Two Kingdoms (The Dark Side Book 3)

by C. M. Owens

  First war of Scottish Independence.

  No famous names.

  Just a lot of bloody warfare for the twins as they worked behind the scenes to stir the feuds.

  Confused, I look around, wondering why they’re always each other’s opposition in the paintings they’re in.

  My eyes instead land on an image of Lilith with dark hair, smiling wickedly as she clutches a bloody axe, despite the fact she’s wearing a prim and proper dress.

  Lizzie Borden

  Casualties – minor

  Historical impact – just shy of legendary

  I give an exaggerated roll of my eyes after reading that last line.

  I’m beginning to the think they caption these images themselves, because you can hear the vanity and self-importance rolling off the vapid overtones.

  Just as I find another image of me in a regal gown and read the plaque that indicates I was a very memorable queen once again—who conveniently never married—a chill slithers down my spine.

  I don’t even have to look over to know the Devil has just located me in his Hall of Sick Fame that I demanded to be a part of. I’m not sure why I thought I could be let out in public.

  “Your mortal lives didn’t always impact the world,” Lucifer says conversationally, as though we’re fast friends now that I’ve bested him in a sword match.

  Winner or not, he still found a way to get me right back down here and possibly threaten my existence topside.

  There’s the Devil’s manipulation that I had expected from the very beginning. I never stood a chance. However, now I’m starting to wonder if he’s right.

  Without looking at him, I glance at the next image of me. My lips twitch when I see the Duchess I’ve read about. We certainly had no historical impact in that life because we were too busy being sexual deviants.

  “It’s a hard balance to maintain, and it’s been ours to handle for a great amount of time, since the world always has just a touch more evil in it than purity,” he goes on.

  I move on to the next picture, pretending to be comfortable with his presence. I pause when I see the Viking image, all of us being ridiculously crude—and lewd—for the pose.

  My fingers trace the image of all four of them, wishing I knew them as well now as I did back then. Back when I had all the faith in the world I’d find them in any life.

  “The world forgets religion, culture, and various other things that seem prosaic or outdated to them. Morals get twisted for the sake of personal gain. With progression and innovation comes dismissive attitudes of a greater authority,” he goes on. “You have to inspire someone to get on their knees, repent, and strive to be the best person they can be. Because evil exists in all mankind,” Lucifer drones on.

  He stays at the end of the hallway, giving me enough space to accommodate me with a false sense of security. He really is good at making it sound like hell is doing the world a great sense of duty…

  “So my children make appearances in the world, create a bloody scandal or a war that ignites fear. Fear assures prayer. As mortals, you have no mystical dark influence, even without balance. You use your minds instead of your powers, and you create a butterfly effect that results in repenting lips, sincere tears in prayer, and force a man—or woman—to face their mortality. You weren’t designed to be the heroes. You’re the true antiheroes. You were always meant to be the villains who create a path for those pure, righteous heroes to emerge and do feats that only prayer and faith could have brought about—creating that balance.”

  My eyes land on an American Revolutionary War painting that involves the twins once again, always on opposing sides of a fight.

  “The twins always end up fighting each other. They get a thrill from it, so they purposely set themselves up for it so they can laugh about it later when they return home,” Lucifer explains. “Usually they kill each other while they’re mortal.”

  “Lovely children you have,” I state dryly. “You must be so proud.”

  “Indeed,” he says seriously, apparently not catching onto the wry sarcasm…or simply overlooking it.

  He moves a step closer, and I tense, even though he remains plenty far enough away. He pauses in front of a picture and feigns interest in it. I watch all of it from my peripheral.

  “We watch the humans. We see their past, present and their future. We know what happens when we don’t step in. We know what happens if we do alter one moment in history. And we do it with war, with fear, and with bloodshed. It’s our part of the balance needed to keep the human world from imploding,” he goes on. “I certainly want to torture their souls for all eternity, but I don’t want the world to come to an end. There needs to be a balance.”

  “How kind and noble of you,” I quip, smiling like the smartass I am.

  My eyes flit over a tattered flag on the ground in the painting that is streaked with blood and lives lost for the sake of preserving a balance.

  “If people genuinely wanted a utopia, they could create it. They, instead, give way to their baser urges and primal instincts—play too far over on the dark side, disrupting their personal balance and the ability to produce selfless, pure acts. The clothes are more sophisticated, and their words are more refined, but evil still rests at the heart of every man. It’s not our duty to save them. We simply demand a balance so their existence is ensured.”

  Now he’s just giving me a sales pitch.

  Finally, I turn to face him, and he turns as I do, his lips twitching when he sees the bored expression on my face.

  “I get it. We’re evil. Sometimes we do evil things. You don’t have to sell it to me.”

  He remains mildly amused, if his expressions indicate his mood. “Either you’ve remembered something, or you foolishly trust me even without your memories,” he says when our eyes lock.

  “I guess I’m a fool for being alone in the Devil’s house and leaving my boys to fend for themselves in a roomful of unpredictable siblings, but something about this place draws forth a familiar trust I shouldn’t feel. However…something is wrong. I just don’t know what.”

  He nods slowly, like he’s considering that.

  “Your siblings are no threat. I’d tell you to trust me, but even I know how ridiculous it sounds to have the Devil ask for one’s trust,” he tells me, wry amusement in his tone.

  This moment feels terribly familiar, as though we’ve held this conversation before. And I can see in his eyes that he’s waiting on recognition to spark.

  There’s almost a sadness in his gaze when I don’t revisit whatever memory he just tried to provoke.

  “Tell me, daughter dearest, why is it you stand before me with very little humor and no amusing commentary this day?” he asks candidly.

  I arch an eyebrow at him. “I’ve heard that serious situations call for my own personal seriousness. I’m here for answers, and I’m not leaving without them this time.”

  “And what do your boys think of this?” the Devil muses.

  “They think you’re responsible, but they’re hiding it from me because they don’t trust me not to act irrationally. I’m a logical person, according to everything I’ve read, so why am I acting rash? My memories are gone, but my mind is trying to tell me something. I just don’t know what, and pardon me if I’m serious for a moment because I’m sick of the games I find myself playing for the sake of your amusement.”

  He scrubs his jaw for a moment as though he’s frustrated, as a small throb pulses in my temple.

  “You are missing four important pieces of yourself because you chose to save them. They seem to be saved, but you can’t retrieve the pieces without your memory of how to do so. How unfortunate you never shared that information with me.”

  “I guess that means I didn’t trust you with that information,” I state with a smirk, as though I’ve forced him to slip.

  It’s not the missing pieces that’s causing this sense of unknown trickling of dread. There’s a breath of urgency on my back, as though I feel some
thing coming but don’t know which direction to prepare for it.

  “Of course not. I would have retrieved your missing pieces immediately. To hell with them. You have no idea how foolish that was,” he says, his jaw ticking momentarily as he seems to struggle to keep his temper in check.

  “It tethers them to me whether they want it to or not, doesn’t it?” I ask so fast that it feels like I’ve simply been awaiting an opening.

  It’s a weird thing—surprising the Devil, that is. Every time I or the guys cause surprise to flit across his features, however brief, it’s a little unnerving.

  Nothing should surprise a man of evil who has watched the world for so long.

  “Oh, my pathetic little youngest, you’d be horrified if you heard yourself right now,” Lucifer says while visibly working to restrain a smile. “Dear daughter, are you struggling with your conscience? You know you don’t have one, right?”

  I narrow my eyes at him. Anytime he seems to taunt me, it’s like I turn into a teenage rebel of sorts. I’ll be embarrassed about it later.

  “I simply don’t like feeling like the interloper who has to force men to want her. I want to know they’d be mine regardless of those pieces being removed. Because, no, I have no clue how to retrieve those pieces. Even if I knew how, I’m sure I put it into one of those formulas I created with my own language, and that really does me no damn good.”

  He wipes away his grin and clears his throat. “The boys would still be in hell’s black heart all these many thousands of years later had you not spared them. If they were here to hear this—as the men with all their memories—”

  “Consider them entirely different,” I interrupt, and then I have a subtle moment of panic when I realize I’ve interrupted the fucking Devil.

  Since I’ve already done it, I roll with it, especially since he seems to be taking me a little more seriously.

  “I wrote myself notes to tell myself about the guys. As though I foresaw this coming. What if I found out a way to better their existence, and forgot that I may not be quite as important to them like this?” I ask, feeling a little…weird.

  But I try not to make it weird.

  “But you are still just as important to them, Paca,” he says with a smirk. “It’s been a long time since I had to talk boys with my youngest. I have to say…it’s making me quite nostalgic.”

  There he goes…making it weird.

  “You realize you just danced around my question,” I say on a sigh.

  “They have nightmares, don’t they?” he asks, causing me to stiffen as I look at him.

  “If they have no memories, they’d be riddled with nightmares as a balance,” he says as though he’s explaining. “But in order to create theories about what may or may not have happened, you need to know how you died. More importantly, you need to know when you died.”

  My eyes find his and hold there expectantly, wondering why he hasn’t already told me if he’s no way involved. Why hold back?

  “Well?” I prompt, trying not to sound too desperate for the answer and give the Devil the power of leverage. “Skip to the how, since I know the when. I know it’s been five hundred years.”

  “The how part will take some explaining, and trust me, we will be having that conversation very soon. It’s one of the reasons I had you summoned tonight.”

  My heart thumps heavily in my chest as he starts nearing me, and I make a conscious effort to remain rooted to my spot. The goal is to appear unafraid, but I feel the menace rolling off him the closer he grows, and my resolve wavers no less than four times in under five seconds.

  He’s the only person whose presence I’ve felt, aside from my siblings and Lamar. I wonder if it’s because I’m too powerful to feel the lesser ones such as escorts or Elders—who aren’t very elderly, if you ask me. Five hundred years is not that long, in the grand scheme of things, and he clearly had no idea who I was until I went all psycho devil child on him and told him my badass name.

  But if I’m that powerful, why would there be any rebellions at all? They’d never stand a chance. The divide in power is unconquerable.

  Lucifer stops just a foot in front of me as my inner ramble comes to an abrupt halt, and I startle when he lifts his hands. He moves so fast that I don’t even gauge his next motion until he’s stepping back with my mask in his hands.

  His eyes almost seem to soften as he rakes his gaze over my face.

  “The boys have only been dead for three hundred and fifty years,” he says with a slight frown. “Though, technically, they weren’t dead for long at all, since they’ve existed centuries since.”

  “Five hundred years. They’ve been missing for as long as I have,” I argue.

  He nods slowly. “The moment you were killed, they lost it, unable to function without you. The madness set in. They damn near destroyed the world with a single day of unbridled, grievous chaos. Echoes of Malek’s plagues still come and go, and seeds of wisdom and medicine have formed in the minds of righteous men to counter such.”

  Reaching up, I touch my heart when it hurts, and vaguely I think of the destruction they caused just recently. They didn’t even particularly like me this time when I died. Still, they grieved and tore apart the home I know they love, for whatever reason.

  I can only imagine the four of them in such deep love with me when I died. Centuries upon centuries of bonding with each other….

  It might have devastated them, especially since I was their savior back then.

  “It took all my heirs and myself to bring them to a hilt and lock them back away. The twins built an entire area in purgatory to lock them in, just trying to keep them alive long enough to figure out a way to bring you back, without putting them back into Hell’s Black Heart.”

  “How did they die?” I ask on a rasp whisper.

  He lets my mask tumble to the floor. “Manella broke the law and recycled them as a mercy, and it was assumed they’d ceased to exist—along with their powers—when they didn’t return to the throat. He never told Lamar. He let Lamar hope it was possible, giving him that gift even as he never truly believed it.”

  He blows out a breath as I remain silent for once, just listening.

  “But Manella, like all of us, believed we’d really lost you. He didn’t want them to suffer any longer. But clearly something happened after they were recycled, because they are a balanced imbalance that makes no sense outside of you.”

  “You had me until that last part, and now I’m just confused,” I grumble.

  His eyes harden. Slightly terrifying too.

  “I’m saying, without a masterful balancer, there’s no way they would exist. I don’t know how, but you saved their lives even after you’d been dead for over a century. Tell me, Paca, are there truly no memories at all?”

  “I wouldn’t be standing here listening to you endlessly ramble about things I haven’t asked about if I had any other way of gathering information,” I point out. “It’s unbearably tedious.”

  His lips twitch with the beginnings of a grin.

  “Very well. I think it’s time we tell you what we know. But first, it’s time for a family reunion.”

  My breath leaves in a rush when I suddenly feel like I’ve quickly stepped through a tornado. The air stills in a hallway I’ve never seen before, at least not in the memorable past.

  How the hell did we get here?

  Knots tighten in my stomach, and a red door suddenly appears on a stretch of wall that had no door there before. I’m not sure if I’m terrified or stupidly excited that this is about to happen, but I do know I wish the guys were here right now.

  I actually dart a glance around, wondering if I can find them. Lucifer doesn’t miss anything I do. It feels like he’s constantly reading me.

  “You shouldn’t be spending so much time away from them. You’re strongest with them,” Lucifer tells me as we take a walk like he’s the hangman leading me down to the gallows.

  The excitement is decidedly gone, and dread c
ontinues to unfurl. I have no clue if I even have as much power as I used to, back when I was The Apocalypse.

  “I’m not doing this,” I say as I stop. “I never agreed to this. You forced my hand, and then you make little inside jokes I can’t remember about trusting the Devil,” I add, turning to face him, stopping far away from that red door.

  His eyebrows bounce up, and I half wonder if I’ve almost surprised him, or if he’s simply humoring me.

  “I won that sword match, and then you turn around and try to manipulate me just as you said you wouldn’t for someone who could make your life hell.”

  “By being absent,” he bites out, “you are making my life miserable—not hell. I prefer not to use hell like it’s a foul word, since that’s the name of the home I’m trying to bring you back to, Paca.”

  I suppose using hell as a derogatory term could be considered offensive to the Devil…

  These are the fucked up new days of my life.

  It was so much simpler when I was just a lonely, shameless, perverted phantom girl.

  “Regardless, you still manipulated me, and something tells me that not even the old me would have just laid down and taken this,” I go on. “I think I’ll be leaving now.”

  “You will make an appearance, if for no other reason than to stave off the damn rebels.”

  “Like the rebels really pose a threat,” I say on a humorless laugh. “I killed an Elder tonight with very little effort. You could mow down half of hell yourself. Easily.”

  “You killed an Elder tonight?” he asks incredulously, his expression almost causing me to laugh.

  I only thought I knew what Lucifer’s face of surprise was until this moment, because this distorted expression is less unsettling and much more comical.

  “He wanted to put me in my place, since I’m just a lowly surface guardian,” I explain.

  His mouth forms an O, and that weird sense of familiarity spreads throughout me again. I just blurted out that I killed an Elder of hell to the Devil, and never thought twice about it…