Page 61 of Hell Fae King

I swallowed at the whirlpool swirling in his dark blue eyes, his intensity making him that much more beautiful.

Not the ocean I wanted to be dunked in,I thought, holding his gaze.But I could absolutely lose myself in those oceanic irises.

A long moment of silence passed, tension seeming to crackle in the air. Or maybe that was the fiery walls nearby. I couldn’t say. I… I was hypnotized by that look on Lucifer’s face.

Only, it vanished in a blink as he stepped backward into the contract room. “Come in, Camillia. There’s something I want to show you.”

He disappeared from view before I could ask for details. Not that he’d probably give any of them to me.

Sighing, I started forward, only to freeze outside the doors. Not because I was afraid, but because my distorted reflection in the metallic sheen reminded me that I resembled a damn disco ball again.

“You’re going to scrub all this crap off of me,” I told Melek. “And then you’re apologizing by feeding me chocolate-covered strawberries in the bath.”

“Mmm, it’s a date,” Melek replied as he hugged me into his side. “Maybe our king will join us.”

Wait, what? I?—

“Only if Camillia learns how to behave,” Lucifer replied from behind the door. “I don’t reward brats. I punish them instead.”

I blinked, his earlier commentary regarding my brattiness filtering through my mind and causing my eyes to narrow.

“I wasn’t being a brat,” I argued, resuming my walk toward his contract room. “Your lesson, or whatever you want to callthat back there, was hurting Ajax. I reacted appro…” I trailed off in the middle of the word as I stepped through the threshold.

Becausewow.

I couldn’t say what I expected, but it wasn’t this. “Holy fae,” I breathed, my gaze traveling up the endless wall of files. It… it just kept going. There was no roof. Just a sky of swirling paper above.

And golden quills.

I jumped back as one sailed by my head, a memory clicking into place of the last time I saw one of those. It’d been during Melek’s tour. He’d warned me to stay away from it. Something about it having unpredictable properties.

That’s an understatement. The entire palace is riddled with unpredictable magic.

And Lucifer was the most unpredictable of all.

He stood in the center of the space near a single desk. There was no other furniture. Not even a chair. Just a simple wooden desk.

“You claim to know a lot about my deals,” Lucifer said as the doors closed behind Melek. The rattle of chains that followed suggested we’d just been locked inside, too. “Enlighten me, Camillia. What do you think you know?”

“I know I didn’t agree to be a bride,” I told him. “That you made an arrangement with my father for my life without my consent.” I folded my arms. “It’s a fair deduction to assume there are others like me who tried to break free from one of your arrangements. And as you’ve said, you enjoy punishments. Ergo…”

I waved a hand, allowing the statement to fizzle and burn between us.

Lucifer considered me for a moment. “That’s it? That’s your grand summary?”

“You also tried to force Ajax to mate you,” I added. “Should we talk about that again?”

He didn’t immediately reply, just stared at me. “Your opinion of me is quite low.”

That… wasn’t true. I’d actually begun to respect him a bit. But I didn’t feel the need to voice that out loud. So I just held his gaze and waited for him to say more.

“All right.” He snapped his fingers, making me wince at the unexpected sound.

His lips curled down in response, his gaze narrowing a bit.

Then a paper appeared on the table before him, the lone document the only item on the dark wood.

A quill appeared next.