Page 33 of Unholy Bond (The Corruption of Evelyn Adams #2)
The doors of the throne room detonated inward in a single, obscene thunderclap, and every immortal and dead thing in the chamber flinched as Lucifer stormed through.
He wore his truest form. The swollen, beautiful horror that belonged at the center of this universe’s original sin.
His horns nearly brushed the lintel, and his skin glowed with that impossible shade of red that punished the retinas, a shifting spectrum of agony.
His rage eclipsed all lesser lights, and the air trembled with it.
He didn’t stride; he conquered the space, his tail smashing torches from the walls, clawed feet gouging new trenches in the fossilized ribs that paved the floor.
Two handspans behind him, a shockwave followed, flattening lesser courtiers to their knees.
Eyes as black as midnight caught mine from across the hall, and I could see the instant his momentum failed.
He saw me seated on the cracked, blackened throne, legs crossed, back straight, Void energy licking over my shoulders like a blasphemous stole. Aziz, Levi, and Ian knelt below me.
The court lined the walls, packed so thick the architecture itself seemed to bulge. Not a one so much as blinked. Even the demon- children at the four gates stopped gnawing on bones to watch the scene with animal reverence.
Lucifer bared his teeth. The heat rolling off him condensed moisture in the air, formed instant clouds that hissed and rained blood onto the audience. He flexed his claws, and the runes in my throne room guttered, as if fearing to bear witness to what came next.
“You dare,” he boomed, and the resonance cracked bone and sent a spiderweb of fractures up the obsidian pillar nearest me. “You dare usurp my throne?”
A thousand nightmares tensed, expecting apocalypse. I did not move. I smiled. A gentle, infuriating curve of my lips, the sort of smile a chess player wore before the final move. I let him fill the silence, let him taste the possibility that maybe he had a chance to regain his throne.
He hurled a ball of hellfire at me, and the thing howled as it streaked through the room.
It should have atomized the throne, the court, the city, but it struck an invisible skin an inch from my breast, blossomed into a corona of blue-black Void energy, and vanished.
The audience gasped in a ragged, orchestrated way.
He tried again. And again. Each time, the fire fizzled, then snuffed, absorbed into the growing storm around my body. The Void adored the attention.
Aziz watched the spectacle, lips curled in a lazy, lethal smirk.
Levi cracked his knuckles and leaned forward, as if to better savor the humiliation.
Ian, unreadable as ever, kept his gaze fixed on the former king’s face, cataloging the micro-expressions as Lucifer realized just how bad things had become.
I uncrossed my legs, let my arms drape over the sides of the cracked throne.
I stood, slowly, and the three kneeling devils didn’t flinch. Instead, they bowed deeper, as if the pressure of my rising pressed them down. I walked to the edge of the dais. Each step radiated a pulse of hunger that made the air tight as a noose.
Lucifer’s face twitched. Rage, then confusion, then something like terror before rage reasserted itself. He lashed out with raw power, a shockwave meant to vaporize the soul, but the Void caught it, devoured it, and shuddered in delight.
“What is this!” he demanded, but the sentence wobbled, lost its footing. “What did you do?”
I held up one hand, palm out. The court saw it. The intricate latticework of runes, the signature of my blood, inscribed with care and hate into the very flesh. “Looking for this?” I asked, with just enough mockery to cut through his bravado.
He staggered, as if something unseen had kicked out his knees from behind. The audience moaned, a susurrus of pleasure and horror, indistinguishable in Hell. The runes along Lucifer’s spine began to glow, the symbols I had carved into his skin during our last communion.
“You—” he rasped. His mouth hung open, fangs gleaming. “You cannot—”
“Oh, but I can.” My voice carried. The Void saw to that.
His body jerked, puppeted by the binding magic. He resisted, every muscle bucking, but the runes flared brighter with every futile twitch. Aziz watched, eyes avid; Levi licked his lips; Ian exhaled a contented sigh, as if watching a masterwork fall into place.
I came down the steps with glacial patience, circling Lucifer, letting the silence show the court who now ruled.
At his back, his wings flexed, then convulsed, then folded in submission.
With a twist of my wrist, I drove him to his knees.
He collapsed in a shower of sparks, hands braced against the cold stone, refusing to look up.
I stood over him, one hand on the crown of his head, the other tracing a line along his spine. “You thought you were shaping me,” I said, loud enough for the court to catch every syllable. “But you never realized I was letting you think you had control.”
He tried to rise, but I forced him down, grinding his face to the floor.
The room was so silent that the hiss of his shame was audible.
I returned to the throne, spread my legs slightly, and gestured to the kneeling Lucifer. “Come here.”
The audience watched as his body betrayed him. First one hand, then the other, crawling forward on all fours, red skin splotched with sweat and humiliation. The runes on his back now throbbed with every beat of his heart.
“Show your court who truly rules now,” I said, low and intimate. The words hit him harder than any spell.
He hesitated at the foot of the dais, head lowered, shoulders shuddering. Then, with the inevitability of entropy, he hauled himself up to the space between my thighs. My fingers found the base of his horns, massive, curved, the perfect handles, and I pulled his face flush against me.
He snarled, hissed, and tried to bite, but the binding spell forced his tongue to obedience. The first touch was rage, the second despair, and by the third, he was rutting his face into my cunt, desperate to deny me the pleasure even as he was compelled to give it.
I moaned, loud and unashamed, arching my back and digging my nails into the flesh of his scalp.
The court gasped as one. Some averted their eyes; others stared with the feverish awe of zealots witnessing a miracle.
Aziz, Levi, and Ian watched, no longer kneeling, but crouched on their haunches like wolves ready to pounce.
“Is this what you wanted?” I taunted. “To be on your knees for a queen?”
He growled, and tried to pull away, but the runes burned his skin in punishment. I clamped his horns tighter and ground myself against his mouth, using his face for my pleasure. I looked out over the assembled court, locking eyes with every noble, every monster, every would-be rebel.
“Look at your king now,” I said. “Look at the fate that waits for those who try to leash me.”
The air thickened, each breath a struggle for the weak.
I rode Lucifer’s tongue, each stroke more desperate, more frenzied as the Void inside me grew.
The cracks in the dais widened, black veins racing outward, slithering up the walls and across the ceiling.
Every living thing in the room seemed to vibrate with the feedback, some dropping to their knees, others tearing at their own skin in the throes of submission or envy.
Lucifer’s hands clawed at my thighs, gouging furrows that bled black, but I just laughed and forced him deeper. The more he fought, the more the spell coiled around his heart and genitals, squeezing until he could do nothing but service me.
Aziz prowled closer, his cock already hard, hands idly stroking himself as he watched the greatest tyrant in creation reduced to a sex toy. Levi and Ian pressed against the sides of the throne, their bodies vibrating with the hunger of creatures who knew the food would never run out again.
I threw my head back and shrieked as the orgasm hit, a raw, wild thing that reverberated off the bones of the chamber and up through the layers of Hell.
The Void seized the moment, billowing out of me in a pulse that dropped a dozen courtiers in their tracks.
Lucifer’s own body convulsed, spilling him to the floor, where he lay trembling and ruined.
I wiped the slick from my thighs, then used his horns to lever his head up. His eyes, those famous pitch-black wells, now bled a new shade. The color of defeat.
I stood, towering over the court. Aziz, Levi, and Ian took their places beside me, flanking the throne in a formation older than time.
“The reign of Lucifer is over,” I announced. “I am your queen. Those loyal to me will prosper. Those who resist…” I let my gaze fall to the heap of flesh and fury that had once been the terror of angels.
The first noble dropped to her knees, eyes wide and shining. The rest followed, a waterfall of genuflections, each more frantic than the last. Even the children at the gates wailed and writhed in ecstasy, knowing at last whose leash they wore.
Lucifer whimpered. It was a soft, pitiful sound, but the court heard it and shuddered in delicious terror.
I took my seat on the blackened throne and watched as Hell, entire and eternal, bent to me.