Oh. So that hadn’t been an amrit-induced hallucination after all. Azmodea really did set off glitter bombs. I bit back laughter. How fiendish.
My amusement vanished like a popped bubble when the dais came into view. Lucifer and a handful of his courtiers as well as Lilith were present. Anxiety rocked through me, making my skin crawl. The memories of how he forced me to drink the amrit and took advantage of my drugged state played out vividly in my mind. My skin flushed hot. He’d humiliated me in front of his court with such easy cruelty, and my visceral reaction at seeing him again was to turn and run.
Especially since he was in the process of punishing someone.
A demon knelt before him, straining as if trying to move against shackles, though I saw none. Lucifer laid a hand on his head and spoke a word I couldn’t make out from where I stood. The demon screamed, and his wings erupted from his back.
“Please don’t,” the demon pleaded.
Placing one hand on the demon’s left shoulder, Lucifer grasped his right wing—and yanked. Flesh and muscles ripped, bones broke, as the wing tore away from the demon’s back. More ear-splitting screams, blood spraying in a gruesome rain.
Humming, Lucifer handed the ripped-off, blood-dripping wing to an attendant next to him. Cracking his knuckles, he went for the other wing.
I gagged, the bile I’d tried so hard to keep down after the guard dismembered the demons finally forcing its way up my throat. Bending over, I retched and puked the sparse contents of my stomach onto the floor.
A merihem scurried over and mopped the vomit right up, ranting and raving at me all the while in their impish language.
I winced, my stomach aching, and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
The guard threw the two demons on the floor in front of the dais and went down on her knee, bowing her head. “Your Grace.”
I remembered protocol with a start and quickly knelt as well, lest I give Lucifer more reason to punish me. I was probably in boiling hot water with him already anyway.
“Timira,” Lucifer said. “Rise. What have you got for me?”
“Two insurgents who broke into Naamah’s rooms and attacked her, sire.”
The entire hall hushed, even the whimpers of the punished demon died down.
“What?” Lucifer’s whispered question held all the more menace for how quiet it was.
Timira gulped audibly. “It seems two of the insurrectionists made it past the guards stationed outside her quarters. I arrived on the scene after hearing the commotion from several corridors over, while dispatching another insurgent. The two guards outside her room were incapacitated, the door smashed in. Inside, I found these two demons, one of them immobilized by a dagger through the heart, the other with his sword at her throat.”
She gestured to me, and I ducked and furtively glanced around, searching for a hole to crawl to and hide in.
Timira went on with a succinct report of the scene and my own statement, after which eerie silence again descended over the throne room. I chanced a look at the dais and immediately wished I hadn’t.
Cold fury vibrated around Lucifer, ice crystals forming in the air, frost licking over the floor, down the steps, until it reached my bare knees. I shivered. I knew what happened when Lucifer got furious as opposed to “just” angry.
“You,” he said, his voice chilling me to my bones.
An invisible hand grabbed me by the throat and pulled me up until my toes barely touched the ground. I gagged, pawed at my neck, unable to break the hold of a hand that wasn’t there. Little lights danced across my vision, darkness creeping in. I wheezed, struggled for breath, panic setting in.
“I should squash you like the bug you are.”
My mind was a white wasteland of fear.
“Lu.” A resonant female voice. “She saved your daughter’s life. You owe her a debt.”
The grip around my throat eased. My feet fully touched the ground, and I gasped for air.
On the dais, Lucifer turned to Lilith, his expression equal parts bewilderment and reproach.
“Lil,” he grated.
She cast him the best side-eye I’d ever seen. “I like this one,” she said.
“Why?” Lucifer looked like he’d sucked on two pounds of lemons.
Lilith’s eyes tracked to me. “She reminds me.”
“Of what?”
A small smile curved her lips. “What it was like to be human.”
Lucifer glared at Lilith for a long moment before he turned to me with the utter resignation of a man fulfilling his beloved’s