Most reviled him. Some worshiped him. All feared him.
But to Adrianna, he would always be Luc, her former classmate who’d finally taken his ambitions too far and gotten in way over his fucking head. He was more broken than conceited now, but no one asked Adrianna. No one asked if the demons in this world existed more in Luc’s mind than anywhere else.
What mattered was that Luc had more power than the legions of humans and demons inhabiting this realm combined. He was the only being who could exit Hell and come back, though he couldn’t re-enter Heaven. Or Earth, for that matter.
Here, there was no way to defeat him. He could rip an angel to ribbons with a glance, and his horrible world was the only reason any of the rebel angels—now known as demons—had survived falling into the Void, so of course they obeyed him.
On the surface, at least.
Adrianna was no longer one of them. She preferred wandering among the humans, acting as Luc’s eyes and ears, to associating with the angels who had cut down their own kind with swords, and for what? A show of force?
How foolish she’d been to think it would have only been that. A show, like one of Eva’s plays. Just pretend. Just acting.
Those souls rising into the aether…all that blood…It hadn’t been acting.
No one knew where the souls had gone. Humans who died either went to Heaven or Hell, but the angels…? Where else would they go? They were lost to the aether. Or lost to the Void. Just lost.
Like Lila.
Adrianna paused by the statue in the middle of the square in front of Luc’s castle. A few devoted worshipers had left offerings at its base. A marble carving of Lila’s likeness, the statue was the only structure in Hell besides his castle that Luc renewed daily so that it had minimal wear and tear despite the climate. The plaque at the statue’s base read:Queen of Night, Architect of Earth.
Luc’s connection to Lila had caught Adrianna by surprise. That her friend had partly designed Earth was less shocking. She’d always known Lila was clever and capable of much more than her status allowed. But on that count, she could see why Luc would have been drawn to her.
When he’d learned of Castor’s death at the hands of one of the fallen angels, that was the first time she’d truly feared him. She would never forget the horrible crunching of the angel’s bones and his terrible shrieks as Luc closed his fist around nothing but air, yet crushed the angel’s skeleton into tinier and tinier fragments. He’d burned away his skin until nothing but powder remained. It blew away with a violent wind, and then nothing of him was left. Those present hadn’t even seen a soul rise.
The darkness in Luc’s eyes had been blacker than the Void then. If any angel had thought to avenge the death, they quickly forgot it. From then on, Castor’s name was never spoken, and Lila’s was only spoken with reverence.
Adrianna couldn’t say that she blamed Luc for being so angry. She knew his pain because she also felt it. The pain of knowing that her loved one was permanently, irrevocably, too far for her to reach.
At least, Eva was alive. Adrianna was alive, so she had to be. But Adrianna could no longer sense her emotions. She didn’t receive glimpses of her thoughts, the way they used to send them to each other like coded messages. Whether Hell was too far from Heaven, or Adrianna was too far from Eva, she didn’t know, but she couldn’t deny she deserved it.
What right could she have, after all, to listen in on the thoughts of the angel she’d abandoned, aeons and aeons ago?
Skirting cracks in the rocky path leading from the statue to the base of Luc’s castle—a not-quite-identical replica of the Great Hall built out of dark, craggy rock—she arrived sooner than she wanted to. The gray aether surrounding the castle recognized her, and its doors swung open. She entered, and they closed behind her.
“I wouldn’t go in there if I were you. He’s in a mood.” The soft voice next to Adrianna would have spooked her if she hadn’t glimpsed Braun when she’d arrived. He stood off to the side of one heavy inner door, shrouded in shadows.
So…Luc was not in his tower, as she’d suspected, but in the ruined atrium that served as his throne room, beyond the next set of double doors.
Wherever Luc went, Braun followed. He kept watch, still as a statue. Like he could do more than cry for help. Braun wasn’t a bad warrior, but hewasn’t the best either. Even four hundred and fifty thousand aeons in Hell hadn’t given him a taste for blood. The humans had a name for that—freak.
Personal guard to Lucifer himself?Pfft.
Adrianna was the real muscle. Luc guarded Braun more than the other way around. Like now. He’d probably kicked him out of the throne room because he was about to do something gory even by Hell’s standards. He kept him for two reasons: Braun was ridiculously loyal, a quality in short supply, and Luc felt guilty for dragging him down to Hell, even if he never said it out loud.
Adrianna could have told Luc that he hadn’tmadeBraun leap after him into the Void, accompanied by Luc’s fabled sword. She could have pointed out that Braun would have been cast out of Heaven anyway with the rest of the rebels. But the humans had a saying—misery loves company.
Luc’s misery complemented hers.
“Braun, you know how, on Earth, humans keep animals as pets? They feed the pet. It follows them around. Sometimes, they let it stay inside their house.”
“Uh, yeah?”
Adrianna smiled.
“What are you worried about? You’re Luc’s pet. The most he’ll do is kick you out into the courtyard.” She patted his cheek.
Braun swatted her hand away. He drew himself up in his rusted armor, indignant, fist clenched around his tarnished spear.
