Page 46 of Hell Bound

She wasn’t there, of course.

I laughed, wiping the back of my arm across my mouth. Did I honestly believe she’d be watching us train, pining over me?

Of course not. The new Lilith didn’t pine for anything but a way back to her human life, and with good reason.

What did I have to offer a demoness like her? After twenty years without her influence, becoming the brutal beast Asmodeus wanted me to be, what was left?

I was not the Lucifer she’d known anymore, and she was no longer my Fire Lily. Those days were dead and gone, and it was time to stop pretending we could resurrect the past.

I left the blood for the circling slaughter-crows to drink and showered in pack quarters, washing Odragir’s drying blood down the drain. By the time I was fit for social interaction, the quarters were empty except for me. The pack must already be in the dining room.

No one wandered the halls as I made my way there, and smug satisfaction filled me when I noted Odragir’s absence upon entering. I dropped into my seat with a glare at Arand and Vibek.

Jovran was on my right, piling his plate with grilled meat. Pypentha sat to my left, shredding a roll and watching the nobles’ dais with furrowed brows, and Deasley seemed to have absolutely no awareness of the fact that he was no longer in Miami.

“—so you hold it like this,” he said to Pypentha, who wasn’t listening, “And you like, click the buttons and you control the guy on the screen! When I get electricity hooked up in the Clubhouse, I could set up the Xbox—”

“Shut up,” Jovran growled. “We’re not playing frivolous human games when there’s work to be done.”

I’d been searching the dais for any sign of Lilith, but she’d yet to arrive. I glanced at Jovran, who was still fiddling with the runes.

Travan’s bones never lied. The last time Jovran was given a sign, he’d nearly been taken out by a sentient fusion of demon flesh and rusted metal that had escaped from the neighboring Reviled Court.

Sometimes it took awhile for whatever he was warning Jovran about to become clear to us, but if he was trying to speak now…

There was blood and destruction on the horizon.

The only question was when.

I was about to get up and go back to practice if Lilith wasn’t going to be here, but the king chose that moment to sweep dramatically to the head of his table. All the nobles and emissaries had been standing nervously around their chairs, awaiting his arrival before sitting.

“I wish to apologize for last night’s festivities, my friends.” He gave them all a winning smile, showing too many teeth. “It seems that in her absence, my wife still hasn’t learned that a female should be seen and not heard.”

He raised a hand, and a stone-faced maid pushed a dark figure forward.

“But we have remedied that, and tonight, she will make amends for her actions.”

Lilith raised her head, her dark hair parting to show the wicked contraption strapped to her face like a cage.

Extended bone-like arms dug into her flesh and left red welts, her lips forced painfully apart by the spiked wedge driven between them.

Despite the tears glistening in her eyes, she kept her head up as she walked forward.

I didn’t realize my claws had gouged massive chunks out of the table until Jovran gripped my arm in an iron fist.

Asmodeus met my eyes, but his smile slipped.

I wore a death’s head grin, imagining the table beneath my hands was his throat. When I found a way through the barriers of his curse, I was going to take that cage and drive it through his skull.

Chapter11

Lilith

Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.

I silently chanted the refrain as I walked into the crowded dining hall again. This time, however, being almost naked was the least of my worries.

Just before I’d been about to walk out for dinner, Hana had opened the door to reveal an old, hunched demon with long spindly fingers wrapped around some kind of contraption.

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