Once Upon A Devil: A Dark Academy Reverse Harem Bully Romance (Everafter Academy Book 3)

by Scarlett Snow

  Please, Lucifer… I beg of you… make her better….

  The last thing I remember is Redera and Broin charging into the Church of Shadows to rescue me. I didn’t want to be rescued by them. I deserved to die on that dais after all the suffering I caused them and those around me. But alas I didn’t die, for it seems Lucifer has plans for me still. Or I’ve just got terrible luck. Probably the latter.

  I’m not sure how much time passes before I wake up in Broin’s cabin. It’s like I’m riding a wave of agony tearing my body asunder with every breath. Whenever I do wake up, my pain doubles, my veins pulse and throb under my clammy skin, my lungs clench, and I swear my heart stops beating multiple times. Sometime during my delirium, I feel Broin’s hands on my wounds, and the potion he uses stings more than the flogging.

  I open my eyes what feels like only seconds since the last time, but I can tell by the number of candles around me and the dark sky beyond the windows that it’s well past midnight now. Witching Hour has blessed me with a tiny scrap of strength, and I’m able to breathe without crying out in pain. Tears of relief escape my eyes and roll down my swollen cheeks. I lay perfectly still, though, knowing any movement will result in pain.

  A gust of air creeps in through the windows. It sighs across the room, extinguishing all the candles and sending a sharp chill down my spine.

  The brimstone scent makes Lucifer’s presence known before he unveils himself.

  I turn my head toward the intense warmth radiating from the corner of Broin’s bedroom. Two golden eyes sear into me and my heart jumps, picking up its pace. I try to straighten a little on the bed, both excited and afraid to see Lucifer.

  “Do not move,” he orders, his voice barely a whisper and yet holding such contempt that I don’t protest. “You will answer me honestly and clearly. Who did this?”

  His voice is dangerously low and his words are somewhat shaky. He is barely containing his rage, and it’s terrifying.

  Goosebumps break out over my skin and my mouth turns dry. I lick my lips, wondering how I should answer him. Even just wetting my mouth is painful and I gasp, clenching my eyes. Sweet unholy fuck, this shit hurts! Broin wasn’t able to heal it and he’s the most powerful druid I know. The potion helped, but my body is still covered in violent welts that have shredded my skin. I can’t even stand the light caress of the cool night air touching them. What the fuck did Cassim lather his whip with? Acid?

  In an instant, Lucifer is by my side. The candles illuminate again, blazing brightly, and the mattress dents as he settles down beside me, his features bathed in soft light. But there is nothing soft about his eyes. They’re feral, almost animalistic, and entirely gold with not a hint of white.

  “I’m waiting for your answer, child,” he warns, though his anger doesn’t seem to be directed at me. He reaches down to lift the bandages from my chest, and his eyebrows raise when he sees the severity of my wounds. I hiss when he gently places the bandages back down. The pain is so extreme that every touch, no matter how light, is like an electric shock. “Well?”

  “I… can’t,” I manage to whisper, my entire body depleted of energy. “My coven…hates me enough…already.”

  “Your coven shall pay dearly for this.”

  Too exhausted to speak, I think back,—But it wasn’t them. They thought they were doing the right thing to a traitor. And they were right. I am a traitor. Redera and my grandmother suffered worse than this. Please, my lord?—

  Either Lucifer isn’t reading my thoughts or he doesn’t believe me. He focuses on my wounds, checking and counting them, his eyebrows knitted together. All the talking has already worn me out and I close my eyes, allowing him to inspect me while I struggle not to pass out.

  “Whoever did this used magic I cannot heal,” he finally whispers, and I blink up at him, surprised to hear there are things that go beyond Lucifer Morningstar’s powers. “But I can take this pain from you.”

  Before I can register the meaning behind those words, his lips are against my mouth and he’s kissing me ever so softly. I don’t have the energy to kiss him back, so I just enjoy the feeling of his lips on mine, and the tender caress of his palm against my unmarked cheek. For a moment, my pain is subdued, and I moan as a strange sensation overcomes me. It’s giddy and warm, blossoming from the pit of my stomach into my chest, then my throat, spreading at last into my fingers and toes.

  Slowly, I’m able to reach out to grasp his neck, but Lucifer pulls back and shakily stumbles off the bed. The lacerations that blemished my body are now manifesting onto his own, marring his beautiful skin and making his leaking blood stain his golden robe. My mouth hangs open as I realize what he just did…for me. Why? Why would he do such a thing?

  I throw my legs over the bed and rush to his side. I’m grateful to no longer be in pain and have my strength back, but to see Lucifer bearing the same agony that I did just a moment ago kills me inside, and I don’t know why.

  Lucifer shrugs me off and leans against the wall. Fallen angel or not, I know exactly how much pain he’s in, and yet he still manages to grin at me.

  “This isn’t over,” Lucifer says, clutching his bleeding stomach. “I will find out who did this, Ravyn, and I will make them suffer.”

  And just like that, he disappears into his usual cloud of smoke.

  I stand in silence for a moment, my head still whirling. Just a moment ago, I was lying on what I would have sworn—would have begged—was my death bed. Now I’m standing here, completely whole and without a single injury. I run my hands over my skin, feeling that it’s unbroken and unmarred. Even my old scars from His Excellency are gone, and I’m surprised by how relieved that makes me feel. I don’t want to have physical reminders of anything he’s put me through.

  I find a robe in Broin’s closet and pull it on, proof against the cold that’s seeping into the little cabin. The fire is only embers, and it’s not helping chase away the chill. There’s no firewood piled in the iron rack beside the hearth. That’s probably where Broin went.

  For the first time since Redera returned, I find myself alone, and I’m glad. There’s so much I still need to wrap my head around. She’s been brought back by our Dark Lord, and now he’s come to save me from the brink of death. I’m grateful, deeply so, but suspicious as well. Lucifer doesn’t do anything unless there’s something in it for him to gain. Selfishness is one of the primary Satanic Virtues that he teaches and he’s always been an outstanding example of it. Now he’s behaving in what seems like a selfless manner, but there’s something more here, an endgame that I don’t see.

  I’m grateful, but I feel like a pawn again and it doesn’t sit well. We Hemlocks make our own fates. We don’t sit around and wait for someone else to make them for us. I need to know what he intends.

  The last time I was in this much pain, I had just been expelled from heaven at the point of my brother Michael’s flaming sword. Those burns took a millennium to heal. I hope these injuries aren’t as long lasting.

  There is only one substance in the world that could make me hurt this way, and it’s silveryn, the poison that Eden created and gave against my orders to the warring parties of the Silva War. Damn her ambition and her misplaced loyalties. She’s paying the price now, languishing as Salvador’s slave. It serves her right.

  Salvador. He is behind this.

  I am filled with rage, but the injuries on my body prevent me from doing anything about it. Not since I broke the chains that Michael used to hold me in the Lake of Fire has anything been so incapacitating.

  Excruciating.

  I go to my bedchamber and lock the door. I don’t want anyone to see me this way. I have an image to maintain, after all. I groan and throw myself on my bed where I can writhe in peace. I hate this, but more than that, I hate the thought of how long my witch was suffering this way.

  I was aware that Satanlia was approaching. How could I not be? But I didn’t realize what they were doing to Ravyn until Blackstone took her out of the Church of Sh
adows. I could not see in, nor could I enter—my own church, for hell’s sake! My own worshippers, and all of that delicious energy was being kept from me!

  There are only two beings in the cosmos with the ability to keep me out of someplace I want to go. One is the Storyteller, and, well… when he’s not napping, I’m not sure he’d have the interest or the necessary spite to keep me away from my own flock. The other is Lilith.

  Fucking Lilith.

  The pain is rising around me like a black cloud. My body is twisting with the agony of it, but my mind is strangely detached. I don’t often do this sort of healing—frankly, I normally don’t care enough about anyone to put myself out—but when I do, it’s always this sort of mind fuck. My mind is clear, but my body is a total wreck.

  Damn Salvador for doing this to my Ravyn!

  In an effort to get my mind away from this miserable cage of physical form, I cast my power out of Hell and look through the eyes of the patient demon guardian I put on Ravyn weeks ago. Mephisto obediently raises his head from his grass-munching to let me watch as Blackstone returns from his wolf hunt, coated in blood and wracked with guilt and fury. It pleases me that he’s returned to my witch, although I’m not entirely thrilled with the closeness of their relationship.

  I feel too much for her.

  Someone should have told me that women were trouble.

  I wouldn’t have listened, but they should have told me.

  There’s a click behind one of my bookcases, and the secret door hidden behind the infernal tomes swings open. A wizened but still beautiful face crowned with a halo of white hair pokes into my room. Elnora Hemlock, my recently-acquired self-appointed mother, comes in, clicking her tongue.

  “Oh, dear, dear, dear,” she says disapprovingly. “Whatever have you done to yourself, my Dark Lord?”

  I try to turn my back on her, but that just makes the misery in my body worse. I groan and swat at her.

  “Go away, you stupid old woman!” I snap.

  Elnora takes my hand and pulls it out of the way so she can examine the wounds on my torso. I’ve never had a mother, since I was created and not born, so I’m not entirely certain what to make of this. I hate to admit it, but being fussed over this way isn’t entirely unpleasant.

  “Silveryn.” She shakes her head, clicking her tongue again. She coos, “Now, my lord, you’re hurting so you’re irritable. Let us come up with something that can help you. We’ll have that nasty white magic out of you in two shakes of an imp’s tail.”

  I don’t need to ask who she means by ‘we.’ Her great-grandmother Esmeralda has gleefully welcomed Elnora here, and the two Hemlock witches have been having a joyful reunion. I’m partial to the Hemlocks, so I keep the two of them close, housing them in a room near my own… a room that was once Esmeralda’s, hundreds of years ago and in a different life.

  Elnora vanishes through the hidden door behind my bookcase, and I grip the bedclothes in my fists as another wave of horrible pain roars through me like a forest fire. I of all people should not be burning. I burn others! The irony leaves me furious and grinding my teeth in an effort to keep from crying out like a bitch.

  I once had two queens. They each had their own chambers, of course, one on either side of my own. Lilith had the room to the left, and Namaah had the one on the right. Having my room between theirs not only gave me ready access to their beds. It also allowed me to keep those hellcats separate.

  Namaah and Lilith, twin sisters, hated one another with a ferocity that bordered on erotic for me. I would have loved to stage gladiatorial style combats between the two of them, with me burying my cock in the winner. Neither of my wives would have stood for it, though, and it behooved me to keep them both at least moderately satisfied.

  Lilith was a wife of necessity. Ours was a marriage of convenience, almost like the ones those pathetic royals arrange between their children up in the Six Realms. She brought certain powers into my court that I wanted to have, and through our union, I was able to absorb them… at least until she caught me doing it. It was Lilith who created the first witches, and it was she who brought the covens to me.

  Witchcraft under those twins was special in the beginning. Lilith was all spite and hatred, ambition and an intense desire for destruction. Her sister, Namaah, was also a witch, but her powers were different, with healing potions and spells to control weather and make crops abundant to keep famine away.

  Namaah… for a long time, I thought I actually loved her. Can you imagine? Me, loving any woman? Namaah was everything to me. A good companion, a breathtaking lover, a brilliant strategist, and a fiend with a cruel streak I could respect. Her mean moments were always well calculated, thoroughly considered and planned. She wasn’t like Lilith, whose plans were as shallow as a pie tin, or so I thought.

  I favored Namaah. I honored her by throwing orgies in hell and wars among the mortals. Those were heady days, when we would ride out together to cause mayhem among the so-called good people of the Great Forest. Then Lilith got jealous, and she got vindictive, and suddenly Namaah was missing. I left Hell just long enough to corrupt Underland, and when I came back, my preferred wife was gone, killed and reborn as a mere witch known as Esmeralda Hemlock.

  I knew Lilith had done it. There was nobody else that would have dared. And though I did my best to beat the truth out of her—and believe me, I exercised some exquisite creativity that year—she still hid the details of what she had done. She finally escaped me with the help of her Horsemen, and she, too, vanished. She ran just before I was going to turn her out into the Six Realms as a mortal leper.

  Lilith did not leave empty handed. She stole power from me, and seven infernal relics that gave power over me, and though I still want to see her skinned and bleeding on my throne room floor like a rug, I have to admit to a certain amount of admiration for her sheer audacity. I mourned for Namaah, but Lilith? I’ve never missed her one bit, and I knew that she would return in time to be a thorn in my side.

  Or a lash scar in my abdomen, as the case may be.

  Only Lilith could have empowered Salvador to ward his Church so powerfully that I would be blind, deaf and dumb to the proceedings therein. Only Lilith would shove herself back into my life when I’ve come so close to claiming my replacement queens.

  My body contracts with another surge of torment, and I find myself grinding out a groan of distress. That Ravyn bore these wounds and still survived is testament to her Fate. She will be mine. She and Redera will be my queens, and I will once again have the full power that I deserve.

  Elnora returns, bringing Esmeralda with her. Esmeralda is as young and dewy as my favored bride Namaah had been, but power lies upon her like a cloak. She is beautiful and desirable, and she should be the object of my attention as she once was. Instead I find myself enjoying the symmetry of her face because it reminds me so much of Ravyn’s.

  More pain wracks me, and I catch my breath and bite my lip between my teeth. I have lost all of my ability to maintain my human shape, and my goat form—the form that I was cursed with when I fell—is in control. That means my hooves ache and my teeth are blunt and I would give almost anything to gore Cassim Salvador with my curving horns. The pain lances through me again, and I roar out this time, furious and in agony.

  Esmeralda sits beside me on the bed and moves my head into her lap, stroking the hair around the bases of my horns. I’m having difficulty breathing, because the agony is burrowing a particularly sharp path through my flesh, squirming through me like a maggot made of fire.

  “Shh,” Elnora soothes. She’s holding a brass cauldron, and with a wooden spoon, she ladles out a potion that she pours over the wounds I took from Ravyn. The potion burns like acid, and I roar again, kicking at her. Esmeralda grabs my ears and pinches them on certain pressure points, and I go limp in her arms. I don’t know whether to be annoyed or grateful for the presence of a clever woman.

  “Hold still,” Esmeralda whispers, and her voice is soothing, wrapped in cooling magi
c that I can’t use. Witches gain their power from me, yes, but only they can do the things they do. It’s why I needed witches as my queens, and why I need witches once again. Only twin witches will do, as the prophet has said.

  “Hold still,” she whispers again, “and let us care for you.”

  Elnora croons a healing chant, and the fucking potion burns even worse. I want to slap the song out of her mouth, but something Esmerelda is doing has rendered me immobile. Naamah had the same trick, and she used it when I came out on the losing end of another battle with Michael.

  Fucking Michael. Someday, brother, you and I will have a rematch, and it will end much differently.

  I content myself with thoughts of impending revenge while Elnora tortures me with her homemade cure. Just when I’m certain that I’m going to go mad if she doesn’t stop, the curling white magic begins to concentrate in my gut like a meal of rotten food.

  Esmeralda nods and runs her hands along my horns. “That’s right. Let it collect in your stomach. You’ll vomit, but then you’ll feel so much better. We’ll get that white magic out of you before it poisons you any further.”

  She’s whispering to me in that sing-song way that mothers use with very small children, and it’s annoying the shit out of me. She sees the anger flashing in my eyes, and she has the gall to laugh.

  Oh, yes. This is Naamah, all right. I knew it the day I found her slicing the throat of that wolf shifter at my altar. Only my Naamah would be so bold, and so self-sacrificing. There was a famine at the time, not uncommon once Namaah lost her immortality, and she had foolishly gone to the Storyteller for help. As usual, he turned a deaf ear, caring nothing for what was happening in the moment, his attention riveted instead on his grand plan… whatever the fuck that turns out to be. Esmeralda begged for an end to the famine, because her entire coven was suffering, and when the Storyteller failed her, she did as she should have done in the first place—she turned to me.