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“So, you thought you were Sariel?” I found myself asking.
He shook his head slowly. “Not always. I was mostly aware that even though I had… thefeelingsthat I had for you, they were not real, and I was able to combat them. That wasn’t always the case, though, and if I did anything that was—”
He cut himself off and swiped a hand down his face. It’s weird seeing such human emotion in him when he was wildly unbothered by what was going on around him every other time we’d interacted. Maybe he was just too old to really care about things anymore.
“You thought highly of me,” he continued. “Not because I am an Archdemon and worthy of respect and fear, but in spite of it. I would hate to have done irreparable damage to our… acquaintanceship.”
Pity. I found myselfpityingthis asshole.
I took a moment to rub at my own eyes. They ached from the crying I’d been doing before, but it was mostly just to wipe out the sting of tears.
His apology should have been worthless, but I could hear his genuine discomfort with everything that had happened, and it gave the words weight.
Lucifer was disgusting for having him do this to us. I hated myself a little, too, that I was so affected by everything that had happened.
“I don’t even know how I feel right now, Barimuz, but rest assured, you’ve proven everything bad I thought about demons right. Would you even be apologizing right now if you didn’t have to deal with the lingering effects of the shapeshift?”
He grimaced, so I nodded grimly. “See? Exactly.Youdon’t really care that I’m hurt or traumatized by this—it’s just becauseSarieldoes. Apologize to me in a few weeks when it’s all out of your system, and then we’ll talk.”
I must have sounded too authoritative, because hebowedwhen I barked that out at him before disappearing in a puff of black.
He wasn’t gone long, reappearing with a change of clothes for both of us and clearing his throat. “There is a bathroom connected to the suite that you are both welcome to use and—”
“Why did you do it? What was the goal?” I demanded to know.
Sariel had been weirdly silent as I worked through everything that had happened in the last… God, how long had it been? An hour? I didn’t know, but he’d been super quiet while I’d pondered everything, argued with the angels, and—even now—bickering with Barimuz.
I was worried about him, but when I reached down the bond, all I got in return was soothing sensations.
They weren’t soothing at all, actually, because I could remember how Barimuz had shoved that warmth down the bond at me to distract me, but I couldn’t unpack that right now. We were in the metaphorical viper's nest with no way out. It would be a mistake to let myself fall apart when Sariel so clearly needed me to keep it together.
“To force us into solidifying the bond.”
Sariel was the one who’d answered me. I shuddered at the dead tone of his voice. “They expected you to realize sooner, and it would have snapped into place in my defense.”
There was a bitter note to his voice, yet he didn’t turn me away when I spun and hugged him. So they’d manipulated us to make our bond finish forming without the sex?
“Why?” Sariel asked Barimuz, and I looked over my shoulder at the demon.
The other shook his head, tail flicking back and forth anxiously behind him—I assumed it was an anxious tick, at least. For all I knew, he was over the moon with how this was all playing out, and it was a sign of how much fun he was having watching it unfold.
“I can’t tell you that,” he said.
“But you know?” I clarified, and he nodded slowly.
“I think I should explain to you how things work once you die,” he said softly, putting the folded clothes on the foot of the king-sized bed and staring at them, “since you both seem determined to keep poking at this issue.”
Barimuz cracked his neck, looking more and more like the man I remembered.
“I am a special case, as I became an Archdemon, one of Lucifer’s chosen, but some rules still apply. When you die and get sorted to your appropriate afterlife, you are more or less the thrall of whoever rules it. Angels have Him, and demons have Lucifer.”
“What do you mean bythrall?” I interrupted, feeling Sariel’s anxiety skyrocket as he clung to me again.
This was his future whether he wanted it or not, I realized, and that opened a new wound in my chest.
“We are compelled to follow their orders. It’s one of the reasons that Lucifer is such an anomaly—he should not have been able to go against Him at all. Thralls don’t fight back against their masters, no matter how unhinged the order. He is not the only person who has broken the thrall bond, but hewasthe first, and it is… almost impossible to do.”
“Slaves,” I uttered. “You’re saying you’re allslaves.”
