“We can’t afford a problem.” Levi leaned his hip against a credenza, and his shirt rode up to expose a strip of dark skin. Lucifer could remember exactly how that strip tasted against his tongue. “Belial was right to ask,” Levi continued. “Whatisyour plan?”
It was probably best to tell them now and see if they would still insist on baying for Galilee’s blood.
“I intend to bargain for her soul,” he said.
A ripple of interest spread through the parlor, and Belial blinked several times. “You plan to cut another deal with her?”
Lucifer spread his palms out. “Galilee’s an innocent. Your concern is that she’ll move against us. With a soul deal, she won’t be able to. Problem solved.”
Levi’s mouth twisted halfway into a sneer. “How do you plan on getting her to hand over her soul?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Mephis let out a gleeful cackle. “He’s going to seduce her out of it, aren’t you, Luci?”
The princes all chuckled, and Lucifer bit back his irritation. “Do you object to this?”
“Nope.” Belial raised her hands. “Your solution is acceptable.”
“Levi?” Lucifer wanted to hear it from both of them.
Levi gave him a sharp smile. “Fine, Luci. Fuck her, blackmail her, threaten her, I don’t care. You have thirty-six hours to get her soul before I do.”
Lucifer paused. Leviathan was openly taunting him now—a bold move on the prince’s part. Perhaps it had been a mistake to beg for their accommodation in the first place. Mephis had turned to the minor princes, and they were already placing bets on Galilee’s life—on how fast she would die and who would be the one to kill her, like she was a beast in a fighting ring, livestock destined for a short life and an entertaining death.
“You need to hurry,” Belial added, with a rare note of worry. “We ran into a problem with the hellgate.”
What?Lucifer’s head snapped in her direction, alarms now blaring in his head. “The fuck are you talking about? You told me the ward was reinforced.”
Belial straightened up and looked past his shoulder. “That status changed recently.”
Violence was indeed gathering in him, dark and certain. “By recently, you mean in the last twelve hours,” Lucifer bit out, rising slowly from his chair.
Asmodeus cursed softly and took several paces back, but Belial stood her ground. “Something got out.”
Shock ricocheted through the parlor, and the princes burst out into a clamor. “When did this happen?” Asmodeus was yelling. “How did we not feel it?”
“I warded the rip almost as fast as it formed,” Belial snapped back. “None of you could’ve closed it any faster!”
“That’s not thepoint, Belial!”
“It is under control!”
Lucifer closed his eyes. Everything had gone terribly quiet inside his head. “Something got out,” he echoed.
The parlor fell deathly silent. He breathed deeply and opened his eyes, fixing them on Belial. She stared at the blackness that had spread over his corneas.
“Luci—” she started.
“You didn’t tell me.”
Her face went sullen. “You were busy.”
Lucifer’s wings snapped out, crashing a bookshelf from the wall. Glass shattered, and the floor underneath his feet groaned as his density rapidly increased. His face warped, his form expanded, and Lucifer already knew the house wouldn’t be able to take it, but he was so fuckingtiredofthe bullshit. Perhaps he’d been wrong to be soft, wrong to bargain when he could simplytakeand destroy anyone who thought to stop him.
“One more pathetic excuse and I will rip off your wings, flay you, and chain you to the bottom of an acid well. Am I clear, or would you like me to take some of your fucking skin to make my point?”
The skin over Belial’s cheekbones tightened as she fell to her knees, bowing her head. “Forgive me, Lucifer.”
The air smelled like clotted blood, and all his dark clouds were bleeding out from his pores, filling the parlor with a shadowed fog. Howdarethey? The doubt, the withholding, the contempt toward Galilee that they didn’t even bother to conceal in his presence. He was the fucking Morningstar, and if he asked them all to worship Galilee, they should be crashing to their knees. He was thegoddamnedson of the morning!
