Page 17 of Hell Bound

The aches and pains I’d accrued during my trip to Hell disappeared, and even the lingering throb in my scalp went away as soon as I dipped my head below the water.

As Hana began to massage my feet, I struggled to keep my eyes open. I hadn’t realized how much they ached until her thumbs had started kneading the balls.

“Are massages really part of your job?” Surely there was someone who was a dedicated masseuse in a place like this.

“It’s a kindness. I simply wanted to do something nice before your evening with the king.”

All the tension that melted away returned in an instant.

I said nothing else, but my eyes stayed trained on that pocket that held the key to my freedom.

Chapter4

Lucifer

It killed me to walk away from Lilith, locking her in that empty suite alone. Yet how could I stay?

I couldn’t.

Not unless I wanted to do something we’d both regret. Hell forbid Asmodeus found out. My inability to fight what I felt for her had led to me losing her once. I couldn’t send her to her next grave hating me for failing her again.

I stalked away from her door before her handmaidens arrived, taking a long dark hall to a set of stairs that was kept carefully hidden behind a statue of a succubus.

Her sightless eyes seemed to watch me as I pressed a button embedded in her back.

It always bothered me how the statue looked exactly like a colorless Lilith.

Fuck, for all I knew, she was one of Lilith’s previous incarnations, forever frozen in stone.

The door slid open, revealing spiral stairs that led downwards, and Deasley on his way up.

He stopped as soon as he saw me, his brown eyes wide, dark hair still messy and uncombed. “Commander? I thought you’d be a while...”

I hid a grimace, clenching my jaw. In days past, yeah, I would’ve been awhile.

The new Lily wanted nothing to do with me.

“I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that,” I said roughly, pushing past him as the hidden door slid shut behind me.

I drew in a long inhale, tasting the air for intruders; only Deasley’s smell filled the stairwell. The scent of the maids had long faded.

As far as I knew—and I’d gone over every last inch of this damn stairwell, because it was one of two ways I used to visit Lilith in secret—it was clean of Asmodeus’s spies.

“She doesn’t remember anything.” The words were out before I could stop them.

Deasley caught up as I descended the stairs in a fury, falling in a half-step behind my left shoulder. “But… the core of the spell failed. He found her. And she’s always remembered things when she’s come back before, right?”

He let his voice peter out. Everyone had witnessed Lilith’s previous lives, but nobody ever really spoke of them out loud.

Except for Asmodeus. He didn’t want to just speak of them, he actively ensured the evidence was displayed like a trophy for the rest of the court.

Hence the statue, the graveyard, the lake of blood.

A savage show of his power, but to me, it only displayed his cruelty.

I shrugged, even though I wanted to unleash my riled emotions by putting my fist through the stone wall. From experience, I knew that would only break my bones, and that was healing time I couldn’t afford.

Still, the temptation remained.

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