Page 36 of Unholy Bond
I would make sure of it.
Chapter 19: Lucifer
My chambers smelled of Lilith. Even with the doors barred and the wards primed to sterilize every trace of the Void, she clung to the stones, electric, the way the aftershocks of an orgy hang in the sheets for weeks. I’d had every inch of the suite scoured. Fresh demon pelts on the floor, the obsidian desk polished to a mirror, the basin on the altar purged of the last scrying’s residue. Still, nothing drowned the smell. She was everywhere.
I flexed my claws and stared at the basin, its lip wide enough to serve a dozen sacrifices. The bowl brimmed with quicksilver and charged blood, both still steaming from the last batch ofdefectors I’d had pulped for precisely this reason. Every drop was meant to catch her in the act, to show me Lilith’s face or at least a ripple of her shadow as she moved through my palace. But the liquid only shivered and clouded, blank as the mind of a human accountant.
I swept my hands over the basin, muttering the old words, the ones God was supposed to have forgotten. The surface stretched tight, then shuddered and collapsed, vapor gushing up to freeze the air to instant winter. The cold snapped at my breath and rimed my horns with blue frost. Every part of me went rigid, muscle, cock, even the pulse of rage in my spine, and I slammed a fist onto the rim. The stone split, spiderweb cracks racing to the floor.
Behind me, something whimpered. A lesser demon, all teeth and hunched shoulders, flinched into the corner, claws digging tracks into the pelt. I hadn’t even registered it until the whimper caught in its throat, but now the sound tunneled into my skull, pure and raw as panic.
“She’s hiding from me,” I said.
The minion tried to flatten itself, which is never a good look for something with a carapace and four eyes. “Majesty, I—”
“Shut up.” I gestured, and it slunk from the room. The rage inside me funneled and crystalized, everything narrowing to a single, clean urge.
I stalked to the door, flinging it open with enough force to rip the hinges from the frame. The air outside was hotter, thrumming with the tension of a bureaucracy one breath away from open rebellion. I inhaled, savoring the stink of fear, then bellowed down the corridor: “Bring her to the grand hall. Now.”
No sooner had the last syllable echoed than a scuffle broke out in the distance. My guards moved fast, but even faster were the rumor-mongers and courtiers, each one desperate to see what punishment I’d cook up for my favorite mistress.
I waited at the head of the grand hall, perched on a throne carved from a single block of obsidian, the arms inlaid with teeth and bones from previous tenants. The court filled in waves. First the bureaucrats, next, the soldiers, their faces stone but eyes hot; last, the demons, the children of Lilith, among others, and me. The walls stretched up and up, ribbed with iron chains that hung from the rafters like a promise of strangulation. Light came from torches that bled blue fire, painting every face in a mask of judgment.
The guards dragged her in.
Her wrists were bound, her ankles too, but she walked upright, the only one in the room not trying to shrink from my gaze.
I let her reach the dais before speaking. “You think you can hide from me?”
She stopped, the chains pooling at her feet, and looked straight ahead. Her jaw set, lips pressed so tight the blood drained out, but her eyes stayed on me, and there was something new there, a kind of emptiness that shivered the torches. I savored the silence that followed, a perfect hush, then rose from the throne. Every movement drew the crowd tighter, the whole room leaning forward.
I circled her once, then twice, making sure everyone could see the pattern of bruises already blooming on her arms and thighs. The work of amateurs. I’d do better.
“I’ve tolerated your disobedience,” I said, voice pitched for the back of the hall. “I’ve even admired it. But this,” I gestured tothe black veins that laced her forearms, thicker than yesterday, pulsing with the Void’s own heartbeat. “This is corruption.”
I let that sink in. Even the ones who owed her their lives shrank back, unwilling to side with a traitor to the cause, even in their own minds.
She shrugged, the motion slow, mocking. “You made me this way.”
That got a rumble from the crowd, half laughter, half outrage. I waited for the echo to die, then turned to the guards. “Bring her child.”
A side door opened, and two soldiers dragged in the offspring: winged, scaled, and meaner than any of its siblings, but still her child in all the ways that mattered. It had her eyes, which always made me want to smash them out, but its mouth was mine. They chained it to a post in the center of the hall, the links so tight they bit into its scales. It struggled, but not much. Defiant.
I took a whip from the nearest guard. The leather was new, studded with barbs along the length, each one inscribed with my name. I cracked it once on the floor, the sound echoing off the stone, then raised it high.
“If pain is the only language you understand, I’ll speak it fluently,” I said.
The first strike split the scales on the demon’s back. Black blood fanned out in a slow arc, spattering the marble and the boots of the nearest guards. He didn’t scream at first, but after the second lash, the sound started, low and ragged, rising in pitch until it filled the room with something close to music. I watched Lilith’s face after every strike, waiting for the moment she’d break, waiting for a shudder, a plea, a collapse.
She never did. If anything, each lash made her stand straighter. Her fingers curled in, the nails biting into her palms until red ran down her wrists to mix with the black. At the seventh strike, her eyes met mine, and I saw the Void in them, swirling and hungry, but not in control. Not yet.
The crowd watched, spellbound. Some licked their lips, others hid their faces, but none dared look away.
At ten lashes, I stopped. The demon slumped forward, a pool of blood forming under its claws. I dropped the whip and gestured for the guards to take it away.
I knelt beside Lilith, close enough to smell her sweat and the chemical tang of the Void at work. “Did you learn anything?”
She turned, slow and deliberate, and spat blood on the floor. “Yeah. You’re running out of ideas.”
