The room watches Satan slap his knee and hold his side, gasping for breath in between guffaws. I look to Tazreel, who watches his friend with a look of frustration, shock, and mortification. He does not like Lucifer laughing at his expense. Not one bit. I study the other Abdicated and see a mixture of surprise, satisfaction, and burning curiosity.
Lucifer looks over to Tazreel and shakes his head as he titters. “I don’t even know how you found her, let alone convinced her to fuck you,” he comments, upping the need that’s bleeding out of everyone to be let in on the secret that has him in hysterics.
“Who is it then?” Tazreel demands, his tone flustered and his eyes sparking with exasperation.
The Devil shakes his head. “Oh, no. It’s just too good. I might just have to sit on this one for a while longer. But new rule, Taz. You’re not allowed to punish this progeny of yours. She’s officially under my umbrella of protection.”
Tazreel crosses his arms and sits back in his chair with a humph, like he’s pouting. I jump when the Devil’s hand comes down on my shoulder. Luce leans on me as if the laughter has weakened him too much to support his own weight. He’s really fucking heavy. I suppress the instinct to move away, careful to hold my stick far from him so that I don’t accidentally scythe the Devil. He did just tell Taz he can’t punish me, so that’s something. Whoever my mother is, she just made it so I get a free pass. I’ll take it.
“You are officially my favorite niece. Oh, I haven’t laughed this hard since the Inquisition,” Luce chuckles, his voice merry as it comes down from his laughing fit. “I see it now. I knew there was something there that was resonating at a frequency I hadn’t heard in far too long, but I get it now.”
He pulls me in for a tight hug that forces all the oxygen in my body to whoosh out. He smells like bad choices and ecstasy on a warm summer night, and I have to fight to keep from nuzzling him.
Fucking Rings of Hell, do I have a death wish?
He pulls back and slaps me on the shoulder a couple times while fixing me with a smile that makes my brain take way too many mental pictures of his gorgeousness. We’re talking helicopter-mom on prom night level of pictures.
“Did you fuck a Grim?” Elle demands, fixing Tazreel with a look and gesturing toward my dormant scythe.
“No!” Tazreel defends, as if he’s offended at the suggestion.
“Who else carries them?” Baldy asks, like he’s wracking his brain to come up with an answer at the same time that he dusts the crumbs off the front of his shirt.
All of their stares grow distant, like they’re thinking it through. A Where’s Waldo of demon weapons, so to speak.
“Why were you in the Vestibule? What Ring were you coming from?” Driftwood asks suddenly.
I clear my throat, still standing awkwardly behind the table with Lucifer at my side. When I send him a look, he nods, like he’s urging me on. “Uh, the Guardians I was with said that I needed to see what Ring I was from before they could induct me. We were trying to find out when we were attacked by Outer Ringers.”
An ache starts in my chest, and I hate stating what happened like they’re simple facts and not things that have rocked my soul beyond recovery.
“Guardians?” Tazreel questions angrily as he gets to his feet. “What Guardians? Why have you not mentioned them before?”
My eyes hook onto him. “I did! I told you I answered an ad to guard a graveyard. It turns out the job was actually to guard a Hellgate. I met the Guardians, and that’s how I learned that I wasn’t human.”
Lucifer gasps, but it sounds delighted, like this just got even more fun for him. “She hid you in the Mortal Realm? Oh, that’s sneaky,” he says, his tone sounding shocked but his eyes looking impressed. “That’s why you showed up in Tazreel’s house. It was your first trip through the Ring Portal, wasn’t it?” Lucifer’s tone makes it sound like I did something precious and adorable.
I nod warily, a little freaked out by his turn of demeanor.
He claps once excitedly and looks over at my sperm donor. “I put a fail-safe on the Ring Gates for lost progeny,” he explains, and understanding lights up in everyone’s faces.
“Ah, that makes sense,” the jewelry-wearing male says.
“What makes sense?” I ask, because I’ve been lost since the scythe somehow appeared in my hand like it was answering some silent call I put out when I thought I was about to be charbroiled.
“Why you landed in his meditation room, of course,” he replies. “Luce’s fail-safe. If lost progeny pass through our Gate, they automatically are transported into their Sire’s home.”
“Oh.”
I feel a second of resignation. I guess the Savor was right—I’m definitely Tazreel’s offspring.
Tazreel fixes Lucifer with a determined look. “What do you want for the answer? I need to know who her mother is so I can punish her for this offense. It is forbidden to keep progeny away from their Sires.”
That scary fucking smile is back on Lucifer’s face. “The price would be too dear, brother. This is a barter you don’t want,” he warns, but his light blue eyes are full of temptation and excitement.
Tazreel studies him for a moment, deciding how to proceed. “The lake house in Purgatory, two Hellhound pups for your newest twins, magistrate duty for the next millennium, 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
