by Cate Corvin
The bitch knew I wasn’t going to raise a finger against her, not with my pregnant mate at stake. Not that I could anyways. The damned collar made sure of that.
I ignored the faces of the guards who had beaten me bloody only a week ago, following the faint tug several floors down, to an empty corridor where he waited.
Satan was leaning against a wall, picking at his nails with the tip of a knife.
“What do you want?” I didn’t bother being polite or subservient. That time was long past.
He just raised an eyebrow and put the knife away. “Is that how you speak to your father now?”
I laughed. It bubbled out of me, ridiculous as it was. “Don’t delude yourself.”
He’d adopted me, made me his heir… and used me as a puppet. Whatever loyalty I’d felt towards him was long gone, and finding someone like Melisande had fractured the remaining pieces entirely.
Satan’s face became serious as he looked me over. His mismatched gaze landed on the scar on my chest that had severed the majority of the soul-bond between us. “Melisande wishes me to remove the remainder of the soul-bond.” He raised his eyes. “But I cannot.”
I leaned against the wall as well, mimicking his pose with my arms crossed over my chest. “Because it’ll kill you?”
“Because it’ll likely kill both of us.” Satan made a sound that might’ve been a snort in a less exalted being. “I rather enjoy being alive, with all this world has to offer.”
Of course he did.
I just stared at him, waiting.
“She permanently damaged it with that knife.” My father frowned at the scar. “Even if I were to reach out now and seize your soul… it would only be half of what it was before. The bond is essentially broken.”
“Your point being?” I had no intention of ever allowing him to take control of me again, even by half.
He tossed back his hair, his gaze flicking down the corridor to check for guards before coming back to my face. “Convince her to come with me regardless of the soul-bond. I can bring her to safety.”
I resisted the urge to chew my lip as I thought. Melisande’s habits were rubbing off on me.
She was right. Satan had only been interested in getting his hands on what he couldn’t have and consuming it in a haze of greed.
Nergal’s mind was infecting his, meshing them together. In his mind, he was playing out a scene from eons ago, and all of Nergal’s emotions towards Inanna were being superimposed on her. Satan’s original desire to consume her was probably only making that longing stronger.
But if I convinced her to go… she’d be free of Kur. Free of Ereshkigal.
In the hands of another enemy, but as long as Nergal remained in control of their combined emotional climate, she’d be safe and protected.
But there was no convincing her. She’d allowed herself to be captured just to stay with me.
She would stay here as long as the rest of us were here.
For a second, I wished my mate were a little more willing to save her own skin. But then, she wouldn’t be Melisande if she wasn’t headstrong.
“I can try, but she doesn’t take well to being ordered around.” I didn’t add that there was no way in Hell she’d actually take him up on the offer.
“One of the many things I admire about her,” he said. There was a hint of longing in his voice.
I loathed him entirely, wished Nergal would consume him and eradicate any trace of the devil within.
“Admire from afar.” I fixed my eyes on him. He looked more like the King of Kur now than ever. “Even if I’m willing to push her out the door with you, she’s not yours and never will be.”
Satan just pointed upwards lazily and smiled. “You’re expected.”
We were several levels beneath the throne room. There was a rumble in the ebonite beneath my feet.
It was time for yet another game, and the tension I’d been sensing was ramping even higher.
It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Something wasn’t right.
Without another word I turned on my heel and strode away. The guards’ eyes watched me as I passed. I marked them all, every single one of them.
Because so far, we’d been playing nice. Biding our time.
Letting Ereshkigal sling us around like puppets to amuse her.
But when the moment came that she was weak, nobody would hold back. Kur itself would be punished.
A prickle ran down my spine at the thought, but it was a pleasurable shiver. The sort of shiver one got before they were bathed up to their shoulders in blood, feeling the crack of bones in their hands, the ease with which flesh parted.
It was a side of me I’d always made a great effort to hold back.
I turned a corner and realized I’d gained a shadow.
Azazel’s soft footsteps echoed behind me. I slowed just enough to allow him to catch up.
My old friend was no longer quite himself. His pale skin gleamed with the painted ritual marks of Kur, and the shadows grew longer and deeper, like pools of black velvet, wherever he stepped.
He cocked his head as he drew alongside me, giving me a sidelong glance. “Making deals with devils right under her nose?”
I put caution to the wind. Azazel wasn’t soul-bound; his mind wouldn’t report everything he saw and heard to Ereshkigal.
That he was asking at all was a good sign.
“I’m a devil myself, so it seems right. Wouldn’t you do it as well, or do you like licking the ground she walks on?”
Azazel didn’t so much as blink. “I would devour her whole if given the chance.”
I slowed even more, and finally came to a stop. Azazel stopped as well. The flickering lamps of Dis gave him a feral quality as he turned to look at me.
“Are you in there, old friend?” I asked. “You taught me everything I know.”
The shadows shuddered and pooled around him. “I taught the entire world.” His voice was utterly toneless. To him it was just a fact, a rather uninteresting one.
“Remember when I tried to break into your library? I thought you were going to eat me alive then.”
There. A flicker of recognition in those violet eyes. “You were too precocious for your own good.”
Azazel would have to fight his own way out. I knew all too well how difficult it was to break free of a Prime power so close to my soul. His blood ties to Ereshkigal weren’t something that could be cut away with a blade.
“Maybe you should try breaking the rules.” I started walking again. Azazel did too. “Eat a few souls. Kill the Queen. Live a little.”
A faint but eerie smile crossed his lips. “Her time is coming.”
“Do you know something I don’t know?”
Azazel gave me a disgusted look, the most Azazel-like expression I’d seen on his face since he’d been captured. “Did I teach you or not? Feel for it, Morningstar. It’s in the air. The fabric of the universe is caught here at this point in time, and it can only take so much before it tears.”
I couldn’t suppress my own grin. He was breaking free, little by little. “I feel something, but I can’t tell what it is.”
I was still smiling when we walked into the throne room.
It was frozen to my face.
Melisande’s long hair was still rumpled from sleep, but her eyes were wide awake, flashing with warning. She stood stiffly at Ereshkigal’s side, her hands clasped behind her back with white knuckles.
The Queen’s tendrils of pure blackness held Belial in place, only feet away from our mate. His lips were drawn back over his sharp teeth, the lion just held at bay.
“Oh, there you are,” Ereshkigal said coldly. All fondness for me had vanished when I’d laughed at her humiliation before and paid for it in blood.
Her dark eyes drifted to Azazel, who was staring at… Melisande.
The Queen’s lip curled. I realized the same tendrils that held Belial away from her throat were also wrapped around Melisande’s ankles, keeping
her firmly rooted where she was.
There was a throbbing intensity in the air, almost sickening in its power. It felt like standing on a ship in a storm, but the city was flat and stable.
All of the turmoil was in my own head, but from everyone else’s pale faces, they felt it, too.
Another wave of power washed over, making my stomach turn, and I realized where it was coming from.
The body of the war goddess.
It was a power fueled by rage, emanating from the last vestiges of her remains.
Melisande licked her lips, her gaze darting to Inanna’s corpse and back to us. She shook her head the tiniest amount when I stepped forward.
Queen Ereshkigal gestured to Azazel. “Come, Prince. I’ve been waiting for you.”
Azazel didn’t move. He looked at Ereshkigal like she was something he’d found on the bottom of his shoe.
The Queen faltered, then steeled herself, reaching out to wrap her long crone’s fingers in Melisande’s hair. “Everything,” she whispered. “I tried to trust you, tried to teach you, but you take everything.”
I felt a lurch in the world again.
That something was going to happen, and nothing we could do would prevent it.
“Stop her,” I whispered.
Azazel vanished in a swirl of smoke and reappeared in front of Melisande. He wrapped his arms around her, and both turned vaporous.
He would get her out of here.
But the darkness slid around them and constricted. Both Melisande and Azazel became corporeal again.
Spikes exploded from the dark, spearing through Azazel. Melisande was frozen in shock as blood sprayed across her face, soaked through her dress. It pooled on the floor around them.
Azazel looked down at the giant thorns that had ripped right through him. A look of pure fury crossed his face, and flashes of pale lightning glittered in the back of his eyes.
Ereshkigal hissed at him. “None of that. You don’t defy me.”
She slammed him into a wall, making the throne room shake. Several of the thorns emerged from Azazel’s chest and rib cage, pinning him neatly into place.
Melisande had gone dead white, beads of sweat sparkling on her forehead. Her fists were trembling. “You complete cunt,” she snarled.
God, she felt his pain through their soul-bond. I wondered how she was still standing, until I realized it was only Ereshkigal’s darkness-made-solid holding her upright.
“I see what you’re trying to do!” Ereshkigal shrieked, so suddenly we all doubled over. Her voice cut through my head like a saw, the sound of a thousand vultures screeching, the wails of dying women a chorus in her voice. “You’re all traitorous liars!”
Her darkness hit me like a fucking meteor to the chest. Air exploded from my lungs as she slammed me backwards into another wall, pinning me in place.
The force of her power made Satan’s wrath feel like a love tap. I realized how much she’d been holding back all along.
It didn’t stop us from struggling against her, but the darkness spread into dark webs that crept over us, leaving our eyes and ears and mouths exposed.
“This is what I deserve for opening my arms to you,” Ereshkigal told my mate bitterly. “Perhaps I should be proud of you for taking my advice to heart. We are, after all, natural enemies.”
Melisande raised her chin, glaring up at her defiantly. “I didn’t take a damn word of your advice.” She spat the words through gritted teeth.
The Queen was slowly growing taller, leaning over Melisande like a hungry beast. Her face was beginning to warp out of shape under the influence of her anger.
“You woke her,” she growled. “Trying to steal her power, trying to become better than what you are. Well, let me tell you, little songbird.”
My heart jumped into my throat as she unsheathed a knife. The blade was curved, catching the light in a brilliant arc.
“You will never come close to what she was.”
I struggled, but the webs held tight. They smothered my physical body and the power of dawn inside me, stifling my light to nothing more than a faint ember. The collar around my neck dulled it all, sinking through my power, preventing it from moving against the Queen.
“You can lie, cheat, and steal, but always remember…”
Across from me, Azazel tried to vanish, but the webs of his grandmother held him fast. His stars died out around him, dim and gray.
“You are nothing. There is nothing to hope for. And I will make sure you understand that in the end, nothing is all you will ever be.”
Belial’s roar filled my ears. His fire flared bright and was smothered to ashes.
Ereshkigal raised Melisande into the air, suspending her like a puppet from strings. Her gnarled hand slid over the beautiful arch of her wings, the oil spill black of her feathers, stroking them greedily.
Melisande fought, her muscles standing out in cords as she struggled against her bonds, same as the rest of us.
There was no escape. There was never an escape, not from this hellhole.
The Queen found the junction of smooth skin and downy feathers. Then she began sawing, her mouth stretched in a wide rictus of a grin.
Blood flowed like a river. It was impossible to tell who was screaming. Maybe all of us were.
Melisande’s agony through the mate bond was blinding, suffusing every nerve in my body until I couldn’t see through the pain.
Her wings fell silently to the floor.
17
Melisande
I’d never felt pain like it before.
It consumed me, body and soul, ripping through every cell in me.
It ate the entire world.
I realized I was kneeling in a puddle. Darkness crept in at the corners of my vision, and all I could see was my own hands, pale as bone against the scarlet.
My blood. I was on my knees in my own blood, with what felt like the weight of the world lifted off my shoulders.
I took a deep breath, then another, trying not to pass out.
Above me, from what seemed like miles overhead, Ereshkigal cackled like a crow. She was a storm that seemed to go on forever, surrounding me with endless dark.
“You’re already healing.” She laughed again and something heavy hit the floor, clattering against the ebonite. “Return to the worm you once were. Neither demon nor fallen, and certainly not a goddess.”
I blinked through the haze at the dagger she’d dropped. My blood still coated the blade, but the pain was already fading.
The stumps of my wings were healing over.
All thanks to Inanna’s power.
At that moment, I hated the goddess who’d reached out to touch me. I hoped she was suffering where she hung on the wall, unable to live, unable to die.
Because my body felt so light. So weak. So… human.
And it was all because she’d linked us. She’d brought this on me.
I’d known it when I saw the chain between us, that she’d sealed my fate. Ereshkigal’s guards had dragged me out of bed when she made the final connection between us, the burst of power echoing through the city for those who could sense it.
I dragged in another breath, closing my eyes against the tears that threatened.
Fuck you, Inanna, for sending me dreams. For waking up at all.
I wish you’d stayed dead.
There was a last shock of pain that prickled through my shoulder blades, and I knew my skin had knitted itself together again. The remaining blood was drying on my back, over my sides, gluing my hair to my own flesh.
But there was other pain. It was dulled in the cross on my chest, in the spiral on my palm, but in the star on the nape of my neck…
I raised my head, still forcing myself to breathe in and out, in and out.
The bitch who’d done this had entrapped my men in her darkness. The spikes she’d whipped me with upon arrival to Kur had lengthened into deadly spears, and she’d thrust them straight through Azazel’s chest.
He was still living, half incorporeal, half bloody and solid. Lightning shone in his eyes, the crackles of pure light that only emerged before he became a creature of night. Something monstrous and full of unrestrained rage.
“Azazel,” I rasped, trying to crawl forward. I almost sprawled on my face, unbalanced by the lack of my wings.
It was strange how they weighed so much, but I had never noticed until they were gone. I was nothing more than a feather that could drift away now.
Ereshkigal hunched over above me, her wizened hands flexing like pincers. “Keep his name out of your mouth.”
She leaned over and picked something up, dangling it in front of me.
It was one of my wings. Several dark feathers broke free and drifted to the ground, landing softly in my blood. The sawed-off base of my wing was bright with exposed bone.
I threw up, retching into the mess she’d made of me.
Ereshkigal looked at the wing she held, smiling faintly. “Who will want you now? Broken, pitiful thing.”
When my stomach clenched on sour emptiness, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Tears of rage burned the backs of my eyes.
“They will want me. They already chose me.”
She scoffed. “You are no more than a human now.”
I forced myself to look up at her, even though the sight of her face made me want to rip her throat out with my teeth. “One of the men who chose me endured the same thing. If he could live through it, so can I. You can’t break me with this.”
Ereshkigal knelt down, her lace and silk dragging through my blood. She became a young woman as she stared into my face. Her dark eyes saw more than I wanted her to see.
The Eater of the Damned smiled, showing her teeth. “Liar.”
Against my will, one of the tears slipped free.
She picked up my other wing, gathering them both in one hand, and stood up. How could they look so small now, when they’d always carried me so faithfully?
Like they were nothing at all.
“Let’s put it to the test,” she said calmly. “You’re no longer my songbird, are you? Not without your lovely feathers.”
