Home > Two Kingdoms (The Dark Side #3)(10)

Two Kingdoms (The Dark Side #3)(10)
Author: Kristy Cunning

I narrow my eyes at him. Anytime he seems to taunt me, it’s like I turn into a teenage rebel of sorts. I’ll be embarrassed about it later.

“I simply don’t like feeling like the interloper who has to force men to want her. I want to know they’d be mine regardless of those pieces being removed. Because, no, I have no clue how to retrieve those pieces. Even if I knew how, I’m sure I put it into one of those formulas I created with my own language, and that really does me no damn good.”

He wipes away his grin and clears his throat. “The boys would still be in hell’s black heart all these many thousands of years later had you not spared them. If they were here to hear this—as the men with all their memories—”

“Consider them entirely different,” I interrupt, and then I have a subtle moment of panic when I realize I’ve interrupted the fucking Devil.

Since I’ve already done it, I roll with it, especially since he seems to be taking me a little more seriously.

“I wrote myself notes to tell myself about the guys. As though I foresaw this coming. What if I found out a way to better their existence, and forgot that I may not be quite as important to them like this?” I ask, feeling a little…weird.

But I try not to make it weird.

“But you are still just as important to them, Paca,” he says with a smirk. “It’s been a long time since I had to talk boys with my youngest. I have to say…it’s making me quite nostalgic.”

There he goes…making it weird.

“You realize you just danced around my question,” I say on a sigh.

“They have nightmares, don’t they?” he asks, causing me to stiffen as I look at him.

“If they have no memories, they’d be riddled with nightmares as a balance,” he says as though he’s explaining. “But in order to create theories about what may or may not have happened, you need to know how you died. More importantly, you need to know when you died.”

My eyes find his and hold there expectantly, wondering why he hasn’t already told me if he’s no way involved. Why hold back?

“Well?” I prompt, trying not to sound too desperate for the answer and give the Devil the power of leverage. “Skip to the how, since I know the when. I know it’s been five hundred years.”

“The how part will take some explaining, and trust me, we will be having that conversation very soon. It’s one of the reasons I had you summoned tonight.”

My heart thumps heavily in my chest as he starts nearing me, and I make a conscious effort to remain rooted to my spot. The goal is to appear unafraid, but I feel the menace rolling off him the closer he grows, and my resolve wavers no less than four times in under five seconds.

He’s the only person whose presence I’ve felt, aside from my siblings and Lamar. I wonder if it’s because I’m too powerful to feel the lesser ones such as escorts or Elders—who aren’t very elderly, if you ask me. Five hundred years is not that long, in the grand scheme of things, and he clearly had no idea who I was until I went all psycho devil child on him and told him my badass name.

But if I’m that powerful, why would there be any rebellions at all? They’d never stand a chance. The divide in power is unconquerable.

Lucifer stops just a foot in front of me as my inner ramble comes to an abrupt halt, and I startle when he lifts his hands. He moves so fast that I don’t even gauge his next motion until he’s stepping back with my mask in his hands.

His eyes almost seem to soften as he rakes his gaze over my face.

“The boys have only been dead for three hundred and fifty years,” he says with a slight frown. “Though, technically, they weren’t dead for long at all, since they’ve existed centuries since.”

“Five hundred years. They’ve been missing for as long as I have,” I argue.

He nods slowly. “The moment you were killed, they lost it, unable to function without you. The madness set in. They damn near destroyed the world with a single day of unbridled, grievous chaos. Echoes of Malek’s plagues still come and go, and seeds of wisdom and medicine have formed in the minds of righteous men to counter such.”

Reaching up, I touch my heart when it hurts, and vaguely I think of the destruction they caused just recently. They didn’t even particularly like me this time when I died. Still, they grieved and tore apart the home I know they love, for whatever reason.

I can only imagine the four of them in such deep love with me when I died. Centuries upon centuries of bonding with each other….

It might have devastated them, especially since I was their savior back then.

“It took all my heirs and myself to bring them to a hilt and lock them back away. The twins built an entire area in purgatory to lock them in, just trying to keep them alive long enough to figure out a way to bring you back, without putting them back into Hell’s Black Heart.”

“How did they die?” I ask on a rasp whisper.

He lets my mask tumble to the floor. “Manella broke the law and recycled them as a mercy, and it was assumed they’d ceased to exist—along with their powers—when they didn’t return to the throat. He never told Lamar. He let Lamar hope it was possible, giving him that gift even as he never truly believed it.”

He blows out a breath as I remain silent for once, just listening.

“But Manella, like all of us, believed we’d really lost you. He didn’t want them to suffer any longer. But clearly something happened after they were recycled, because they are a balanced imbalance that makes no sense outside of you.”

“You had me until that last part, and now I’m just confused,” I grumble.

His eyes harden. Slightly terrifying too.

“I’m saying, without a masterful balancer, there’s no way they would exist. I don’t know how, but you saved their lives even after you’d been dead for over a century. Tell me, Paca, are there truly no memories at all?”

“I wouldn’t be standing here listening to you endlessly ramble about things I haven’t asked about if I had any other way of gathering information,” I point out. “It’s unbearably tedious.”

His lips twitch with the beginnings of a grin.

“Very well. I think it’s time we tell you what we know. But first, it’s time for a family reunion.”

My breath leaves in a rush when I suddenly feel like I’ve quickly stepped through a tornado. The air stills in a hallway I’ve never seen before, at least not in the memorable past.

How the hell did we get here?

Knots tighten in my stomach, and a red door suddenly appears on a stretch of wall that had no door there before. I’m not sure if I’m terrified or stupidly excited that this is about to happen, but I do know I wish the guys were here right now.

I actually dart a glance around, wondering if I can find them. Lucifer doesn’t miss anything I do. It feels like he’s constantly reading me.

“You shouldn’t be spending so much time away from them. You’re strongest with them,” Lucifer tells me as we take a walk like he’s the hangman leading me down to the gallows.

The excitement is decidedly gone, and dread continues to unfurl. I have no clue if I even have as much power as I used to, back when I was The Apocalypse.

“I’m not doing this,” I say as I stop. “I never agreed to this. You forced my hand, and then you make little inside jokes I can’t remember about trusting the Devil,” I add, turning to face him, stopping far away from that red door.

His eyebrows bounce up, and I half wonder if I’ve almost surprised him, or if he’s simply humoring me.

“I won that sword match, and then you turn around and try to manipulate me just as you said you wouldn’t for someone who could make your life hell.”

“By being absent,” he bites out, “you are making my life miserable—not hell. I prefer not to use hell like it’s a foul word, since that’s the name of the home I’m trying to bring you back to, Paca.”

I suppose using hell as a derogatory term could be considered offensive to the Devil…

These are the fucked up new days of my life.

It was so much simpler when I was just a lonely, shameless, perverted phantom girl.

“Regardless, you still manipulated me, and something tells me that not even the old me would have just laid down and taken this,” I go on. “I think I’ll be leaving now.”

“You will make an appearance, if for no other reason than to stave off the damn rebels.”

“Like the rebels really pose a threat,” I say on a humorless laugh. “I killed an Elder tonight with very little effort. You could mow down half of hell yourself. Easily.”

“You killed an Elder tonight?” he asks incredulously, his expression almost causing me to laugh.

I only thought I knew what Lucifer’s face of surprise was until this moment, because this distorted expression is less unsettling and much more comical.

“He wanted to put me in my place, since I’m just a lowly surface guardian,” I explain.

His mouth forms an O, and that weird sense of familiarity spreads throughout me again. I just blurted out that I killed an Elder of hell to the Devil, and never thought twice about it…

It feels like a father/daughter bonding moment.

Why did I start sounding proud when the words just tumbled right out?

Hell girl problems.

His eyes almost soften, as though he realizes why I’ve stopped talking.

He huffs out a breath, muttering something I miss, even with my keen hearing.

Just as I open my mouth to speak, I see his brow furrow as he takes a step back. When his jaw tics like he’s eavesdropping on a conversation not even I can hear, I half wonder just how much better his hearing is. And I get a little annoyed that it’s better than mine, if I’m being immaturely honest.

“Congratulations, Paca,” he says as he glances down at me. “You get to remain a secret for at least another day.”

I don’t even get a chance to celebrate my small win, because I’m suddenly stumbling forward in our surface home’s living room.

As if cued, all four guys are abruptly in the room with me, but they don’t even glare at me for a full second before they siphon out of the living room.

No one asks me any questions, which is clearly not what I expected. We have a system: I do something that pisses off the four of them, they rant and mime wringing my neck, and…now we can have angry sex. It’s on the table, right?

We’ve read countless times that I enjoy a little chase.

They enjoy one too.

Maybe I need to be better about chasing a little less.

Huffing out a breath, I zap myself up to Ezekiel’s room, hoping he’s in a reasonable mood. Oddly enough, I’m supposed to have the most in common with War.

I suppose that should say something about my personality.

Then again, my name should make it obvious, so I don’t know why I’m doing an inner ramble and just staring unabashedly at Ezekiel as he undresses in front of his bed.

   
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