Underworld Bride Trials 1 Playboy King - Meg Xuemei X. Page 0,51
the expense of the Duke of Envy. I struggled not to grin. Now that I was up close and personal with the Demon King, he wasn’t what I’d expected at all before I arrived on Earth. He was nothing like what his father depicted.
I’d thought he’d be a damaged man and a tyrant in Hell. By killing him, I’d end his misery and do the world a favor all while I collected my bounty.
I’d met countless damaged, broken men and women. Very few of them rose above their former position. In fact, most of them became worse than their initial abusers. It was a mercy to put the rabid dogs down rather than allow them to continue their vicious cycle of victimizing others.
Yet Loki wasn’t a broken man, despite being tormented by his own father as an innocent boy. And Lucifer wasn’t just any other brutal father. He was the worst; he was the devil.
I’d wondered what made Loki different than the other damaged evil man, especially when he laughed and joked with Mari and his dukes at their gold table. He sincerely loved them. Somehow, he still had the capacity to love after all he’d been through. Even when the demigod jabbed at and provoked him at every turn, he merely brushed it off because of his love for his adopted sister.
A spark warmed my middle as a thought struck me. Loki was like me. He refused to be a victim, refused to be branded, refused to be broken as his father had intended, just as I’d refused to empower my ex-mate and allow him to make me into a damaged doll or to mold me into his twisted desires.
We never let the bad guys win.
“May I see the ring, Tessa?” Loki asked softly.
I lifted my hand off his shoulder and showed him the shiny gem.
On my left index finger was a white-gold band etched with my family’s royal symbol of an icy mountain and the sun. A pure blue diamond the size of a thumb rose from the band; the priceless diamond was called the Ice Kingdom Glacier.
The density of ice in my world absorbed every color except this brilliant blue. And the Ice Kingdom Glacier symbolized “forever,” yet every member of my royal family, except me, had perished—being slaughtered mercilessly by my ex-mate.
“It’s stunning,” Loki said in hushed admiration.
“It’s a family heirloom.”
“You might be richer than me, Tessa,” he said with light humor.
Ice Kingdom Glacier was the only thing connected to my royal family, the only thing I had left of them.
A sudden, profound sorrow that I’d buried so deep rushed to the surface. A sharp pain speared my heart, and I almost doubled over.
Not now, Tessa Morrigan, I warned.
I choked back overwhelming grief and fought back tears before they could wet my eyelashes. I would not be undone, not here. Not now. Not before my people had their justice and I had my revenge.
The Demon King was the first person to evoke such deep, buried emotions inside me, and that made him more dangerous than anyone else. I hadn’t expected this. But the Weaver’s words rang in the chamber of my mind again. “Pyre to your ice.”
Was it possible that the inferno I’d come to seek was not an elemental power but a person, and that person was the Demon King who held me tightly in his arms as if he would never let me go?
Confusion, shock, and grief flooded my mind and heart. Maybe meeting my kin in this unexpected place after I was sure I was the last descendant of the uncrowned Titan King’s line had unbalanced me. To know that my team and I weren’t alone anymore and that we had a very powerful ally meant the world to me, though I wouldn’t expect and would never ask Mari to go with us to my Ice Kingdom to take out my ex-mate, the extremely powerful bastard son of the Frost God.
But talking to Marigold had shifted something inside me. The warmth of her Living Flame made me warmer and softer, yet I couldn’t afford to get all warm and cozy, not while I was still in the middle of the trials and had a final war to fight back home.
“Where are you from, Tessa?” Loki asked with care.
“Here and there,” I said. “I’m a traveler. But I’m here now.”
“And you’re here to stay, Tessa,” he said in his rich, velvet voice, sending a shiver of pleasure over my skin. “One day you’ll beg