Page 1 of Astaroth

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Chapter One

Briar was bought on a Wednesday.

Heat poured through vents in the ceiling, tempering the indoor climate despite the mid-winter freeze outside. Unfortunately, the artificial air did nothing to dry his sweat-slicked palms. This moment was a reckoning. Regret neatly packaged and expertly tied with a bow. Briar touched the tip of each finger to his thumb, poised beneath a yellow spotlight, center-stage before an audience filled with shadowed silhouettes. Someone’s wrist swayed, tipping away from a sturdy armrest. Two fingers flicked upward.

The auctioneer’s voice sliced through the air. “Anotheroffer! Seven hundred thousand for Briar Wright.”

A bidding war.Briar shifted his weight from one bare foot to the other, hyperaware of the meaty stumps jutting from his shoulder blades. Wings used to perch there, flecked beige and white, hollow-boned and beautifully feathered. The loss of them, and the scars he carried in their place, deemed him an expensive prize.

“Going once, going. . . Oh, right, yes. Another bid. Seven hundred andfifty—”

“One million,” the buyer said.

“My, my,” the auctioneer purred, “what asubstantialoffer. Do we have a higher bid? Let me remind you, Briar Wright is newly expelled, pure as a lily—albeit rebellious—and is available to retain, exclusively, for one decade.”

Briar’s heart climbed into his throat. He tugged at the sheer white linen draped over his lean frame. The garment pooled delicately around his ankles.

Once a year, every year, the Celestial Auction showcased a prime selection of Fallen and Damned, allowing angels who had tumbled from their heavenly pedestals and humans who had landed in purgatory the ability to expedite their hellish consequences. Twenty-four hours ago, Briar Wright had shoved a bone-shard into his mouth, punctured his cheek, and blotted a sallow scroll with bright, crimson blood, signing over his autonomy, his agency, his soul, his. . .everything. He swallowed around a jagged lump.

A century in here, Michael the Chief Prince had said, watching Briar through the slot on his steel cell door.Or a decade out there. Choose wisely.

“Going once, going twice. . . Sold! Briar Wright, Fallen War Angel, to Astaroth, Great Duke of Hell, for the duration of ten human years! Let it be known,” the auctioneer said.

The gentle rap of rich hands filled the auditorium.

Briar stared at the place where Astaroth’s voice had manifested.One million. But the details remained hidden, cloaked by the shadowy stretch of broad shoulders. One of the demon’s polished dress shoes—Derby’s, perhaps—rested on his thigh, bouncing lazily, and he cradled a short, faceted glass in his palm. The scabbed mounds on Briar’s back fluttered helplessly;phantom limbs scurrying to the left and right, urging him to flee.Fly toward the sun, get away, go now.

But the deal was done, Briar had been sold: his fate sealed in blood and disastrously undoable.

“Come here, dear. No, no—here, yes. There we are, no need to be shy.” Delicate hands clasped Briar’s forearms and hauled him to his feet.

Water streaked his freshly polished skin. Remnants of almond scrub and rose oil clung to the bottom of the tub, leaving his body faintly scented. The fair hair on his legs and arms and between his thighs had been carefully sheared, plucked, and waxed. His fingernails manicured. Toenails rounded with an emery board. Eyebrows shaped, chestnut waves clipped and styled, cheeks blotted with moisturizer and pinched until pinkened. He stepped onto gleaming black tile.

The oversized washroom on the second floor of Astaroth’s estate was stocked with an assortment of expensive goods—perfumes, body oils, bath-bombs, fluffy towels, goat-milk soap. As surprising as the extravagance happened to be, Briar hadn’t expected to be guided there by servants. Nor had he anticipated the assisted bath, where a woman with her hair tied into a tight bun, and a simple, white cloth wrapped over her eyes, had attended to him. He twitched away from her when she draped a robe over his shoulders, coaxing his arms through the sleeves.

Briar had given himself over to servitude. He had signed away his rights, his ability to choose, and he’d braced for a piece of his life to be chipped away and repurposed. Would he be a cook? Someone tasked to clean the estate? Or had Briar been purchased to assist in Astaroth’s daily needs—a carrier, a driver,a guard of some sort? In the end, he had no control over where or how he would be received, but his treatment upon arrival stirred paranoia in his gut. A cook would not be primped. Nor would a maid or an assistant.

But a concubine? They would surely be lathered, rinsed and lathered again, and they would be worth a million-dollar bid, too.

He tongued at the inside of his cheek. “Madam, do you have any idea where my belongings have been stored?”

The bath servant snatched his wrist and smoothed lotion over one arm, then the other. “In your chamber, of course. You’ve been measured, correct?”

“Yes, I was measured at the auction.”

“Splendid. Lord Aster requires your attendance at dinner. You’ll be dressed accordingly.”

Aster.

Briar glanced at his reflection in the mirror above the naked, marble countertop. After spending weeks in a dingy cell under Michael’s watchful eyes, Briar couldn’t help feeling a tad bit relieved. He’d bathed before the auction, but here, like this, he appeared far more himself than he had since the High Court heard his plea for mercy and found him guilty anyway.

His chapped lips had been soothed by beeswax balm, and his cheekbones were prominent beneath flushed freckles. He was angular, fine-boned and boyish, with features most angels bred for battle purposefully roughened—an attempt to chase away unwanted softness. He flinched as the servant crouched, attending to his lean legs with floral lotion, and tried not to kick like a mule when she smoothed antiseptic over his cracked heels, sore from too many days spent pacing in a cell.

Briar turned his gaze downward. Concaved pits shadowed the tightly wrapped gauze covering the servant’s eyes, a punishmenthe’d heard about but rarely witnessed. She stood again, smiling pleasantly in her ankle-length dress, and handed him a robe.

“I do wish you would allow me to see to your clippings,” she said, gesturing to a basket filled with ointments and bandages.

“I’m fine, thank you,” he said. Fabric brushed his wounded back, still scabbed and raw where he’d been clipped. Pain aside, he would survive. He clenched his jaw and nodded curtly. “Are we done here?”