He relaxed against the arm of the couch, body angled toward the door, bowl cradled in a hand. “Are we okay?”
Laughter burst from my lips. “Are you kidding?” Apparently not, if his frown was genuine. “Stefan, we’re so far from okay, we’re in different time zones. You’re a Prince of Hell. How did that even happen?”
He swallowed and looked away, twitching a muscle in his jaw. “After I thought I’d killed you, I lost control.” His eyes narrowed. “The princes noticed.”
“All of them?” One Prince of Hell was bad enough. I couldn’t imagine facing more.
“Not Akil.” No, because he’d been unconscious with grief at his suburban house. “I only remember fragments. My demon was… We were high on power. I pulled it all from the veil.” He stabbed his spoon into the ice cream, scooped out a chunk, and tasted it. The resulting groan was more demon than man. “I miss this,” he mumbled around his mouthful.
“And? What happened?” He licked the spoon. My demon and I shared an internal purr. I swatted her back.
“One demon came at me. I didn’t know who or what he was. Wolf-like, but huge. I’m not talking about some hellhound mongrel. He was the size of a truck and would have torn me apart.” His lips turned down. “I fought with everything I had. They wanted me dead. They still do.”
“The wolf demon was Wrath?”
He nodded, taking another spoonful of ice cream. “When I worked as an enforcer, I suspected the princes had some sort of advantage over the demons. Turns out I was half right. The princes have a purpose; you might even call it a weakness. When chaos is shaped over time, it becomes honed, powerful, focused. It reaches out, hungers for more, and latches onto the thing the demon wants the most. Greed, lust, gluttony. All I had was anger. Wrath sensed that, I think. The others pulled back when he attacked, like it was personal.” Stefan licked more ice cream from his spoon, suddenly finding it fascinating.
Stefan was a skilled demon-hunter. I knew that. I also knew, as demon, he was powerful. But to battle a Prince of Hell on his home turf, surrounded by his brethren? I’d wiped out a few hundred demons once, and the memories still terrified me. How was he here, eating my ice cream like nothing had happened? “Did you kill him?”
“No.” His blue eyes darted to me. “You can’t kill a Prince of Hell.” He was wrong about that. A nine-year-old half-blood girl had recently proven the exception to that rule. “When I came back to my senses, Wrath was beaten, torn apart…” Stefan cleared the growl from his throat. “There wasn’t much left of his physical form. The princes backed off and...”
“What?” I’d forgotten my ice cream, forgotten everything, absorbed in his story. I’d seen Stefan in the netherworld, seen him battle Akil’s true form, Mammon. As a demon, Stefan was beautiful, as though carved from crystal—if crystal had razor-sharp edges and murderous intentions.
He lifted his gaze and fixed me in his sights. “The power I’d summoned should have killed me, but I took it all in and controlled it. Shaped it. It responded like our elements do, only this was chaos in its purest form. It wasn’t just about ice any more. I had control over of all the elements.” A slither of fear trickled down my back. Stefan’s eyes brightened. Their usual winter-sky blue churned darker, flecked with greens and purple, the colors of the veil. He blinked, and the colors vanished.
Stefan shoved off the arm of the couch and placed his bowl on the coffee table before settling on the couch. Jonesy gave him a prrp greeting and stretched feline limbs out, inviting Stefan to tickle his belly. Stefan stretched his own legs out, popped his feet up on my table, and threw an arm over the back of the cushions. Between him and my cat, they hogged the entire couch.
“How do you know you’re a Prince of Hell exactly?” I asked quietly, still uncomfortable speaking the words.
“I hear them.” He tapped his temple. “As if it wasn’t crowded enough in there already. It’s like having a radio on in another room. For the most part, I filter it out. I also heal quickly. I barely bleed when cut. The wound closes in seconds.” Stefan paused and steadied his gaze on me, waiting for my reaction.