His face was taut. Maybe he was considering the same thing.
I jerked when a presence almost ran into me, and stopped dead in midair, beating my wings to keep my height.
Lucifer descended in front of us, his stoic face fixed on Tascius’s wings as the Nephilim drew up short and circled back to me.
“So this is what Wayland created from the ebonite.” Lucifer was utterly toneless. It was like trying to read a blank wall; there was nothing there to guess at.
“Yes,” I said, refusing to look away. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, or ask, but this was worth it, Lucifer.”
He gave no hint that he heard me, looking over the new ebonite wings with distant eyes.
“You can be angry at me all you want later,” I snapped, hating myself for taking this tone with him. “But we need to get to Belial, now.”
Lucifer raised an eyebrow. “Does he have something to do with the destruction of our plans?”
I bit back a curse. He had every right to be enraged; but I hated this distant coldness, the judgment, how un-Lucifer-like he was.
He seemed every inch the Morningstar in this moment.
“No, but he left a pair of gilded angel wings on my wall.”
That brought him up short; some of the iciness left his features, and his eyes widened. “When?”
“An hour ago, Vyra said. She’s completely losing it; I need to know if Belial is okay, and which angel he killed.”
Lucifer swore, his lips drawing back in a grimace. “Fucking hell. Let’s go, then.”
I heard the unspoken addendum: but this argument isn’t over yet.
As much as I wanted to prove that I could be trusted, I would fight tooth and nail to make them see that healing Tascius was the right thing to do.
I felt it in my bones.
The same way I felt the fresh wave of tension radiating from Belial’s arena. The Overseers were silent on the battlements, weapons at the ready. The imps were hiding under doorways and windowsills.
I dropped to the street as Azazel materialized in a fog of smoke and stars. “Vyra sent me,” he said tersely.
God, but it hurt the way they spoke to me like a stranger, no matter how much I deserved it. I pushed aside the sensation and strode towards the tall, familiar doors. They were unlocked, the chains unstrung, and the Overseers guarding it drew their spears upright as I approached.
They were trembling.
Everyone was terrified by what Belial had done.
They didn’t stop me as I pushed the door open. Tascius followed me, his hand on my back, and I strode forward into the darkness.
Belial hadn’t lit any lanterns. The emptiness of the stands, after so many nights of seeing them packed with screaming demons, was more than a little unnerving.
It felt like a ghost town.
“Belial?”
My voice rang through the empty arena, and the scuff of a foot on stone was the only sound that returned my call for several eternal seconds.
“I’m home, angry angel.” A faint light kindled in the darkness, illuminating aquamarine eyes that were full of madness. “Did you miss me?”
He stepped into the light, and I saw that Vyra was right; every inch of him was coated in blood, but he didn’t look hurt. He held out his arms, giving me the insanity-tinged smile I knew so well.
“I did,” I breathed, and ran across the arena floor, uncaring of what he’d done.
Whatever it was, he’d done it for me.
I slammed into him, wrapping my arms around his neck and breathing in his spice-and-whisky scent. He was here, real and solid, and he made the rumbling purr that made my knees weak.
“Do you like your pretty tokens?”
He whispered the words in my ear, and the sensation of his lips moving against sensitive skin made me shiver.
“They’re very beautiful.” I raked my fingers through his hair, fire flowing through me now that he was close. “Did you make their owner suffer?”
Belial laughed, his hands roaming over my back and hips. “Oh, he suffered. He begged for mercy before it was over.”
“What have you done, Belial?” Lucifer’s voice rang through the arena, bouncing off the walls. I tightened under the coldness in his voice, feeling like some part of that rage was directed at me, and Belial looked down at me when he felt my tension, then back up at Lucifer’s faintly-glowing form.
“No more than he deserved,” he said, with a tone that made this all sound like a normal, pleasant conversation. “You could almost say I was kind enough to be doing him a favor. He’ll be making atonement for his own sins right here, in my little Circle of Hell.”
“Whose wings were they?” Lucifer wasn’t going to be put off by him.
I was dying to know the answer, but part of me was exultant. Belial had reached into Heaven, pulled down one of those bastards for himself, and made them pay.
A delicious shiver of satisfaction went through me. It was no more than they deserved. I wished I’d been there to see the angel’s face.
At that moment, I knew I was where I belonged. Heaven had never been meant for me.
Not when I was so like my prince.
“Would you like to see? I don’t think he’s ready for company, but then… we don’t always get what we want, do we?” Belial cast an odd look at Lucifer, that strange little half-smile still on his face.
The lanterns lit up as imps crawled through the arena, casting a glow from front to back. When the lanterns above Belial’s bone dais lit up, I bit back a gasp.
I was very well-acquainted with the form slumped at the foot of the stairs. He looked diminished by the loss of his wings, blood crusting his silver hair, bruises raised on his face. Yraceli’s chains bound him, keeping his arms pinned at his sides, digging into the thick column of his throat and purpling the flesh.
It was like he and Tascius had traded places. Without his wings, his system was weak, shocked,
