Page 4 of Sinful Pride

“Truth.”

Aurelius clapped his hands. “Is it true you wrote multiple songs for Michael?”

“Oh,” Lucifer glared at Aurelius and then Abaddon, the likely source of the information. “Yes,” he said simply, leaving me with my mouth open. Why didn’t I know about that? If he wrote multiple songs for me then they were all mine. I wanted them! But the game progressed already to the next person, so I decided to give it a rest… for now. I promised myself to address the matter later.

The next victim turned out to be Hellion.

“Dare.”

“Act out the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet with Zachariel.”

“And what if I don’t know it?” Hellion grumbled at Lucifer.

“I saw you at the theater, watching several plays, when Shakespeare was still alive and all the rage, don’t even try to pretend.”

Hellion blushed. From what I had noticed, the demon liked to project an image of being an uncouth hooligan, but in fact he seemed to have superb knowledge about culture, especially movies, music, and apparently theater as well.

Zachariel stood up and made his way up to the second open floor overlooking our position.

He leaned on the railing expectantly

“O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?”

We watched as they performed the famous scene. It was entertaining. I could get behind dares like this. My hand squeezed Lucifer’s leg in a silent gesture of appreciation.

Hellion’s next target turned out to be Raphael, and he had to spill the beans about getting scared when he watched horror movies.

After that, it was Zachariel’s turn. He had to stand in a silly position and make animal noises for a minute while his boyfriend recorded him shamelessly. When Zachariel’s bottle pointed at me I was afraid he was going to take his frustration out on me, but he just asked which of the writings on my body I liked the best.

“The words of the song are interesting,” I said. “I have never listened to those particular lyrics, but the poetic phrases make me think I would like to.

For my dreams I hold my life

For wishes I behold my night

The truth at the end of time

Losing faith makes a crime…”

“I will send you a link to it later,” Jaheel said gruffly, but I could tell he was pleased.

Next turn, and it was Hellion at the end of the bottle once more. He chose truth as fearlessly as he chose the dare.

“What was the best pickup line you had ever used?”

Hellion lit up like a Christmas tree and told us all one of the worst pickup lines I have ever heard.

“Really?” Lucifer said doubtfully. “How in the world is ‘Are you a parking ticket? Cause you’ve got ‘fine’ written all over you’ your best pickup line?”

“It truly is the best,” Hellion said smugly. “Because it landed me this guy,” he proudly pointed at Zachariel.

“I never said I had the best taste,” Zachariel shrugged. “But yeah, I’m kinda fond of this line.”

The game continued with Tirael being Hellion’s victim. The angel couldn’t decide between choices of truth or dare. In the end, he choose a dare, probably afraid Hellion would use truth to publicly ask him about what he did to Zachariel.

“I dare you to write something on Michael’s leg.”

I groaned, while a few people around me cheered. So this was why Hellion saved Tirael and made him play the game. Well done, demon, well played. Tirael was still reluctant to mark me, but it didn’t seem like he had a choice now. He took a green pen and wrote on my side: ‘Note to myself: never play games with Hellion.’

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