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Chapter 1
Lauren?iu
Lauren?iu rubs a finger against the gilt rose protruding from the interior palace wall. It’s the thirty-year anniversary since his ex-lover’s husband drove a silver stake into his heart, and currently, he stands outside a throne room of one of the Kings of Hell.
Thirty years.
Since Anthony watched him die.
Even more years since Anthony had ruined Lauren?iu, and Lauren?iu never forgave him.
Even when it wasn’t his ex-lover who dealt that fatal blow, Anthony had held him and wept. He had the audacity to weep when Lauren?iu’s tears had long dried. About the same time his hair had gone silver during his time at the hospital.
Wet-eyed Anthony with his square jaw and impressive barrel of a chest, who only pleaded and said that he really didn’tmeanto hurt Lauren?iu and that it was better to forgive.
Lauren?iu could forgive anything, except betrayal.
So, he died. He was damned. He isn’t sure if all vampires go to Hell, but he did.
Nothing more than an obstacle. If there’s one thing Lauren?iu can do, it’s survive. Mostly, admittedly, out of spite. If he has nothing else, he’ll always have his refusal to be insignificant.
The world told him: Everyone you love is dead, and no one will ever love you again. You’re disposable. A monster. Ruined. You deserve to be alone. We owe you nothing.
So, he replied: Give me everything.
If he can’t have love, he’ll have everything else. If not on Earth, then in Hell.
Lauren?iu would say that once he gets his revenge, he can finally rest; but he doesn’t know what he’d do without his ambition. He’s never been able to stay idle long.
It’s like Frankenstein’s monster said:
I will revenge my injuries; if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear, and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred. Have a care; I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart, so that you shall curse the hour of your birth.
Yes. Something like that.
Lauren?iu enters the throne room, dressed in a flattering, crimson silk chiton, which shows his shoulders, arms, and legs, and starkly gives attention to his curling white-silver locks, once songbird-brown. Gold wreaths his ankles and upper arms, his eyes ringed with kohl.
Though King Paimon himself doesn’t always indulge in breezy fashion, he preferred it on those in court. Outside of the preternaturally warm palace, such easy, light fabrics would be misery out in the wintry dark-bright of the Ninth Circle.
The space itself is like much of Hell, especially Pandæmonium, the capital. Deceptively perfect, a wash of colors and jewels and lined with gold. Turquoises, rubies, garnets, emeralds, and opals stipple the columns in the patterns of flowers and eyes. There are few spaces not occupied by a gem or gold-painted flower.
On the shimmering walls, oil paintings depicting various different people and scenes line the walls; King Paimon has always been enthused by art and music.
Piano and violin music wash over the many demons and souls there, some waiting with petitions. Many scuff their hooves and claws on the tiled floor, bright with designs of lilies and poppies.
Despite Lauren?iu’s parents being passingly Eastern Orthodox, and having his classmates too confidently correct him on the “real” date of Easter—or telling him that he signed the “wrong way”—once he moodily trudged into high school, Lauren?iu never cared too much about religion or worried over Heaven and Hell.
Splendid, that went well—but he imagines that Pandæmonium is the ghost of Heaven with its golden parapets and high, glittering spires.
He got the feeling that as much as the angels rebelled against Heaven and insisted that it was insipid, they could never quite let it go. They remade it.
So, the throne room is Paimon’s personal Heaven. As close to it as he can, but Lauren?iu has the suspicion there’s always a piece missing. That’s why the haughtiest and smuggest kings, dukes, and marquises always have that kernel of discontent. The snippiness, that fire that Lauren?iu knows so well because he’s felt.
The throne at the far end of the room is a decadent golden chair with vermilion velvet plush, and in it lounges King Paimon himself.
King Paimon, ruler over the third province of the Ninth Circle, right in frozen Judecca, and commander of two-hundred legions of fallen angels.
Leaning with an elbow on one armrest, a leg swung over a knee. He taps two manicured nails together, the only sign of impatience. Lauren?iu hasn’t been in court long compared to those who’ve spent centuries in Hell, but he knows Paimon well enough, from his muscles to his scars. No doubt ruling has always been the esteemed king’s least favorite aspect of...ruling.
