Brimstone Prince. Barbara Hancock J.

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СКАЧАТЬ on a woven rug that was only the thinnest of barriers between her and the packed-earth floor.

      This time she softly trilled an ironic measure of a classic tune about stairs to heaven. Spirits were playful. They wouldn’t mind. And she needed to settle her nerves. Affinity took the tune from there, quickly morphing her wry beginning into a complexity of air and vibration that claimed her entire body from blood to breath to bone. She communed with the universe by sound. Her music was a prayer. She combined the teachings of her mother with the power gifted to her by her father to come to a deeper connection with the spirits than others had achieved before. Her ability was unique, but that meant it was a challenge to navigate. She felt her way through every possibility as she went along.

      Hair began to move around her face, tossed by a breeze that was both as natural as could be and eerily impossible in the closed room. Beneath her the earthen floor trembled, and moisture began to coalesce in the air around her until her parched lips were dampened and her lashes sparkled with what felt like unshed tears.

      Lily paused in her playing. She held her breath. The last note faded and she carefully lowered her flute from her lips.

      “Lucifer’s wings,” she whispered into the silence that seemed heavy with humidity from an approaching storm. The complex challenges she faced made the words seem more curse than request. The wings had to be meant for Michael Turov. They wouldn’t be a means of escape or a bargaining chip he could use to barter his way out of hell. They would seal his fate. Michael Turov’s rejection of his daemon legacy was well-known in the hell dimension. He’d visited. He’d walked away. No one expected him to return for good...except the daemon king.

      “L-L-Lucifer’s wings,” she said again. Her hair whipped around her cheeks now. It had grown damp and stung her eyes and skin like a thousand tiny lashes. The earth rumbled. A crackle of electricity charged the air as if lightning was seconds away. A wash of ozone rode the elemental breeze.

      Her pack at the edge of the bed behind her tumbled to the floor and landed open beside her. The two dolls she’d tried to leave wrapped and hidden rolled out. The warrior angel figure stopped against her shoe, still wrapped, still unsummoned. But the doll that represented Fire was loosened. Its burlap wrap was scorched and blackened. Smoke curled from it into the air.

      Lily grabbed for the smoking doll, but it was too late. She cried out and pulled back burned fingers as the wrappings burst into flame. More smoke than the fuel justified billowed upand rose into the spirit-tossed air, but Wind and Water didn’t touch the rolling gray smoke. It had a life of its own and it was soon evident exactly what...or whom...the smoke would become.

      Lily stumbled to her feet and backed away as rain began to fall. Her wind-whipped hair was plastered against her face, but she saw the smoke come together to form a familiar figure. The grumble of the earth seemed a herald of sorts, more powerful than a plague of angels’ trumpets as the smoky form became solid walking toward her.

      He moved like a king before he was any more than ashy smoke. As his muscular body solidified, he conquered the room by right and by the price he’d paid evidenced by every scar he bore—both seen and unseen. Lily knew Ezekiel’s heart was as craggy as the battle-marked planes of his chest and cheeks.

      She had summoned the daemon king. Or had she? She doubted if her guardian had to be called. He’d arrived at his own appointed time.

      “Sir,” Lily said. If her earlier “Lucifer’s wings” had been a curse, this was a prayer. Because she dreaded the price of the protection he’d given her these last fifteen years.

      “You are well. Your mother’s request might have been lethal,” Ezekiel said. His voice was deep and rich, warm with an interest that could be terrifying if you weren’t braced for it. Lily had the practice of years behind her, but she still blanched. Her cheeks chilled and her head went light. Her mother had wanted to preserve the old Hopi sites from daemon destruction. But mostly Sophia had wanted to help Ezekiel against the Rogue threat. It had been a last gesture of unrequited love. Lily had agreed because she owed her guardian everything, even though Ezekiel’s distant devotion was difficult to bear. Hadn’t she seen her mother suffer for years because she had fallen in love with a “man” who merely cared for her as a means to an end?

      “She wanted me to help you, but she also dreamed that one day I’d be free,” Lily said.

      Her guardian was fully formed now and his worn leather armor told much about his mood. He was perfectly capable of manifesting ordinary, everyday clothes. He didn’t always dress like he sat on a medieval throne.

      “The only way you will ever be free is to die. I’ve promised to prevent that for as long as I’m able,” Ezekiel said. “But your affinity is your jailer. Not I.” His scent was familiar. Wood smoke tinged with a hint of sulfur, ancient leather, and a metallic hint of blood. Yes, her childhood had been interesting. The daemon king smelled like home.

      “So you haven’t come to punish me for running away?” Lily half joked. She feared his devotion to the D’Arcy family he’d adopted because of his love for Elizabeth. Its ferocity. Its fire. She feared his expectations would consume her as she burned herself out trying to repay him. Never did she fear he would purposefully harm a single hair on her head. But he might inadvertently scorch her and everyone else on the earth to protect and promote those he truly loved.

      “I would sooner slay an entire army of Rogues bent on my destruction,” Ezekiel replied. “Alone. With my bare hands.” He cared for her. Not in the way that he cared for the D’Arcys, but he did care. It had always been obvious that she and her mother were mere obligations. He’d disappeared for years at a time to watch over the D’Arcys while she and her mother stayed in the palace alone. She’d learned early on not to expect visits or attention. She hadn’t learned not to be hurt by the neglect.

      Lily could no longer hold herself back from the pull of the only familial affection she’d known since her parents’ death. She threw herself into the daemon king’s arms and he held her to his armored chest with a fierce grip just shy of being painfully ferocious. It was startling. He’d never been demonstrative with her in the past. She’d expected him to stiffen and hold her at arm’s length.

      “I worried,” he said into her drying hair. The earth had quieted. The air was still. None of the spirits dared to make a peep in Ezekiel’s presence.

      “And yet you let me go,” Lily said.

      “Never trust a daemon,” they both whispered together.

      And then he set her from him, maintaining only one of her hands in both of his.

      He was a daemon. He was the daemon king. He could care for her as a guardian more deeply than any mortal father and still he would use her to order the universe to his liking. Daemons were chess players with an eye for the long game—centuries long—and the game Ezekiel played held the balance of worlds in its outcome.

      “You will help him retrieve Lucifer’s wings with no reservation, no equivocation. But you already knew I would ask this of you,” Ezekiel said.

      She pulled her hand from his and turned away. Unfortunately, the tiny bedroom gave her no place to flee. Even if she’d had the whole palace at her disposal or the entire desert, there was no place she could go to escape the obligation to the daemon king. He’d saved them. He’d shielded them. Her mother had fallen madly in love with Ezekiel, and he’d never hurt Sophia even though he hadn’t loved her in the same way. Daemons loved long, and Ezekiel had loved Elizabeth D’Arcy and only her. Forever.

      Elizabeth had been Michael’s human grandmother. СКАЧАТЬ