AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I expect you to watch her. Keep her safe. She needs rest, and I don’t know what else. Tend to her needs, but don’t leave her side.” I take a few steps toward the door, then pause. “And call the head steward, tell him to send a hazard crew to my quarters. If they stumble into that mess unprepared, someone will be making another trip across the desert. The animal is dead, but venom is all over the place.”
Fenriz nods once and settles into the alert, ready stance of a practiced guard. I take my leave before the fury inside me can boil over. Marching through the palace, I make my way to my parents’ wing, past their private living quarters, into their personal kitchen, and out through the servant door there. The King’s balcony is a garden, complete with topiary maze. A pool sits in the middle and a stream runs from that, trickling over the edge of the balcony and into the pools below. It’s a beautiful design, although the statement it makes could do with a modicum of subtlety.
As expected, I find my parents seated across from one another at their breakfast table. Cephalus sees me first and his brows dip in a scowl. “You dare interrupt—”
“You dare make an attempt on Sophia’s life?”Yes, I dare interrupt, you foul bastard.
“Darling,” my mother coos. She looks over her shoulder at me with a tender, yet somehow admonishing, look on her face. “If you wanted to dine with us, you only had to say so. Come, sit, I’ll have Jezebel bring you tea.”
“I’m not here for tea,” I growl.
“And he’s not sitting at my table,” Cephalus snaps. “Not while he’s busy tossing accusations around. What happened, Lucifer? Did your pretty little human bump her head on a gargoyle? Slip in the tub? Tell me, should she be packed in furs and carried about so as to protect her soft human sensibilities?”
I lunge for him, ready to smash his head in and toss his lifeless body over the waterfall, but my mother is suddenly in my way. I dodge her, only to find her waiting in my path once again. Frustrated, I frown down at her. She faces my glower with a gentle smile, then turns to address Cephalus.
“My dear, can’t you see our poor boy is already in distress? Mocking his woman is no way to have a conversation. Now—” She turns back to me and puts one hand on my chest. In spite of how well I know her and her powers, I feel myself relax. I’ve yet to find a defense against weaponized sympathy. “Lucifer, love, tell me. What troubles you?”
“Sophia was attacked last night,” I inform her, my voice quaking with fury. “He tried to have her killed!” I jab an accusatory finger at my father, trying to block out my mother’s wide-eyed expression. She’ll have me second-guessing myself if I give her even the smallest opening.
Cephalus throws back his head with a derisive laugh. “Living on Earth has dulled your senses, boy,” he says with a smirk. “If I wanted the woman dead, I would have killed her while I had her isolated and alone, without herbig, stronglover to protect her.” He gives me a long, meaningful look which makes my blood run cold. “She was completely at my mercy. I could have done anything to her; anything at all.”
I bristle at that, tensing to attack even though I know that’s what he wants. He’s intentionally pushing me with imagined crimes against her, goading me to make the first move. I’m not wholly at the mercy of my rage, close as it may seem. There’s logic at work in the back of my head, and the logic checks out. He could have killed her at any time before I came, if that was what he wanted. Making an attempt on her life while she sleeps in my arms is not a move he would make unless he had no other choice, especially since doing so would void the terms of our contract, and would leave me free to return to Earth.
“There, you see?” My mother smiles at us, one after the other. “The woman was alive and well when you arrived. It couldn’t have been Cephalus. Are you certain it was a deliberate attack, darling? This is quite a dangerous place for such a fragile being.”
“I’m certain,” I tell her shortly.
“What a shame,” she says with a mournful sigh. “Poor thing, making enemies already. Perhaps I should have a talk with her… What do you think, husband?”
“Sit down and finish your breakfast,” Cephalus says. “The boy can work his own magic on his pet.”
Mother obeys without indicating whether Cephalus’s assumption is accurate or not. I assume it is, it’s safer that way. She’s got a way of crawling inside people’s heads without even trying. I’m shaking off her effects on myself, vibrating with the newly unmasked rage she’d tempered with her touch. Someone did this, someone tried to kill Sophia.
If not Cephalus… then who?
Chapter11
Sophia
My eyelids feel tooheavy to open and too itchy to keep closed. My head is pounding, my stomach is sick, and every muscle in my body aches. The desire to drift back to sleep is strong, but there’s something wrong. I blink my eyes open and find myself in a bed that’s facing the wrong direction, looking at a wall that’s painted the wrong color, with too much bed on either side of me.
Lucifer.
The snake.
My hand flies to my chest, touching the place where the fangs pierced my flesh, where the venom burned and burrowed. Lucifer was fighting the snake, he was killing it—did he finish it off? Did it get to him first? Panicking, I move to jump out of bed, to find him, to get away from whatever might be stowed away in this bed, to do something.Anything.But as soon as I try to move, the world around me tilts suddenly and dizzyingly to the left. My stomach lurches.
“Now, now, lie down.”
I know that voice. Head of security, isn’t he? Or accounts? I can’t remember. His hands are on my shoulders and he’s pressing me back against the pillows, gently and firmly. Sweat pops out on my brow, but I’m shivering cold. A cool compress caresses my forehead, and it’s once again bearable to open my eyes. I find Fenriz looking down at me with concern etched all over his serious face.
“Don’t be afraid,” he tells me.
“Stealing lines from angels now, are we?” I mumble fuzzily.
He frowns, confused. “Lucifer left you in my care,” he explains before taking a selective pause. “He had something important to do. How are you feeling?”
“Like Hell,” I say wryly. His expression doesn’t change. I’m not sure Fenriz was born with a sense of humor. Resigned to an informative, if plain, conversation, I change tactics. “What happened?”
