Page 65 of Lustling

Cassiel notices the hitch immediately. “What is it?” he asks, eyes searching mine. I do not answer at once. There is a flicker of something else in the tether before her annoyance comes through, like an aftertaste on the tongue.

“Miss me already?” I probe into our link, amused.

“You have been gone a very long time,” she states like a scold wrapped in silk.

“So you do miss me,” I answer, letting the thread ease before I feel anything else.

“You’re insufferable,” she says back.

“And yet here you are, reaching for me,” I tease.

“Where are you?”

“Hell’s Archives.”

“Are you safe?” The warmth that comes through the bond is a dangerous, private thing. A worry that is not often offered.

“Worried about me?”

“I just need you alive,” she answers. “You’re my connection to answers.”

I chuckle and say “Liar,” because that is the easy shade to throw as I feel her worry bleeding through the bond. “Behave, Lustling,” I warn.

“I can only behave for so long,” she counters, and “Bastion and I will both grow bored” rolls from her like a promise.

My grin sharpens. “That is dangerous,” I tell her.

Before I can say anything more Cassiel slides a parchment toward me and says, “I found something.” I snatch it from his grip. Her name is there but not the mask she wears. Her true name lays heavy against the page like iron.

“Her mother was a succubus,” Cassiel says quietly. The ink smells like an old ritual. My eyes track, greedy. “Her father was an incubus, high-ranking, both murdered nineteen years ago,” he adds. My fingers go numb as if the paper is already too hot to hold. The scroll crimples under the pressure of my grip and I know I have been hungry for a truth I did not know how to name.

“Zepharion,” Cassiel says at last, and the syllable drags a shadow through the stacks. The name itself is a blade. I flip the parchment forward and there it is: a contract, infernal ink seeping promise. A binding sealed with blood. She was not merely born. She was made. A niche of fate stitched by hands that thought themselves rulers. His bride. His queen. The ledger says she was created to be his.

Something hard and animal shifts inside my chest. My magic rises like a tide. Books rattle; a distant shelf groans and a volume falls. “She was made for that bastard,” I snarl.

“Her parents tried to hide her,” Cassiel says, his voice flat with something that is close to grief and rage. “He butchered them for it.”

The scroll trembles in my hands. My claws find purchase without thinking. Cassiel’s face tightens. For a breath he looks like he wants to say something that might save us, but saving is a debt he cannot repay with words today.

“We do not have to do this,” he says in that quiet voice he uses for apologies and for prayers.

“Stopsayingthat,” I snap. I am tired of prelude. I am tired of thinking about what happens if I do nothing. The air narrows and the silence is a loop that needs to be broken.

A slow, mocking clap comes from the dark. The presence is a cut of armor as black as oil. Zepharion’s crest shines on a chest that steps out of shadow. Two more shapes fall in line behind him.

“Hand over the girl’s records and we will let you leave alive,” the lead soldier says.

“No,” I say. The single word lands like a stone; then the world goes loud and clean and the fight explodes.

Wings open like banners. Cassiel’s feathers have the dull sheen of battered metal as he dives into the first attacker, black and gold sweeping the air. The second man lunges for me with a blade that wants to take more than flesh. I catch his wrist without thinking and twist until a hot, surprised sound leaves him. He screams. He folds under my grip. I do not let go. I drive my claws into his belly and twist until blood paints my hands and the stone. I taste copper and victory on the same inhale.

Cassiel moves like a thing that used to be heaven but for a second he falters. That second is all a demon army needs tochange the angle of a fight. My blood becomes flame. I move faster than mercy allows and rip the other demon from his feet. I slam him into a pillar until his spine snaps like a twig. My hand closes around his throat. I do not pull him to me to savor killing. I pull until he is nothing more than a mouth that cannot scream and the blood is a sluice on the floor.

Cassiel exhales sharply and his blade leaves him trembling. I round on him then because the hesitation was mine to punish as much as his. “The fuck was that?” I demand.

His jaw tightens. I shove him and the contact is an accusation. “Are you with us or not?” I press, and the tremor in his hands answers.

“Of course I am,” he says, but the phrase is thin. It is not enough.