Page 93 of Dark Prince

Any second now.

“Luc—!” The voice is broken with a gag.

Sophia.

Throwing caution and stealth to the wind, I hurtle through the office toward her voice. Cubicles flatten before me, but not quickly enough. Horrific images flash through my head—the things Cephalus could do to her mind and body with no effort at all are mind boggling, blood curdling, and unspeakable.

I find her suspended from his hand by her throat. He stands on top of the desk where she was hiding, glaring down at me with triumph and disappointment both prominently displayed on his twisted features. Sophia is desperately gripping his wrist as tears stream from her eyes.

My mind races, calculating how to free her without killing her, how to kill him without hurting her.

“It’s time for you to ask yourself what this little human really means to you,” Cephalus chuckles. “What lengths would you go to in order to save her, my son? Her life depends on your answer.”

With that, my father disappears with my lover in hand, leaving a blackened and scorched smudge where he once stood.

Chapter33

Sophia

My face is wet.

Did I fall down in the cooler?

Oh god, I better not be bleeding in here, Ronnie will have a fit.

Okay, Sophia, get up.

My head throbs in blinding flashes as I try to move, and the pain sends me helplessly back to the floor. My throat hurts, too. I really hope I haven’t been throwing up. If I barfed in the cooler, Ronnie will assume I have a hangover.

Do I have a hangover? When was the last time I even drank like that?

Right, it was at Naamah’s place the other night.

Oh, fuck!

My eyes fly open as everything comes rushing back. I’m not in the cooler. Of course I’m not, because I don’t even work at the restaurant anymore.Naamah…

Her name fills me with rage and despair. She betrayed me. The one woman I trusted outside of Cassidy, and she betrayed me. But she’s dead now, right?No. She healed, she pushed me off the roof, and then—

Lucifer. Where is he?Where am I?They were fighting, and I was hiding when I heard Naamah scream. Then the scream cut off horrifically, the sound so viscerally awful that I gasped. Damn it, I was supposed to be silent and hidden. I was supposed to wait out the battle like a shadow, but I gasped. Then he grabbed me.

I screamed for Lucifer, or tried to, anyway. That demon, Cephalus, tried to choke me. That’s why my throat hurts. Lucifer hesitated.He froze.He looked so frightened, so uncertain, and the memory of his expression makes guilt rush through me. Because I gasped, because I got captured, he looked that way. I was sure Cephalus was going to kill me right there, but then something happened.

That part isn’t clear at all. Probably because whatever happened next knocked me unconscious.

I finally work up the nerve to look around. The floor is stone, which explains why it feels cool. So are the walls. Shackles and chains are bolted to the wall in front of me. A sluggish draft curls across the floor from behind me. It carries a hint of a scent that makes my stomach curl. Like Lucifer’s, but wrong. I can’t really explain it, but it’s empty and predatory all at once.

I push myself gingerly up on my hands, then carefully pull my feet under me. Everything aches, but it all seems to be working in the way it’s supposed to. Nothing broken, then.

Slowly, apprehensively, I turn around. The fourth wall of the cell I’m in is made up of a row of dull metal bars. A man watches me from the other side, his eyes glittering.

Cephalus.

It has to be him. I’ve only seen him in his demon form before this point, but somehow, I recognize him anyway. Maybe it’s because he looks a little like his son.

He’s a little taller and broader than Lucifer, but similar in features. The same handsome facial structure, the same thick hair. His eyes are a dark brown like Lucifer’s, only missing the sparks of gold. That’s what it is that makes him so terrifying to look at, I realize. He’s so similar to Lucifer in every way, but he’s missing the spark. All danger and no desire, all fury and no softness, a walking nightmare. Everything that ever frightened me in Lucifer is here, unleashed, barely hidden behind the visage of an elegant man.

An elegant monster.

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