The Darkest Passion (Lords of the Underworld #5)(45)
Author: Gena Showalter

What was she going to do? The first time she’d seen Aeron, chained and hungry for blood, she’d loved him. He’d been fighting that hunger, had even hated himself for it, and never before had she encountered anyone who preferred to save rather than destroy. She’d thought, He can save me.

In a mere heartbeat of time, she’d decided to live with Aeron. To marry him. To sleep in his bed every night and wake up next to him every morning. Instead, he’d had his friend Maddox build her a bed of her own. Still, she’d wanted to be everything to him. Had known all she needed was time.

Yet time was not a luxury she had anymore. She couldn’t return to their home because he’d invited the angel to stay. That stupid, ugly angel, with her long curly hair and cloud-pale skin. Legion—and every demon, really—couldn’t remain in the presence of such goodness for long. It hurt. Truly hurt. Somehow eroding everything they were, destroying them little by little.

Aeron didn’t hurt, though, she thought darkly. How could he? He’d welcomed the bitch. Maybe Wrath had lived among humans for too long to react to the angel as a normal demon should. Maybe Wrath was buried too deeply inside Aeron.

Either way, Aeron should have cared about Legion’s pain. But he hadn’t. Just like he no longer cared about her. He’d sent her away.

“What’s wrong, sweet child?”

Legion gasped at the sudden intrusion, peering wide-eyed at the newcomer. She hadn’t heard him approach, yet he was now in front of her, as if he’d simply materialized. Or had been waiting, invisible, all along.

A tremor rolled down her spine. She would have scrambled away, but the rock behind her stopped her. Bad, bad, bad. This was so bad. A visit she couldn’t hope to survive.

“Leave me alone!” she managed to work past the sudden lump in her throat. A lump that held a thousand whimpers.

“Do you know me?” he asked smoothly, completely unoffended. Or seemingly so.

Oh, yes. She knew him. Hence the whimpers. He was Lucifer, brother to Hades and the prince of most demons. He was evil. True, undiluted evil.

Sweet child, he’d called her. Ha! He would stab her in the back the moment she turned away from him and laugh while doing so. Just for “funsies,” as Anya would say. She swallowed.

“Well?” He snapped his fingers and in the next instant, they both stood in the center of his throne room. Rather than stone and mortar, the walls of Lucifer’s palace were composed of crackling flames. “It’s a simple question. Do. You. Know. Me?”

“I—I do. Yesss.” Legion had been here only twice before, but the first time, during her birth into this realm, had been enough to convince her that she never wanted to return. The second time, she was brought here for punishment. Punishment she’d earned for refusing to torture a human soul.

“Concentrate,” Lucifer snapped.

She blinked and forced herself to focus. Plumes of black smoke wafted from the floor, the walls, even the throne atop the dais, curling around her like fingers of the damned. There were screams trapped inside those plumes, and those screams taunted her.

So ugly, they said.

So stupid.

So unnecessary.

Unwanted. Undesired.

“I asked you another question, Legion. You will answer.”

Though she wanted to look anywhere but at him, she forced her gaze to meet his. Lucifer was tall, with shiny black hair and orange-gold eyes. He was muscled, like Aeron, and handsome—but not as handsome as Aeron—despite the inferno always banked in his expression.

What had he asked? Oh, yeah. What was wrong with her? “I—” What should she tell him? A lie, definitely, but something he would believe. “I jussst wanted to play a game.”

“A game, hmm?” His lips curled slowly, wickedly as he strolled around her, closing in, studying, taking her measure and clearly finding her lacking. “I have a better idea.”

The heat of his breath somehow reached the back of her neck, and she shuddered. At least he didn’t stab her as she’d feared. “Yesss?”

“We shall bargain, you and I.”

Her stomach twisted into cutting knots. His bargains were notorious, for they always ended in his favor. That’s how he’d escaped hell for a year to live unfettered on Earth. He’d bargained with the goddess of Oppression, the very one responsible for ensuring the walls surrounding this underground prison were solid, impenetrable. The one who had allowed many demon High Lords to escape. The one who had then died, her bones used to construct Pandora’s box.

“No?” she said, and though she’d meant it as a statement, it emerged as a question.

In front of her once again, he tsked. “Don’t be so hasty. You haven’t even heard what I have to offer.”

It wouldn’t be good for her, that much she could guess. “I—I ssshould go.”

“Not yet.” He spun on his heel and glided to his throne, where he eased down, relaxed, utterly sure of himself. Smoke reached him, surrounded him, and flames soon followed, dancing around as if happy just to be near him.

Legion tried to shift from one foot to the other—only to realize her feet had been glued in place. There would be no leaving. Not until he was done with her. Still. She didn’t panic. She’d been beaten before and had survived. She’d been called terrible names and laughed at; she’d been thrown into seemingly never-ending pits and kicked into ice fields, unable to transport herself somewhere else.

“I can help you get something you want,” Lucifer said. “Something you’ll do anything to possess.”

Ha! There was nothing he could offer that would—

“I can help you win Aeron’s heart.”

For a moment, she forgot to breathe. Only when her lungs and throat began burning, scalding, did she force her mouth to open and suck air inside. He could…what?

“As you like to spy on the happenings here for the Lords of the Underworld—” there at the end, bitterness had filled his tone “—I like to spy on the happenings of the surface. I know you’re enamored of Aeron, keeper of my darling Wrath.”

Hearing his derision, she raised her chin. “He lovesss me, too. He told me ssso.”

Lucifer arched a brow. “Are you sure about that? He was so angry that you’d hurt his precious little angel.”

The word precious used to describe that pig of an angel caused red spots to wink over her vision. She was Aeron’s precious. Her. No one else.