Page 124 of Hell Bound

“You try walking a damn mile in my shoes, Hana. I don’t even remember it, but I was bartered away by my own father for power. Stuck with a husband who does everything in his power to make my life miserable, up to andincludingtaking it!” I balled my fists, rage at my situation rising to the surface. “Somehow I managed to escape his fucked up cycle only for him to send literalHell wolvesto drag me back and start it all over again.”

My chest was heaving with my fury, but I wasn’t finished. I needed to get this shit off my chest, and Hana had poked at me one too many times.

“You tell me how I don’t have the right to be selfish? Afterallof that, I deserve to think about myself!”

“That says nothing of who you were before any of that, Lilith! You’ve always had everything handed to you since we were children. You even had a second queendom handed to you, and yes, it turned out to be more curse than blessing, but the rest of us matter, too! Our lives, our safety, our wants and needs. But they’ve always wound up secondary to yours.”

I wasn’t the only one looking to unload some anger. Hana’s pale face had turned bright red with her emotions.

“Do you think I wanted to leave my family and come to the Infernal Court?” she screeched. “Do you think that I want to be in a place where I’m forced to suppress my nature because I refuse to take energy from any of these disgusting excuses for demons?”

That one drew me up short.

I’d never considered that Hana would have been suffering from denying herself sex and intimacy with anyone in the Infernal Court. I understood her refusal, to be touched by them, I’d have chosen the same.

But the drain she must feel. The constant weakness I’d spent my whole life suffering.

“Hana, I…”Sorrywas worthless. It wouldn’t undo her situation, or take back any of the suffering she’d gone through. So I said the only thing that would give either of us any hope. “I’m going to get us out of here, Hana. I don’t know how, yet, but I will.”

Just like mine, her anger faded fast.

“Lil, don’t you think you tried that before? We planned and plotted for years, looking for any escape. As long as those wolves are under Asmodeus’s control, they’ll track us wherever we go. We’d never even make it out of Infernal territory.”

“But what if the wolves were on our side? At least some of them.” No chance Odragir and his cronies would be willing to look the other way, but Lucifer and his wolves were strong enough to fight the rest of them off.

I hope.

“I don’t believe it’ll be enough. Thanks to the power of the Crone, Asmodeus cannot be defeated.”

“There has to be a way. Lucifer is already working on it.” Just saying his name twisted my heart and doubt surged in my chest.

Hana took me in, and I did my best to keep the despair from my face.

I failed.

“You doubted him then, too, you know.”

“I did?”

“When he first declared his love for you, it took so long for you to finally believe him.”

“Was I… was I always like that? Distrusting of people?” I had been while living among humans, that was for damn sure.

“Not as strongly as when we arrived here. You were always wary that people were using you for your position.”

“And I never worried about that with you?”

She grinned. “We’ve been friends since we were still nursing from our mothers. I didn’t know you were a princess, nor did I care.”

I smiled back. I wished I could remember a friendship that deep. Connecting had been near impossible as a human, and now I understood why.

It’s hard to relate when subconsciously, everything in you screamed that you didn’t belong.

“It took you nearly a year after Lucifer first set his sights on you for you to give him a real chance. You’d flirt, and you wanted him like mad, but you wouldn’t let him into your heart.”

It was hard to imagine Lucifer as a flirtatious suitor despite my memory of our first meeting.

He was so severe now, always serious and broody.

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