Underworld Bride Trials 1 Playboy King - Meg Xuemei X. Page 0,10
much as he loathed his son.
Lucky for us, the current King of Hell guarded this realm more heavily than he guarded the part of Earth that was under his rule.
Once I’d gotten my team out of Hell, wheezing and gagging and slightly burned, I’d searched for a specific place to get them settled.
Lucifer had briefed me about Marigold, the forbidden child of the unholy union between the uncrowned Titan King and a fallen archangel—Lucifer’s ex-wife.
Marigold used to hide in plain sight in Crack, a lawless frontier town like the old Wild West settlement on Earth, until the Demigod of War found her and dragged her to the Half-Blood Academy on Staten Island, which was the demigods’ stronghold. Somehow, she had survived the academy and ended up mated to all four demigods.
Currently, we’d found refuge within the Earth Princess’s warded library. The red brick building was perched at the edge of the dark forest, where no one dared venture, which provided the perfect hideout for my team.
My warriors could handle any rogue supernaturals and the small-time drug lords here. Those gangs usually held their turf wars in the center of town. I bet very few people could break into Marigold’s library; I was among the few selected, and when I spoke the Titan tongue, “Power to power. Blood to blood,” the library had opened for us.
“Joining the Bride Trials is necessary,” I explained again. “All I have to do is fight my way past a thousand vicious women to fetch Hell’s crown. No biggie.”
Dux stopped adding wood to the fire. He rose and turned to face me.
“No biggie?” His light gray eyes rounded in alarm. “Haven’t we gone through enough trials, Your Grace? Why don’t we just stick to the plan—assassinate Lucifer’s son, get a large army, stomp the Ice King, and get your throne back?”
“I saw a better opportunity,” I said, breathing out a trail of frost. “If I become the champion of the trials, I’ll be the Queen of the Underworld. And then we’ll take out Loki. If we do it my way, we’ll not only get an extortionate bounty of gold to buy the best mercenary army, but I’ll also command Hell’s army as their queen. And the best part is—” I paused, my heart drumming in excitement. “The new queen will gain the power of hellfire, the one thing we’ve been searching the universe for. It’s right here, within our reach, should I become the queen of this realm.”
I’d felt the hellfire inside Loki when his wind reached me. Once I became his queen, I’d have the same fire. That was one of the promises to the champion of the trials, as Loki had told the vampire princess.
But I didn’t inform my team how unsettled I was when the Demon King’s fire called my ice, when his hellfire sent a fire song through my bloodstream while he fucked another woman. He didn’t just possess the flame; shadows and death were at his command too. They were all part of his essence.
The Weaver’s warning echoed in my head—your ice’s flame.
And then the scene of the playboy pounding into the female replayed before my eyes until Fayette’s declaration jerked me back to the present.
“If Her Grace becomes the Hell queen, all our problems will be solved,” Fayette said, darting her determined gaze from Dux to me. “I’ll join you in the trials.”
“Count me in too,” Dux added.
Fayette quirked both eyebrows at him. “I don’t think the Demon King would agree to a male bride.”
“I can disguise myself as a woman,” Dux said optimistically. “A big woman.”
“That’s not going to happen.” I smiled. “Plus, neither of you can stand the air and heat of Hell.”
“We’ll find a way,” Dux insisted, his jaw set stubbornly. “We won’t let our queen, our only hope, face our adversaries alone in an alien land.”
My breath caught. For the first time, I would be utterly alone in a land aflame with roaring heat, and half of it was lakes of boiling lava. I didn’t look forward to it, but I had to do what I had to do.
“I’ll have to carry out this task alone,” I said. “By the end of the trials, only the one person left standing will walk toward the crown. The Underworld Bride Trials are bound by magic. It’s the Wild Hunt.”
“Barbaric,” Dux spat.
“I’m more than willing to sacrifice myself for you and the Ice Kingdom,” Fayette said, loyalty sparkling in her arctic silver eyes.