For the Hell of It (Razing Hell Book 1)

by Cate Corvin

  His thighs flexed, and he made a primal sound when he came. I was still clamped tight around him when he released himself, stroking my clit to draw out the orgasm.

  He pushed in and out several more times until I’d stopped shaking and felt more like a puddle of jelly under him.

  I panted hard, staring at the expanse of bedding in front of my face. His silvery strands mixed with my violet ones, but his face was still hidden, his breath touching my neck.

  “Tascius,” I whispered. My voice was hoarse from the sounds I’d made while he fucked me.

  He sighed, stirring my hair. “Melisande.” His own whisper was just as raspy.

  Warmth filled my limbs, along with a languid, bone-deep tiredness. My friend was back. I was in his arms, in his bed, and he was alive and well and not dead at a chimera’s paws. I couldn’t even be angry with him for throwing the fight, not with the relief I felt.

  Tascius rose to all fours and I rolled over, tugging him down on top of me. He settled carefully between my legs so he wouldn’t crush me or my wings, pillowed his head on my shoulder, and ran his fingers down the contours of my stomach.

  I buried my fingers in his hair, still slightly panting. An aftershock of the orgasm rippled through me when I felt the hard muscles of his stomach pressed against my clit.

  “I missed you, friend,” I said, touching him everywhere I could reach. I found the scarred ridges on his back and followed them with my fingertips until I could reach no further. “I was afraid…”

  He didn’t laugh, but I felt him snort a little breath of air against me. “You never have to be afraid.”

  “You could’ve at least warned me of what you were going to do.”

  Tascius raised his head, looking back at me with eyes that were back to their normal shade of midnight blue. “I missed you too, friend.”

  I touched his lips, and he laid his head back down. I’d never been in an embrace as comforting as this one.

  “Was it the pit of dungeons and torture devices you anticipated?”

  Neither of us seemed inclined to speak above a whisper, like talking loudly would break some bubble of absolute peace that had formed around us.

  “No. It was…” I thought, almost grimacing when I came to my conclusion. “It was beautiful there, actually.”

  “I’ve heard that.”

  He rested his hand against my ribs, feeling my breath rise and fall. I found myself toying with his braid, running the edge of my black feather along his arm. “You’re still wearing my gift.”

  “Well, it was a gift, so you can’t have it back.” I felt Tascius’s cheek move when he smiled.

  I examined the velvety black vanes. “Belial seems to be under the impression that my giving you a feather means something… significant.”

  Tascius rose up on his elbow, his smile fading. A grave expression took its place. I’d never seen his eyes so guarded. “Was it not a mating gift?”

  Shock stole my words away.

  A mating gift?

  “Angels give a feather to their chosen mates to mark them,” he said, reading the apprehension in my face. “You didn’t know this?”

  “I…” It was suddenly extremely clear why Belial had been furious about the gift, and exactly what he meant by how little Gabriel had taught me. “No. I didn’t know that.”

  I’d seen angels wearing the feathers of others in Heaven, but Gabriel didn’t allow choirs to mingle with the general populace. I’d always thought it was more of an affectation than anything else.

  “We didn’t find mates, exactly. If Gabriel decided to retire someone from the battlefield for a breeding cycle, they were permitted to apply for a procreation partner. The Choir of Creation supervised all applications, and tried to pair the best bloodlines together for better chances of strong offspring. They’re paired for life after they’re matched.”

  So the feathers were to mark paired mates. Now I understood why. I’d been so disinterested in the idea of breeding for an archangel that I’d never wondered about the reason behind the feathers.

  Tascius’s expression had turned to revulsion. “They let someone else choose for you? Based on paperwork? That’s the most barbaric fucking thing I’ve ever heard, and I live in a barbaric fucking place.”

  “It’s to keep the bloodlines strong,” I started to argue, but the words died.

  I’d always found a way out of the mandatory breeding cycles, whether it was volunteering for the grunt-work or convincing the Choir Officers that I needed to undergo training for a new weapon.

  The idea of being assigned a procreation partner had filled me with visceral disgust, even though the sin of lust wasn’t proscribed during the cycles.

  “You were never assigned someone, were you?” Tascius’s blue eyes bored through me.

  “No,” I said shortly. “I never applied for a permit.”

  A beat passed, and he reached for the feather in his braid. “You didn’t know. Here.” He started to tug it out of his braid, but the little barbs in the shaft clung to his hair.

  I wrapped my hand around his, stopping him. “I want you to keep it.”

  “Friend, everyone who sees this will believe that you chose me as a mate.” His veiled gaze drifted back to my face.

  “I don’t give a single fuck what anyone thinks.” Except Belial. “I gave it to you. It’s yours. Wear it in the arena and stop throwing your damn fights.”

  He dropped the braid, leaving the feather intact, and laced his fingers through mine. “I can’t do that, Melisande.” The sadness I’d seen in his eyes before was in his words now.

  “Will you tell me why?” I asked as he closed the gap between us.

  He just kissed me and pulled me in close, his head resting on my shoulder. After his last fight and fucking the darkness out of his system, he seemed exhausted.

  I felt his breaths even out as he fell asleep, and kept my fingers curled in his hair, toying with the feather.

  I’d never wanted a procreation partner. I’d never wanted to be assigned someone in such a cold, uncaring way, even if it would’ve allowed me to explore true lust without repercussions.

  We’d been taught that it was a prime sin, abhorrent in the eyes of God.

  But lying in Tascius’s arms, my entire body wrung out, I couldn’t see how something that brought so much bliss could be a crime.

  Especially if I’d chosen him for myself.

  19

  Melisande

  When I woke up tangled in a pile of silky sheets, I realized I was alone. I ran my hand over the slight dimple in the mattress where Tascius had been lying next to me. The sheets were still warm.

  Instead of getting up, I flopped onto my back, letting my wings stretch their full span, and stared up at the dark ceiling overhead.

  I’d sinned of my own accord, but despite a slight soreness, I didn’t feel any different.

  I didn’t feel damned.

  A frown tugged at my mouth. I’d always been vaguely under the impression I’d burst into flame if I knowingly committed a sin, but maybe the fall had already taken care of that. My halo was long gone, and my wings couldn’t be scorched any blacker.

  I realized I felt… happy.

  It was an odd sensation, being happy without being on the battlefield. I’d always thought that was where I found the most joy, but this was different, the sort of happiness that had bled into my bones and wouldn’t abandon me once I’d put down my weapons.

  Still, I was determined to win my freedom, and I wanted Tascius to come with me, if he was willing.

  I forced myself out of bed and used his shower, then dressed myself in a spare pair of pants and shirts I’d found in the bottom of his dresser. My clothes were a shredded ruin that I gathered before slipping out of his door.

  The common room was empty except for the new occupant: Razorclaw, the gray-feathered harpy I’d seen before Azazel had taken me. She was sitting cross-legged in front of the fireplace, sharpening an impressive collection of knives. I
raised a hand as I passed, and she nodded her head.

  Shocking. She must’ve known I’d already killed one of her kin from the Fields of Asphodel. I hadn’t expected something as pleasant as a nod.

  I nearly jumped out of my skin when I opened my door and the moon-pale features of Vyra greeted me, almost nose to nose.

  “You’re back,” she said brightly. “Your nail polish is chipping.”

  I didn’t even bother to sigh. The succubus was going to do what she wanted, no matter how I felt about it.

  Her shades slicked a metallic gold lacquer over my nails and Vyra pulled me into a new training outfit while they dried. This one had a short, sheer skirt over the tight pants, and the bra was strappy, winding around my shoulders and sides.

  “Is the lack of coverage really necessary?” I asked, looking down at my once-again bare stomach.

  “You might as well ask yourself if water is wet.” Vyra braided my hair swiftly, starting at my hairline and moving backwards. She used the silver claw sheaths covering her fingers as dexterously as bare hands.

  I barely escaped before she tried putting eyeliner on me. There was absolutely no need for full-on war paint to go train and interrogate Tascius.

  The training rooms were full today. Lady Savage and Blind Luck were playing with throwing daggers in the front rooms. A buzzing whirr filled my ears as I passed, and something silver shot in front of my face and embedded itself in the padded wall to my left.

  “Let me guess.” I glanced from the still-vibrating dagger hilt to Lady Savage’s face. “You hit exactly where you meant to.”

  Her lip curled in irritation that I hadn’t given her the proper opening. “I missed,” she said, her voice thick.

  I plucked the dagger out of the wall and weighed it in my palm. “Well, your aim is shit.” My well-trained muscles moved in unison, balancing my weight as I threw the dagger back.

  Lady Savage jerked aside, but the blade embedded itself in her practice dummy’s face, right between its eyes.

  “Have a nice day,” I said, giving her a fake-ass smile, and kept walking. Both fighters bristled, but remained where they were, which meant Tascius was definitely in here.

  I heard him before I saw him. The rear training rooms were twisty and dark, but the soft glow of lights drew me like a moth, along with the sound of Tascius’s steady breathing and the hollow thud of a blade against wood.

  I leaned against the door frame, watching him run himself through his paces. He held the massive double-bladed axe easily, though the muscles in his bare torso and back stood out like cords from the weight.

  Despite the obvious strain, he didn’t huff or make noise when he whirled it overhead and buried it in a dummy’s face, cleaving away half the wooden skull.

  There was no good reason he should still be here. He could’ve killed that chimera in seconds if he’d really wanted to.

  I started a slow clap and he wiped his forehead on his arm, dropping the axe. It hit the floor, along with half the dummy. “What did that poor thing ever do to you?” I asked.

  “It looked at me wrong.” His chest was rising and falling in an incredibly mesmerizing way. Midnight eyes glittered as they looked me over. His white hair was pulled back in a long ponytail, my feather lost in the strands like a smear of ink.

  “You seem to have a lot of feuds with the mannequins in here.”

  I pushed off the wall and walked forward, stopping only when my breasts just pushed against his abs, and looked up. I rose onto my tiptoes to press a kiss against the corner of his mouth, shivering when large hands wrapped around my upper arms.

  “Tascius… why did you throw the last fight? Why are you so determined to stay here forever?”

  His mouth twisted in that way he had when he didn’t want to tell me something. “You know I’m Nephilim. There’s no way to hide it. How many of my kind have you seen?”

  I thought as his fingers trailed down to my hands. “You, and… Yraceli. That’s it. What you are has nothing to do with it. I know if you wanted to, you could leave here and Belial wouldn’t own you anymore-”

  “It has everything to do with it,” he interrupted. “Everything.”

  He flipped my hands over, exposing the healed burns on my right palm. He touched the slightly-raised diamonds etched into my flesh. “I’ll make you a deal, friend. Tell me what gave you these scars, and why you fell, and I’ll tell you why I’m here, and why I won’t go.”

  “I asked first.” I raised my chin and took a deep breath. “But it’s a deal.”

  Tascius smiled, but it didn’t quite touch his eyes. He picked me up and carried me to the bench in the corner, straddling the wide boards and seating me in his lap.

  I prayed Belial’s walls didn’t have ears when it was my turn.

  “You know what we are,” he said after a long silence. “The Nephilim. We’re the children of angels and demons and humanity. Twisted, fucked-up by-blows, the giants of the earth.”

  I nodded, sinking against him and absorbing his warmth, although ‘fucked-up’ was the last adjective I’d use to describe Tascius.

  “Yraceli and I are alike in some ways.” He played with my fingers while he spoke, sounding like he was speaking from a distance. “The Nephilim are powerful, deadly… destructive. Even the might of Hell struggled to contain us, so after the Apocalypse, Satan gathered all the Nephilim and herded them across the river Styx. We were sealed inside Acheron, a city built solely to contain my kind. A prison.”

  “You lived there once?” I asked. Tascius nodded, a stray lock of white hair spilling across my shoulder. I wrapped the strand around my finger as he spoke.

  “The outside of Acheron is dangerous at best. The inside is… pure chaos. And that is where Yraceli and I differ. Most of the Nephilim are like her: twisted or deformed in some way, their bloodlines creating monstrous creatures. But some of us were born from higher demons or angels. We don’t have the mutations, and we’re considered blood-traitors to the rest of the Nephilim.”

  “That makes no sense. You can’t choose your parentage.” Tascius stroked my hair, forcing me to sit back against him with an arm around my waist.

  “There are very few higher Nephilim left alive. The mutated ones took over power as soon as Acheron was sealed and set the laws. If a child is born ‘beautiful’, they call it a crime, and the child is either forced into slavery or killed.” His fingers touched my lips, silencing the inevitable outburst. “My mother was Nephilim herself. All I know of my father is that he was a higher angel. The… implications of my paternity were enough to condemn both of us to death, and she never spoke of him.”

  My limbs tensed as he spoke. If she’d been that afraid, then Tascius’s father might have been one of the archangels.

  The concept was horrifying and infuriating in equal measure, if one of the archangels had defied God’s orders while torturing us into complying with the same…

  “I had wings once,” he said, his voice becoming hoarse. “I had white, feathered wings, but my father never came for me. My mother kept me locked in a cage in our house to prevent me from flying. If the other Nephilim had seen, there would be no slavery for me. They would’ve torn me apart in the center of the city. Eventually I grew too large for the little cage, and she had no choice but to let me out.”

  A churning ball of nausea formed in my stomach as he spoke. I swallowed the bitter taste in my throat.

  “She put me to sleep one night shortly after that. She gave me medicine to help me sleep, told me I was sick, even though I felt fine. When I woke up, I was in the worst agony I’d ever felt. I’d never imagined there could be that much pain in the world. And my wings were gone.”

  His hands had stilled, lead bricks covering my fingers. “Sawing them away saved my life from the other Nephilim, but for whatever reason, she couldn’t bring herself to carve up my face.” He snorted. “I would’ve given my face before my wings. I can’t be bitter, though, because she gave her life a year later to get me out of Ac
heron. The Nephilim masters were unhappy with my existence, with my unharmed face that was so different from theirs. It was only a matter of time before they came for me. Better to kill the untwisted as children, they thought, than as adults.”

  “What did she do?” My whisper barely made it past my lips.

  “She called on Azazel. One of the Watchers was in Acheron, and she offered him her soul to summon his master. He saw me, mutilated creature that I was then, and thought nothing of it to accept her offer.

  “Azazel came to the outskirts of Acheron. Of course, he knew immediately what she wanted. He didn’t have to take me. The bargain had only been to summon Azazel there in the first place, but he took pity on her and pulled me from her arms. The clearest thing I remember about her was the relief on her face when Azazel promised her he would take me from Acheron.”

  Tascius paused. His fingers tightened on mine, gripping me almost painfully.

  “His Watcher pulled her soul from her body, and Azazel brought me into the sky. I lived in Blackchapel for a short time, but it was obvious I had no magic. Watcherhood was not in my future. But I did have a strong Nephilim bloodline, the battle-rage that we get. He brought me to the Seventh Circle, and while I watched Belial slaughter another Nephilim fighter, for the first time I saw something that called to me deep in my soul.”

  “Azazel had already anticipated that was where I belonged. He entered me into one of the fights that night, even though I had hardly been trained, but when the Nephilim monstrosity inside me took over, my opponent was no match at all.”

  “Azazel knew Belial would practically beg him for you, didn’t he?” I reached up and stroked his tight jaw.

  “He did. I was in the private quarters as they argued over me. Azazel played it like a master, hemming and hawing over whether he wanted to give me up, and Belial ended up owing him a major favor in exchange for me. All of us were happy with the agreement in the end, though I’d learned to hide my feelings long before that point.