you,” Loki said.
Héctor bared his teeth.
Loki raised his hands in surrender. “You half-bloods are like the meanest hedgehogs.”
“Keep your negative opinions of my mates to yourself,” I said, and then sighed over Loki’s worried looks. “Fine, I’ll just tell you what happened in the Void. First, Ares—” I paused, glancing at Axel.
He clasped my hand in his large, rough ones. “The God of War is dead,” he said emotionlessly. “Héctor speared his heart and Queen Lilith beheaded him. I should have been the one to slay him for what he did to my mate.”
Loki looked stunned, then he smiled. “That was unexpected, but no one should mess with Marigold.”
I drew a breath. “However, we have a problem.” I peeked into his abyssal eyes. “Lucifer is missing.”
“What do you mean he’s missing?” Loki shrieked, his face paling. “I thought you took care of him.”