Page 9 of All's Hell That Ends Well

“Made her what?” he asked in a deathly quiet whisper.

I clamped my mouth shut with a squeak. I would not be the one to break to Lucifer that his beloved wife and soul mate had been miserable living in his home realm.Nope, no, not gonna happen.

I knew the fate of the bearers of bad news.

Lucifer’s focus on me narrowed to that of a cobra zeroing in on a mouse.

“Pray tell,” he murmured, and at the same moment, pressure clamped down on my throat.

Not to strangle me—that would not be possible, seeing as he was unable to hurt me physically. No, this pressure was of a different sort.

It pulled the words from my throat. All those I’d just bitten back.

“Miserable,” I choked out, the word ripped from me against my will. “Sad, depressed, withering, forlorn, numb, unhappy, fading, dispirited, downcast, dejected, despondent—” I stopped and hauled in a huge breath, my heart threatening to beat out of my chest. “Oh, God, did you have to make me recite the whole fucking thesaurus? Geez.”

Lucifer’s eyes were black chips of ice.

The room temperature dropped so sharply that the liquid in his glass froze, same as the tea on the table in front of me. My breath misted in the air, the chill of death creeping into my bones. Frost crawled over the floor, spreading out from Lucifer’s chair into the corners of the room. I couldn’t feel my fingers or my toes.

“If I die from hypothermia,” I whispered, my lips barely able to move, “I can’t find her for you.”

The frost receded, the chill drawing back into him, and I sucked in once-again-warm air to thaw my lungs. My hands and feet tingled to the point of itching.

Lucifer sipped from his drink, the contents of the glass no longer frozen. “Demons can’t die from cold.”

I rubbed my arms. “Are you sure? I mean, our home realm is a fiery one. We’re all used to heat, so how do we know we can survive freezing temperatures? Have there ever been anydemons in the Antarctic? Like, did you guys do an expedition to test?—”

“You’ll spend three weeks on Earth searching for her,” Lucifer interrupted my nervous babbling, “and then one week down here to recharge your energy, after which you’ll go to Earth for another three-week term, and so on.”

I sat up straighter as a thought struck me. He was sending me to Earth…the place I hadn’t been able to go to for the past eight years, even though I still had two people there I’d been visiting regularly while I’d been living in Hell with Azazel. I could finally see Taylor and my dad again! And maybe I could check in with my aunt, Cora, as well. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to talk to her, but I’d love to see her after all this time.

Surely Lucifer wouldn’t even notice if I spent some of my trips to Earth hanging out with my human loved ones.

And Azazel could join me. I refused to entertain the thought that I wouldn’t get to see him. I’d made it back to Hell, I was a demon now, and we should be able to finally be together again—even if being under Lucifer’s control meant I couldn’t live with him. Yet. I’d find a way to make that possible.

And until then, Azazel and I could meet on Earth as well as here in Hell. Maybe he could even come travel with me?

Lucifer tilted his head as he regarded me, his gaze far too perceptive. “You’ll be assigned an escort to make sure you’re actually traveling around looking for her, and not just frolicking among humans. And no, that escort will not be Azazel.”

Well, shit. There went that idea.

I narrowed my eyes. “If I do this for you?—”

“There is no if.”

I gritted my teeth and drew in a sharp breath through my nose. “Seeing as I’m doing you a big favor here?—”

“I am your king and direct liege, and my orders to you are not favors the fulfillment of which depends on your whims,but commands that you have no choice but to obey.” Shadows pulsed around him, the temperature of the air sinking again. “Remember your place.”

I took a moment to rein in my rising anger and resentment. I’d never been good at respecting authority. But to antagonize him was a bad idea—even my weird brain understood that.

“Your Grace,” I began, adding a sweet note to my voice, “I humbly request that you consider allowing me a day or two during each three-week stay on Earth to visit my loved ones. I will be much more highly motivated to conduct my search if I get to spend time with the people I care about.”

He swirled his glass, his disturbingly dark gaze on me. “Like your father’s soul that you stole from my Pit?”

I froze. Oh, shit, right, there was that. Heknew. The memory of that moment when he’d taken me down into the bowels of his palace to witness the torture session and had revealed that he’d long figured out we’d freed my dad’s soul from his clutches came careening back, and my breath stuttered out of me.

“That look of panic is priceless,” he muttered with a chuckle and sipped from his drink.

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