Page 175 of Crimson Promises
I couldn’t help it. My gaze slipped to Aurora. A crease had formed between her eyebrows before it was smoothed away by her blank facade.
“Aurora has a lot to offer an individual. Regretfully, it has been wasted on you until now.”
The thought of him anywhere near her made me want to wretch up whatever was floating around inside me all over his pretty, smug face.
“That’s not true,” I stated.
“The mortal world, including you, have come to see me as The Devil, this big bad entity from which nightmares are born. All I do is go after what I want. Are you not here to chase power and vengeance? To right the wrongs of those who have harmed you.”
I wanted to shake my head no, but Lucifer was equal to Michael’s expertise on strategy. Nothing he did was not well thought out.
He knew my wounds, and here he was, ready to rip them open to have them fester and bleed in front of everyone.
“You can hide behind warm and fuzzy feelings like love, but the burning desire to reach for what you want to feel seen and heard. To not be weak but to be powerful that will always be there. What separates the strong from the weak, the successful from the common, is the commitment to follow through, to want it more than anything or anybody else. Aurora was always going to be a casualty of your plans. Don’t you think it’s time she learned what they are? What you’ve done?”
I clamped my teeth together.
“Come now, Bennett Caelum,” Lucifer said. “Now isn’t the time to be silent. If I’m going to be marked as the evil-doer in this room, we might as well expose all of it. What do you have to say to that?”
I wanted to spit in his eyes, fillet the skin from his body. He wasn’t the person I thought he was. But then again, Aurora would think the same thing of me in the next few moments. My eyes burned as bile seared my throat.
“Do you still wish to claim you are here for an ‘us’?” Lucifer taunted.
I rolled my shoulders back and cracked my neck. “Yes, I do.” Because despite it all, the hurt, the pain, the void, the anger I felt towards Aurora when I saw her in Lucifer’s arms, seeing her again burned it away. The love I had been trying to smother exploded like the colors of a sunrise. It was all right there in front of me.
Lucifer crossed his leg and leaned back into the throne. “Well then, if that’s your choice, it's time to get everything out in the open. What is that saying the mortals have?” He rested his elbow on his knee. “Honesty is the best policy.”
An invisible force tugged Aurora’s long hair back, forcing her on her feet. A shot of pain flashed through the bond.
Horror coiled in my gut.
“Release her,” I demanded.
The Devil gave me a sidelong glance. “You are in no position to make demands. You would do well to remember that, Caelum. This is the second time I've mentioned it. I will issue no further warning.”
Lucifer unfolded himself from his throne as he went to stand beside Aurora. He towered over her, reminding her who he was and the power he possessed.
I pressed my lips together as I bit the inside of my cheek. It took everything in me to not roar at the pain he was causing her.It could be worse, a little voice that was intimately familiar with pain reminded me.
“Finally, my darling, you’ve decided to join the party,” Lucifer pressed an open mouth kiss to Aurora’s neck. I expected her to recoil from his touch. Instead, her blue eyes fell to his. He continued, “I can see the sparks of magic behind your eyes. It’s a shame they’ve kept you hidden from me for so long.”
Her body went rigid at his use of the word ‘magic.’
“Ah yes, your magic. It is the reason you are here, Little Star.”
Little Star. I vomited in my mouth.
The bond between us pulled taut. It was my only indication that she felt anxious before she did the last thing I expected her to do.
I watched, captivated, as Aurora stepped closer to Lucifer, her eyes dancing with a fire of their own.
In her gaze, I saw a challenge.
Her hands, those soft, warm hands I’d held countless times, reached up to touch Lucifer’s face. A face hardened by millennia of dominance now caressed with such... tenderness. She looked into his bright red eyes with desire. Eyes that had haunted her in her dreams. Eyes that belonged to the Devil. How could she not see that she was only a game to him? A shudder rippled through me, the world spinning off-kilter as I tried to comprehend what I was seeing. Again.
With an almost possessive grip, she drew him closer, her lips hovering just a breath away from his. For a moment, everything froze. Anticipation strung tight in the air.
And then, with an energy that blazed brighter than the fires of this damned realm, Aurora kissed him.
