Page 32 of The Damned (Coven of Bones #3)

B EE L ZE B U B

Margot fled up the stairs with the man she’d chosen, leaving me to stand in the center of a circle of women she’d used her magic against.

It shouldn’t have bothered me so much that she was capable of turning them on me and walking away.

It shouldn’t have haunted me to know that I could never have done the same, because the very idea of her being behind closed doors with another man made everything in me tighten into an ache.

My jaw clenched as I grabbed one of the women by the wrist, pushing her back without preamble in my rejection as she dragged her nails over my chest.

Her touch was wrong. It left me feeling cold and callous, holding none of the traces of warmth that filled me the moment Margot’s skin touched mine. I snarled at the next woman who moved to touch me, her face twisting with shock at my revulsion.

Burying my hands in my hair, I tugged at the edges where it was pulled into a messy bun at the back of my head.

This had been her choice, and I had to respect it. I had to honor the fact that she’d been so willing to choose anyone but me, that she’d done it to save me from what her touch would have done to the enchantment she’d placed on me.

“You’re just going to let her go?” Amelia asked, waving a hand to dismiss the women who lingered too close. Who were too determined to put their hands on me and use touch to convince me to play with them. Any other time, I might have taken them up on it.

“She made her choice,” I said, my voice as dejected as I felt. The anger was nearly all-consuming, taking the lust dancing over my skin that Margot had stoked into roaring flames and twisting it into the other side of passion.

Wrath.

Wrath that couldn’t be explained outside of accepting that it was just another consequence of her song.

“You disappoint me,” Amelia said, her voice quiet as she studied me. “I thought you cared too much to allow her to do something that she’ll regret.” She sighed, pursing her lips as if she was so exhausted with the way demons constantly disappointed her.

“I don’t care, ” I snapped, baring my teeth at the witch who was so like the one I wanted to be with in that moment. “It’s just her spell. I heard her sing and I’ve been trapped in this fucking hell ever since.”

Amelia froze, taking a step closer to me with a scoff of disbelief.

“You fucking idiot,” she said, sinking her teeth into her lower lip.

“You are an archdemon. Your soul is already owned by Gluttony so fully that there is no room for any other sin. You cannot be controlled by the magic of lust. If you could, you would not have been able to resist the call of Asmodeus’s magic in this place.

You would have already found a partner and joined the festivities. ”

“You’re wrong,” I said. The magic of the witches had to be different from that of the demons. I could be immune to the darkness of Asmodeus’s magic but still be pulled in by the lightness of Margot’s.

Right?

“By all means, demon. Continue to tell me how my magic works. It’s not like I have spent centuries here, or tried to pull you and the other archdemons under my spell for my own entertainment when I’m bored. What would I know?” Amelia asked, her face twisted in anger at my dismissal.

“But that’s not possible. I heard her sing, and I haven’t been able to leave her alone since.

I’ve been obsessed. I stalked her when we were still in Hollow’s Grove!

I have done everything I can to keep her safe since we fell through the portal to Hell.

Why would I do that if I am not under her spell?

” I asked, my frustration growing as I tried to wrap my head around her claim.

Amelia grinned up at me, reaching out with a single hand to touch her palm to the center of my chest. She pulled it back, drawing a swirl of thin red tangles out from my skin.

They danced in her hand, twisting and writhing in a round mass.

“Margot may not be capable of recognizing the magic of love when she sees it, but I am,” she said, her words making me snap my stare away from the red tangle to her eyes.

No.

That was impossible.

“Obsession is a form of lack of self-control and the desire to overindulge in something, or in this case, someone. That is your sin, Beelzebub. Not hers or any spell she has placed you under. You are obsessed with her because your magic recognizes what you have yet to admit to yourself. You love her,” Amelia said, keeping her words low enough that Asmodeus would not hear them.

Protecting Margot and what my feelings for her could mean if any of the other archdemons knew.

They would see her as my weakness, use her against me at every turn.

“I can’t be,” I said, arguing the point even though the truth of it had already settled into me. Amelia had touched me, the original Erotes witch, and I’d felt absolutely nothing. No call to act on the magic of lust that surrounded us all in the Second Circle.

There was only Margot for me.

“The witch is yours, Beelzebub. So what are you going to fucking do about it?” she asked finally, smirking when I pushed past her and made my way to the stairs.

Minutes had passed since I’d lost sight of Margot, for the entirety of my world to be turned upside down.

The black mass I’d thought existed where a heart should have been didn’t seem to care that she was a witch and I was a demon, that I’d gone to Hollow’s Grove fully intent on condemning all the witches to the Hell I’d lived in.

I blacked out, seeing red as I took the steps two at a time in my haste to get to her. To stop her from doing something she would regret and that would hurt me now that I understood what this feeling was lurking beneath my anger.

It was pain. The kind of pain I’d only heard of in stories from people who were foolish enough to fall in love. I’d never thought to join their numbers, never thought I could be dumb enough to tie myself to another being in such a way when I knew all too well how disappointing people could be.

I made my way to Amelia’s room, because even though I couldn’t see the doorway to know that’s where Margot had gone, I knew her well enough to anticipate that she would go somewhere that was familiar to her.

In a place that was entirely new, she would go where she’d already begun to feel comfortable over walking into an unknown.

I slapped my hands on the door, shoving forward with a force I would have taken back if I could.

The door burst open before me, revealing Margot standing behind the chair where the man she’d grabbed sat.

He gripped the side of the chair as he turned to look at me, his mouth popping open in shock as I took a few steps into the room and surveyed the situation.

Margot held a piece of rope within her grip, her intentions clear. It should have eased some of my tension that she felt the need to restrain her chosen partner, when I’d been allowed to touch her on and off, however casually, since we’d come to Hell.

Instead, it only filled me with anger that she hadn’t simply chosen me in the first place. That she’d been so anxious to avoid me that she’d been willing to subject herself to this .

I didn’t give either of them time to react as my anger dictated my actions, driving me to the center of the room.

Grasping the man’s head in my hands, I stared him in the eye as I twisted his head sharply to the side.

The resounding crack filled the room as Margot dropped the rope to the floor and scrambled forward in an attempt to intervene.

The man’s body swayed to the side, toppling off the side of the chair and falling to the floor, forgotten by me. I turned my stare to where Margot swallowed and stared at me with wide eyes.

“What is wrong with you?” she asked, her voice rising in pitch. It drew Amelia to the door to her bedroom, having followed after me.

She stared down at the body, a grin of glee spreading across her face as she leaned against the doorway with her arms crossed over her chest. “This is about to get very entertaining,” she said.

I glared at her as I spun and stalked to the door, giving her a gentle nudge into the hall.

I swung the door closed in her face, completely uncaring that it was her room Margot had chosen to hide away in.

“Tell me, songbird,” I said, twisting my body and strolling toward Margot.

I kept my body languid and casual, working to shove down my anger as I worked through the revelations that had rocked my world.

I stepped around the edge of the chair and lowered myself into the space the other man had occupied, facing Margot where she stood behind it as I kicked the body out of the way with a sneer.

“What exactly were you planning to give him?”

Margot couldn’t seem to tear her eyes off the unconscious male on the floor, her eyes wide with shock. “What have you done?” she asked, floundering for words as I looked at her over my shoulder.

“Were you fond of him?” I asked, studying her response. She turned those wide mahogany eyes to me, watching as I kicked him again. It didn’t matter to me that he couldn’t feel it in that moment, if she kept looking at him, I would desecrate his body and leave nothing more than ashes.

“You killed him!”

I scoffed, leaning forward to pick up the rope from the floor where Margot had dropped it in her haste to scramble back.

“You can’t kill what is already dead, songbird.

Give him a few hours, he’ll wake up eventually.

Though he will stay away from you when he does so unless he wants me to do far worse the next time I catch him looking at you. ”

She gaped at me, those pretty lips spread wide as she sputtered for a response. “There was no reason for that.”