and…” he trails off in thought.
Lucifer shakes his head. “Three picks from your menagerie, and Cedrice for my first born son,” he throws out casually—way too casually for it to actually be casual. Lucifer manipulated this whole thing.
Tazreel balks and looks at Lucifer, completely stunned.
“I told you it would be dear, my friend,” Lucifer teases, though his eyes are sharp and biting.
Tazreel looks at me and then back to the Devil, pained. I’m not sure what’s being bargained right now, but clearly it’s a big deal, and I have a feeling it’s for this Cedrice person.
“You know I can’t force that arranged marriage, since I’m not her Sire, but I’ll encourage it. I’ll even go so far as to give it my blessing if that will suffice,” Tazreel finally relents.
The others all watch the negotiations with rapt attention, like a pack of wolves waiting for their turn at the carcass.
Victory shines in Lucifer’s features, and he turns to me with a calculating smile. “When you see your mother, tell her the Ophidian says hi,” he tells me on a chuckle before he turns back to Tazreel.
The Ophidian.
I don’t know what comes over me in the next second, but just as Lucifer opens his mouth to divulge the secret Tazreel is dying to hear, I lose my shit. One second, I’m watching the Devil’s lips form the Ophidian, and the next, I’m hooking my now-activated scythe blade around his neck.
Every single one of the Abdicated snap to their feet and move toward me, but Lucifer holds his hands up to stop them. They obey without question, though their eyes stay trained on me and my blade. Lucifer turns back to me, like he doesn’t care that my blade is right against his neck.
His body language may be casual and relaxed, but the look in his eyes screams of the suffering he’s now planning for me. I should probably shit my pants right about now, but I can’t seem to move past the rage sparking in every synapse I possess.
“You attacked us? You’re the reason they were ripped away from me?” I ask on a growl. I try to work through what’s happening, but it’s a struggle. If he’s the Ophidian, then he’s responsible for what happened. But something about that doesn’t make sense to me. Why would he attack his own guards? Crux, Jerif, Echo and Rafferty guard his Hellgate, why would he kill them?
“Careful, niece, you’re quickly losing your coveted spot as favorite,” he quips. “I’m going to need you to be a bit more specific so I can address your accusations before punishing you.”
I tamp down a foreboding shiver at his words.
“The Outer Ring demons that attacked me kept saying they were supposed to take me to the Ophidian. There were hundreds of them pouring out from the portals. We tried to fight, but there were too many,” I tell him, my vision suddenly far away as if I’m back in the Vestibule again, my voice haunted with the memory of it all. “Why would you do that?”
I blink away the pain and crushing grief and try to focus my anger back on Lucifer. His frost-blue eyes look confused for a moment, and I can see questions flash through his cold stare.
“Me? I wouldn’t,” he defends, and it confuses me even more when his statement and the look on his face ring true to me. “The Ophidian...that’s just something we used to… Wait.” He pauses, his eyes going distant. “That can’t be…” he whispers, his brow furrowing and his tone perplexed and eerie. His head snaps up, and his eyes focus back on me. I watch as comprehension dawns on him like the sunrise, and in the time it takes to inhale and then let it out, Lucifer is gone.
Just poof, disappears.
The blade-end of the scythe hits the ground, no more Adversary there to hold it aloft, and everyone blinks for a moment like they’re trying to understand what just happened.
“What did we miss?” Driftwood asks, looking around at the table and then back to where Lucifer just disappeared from.
I’m surprised that they aren’t all jumping on me, ready to mete out revenge for threatening the King of Hell, but they seem more interested in solving whatever riddle just went down between what I said and the apparent conclusion that Lucifer came to because of it.
“Fuck!” Tazreel says, his fist banging on the table. “He left without telling me who the mother is.”
“He mentioned the Ophidian. Who is that?”