“Then get out.”
The words crack like a whip. His gaze slides to Lillien, and the contempt pouring off him is suffocating heat, poisonous and absolute. “Take your overpowered succubus whore and leave. This is your only warning, Deimos—because you are my son. Because I’m feeling charitable. If I findheror your brother in Hell again, I will kill them both.”
The decree settles over the chamber like a death sentence carved into stone. My blood snarls, demanding steel and fire, demanding a thousand deaths to answer such audacity. ButLillien presses closer against my back, bracing herself to speak—and then he is gone.
A gust of smoke. The stench of brimstone. The cold bite of absence.
“Well, he’s pleasant,” she mutters tightly, brittle humor cracking her voice like glass.
I laugh. Because if I don’t, the silence will crush me. Because laughter makes me feel more human than any blade. Because mercy is a thing I can no longer afford.
I don’t answer. Instead, I turn and claim her mouth with mine, slow and consuming, a tether drawn in blood and will. When I pull back, she doesn’t look away.
A portal flares beneath my palm, a seam of humming gold ripped into the air. I don’t address my father’s threats. I will not let his poison nest inside us.
“Lillien,” I murmur, voice gathered, steady. “Come.”
Her gaze meets mine—so fierce I almost flinch from it. Then she steps into the light with me. Bastion and Cassiel follow like wolves that cannot be broken.
The world tilts. The throne room dissolves in a burst of cold wind and bone dust.
I steal one last look back as the marble vanishes beneath our heels. Then the seam snaps shut. And we are gone.
EIGHTY-TWO
Deimos drops us into a steaming hot spring in the middle of Iceland.
We break the surface, sputtering, laughing—blood and ash sliding off in ribbons that cloud the water black. Our laughter doesn’t last. Clothes are torn away, ripped as much as discarded, and the spring hisses against raw skin. We scrub each other like sinners desperate to wash the battlefield off, but the memory clings like tar. Reverent touches. Rough ones too. None of us are gentle.
Cassiel is the first to find words, his voice ragged from smoke and fire. “Temptress… you were so fucking beautiful. Harnessing our powers as though they were your own.”
“I fear I need more practice,” she murmurs, eyes heavy, shoulders slack with exhaustion. “I am… empty.”
Deimos’s mouth curls into something hard. “Good thing we’re here to feed you,” he says—too sharp, too clipped, his voice a blade.
Then he seizes her. She squeals, thrashing, but he doesn’t release her. He drags her from the water, drops her to the stone shore like prey delivered to the altar. She lands on her knees, wet hair plastered to her back, her breath torn from her chest. Beforeshe can rise, he wrenches her hips back and rams his cock into her in one savage thrust. No warning. No mercy.
The sound she makes—half moan, half scream—is fucking music, raw enough to snap every nerve in my body. My cock jerks painfully as Cassiel and I follow onto the shore.
“You are going to be fed, Lustling,” Deimos snarls. His fist knots in her hair, dragging her head back until her throat arches. His voice drips with rage and possession. “But you’re going to fucking beg for it. Because you left us.”
“I’m sorry,” she gasps, the word broken on a moan, her arms trembling as she braces against the stone.
I crouch before her, cock thick and heavy in my hand. Deimos stills behind her, buried to the root, his chest rising like a storm about to break. “What was that?” he demands, voice a razor drawn across skin.
“I’m sorry! Please, Deimos!”
Her eyes flick to me, pleading. I only shake my head. My fingers grip her chin, forcing her to look at me. I claim her mouth in a brutal kiss, swallowing her desperation, tasting ash and salt and flame.
“You could have been killed, Lillien,” Cassiel growls beside me, stroking his cock with punishing slowness, his eyes like sharpened steel.
“I wasn’t, though.”
Deimos’s hand cracks across her ass, the sound like a whip splitting the night. She jolts, cries out, then laughs—reckless, wicked laughter spilling from her lips as if she wants to provoke him further. And I’m sure she does.
That’s all the permission I need. With a groan, I shove my cock between her lips, her mouth stretching to take me. Her tongue coils, teasing, and when she moans, the vibrations ripple straight through me. “Fuck.”
Deimos begins to move, pounding into her, each thrust jolting her body forward on my cock. She chokes and moans around me, and she doesn’t resist. She takes us both—raw, merciless, every brutal inch. She wants it. Needs it.
