Page 110 of Endless Terrors
Heilel released it instantly.
It was way heavier than it looked, but Dagan was already there, waiting to take it from me. I handed it over without hesitation. When I pulled at Heilel, half-expecting him not to budge, he came silently. We left that bloody room and started back down the passageway. My instincts urged me to get out of this place as soon as possible.
But as we passed the door to Belanor’s cell, I couldn’t help myself.
I stopped.
The previous Seelie King was still chained to the wall, but his wounds had started to heal. He was almost recognizable now. Our eyes met, and I saw the exact moment Belanor registered who I was. A slow, crooked smile touched his blood-crusted lips. It was a taunt. A dare.
Rage surged through my veins. I moved into the cell slowly, my hands clenched at my sides. I immediately noticed the table pushed against the wall—it hadn’t been there before. Its uneven surface was stained and covered in glinting, wicked-looking tools. As Heilel appeared beside me, I looked at the tools, and I thought about it. I imagined picking them up, one by one, and figuring out what each one did. Using them to repay my old tormentor for everything he’d done to me. Not just the physical pain, but the scars Belanor had put in my mind, too.
He waited.
Heilel waited.
But I knew, no matter how tempting it was, killing Belanor would be a mercy. An eternity down here was the real punishment, and I wouldn’t have another name on the list of lives I’d taken. Wouldn’t have another stain on my soul.
I didn’t say a word to Belanor. To either of them. I just kept going down the passageway.
Heilel came back to the bedroom with me. But when we got there, I still didn’t speak. I went into the bathroom and locked the door, making it clear that he wasn’t welcome inside. I hadn’t gotten blood anywhere other than my hand, but I still felt the need to shower. I took off the shirt I’d borrowed and scrubbed every inch of my body beneath the hot water.
When I reemerged, wearing a towel around my body and another on my head, Heilel was still there. He sat at the end of the bed, his hands folded between his knees. There was a line between his brows. After a moment, he looked up and met my gaze.
“Please don’t be scared of me,” he said. Nothing else.
I walked toward him slowly. At the bed, I put a knee either side of him and sat, wrapping an arm around his neck. His palms rested on my waist, over the towel. I tugged the one off my head and set it down next to us, allowing my damp hair to fall free.
“You do scare me,” I admitted, reaching down to skim my fingers over his tattoo. It made me miss my own, which were on my real body back home. “But mostly I’m scared of myself. I stood in front of Belanor down there, without a drop of power in my veins, and I wanted it. The screams. The fear. The pain.
“It turns out, it wasn’t the Nightmare part of me that liked doing terrible things. It was just … me.”
I waited for Heilel to say something encouraging, or comforting. Responses that I’d come to expect from the other males in my life. Instead, he buried his fingers in my hair, pulling me close. He gave me a hard, thorough kiss that made my core ache, in spite of everything I’d just seen. I accept you, his bruising lips said.
I couldn’t say it back.
We broke apart, but neither of us pulled away. Our foreheads rested against each other. I didn’t open my eyes. As my fingertips trailed down Heilel’s bloodstained chest, I thought of the other words I couldn’t say back. What he’d said to me last night. The memory, I knew, would haunt me until the day I died. I remembered the gold flecks in his eyes and how the light played on the flaxen strands of his hair.
I didn’t expect to love you.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
We spent the entire day in bed. And the next. And the next.
Heilel canceled his meetings. We ignored anyone who came to the door.
I had never felt so intoxicated by someone before. Like I could spend an eternity entangled with him, my mouth on his skin, his cock buried inside me. We learned how to play each other like instruments. We learned how to make each other moan, and cry out, and sigh. Once or twice, Heilel did things that made me forget my own name, much less that there was an entire world beyond the door.
Eventually, though, we did leave his room.
And thus began one of the strangest, most peaceful times of my entire life. The weeks blended together. They turned into months, and at some point, I stopped keeping track. The changes happened gradually. I began to sit in on Heilel’s meetings. I met with his governors and courtiers. The staff called me Your Majesty. They bowed to me when I passed in the halls.
And every night, there was Heilel. Loving me. Worshipping me.
The only ones I avoided were his siblings, who still came to the tower sporadically. Roger or Dagan always sought me out to give a warning, and I’d slip away, spending the duration of their visits in the library or Heilel’s room. Or our room, as it soon became, no matter how much the realization unsettled me. Technically, I didn’t need to hide whenever Mammon or one of the others came. According to a vague remark from Roger, Heilel had made an example of Samael after what he’d done. But I could never forget Olorel, and what had happened when I’d lowered my guard around them. Sometimes, if I closed my eyes, I could still remember the cold altar against my back.
I didn’t avoid all of Heilel’s siblings, however.
One night, Lucifer flew me to the Second City to officially meet his brother, Asmodeus.
