Molten heat lit me up with the lightest of touches from him. He was still so beautiful it hurt.
He leaned down, pressing his hot lips against my neck. As he dragged his teeth an inch across my throat, I arched my neck, giving in to the rush of pleasure.
With a quiet growl, he reached for my knickers, and the water rushed over me as he pulled them off, stripping me naked. Then, he gazed down at me, a reverent look on his face.
His irises had gone dark. “Maybe I enjoy my dark side more than I should.”
Heat from his body enveloped me, and the warming pool water lapped at me. With his high cheekbones and darkening eyes, his unearthly beauty entranced me.
“Maybe I do, too,” I whispered.
He leaned down, murmuring into my throat. “I thought becoming a demon was the worst possible thing that could happen, but I misjudged demons. I misjudged Lilith. I think I could live as a monster. I don’t think I could live without you.”
His words made warmth bloom in my heart, and I ran my hand down his muscled chest. “I like your demon side. But do you have any idea what you will do when you no longer lead the angels? Will they hunt you?”
“I will not live my life like a hunted animal, and neither will you.” Droplets of water gleamed on his golden skin and beaded in his long, black eyelashes like tiny jewels. “We will find a way to make peace with the Fallen, or we will leave. I won’t let them anywhere near you if they mean you harm.”
A drop of water ran down my neck, and he followed it with his fingertip. “Maybe I’ll build a new castle, and it will have a balcony like this, a pool of water that blends into the sky. It could overlook the sea.”
“Now that sounds amazing.” The sun was starting to dip lower toward the tree line, and long fingers of red and purple stretched across the horizon.
He moved in closer, his length pressed firmly against me. “And in this pool overlooking the sea, you will be completely naked at all times. It will be the rule.”
The sensual timbre in his words sent a slow heat moving up my belly, and I wrapped my legs around him. My thighs clenched around his waist, my body growing excruciatingly aroused. The more turned on I got, the more the water kissing my skin, lapping at my nipples, started to feel like torture. An erotic ache built inside me.
Samael’s hand slid up my wet back, and he threaded his fingers into my hair. He pulled my head back, dominating me, his arousal pressing against my wet entrance.
I reached behind him, pulling him into me until he filled me completely. He thrust hard, kissing my neck as he did. He raised his face to mine, his mouth crashing against me. We were hungry for each other, frantic. I wanted him faster, deeper. He was staring into my eyes as I shuddered beneath him, like he was trying to memorize every breath and gasp, like he was learning exactly what drove me the most insane with lust.
I started to moan, and just when I was about to come—he stopped.
“Samael!” I gasped. “What are you doing?”
He leaned down, whispering into my neck. “I need to hear that I’m not the hat maker’s mannequin.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Wow. Fine. You are not a hat maker’s mannequin. Keep fucking me please.”
“Good girl.” He slammed into me again—once, twice—and I came almost immediately, our climaxes in perfect union. My cries echoed off the stone walls, and I collapsed against him.
Catching my breath, I whispered, “The fragile ego on angels. Honestly.” But I was smiling deeply, completely content.
He lifted my chin and started to lean in to kiss me, but as he did, the sound of voices echoed from the cave nearby.
Awkward.
I unwrapped my legs from him, and covered my breasts with my hands. I turned to see Thura and Emma moving through the shadows on the ridge that lined the side of the cave.
“You made it warm enough to swim!” shouted Thura. “Bloody perfect.”
Emma stared at us, folding her arms. She glared at Samael. “Not that it’s any of my business, but aren’t you getting married in a week? To a different person?”
Samael was using my body to shield his. “Not anymore.”
Emma let out a huge sigh. “Oh thank God. Harlow annoyed the living shit out of me while you were gone. She’s demanding that we redecorate the rooms with white lace and diamonds everywhere. Does she think I have tons of diamonds on hand? Like I want to embroider them into the pillows? Are you kidding me?” She cast a glance at the empty pot of cheese. “Lila, have you just been eating melted cheese all day?”
I nodded solemnly. “I was doing it for the cause.”
Emma rolled her eyes. “Okay. Will you two get out of there now and get dressed? This is horrible. It’s like catching your parents in the act.” She shuddered. “I have some information for you, Samael. But Lila’s not supposed to hear it, is she?”
Samael cleared his throat. “I just need another minute.”
Samael and Emma snuck off out of my hearing range to discuss the plans for the attack.
And while they were coming up with that, I was left to get dressed. After drying myself off, I slipped into my fighting clothes—a pair of thick leather trousers, and a sleek black shirt. I had a tight-fitting jacket that functioned as leather armor, but with fashionable shoulder puffs built into it. I quite liked this outfit.
On top of that I had two belts to sling over my waist, crisscrossing, with knives. This didn't really serve much of a function, because my weapons were plants. Still, it looked cool, and sometimes that was important.
I definitely owed Thura more than just a hot pool.
When I was fully dressed, I stood by the stony ridge alongside the pool, and watched the water trickle down. Tonight, we would face the Free Men. And this would be a fight to the death. If we won, I could be free of the people trying to control my mind.
If we lost …
Well I didn’t really want to think about what would happen if we lost.
I shivered, imagining how it would go if I ran into Alice again. I wanted to hear from her own lips exactly what she had to say for herself. I supposed some part of me was still hoping there would be a reasonable explanation for all this.
The other part of me wondered if she was the Baron.
As my mood darkened, Samael emerged from the shadows. Like me, he was dressed in leather pants and the thick jacket.
“Where did Emma go?” I asked.
“I told her to return to the Iron Fortress. The mission is too dangerous for her.”
I arched an eyebrow. “You’re not worried about me being in danger?”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Oh, you will be the most dangerous thing there.”
“Samael,” I asked, “what’s your relationship to Emma? You said you trust her no matter what. You seem very sure that she is not your traitor.”
His brow furrowed, and he crossed to me. “I’ve known her since she was a little girl. Her father was an angel, and her mother was mortal. Both of her parents were murdered by the predecessors of the Free Men. We found her father dead in the Dark River with his wings cut off, his throat slit. Her mother was hanged from a lamppost. She loathes the Free Men. It’s the same reason I couldn’t seriously suspect Sourial.”
My heart squeezed. I had a lump in my throat, and it occurred to me exactly how much we needed this to work. Not just for my sake, not just for Lilith’s—but because of the danger the Free Men posed to innocent people if we failed.
I straightened. “Well, let’s go kill these evil fuckers then, shall we?”
Lila
Soaring under a dark night sky, I followed behind Samael. The wind rushed through my feathers and hair. The farther we flew, the colder it got. We were no longer ensconced in Lilith’s warm magic in the Weald.
The route Samael was taking was mostly forest and fields—places that would be difficult to recognize in the dark.
I didn’t know much, except that Samael
was flying with an enormous pack on his back, and whatever he was keeping in there would help us overtake the Free Men. He wasn’t calling for his army, which meant he wanted the secrecy of a small mission.
My wings beat the air, taking me over cozy little villages, where crooked homes crowded around winding lanes. Orange lights dappled the landscape. We glided over farms, and the Bryne River that moved ever northward through the countryside.
At last, I saw the golden stone walls of Belial, shining like a jewel in the night—the city named after the ancient university.
Imagine all that knowledge in those walls. I could walk through the ancient halls of Belial, soaking in the world’s mysteries. The books, the secrets. The magic … With that knowledge at my fingertips, I could rule all of Albia as the Iron Queen. Once an illiterate street urchin who crawled from the dirt, I’d be the greatest demon queen—
I blinked, then shook my head. Bloody hell. That wasn’t good, was it? The book was calling to me more strongly than ever. No longer a tug, it was a hunger that gripped me. Emptiness gnawed at my stomach.
The feel of the cold wind helped me to recenter my thoughts.
Outside the city gates, villages spread out, rolling down the hill. Little tenements and homes huddled around winding dirt roads. Winter still frosted the air here, and snow dusted the steep-peaked rooftops and cobblestone streets.
Hundreds of years ago, those neighborhoods would have been the homes of those with diseases, the prostitutes, or people whose jobs involved shoveling shit from the street.
I didn’t think it had gotten much nicer since then.
As we flew closer, my fingernails pierced my palms. We weren’t just going to fly over the city walls, were we? They’d be waiting for us there. They’d shoot Samael down with poison arrows in a heartbeat.
We were still a quarter mile away, but even from here I could smell the city rising to meet us—the sewage, the sweat of people living closely together, the food cooking in fireplaces. And with my sharpened demon vision, I could see the icicles hanging from windowsills, and the flecks of orange candles in the windows. So much like the home I’d once shared with Alice.
Before we swooped over the farthest edge of these tenements, Samael turned to me, the icy wind rustling his hair. “I need you to retract your wings, and shut your eyes. And trust me.”
“What?” That sounded like suicide. Retract my wings? Plummet to the earth?
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
“I guess?”
“Good enough. Now!”
I closed my eyes, and a shiver of panic ran through me as I forced my wings to retract, mid-air. The panic only intensified as I started to drop through the frigid night, but it was only for a single heartbeat, and then Samael’s powerful arms wrapped around me.
Ah. Presumably through my eyes, they would see us approaching the city. They’d be looking for us in the sky. But now, we’d be taking another route.
I felt the force of the wind slow, and the dip in my stomach told me we were gliding down to a landing. Snowflakes hit my cheeks as we touched down on the earth, and I slid down Samael’s body, careful to keep my eyes closed.
Samael leaned in, whispering in my ear. “When the time comes, I will tell you what to do.”
“I look forward to knowing what the fuck is happening,” I whispered back.
He grabbed my shoulders, and guided me to face the other way.
The next thing I knew he was blindfolding me. This wasn't my ideal scenario for entering a battle with my worst enemies, but unfortunately the situation did call for it. When he had tied it firmly around the back of my head, he took me by the hand, and started leading me over icy cobblestones. The air smelled thickly of rubbish and cooking meat, a bit of urine underneath. Nothing I wasn’t used to.
It was pretty quiet out here, with only the sound of a drunk person singing a few streets away, and the wind banging a shutter opened and closed. Hand in hand with Samael, I walked until even those sounds faded away. Now, it was just our footsteps, just our breaths. I nearly stumbled as we went down a set of stairs. So we were taking an underground route.
Many of Albia’s oldest cities had ancient tunnels, and this city was no exception. I’d never understood where they’d come from, but I thought some of them were wine cellars. Others existed because the cities had been built over so many times, former homes or palaces of long-forgotten eras. There were literally ancient castles buried under the ground.
Whatever the case, I wanted to get through this as fast as possible, and I wanted to get back to Dovren. Samael had given me a mental picture of what our lives could be like—a hidden castle somewhere, a private pool, just him and me. I couldn’t think of anything better.
After we’d been walking for about ten minutes, I felt Samael’s hand tug me to a stop. Then, I heard the sound of something like metal scraping against stone above me, and the shifting of his backpack. A match strike broke the silence, and then the air filled with smoke so thick I was coughing into my arm. Had he lit something on fire?
“Holy shit.” I coughed. “What are you doing?”
“It’s okay,” Samael said quietly. I thought I heard the twang of a bowstring, then another, and another. I kept coughing into my arm as acrid smoke filled the tunnel. At last, he pulled the blindfold off me. Then he wrapped it around my nose and mouth as a protective mask.
“Smoke bombs,” he said. “They won’t see us coming at all.”
I looked up at an enormous cloud of smoke above me. We were in a tunnel with a small opening above us, and over that it looked like the city was on fire. “Did you light Belial on fire?” I asked through more coughs.
“I would have lit the entire city on fire, but I had a feeling you might be annoyed about it, since you get attached to old cities. In any case, Emma saw their archers were looking for us to come from the sky. They won’t be looking for us on the ground, and the smoke will obscure us completely. When I lift you up out of here, find the next street to the right. We run for about a quarter mile until we get to the round library. We’ll break down the door. I will try to kill everyone in there, and you use your connection to the book to find it.”
“Got it,” I said.
He grabbed me around the waist, and lifted me up through the opening. I crawled out, my elbows on the stones. Immediately the uncontrollable hunger hollowed out my stomach. I had to get to that book.
Even if Samael hadn’t told me where it was, I would have known exactly where to go. I started running fast, and I heard Samael right behind me. A street jutted off to my right. Through the billows of smoke I could hardly see the stone buildings that lined either side of the road, but down to my marrow I could feel the book was in that direction.
We ran side by side, coughing a little in the smoke.
Chaos reigned in the streets, which must’ve been part of Samael’s plan. People were running out their doors, screaming about fire. Samael had shot smoking arrows all over the roads, and the air reeked of burning pine trees.
It was only another few minutes before we reached the library, a tall circular building rising from the smoke.
And now, I was starving for the knowledge inside.
Ravenous.
I could only hope that I’d cling to my sanity long enough to free myself from its lure.
Samael kicked in the door, and I found myself rushing inside, desperate to get my hands on it.
Samael
I charged into the library by Lila’s side.
It was an enormous circular hall, about a hundred feet across, walls lined with books and desks. An upper story with a curved balcony meant I’d need to look out for archers.
Around a dozen men turned to stare at us as we rushed in, their shouts echoing off the ceiling. Sourial and Oswald were not among them. Nor did I see any guns, which was good news. Guns were exceedingly hard to find in Albia, but occasionally someone had one.
I’d simply take them down, one at a time. With the angel of dea
th and Lilith working together, it seemed hard to believe we could lose.
The first man to run for me brandished a sword.
Normally, I’d have had my own sword drawn, but there was hardly any challenge in that. As he slashed for me, I dodged out of the way, gripping his arms. I threw him to the ground, so hard his body cracked the stone.
Satisfying.
Another armed man ran for me, but as he reached me, I dodged and slammed my fist hard into his face. He flew back onto the flagstones, and I lunged forward to kick him in the ribs.
When I heard the footfalls behind me, I whirled to see someone swinging a sword, and I managed to duck at the last moment. I shot up again, within close range, and grabbed him by the throat, lifting him in the air. When I threw his body to the ground, blood pooled from his cracked skull.
But there were already reinforcements pouring in from a stairwell, so it seemed I’d found my challenge.
As I drew Asmodai, my blade sang against the sheath. The urge to end this mess pounded in my blood, more intoxicating than ever before. As the first swordsman reached me, I lunged forward and slashed for his chest, cutting through leather and skin. I caught a glimpse of an arrow heading for me, and lifted my blade to block it.
Two more men were charging for me, and I moved to meet them with a speed they couldn’t match. A thrust of my sword, a pivot and a slash. Blood arced through the air, and I blocked the next arrow.
Footsteps sounded behind me, and I spun, carving Asmodai through someone’s ribs, slicing him in half.
Another arrow loosed—another one blocked.
I could feel the fear in the room now, smell their desire to retreat. To run.
So far, I’d been defending, but now I would go on the attack. Blood dripped off Asmodai onto the floor, and I felt as if her steel were thirsty for more. A lanky man with shaggy red hair broke into a run. But he wasn’t moving for me—he was trying to get to the door.
I ended his life before he could escape, with a thrust of my sword through his chest. Who knew if he was running to find reinforcements?
Possessed (Hades Castle Trilogy Book 3) Page 13
