He gives me a smile that makes my cheeks heat. “I think you might be my new favorite niece.”
“Hey!” Delta says in mock offense.
He shrugs. “I’ll let you know what I decide.” He glances at Medley. “You’re in the running too,” he says with a wink, and her cheeks blush an amusing shade of pink. I don’t blame her. He’s so incredibly beautiful, and the power in him is both enticing and terrifying. If I were a braver, unclaimed half demon, I might be willing to burn up in his light just for the chance to say I tried to claim something so wild and dangerous. But my soul wasn’t made for his. I can see that clear as day through my filter of darkness.
“Help your Uncle out?” he asks, the playful light in his eyes disappearing as determination and resignation etch themselves into his sinfully gorgeous features.
Our stolen moment from time is counting down. It’s like I can sense the grains of sand dropping to the bottom of an hourglass and marking this moment as finite. I don’t know how I can sense that, but I can. Morax has barely had time to blink since this started, but the end of it is approaching all too fast.
Part of me wants to hold on to whatever is happening right now, not forever but just a little longer, it’s a much needed moment of respite, a balm to everything that’s happened to us, but I know we can’t delay. We need to be prepared for when the world around us speeds back up. I look at my sisters, and all three of us nod. Readiness radiates off our connection, and their eyes drift over to fix on their mates.
I take a deep breath, wrapping myself in the calm of this moment, and priming myself for what’s to come. I know as soon as I bring Monster into play, time will stop moving at a snail’s pace, and everything is going to come hard and fast.
“You know what to do?” Lucifer asks, and I don’t even hesitate to nod.
In an impossibly quick movement, I lift my scythe up, and the fluid slowness begins to shatter all around us. Morax’s eyes glint as my scythe begins swinging toward Lucifer.
My blade cuts through the air, and then with a precision that awes even me, the curved blade snips into the fabric that binds him, so close it could nick him, but I don’t. A hairsbreadth is all I have between my fatal edge and Lucifer’s skin, not that it would kill him, but I can’t imagine he’ll let me live, nicking him down. But the darkness guides my every move. My aim is careful and true.
The fabric falls away in perfectly cut ribbons, and just like that, movement and sounds explode all around me as time starts again.
A pulse of power detonates off my sisters and me, and the surrounding demons are thrown back as a burst of black light explodes out of us, like the darkness left our minds and manifested outside of us. Morax is knocked off his feet and lands with a satisfactory thud.
“I’m ready for you,” Lucifer declares, already on his feet, the ruined cloth forgotten on the ground. His tone and volume is conversational, and I feel the command in his even, unhurried tone as he bears down on Morax.
My gaze snags onto a far off movement, and when I look up, I see that the bright lights surrounding us in the distance start coming in fast, and booming battle cries erupt in the air. Heart leaping into my throat, I realize right then that the massive presence of brighter soul-lights waiting on the outskirts wasn’t more of the Ophidian’s followers. It’s Satan’s army.
The thousands of demons around us react, Morax shouting orders to defend as they scramble to ready for the unexpected attack. I look over at Lucifer, surprise in my eyes. “You didn’t think Hell was without its tricks, did you, Sable?” he asks. “I’m the Morningstar. You think I’d really be brought to my knees so easily? By a cloth?”
“Not for a minute,” I lie.
He grins. “Watch and learn, little Annulus.”
Satan rubs his hands together and then reaches out into the air like he’s grabbing something. He lifts that imaginary something up toward the sky, and I’m shocked when I see hordes of soul-lights blink out in my peripheral. I gasp at the group of Morax’s demons as they crumple to the ground, and