Page 23 of The Damned (Coven of Bones #3)

B EE L ZE B U B

I left Margot alone for several hours, giving her the time she needed to process the information I’d given her.

It seemed like an easy choice to me, but I didn’t dare pretend to understand the nuance of human emotion.

Archdemons and demons didn’t experience them, and though I had spent my entire existence surrounded by human souls, the complexities of what drove them in life hardly mattered once they’d been condemned to eternal torture in Hell.

I didn’t dare go far from her, not with the knowledge of the other demons roaming the halls of Raum’s home. I might have been able to keep the lord of Purgatory appeased and entertained with my presence, but that wouldn’t stop any of his underlings from wandering too close.

For that reason, I stayed with Raum in his office at the foot of the stairs, forcing him to keep the door open so I could monitor the door to the room where I’d left her.

It was intended to house what Raum referred to as forcible guests, demons who weren’t quite prisoners but that he didn’t want roaming freely through his home either.

It might have been locked from the inside instead of the outside on this day, but that didn’t change its purpose in the end.

Margot was not free to wander, and doing so would only lead to her getting hurt.

I hoped the room had served as the temporary haven she needed and provided her with the solitude I knew she preferred from the time I’d spent watching her in Hollow’s Grove, but I wouldn’t always be able to offer her this moment of peace on our journey.

The sooner she realized there was no true safety in Hell, the better off she would be.

The only constant she could rely on, the only thing that would protect her from the dangers of this realm, was me.

But she wasn’t ready to talk about that, and I didn’t have any inclination to force the conversation.

We were both trapped in a purgatory of our own, waiting for the day that her enchantment wore off and I stopped feeling drawn to the witch I should have hated.

Her kind had taken Lucifer from me for centuries, had destroyed the illusion I’d held that it would always be Him and me facing the world together.

But He’d abandoned me without hesitation, all too willing to spend centuries apart rather than take me with Him. There’d been a time when the knowledge that He trusted only me to see to His affairs in Hell in His absence had soothed some of my bruised ego, but that time had long since passed.

I groaned, dropping into the seat opposite Raum where he sat on the other side of the desk he occupied.

The vantage point allowed me to watch Margot’s door still, but I didn’t miss the way the closest soul startled at my sudden proximity.

There was no paperwork atop the surface of the desk, nothing to indicate that this was a place of work aside from the furniture itself.

The walls were covered in black painted bookshelves that were immaculately taken care of despite the piles of books he’d loaded them with.

Raum was the lord of Limbo, in charge of Purgatory, where all souls entered when they first died.

Under normal circumstances, when the person died before plummeting into the afterlife, he was responsible for weighing the soul and determining what sin claimed ownership of them.

There was an enormous eight-pointed scale atop a dais at the corner of the room, the metal and mechanisms creating a sort of star shape if one were to ever look down upon it from above.

The very center held golden coins, and as a soul stood before it, one rolled down into a bowl.

A coin for an act of sin.

Each of the soul’s life choices were tallied, weighed as the soul whimpered for absolution. Praying to a God that would not hear him from this place, if he ever would have from the earthen plane.

The soul that waited before the scale eyed the mound of gold coins that had gathered in the point dedicated to Fraud, swallowing nervously as Raum waved his hand passively.

The coins retreated into the center as a blast of wind tore through the room, catching the soul and dragging him out the open door beside the dais.

Carrying him to Fraud itself.

“Next,” Raum said, drawing my attention away from the scale to look over at the woman who would face judgment next. Some souls were quick to be judged; others took hours on end. The very thought of sitting at this desk and presiding over judgments day in and day out made me fidget.

The mirror of the sun above the surface had begun to set, and as much as I wanted to allow Margot to continue to have peace, there was little choice but to pull her from her haven and feed her.

She had to be starving. I toyed with the cup on the desk before tossing back a sip of the amber liquid.

The strength of the liquor burned a path down my throat, so much stronger than the alcohol had been in Hollow’s Grove.

I’d missed it, I realized. Missed the strength that could knock me on my ass if I wanted to sink into oblivion.

Obsession and avarice weren’t my sins, but gluttony could apply to far more than just the desire to lose oneself in food and drink.

I’d rather have sunk into Margot than the bottle, for once in my miserable existence, and I despised that for myself. She’d sung herself right into the depths of my sin, twisting my favored vices and making this growing obsession with her more powerful than any of them.

“Djall? Could you go ask our guest to join us, please?” Raum asked, and I knew the demon was having the same thoughts.

But even more than that, he was a creature of habit.

He ate at the same time every day, keeping a predictable, mind-numbing schedule he clung to with a desperation that I would never understand.

The female demon appeared in the open doorway to the office, nodding her assent before she disappeared up the stairs.

“I’ll do it,” I called, pushing my chair back to stand.

The thought of her seeking Margot out in the room she’d claimed as a sanctuary made me tense.

If anyone was going to wander into her space, it would be me.

I also didn’t think Margot would be inclined to leave the room for anyone but me after my warnings earlier, and the last thing I needed was her revealing how much I’d shared of the nature of demons and the relationship I did not have with my brothers.

“Don’t be silly,” Raum said, flashing me a smile that was all teeth. I moved anyway, following Djall on her way up the stairs. She beat me to the door, rapping her fist against it three times.

“Lord Raum would like to request your presence for dinner,” she said simply, but there was no sound on the other side of the door.

“It’s alright, Margot,” I said, sidestepping Djall and nudging her out of the way. I placed my hand on the door, dismissing the demon with a wave of my hand. I heaved a sigh of relief when the demon relented and vacated the landing, returning downstairs where Raum waited.

I didn’t need to worry that Margot would ever pick a fight she couldn’t win by any means, but I did need to worry that she wouldn’t even try to defend herself.

She might have magic at her disposal, but she refused to use it due to her own loathing for the way it manifested, and that meant, in a place that was teeming with the energy of the Source, she was at a great disadvantage.

“Songbird?” I asked, knocking on the door softly. “You’ve got to be hungry.” The sound of the dresser being pushed back from the door made me smile, the knowledge that my songbird had done as I’d told her warming something within me.

She tugged open the door slowly, peeking out until she saw me staring down at her.

Then she opened the door fully, her body encased in a red shirt that skimmed over her curves and the red pants I’d seen her pull from the closet.

She looked so much younger bathed in all that fabric, her features somehow more cautious, as if she didn’t quite know what to do with herself.

I held out a hand for her to take, nodding when she ignored it and stepped around it into the hallway.

I wanted to be proud of her for not letting her fear keep her grounded to that tiny room, but there would be some circles in Hell where getting her to sit still would be what was best. We were safer in Purgatory than we would be in some of the other circles.

Raum and I had a better relationship than I shared with most of the other lords, very little tension lingering between us.

Perhaps that was due to the fact that he was a noble demon who had risen in the ranks by his own merit, but was not an archdemon with the same level of power and proximity to the Source and Lucifer.

We would never be equals, purely for the fact that we’d been created in very different situations and with different purposes.

We could not be rivals striving for our creator’s attention, not when Lucifer barely paid Raum any mind Himself.

That didn’t mean Raum wouldn’t try to manipulate me or any situation I found myself in to his benefit.

The other archdemons and I, however, butted heads like siblings competing for our father’s affection, even in His absence.

I had better relationships with some of them than others, but all of us were prone to bickering and jealousy at times.

My own twin brother, the demon who had been created on the same day and from the same earth as me, was the only one I even remotely trusted.

Belphegor had not become an archdemon, my form taking too much of the Source as Lucifer created us simultaneously, and that had made my brother bitter as a child.

He’d grown out of that in the centuries since our childhoods, thankfully, and we had a deeply connected relationship now, but that didn’t mean we hadn’t come to blows plenty of times.