Page 178 of Wicked Believer
I didn’t really know what I was signing up for before.
But this time, the choice will be mine completely.
“Is this all Hell is?” I ask once we’ve been walking for what feels like ages. “A gray and endless desert?” I hear an eerie, desolate sound in the distance, something animal, and my spine runs cold. I’m not sure I want to see whatever demonic creature that noise originated from.
“It was, originally,” Lucifer answers. “Hell’s landscape is more vast than the earth you call home, Charlotte, but it is most often ...”—he hesitates for a moment, like he’s trying to find the right description—“spaces that exist between defined states, the familiar made unfamiliar. I take inspiration from humanity’s own horrors.” He wrinkles his nose. “I find most human imaginations are sufficiently insufferable in their own right.”
The dry heat in the air starts to lessen, then cools slightly, and I sigh in relief from where my lips were starting to crack.
If simply walking through certain parts of Hell is this bad, I can’t begin to understand what other kinds of suffering it contains.
But I have a feeling, from the way Lucifer tugs at my hand eagerly, gently urging me onward, that he’s got something new and completely unexpected up his sleeve. Just as I’m about to tell him I’m not going to take another step farther, we come to a stop, and suddenly his hands are overtop my eyelids from where he stands behind me.
“I wanted to be certain thatwhenyou choose to stay with me, to be mine forever and always, that I no longer have to leave you when I come here. That you would have a place here in Hell beside me, as my queen.”
I lift a brow.
This isn’t about to be some hellish BDSM torture chamber, is it?
Lucifer chuckles, hearing my thoughts loud and clear.
“What are you trying to say?” I ask.
“Open your eyes, darling.”
He pulls back his hands, and I gasp, all the breath rushing out of me.
Because in front of me lies his real kingdom, his real court.
The one of his own making.
Made entirely out of stars.
The colors of the sweeping mountainous landscape before us are in the same palette as the northern lights he cast over the city.
And the starlight in Hell is actually twinkling.
“How? How did you—?”
“I had my suspicions that my brother might pull something of a coup, of course, so I’ve been pouring a fair amount of my power into this realm for years. It felt high time that I spruce the place up a bit.” He snaps his fingers, and we’re transported to the middle of an obsidian throne room, overlooking an outdoor balcony. Dozens of smaller dwellings pepper the hillside beneath, and I know without asking who they’re for.
The souls.
The ones he doesn’t believe deserve to be here.
Suddenly, my heart is in my throat, my chest tightening.
I should have known.
Like his Father, Lucifer is capable of mercy.
Mercy he was never given.
Because God couldn’t bear to see His own flaws reflected in His son’s face.
In all the Originals.
I shake my head. If what Azmodeus told me is true, then ...
