The atmosphere had changed. He wasn’t the only one who noticed. More and more entities around him—daemon and damned—began to press out from the walls that held their souls in limbo. He was well ahead of their frenzied efforts. All but one of his legs were free. He ignored the state of his new body. It was more marble than man, with gruesome striations of stone rendering his form dark and mottled in the dimly lit hallway. In the distance he could hear music and laughter. But the Rogues who broke free from their prison filled the shadows with guttural moans as if they were the undead returning from their graves.
Peter grasped at his lifelong obsession because his mind was vague.
Samuel’s daughter. Samuel’s daughter. Samuel’s daughter.
It was her amplified affinity that called them from the walls. Hers and the combined call of others with the same gift, albeit in lesser degrees. The affinity and the weakening hold of a daemon king preparing to step aside for his successor.
His mind might be sluggish and striated with stone like the rest of him, but he knew one thing...the throne must remain vacant for the Rogues and their human slaves to rise. His fellows must have known the same because they struggled to free themselves from the friezes. He sank down to the floor on his knees. He needed to summon the strength to make his way toward the throne room and he needed to wait for an army of Rogues to join him. It was a diminished army. A gruesome army disfigured and deformed. But he was one of them now. The Order was no longer his driving force. To tear down, to destroy, to corrupt—these desires consumed him.
* * *
As midnight approached, the party became a crush of revelry. Champagne and stronger spirits had flowed heavily throughout the night and there were no partygoers more passionate than a hall full of daemons preparing to welcome their new king. Lily was swept up in an atmosphere thick with a joy that edged on desperation.
Love us. Lead us. Save us.
Near-immortality made the fallen more desperate than most for strong, steady leadership. They had survived the loss of heaven, the persecution of human hunters and the battle for hell and now wanted more than anything to live in peace. Lucifer had promised his followers autonomy, but he hadn’t promised them it would be easy.
Lily danced with Michael off and on throughout the night. But she also danced with his stepfather, Adam Turov, whom she found almost as hard and scarred as the daemon king. He was a genuine hero, a man who had sold his soul to escape from the Order of Samuel and then spent his long, long life saving others from the enclave that had kidnapped him and nearly killed him as a child. She found him to be fascinating, intimidating and a fit match for one of the women who had loomed larger than life over her own childhood.
And then there had been John Severne. He still burned in spite of reclaiming the soul his grandfather had sold to the Rogue Council when he was a mere boy. Ezekiel had gifted him with a hint of remaining Brimstone for helping Katherine D’Arcy save her sister from Rogues and the Order of Samuel. The slight burn suited his brooding Parisian good looks and Baton Rouge charm. He deserved the title of Master of l’Opéra Severne. But there was a mysterious edge to his artfulness that flustered her when they danced. Michael’s aunt Kat was a brave woman to have explored those mysteries. Nevertheless, he was a Southern gentleman who spun her around the dance floor with a masculine grace just shy of Ezekiel’s own.
So she faced the D’Arcys and she survived.
Even though their eyes followed her all night long. She feared that Victoria’s and Kat’s affinity would certainly lead them to understand that she wasn’t celebrating with the rest of the crowd. She feared that Adam Turov’s and John Severne’s prolonged lives would lead them to read her secrets in every glance and sigh.
And with every turn in Michael’s arms she held a little tighter and lingered a little longer after the music died. She didn’t trust the flicker of hope Michael’s strength caused in her heart. Her affinity was an impossible obstacle between them even as it irresistibly drew them together. How could she ever be certain that he was functioning under his own free will?
A late Viennese waltz had her gasping for air in a dizzy whirl around the room. She focused on Michael’s eyes. They glowed with flames outlined in darker green, all hazel burned away. She held his shoulder and his hand with ferocious grips, but he didn’t protest. He was more than strong enough to take it. He took the weight of her whole body, propelling her over the marble floor effortlessly, their gazes locked. The rest of the dancers were blurs at the corners of her eyes.
She was in flight. With Michael, she always flew even when her feet were on the ground.
But midnight loomed and the daemon king was well aware of the passage of time. He was suddenly there, tall and immovable in their path. They stutter-stepped to a halt. Michael caught her to his broad chest so she wouldn’t trip and fall.
“The decision is yours, but it’s time for it to be made. Our deal has weakened my hold on the throne. As midnight nears my hold grows weaker and weaker. The walls are restless,” Ezekiel said.
The music had ended as abruptly as their dance. All the other couples on the floor and around the great ballroom faced Michael D’Arcy Turov. They watched and waited. Silence had claimed the whole company. And in that stillness a new sound rose, the rustling and moaning of the walls. Beneath the candle chandeliers, the walls that shivered with the shadows of thousands of tiny flames now also moved with hundreds of figures straining their arms and hands and faces out and away from the wall. The sight illustrated what must have happened in other parts of the palace. It explained the distant sound of tramping feet.
“There isn’t much time. Lucifer’s wings await a new...master,” Ezekiel said.
Michael straightened. He nodded to his grandfather. Lily could feel him slipping away even as he still held her.
“No. There has to be another way,” she protested.
“My whole life has led to this moment. My legacy is my own to face,” Michael said. He held her hands against his chest. She could feel the steady beat of his Brimstone-fueled heart. The crowd was already breaking apart and heading toward the throne room. Michael moved with them. She had to let him go. Although they left the room together at first, the press of people interfered and too soon their hands loosened. Then she lost her hold on his fingers.
Ezekiel led the way. She and Michael followed. They were no longer touching, but still close. The rest of the crowd surrounded them in a press of finery and tipsy enthusiasm. But in spite of the soft noise the guests made, Lily could hear the strange moaning and shuffling coming closer behind the crowd of Loyalists. And, even worse, the walls were alive with the grasping hands of the damned as they tried to break free. The heat of all the Brimstone around her that had risen from fear and fury scorched her skin.
Then there was a scream. One of the guests had made the mistake of looking behind them in the long, dark corridor that led to the throne room. Bad enough that the walls were lined with grasping and grabbing arms and hands, but the Rogues and their human slaves who had managed to fully manifest from the walls were a gruesome sight as they lurched and crawled and clawed their way toward the Loyalist daemons. Lily cried out when she saw them. At her sound of distress, Michael stopped and pushed through the mass of panicking subjects to her side to grasp her hand again.
His assumption of the throne was no longer a leisurely process with the pomp and circumstance of a ritualized occasion. It was now a desperate bid to save their people from harm.
Lily could see the D’Arcys and their mates herding the Loyalists away from the Rogue threat. She saw Victoria reach to stop Adam Turov from using the double small swords he’d drawn from hidden scabbards beneath his tuxedo jacket on his back. The merciful gesture caused tears to prick her eyes. The half-stone, half-flesh creatures that had escaped the walls were more monsters than men, but this manifestation shouldn’t be their last act before Oblivion no matter how much evil had fueled it.
Ezekiel reached the massive double doors to the throne room first and he flung them open as if they were made of air. His people poured in after him and dispersed along the edges of the room, keeping a safe distance from the walls. The carvings were alive with movement here, but they hadn’t been able to break free. Perhaps the residual power in the great bronzed wings that waited on the throne had held them in the walls.
Instinctively, the crowd had left a wide path for its future king from the open doorway to the throne. The daemon king had hurried forward and he waited for Michael. He stood behind the wings, ready to place them on his grandson’s shoulders.
There was no time for goodbye. There was no time to reveal the entirety of Ezekiel’s scheme to Michael before he claimed the throne. The lurching Rogues had already closed the gap. They were feet away from grabbing the slower Loyalists who hadn’t yet made it through the double doors.
“Go. I know what to do,” Lily said.
Michael touched her face. It was a stolen moment they didn’t have. But only that. No more. His hand slipped away and he turned to hurry toward the wings he’d never wanted to wear.
Lily reached into her pocket. Adam Turov was ready with his swords and Grim had suddenly materialized beside his former master, John Severne. They had fought against daemons, side by side, for a hundred years before Severne had given Grim to Michael because he was a tiny baby who needed protection from the Order of Samuel.
Every item of clothing she owned had been made with pockets to accommodate her flute and her warrior angel at her request. Her ball gown for tonight was no exception. She pulled out her flute and brought it to her lips. She turned away from the sight of Michael stepping up on the dais that held the throne.
He would be lost to her.
But their relationship had been doomed from the start.
Lily began to play. She courted death, but she forced fear from her thoughts. She played her mother’s Hopi lullaby. She played and she released the hold on all the affinity she held in her heart. The Rogues shambled to a stop after the first few notes. Their hands went to their ears. They fell to their knees. Victoria and Kat prevented their husbands from attacking the pitiful creatures that began to crawl toward the pure love that Lily channeled.
There was risk that they would tear her apart when they reached her. They still moaned and groaned in protest and clawed at the marble beneath them. They gibbered and cried and howled with occasional tortured screams.
But Lily played.
And Michael accepted Lucifer’s wings. The instant the wings were placed on his shoulders, Lily could feel their power. She continued to play the song that had brought the Rogues to their knees, but when Michael’s heat outshone all other daemons present, she turned. He stood before the throne with Lucifer’s wings on his shoulders. The empty suit of armor beside the throne was dwarfed by his presence. Every Loyalist including Ezekiel had dropped to one knee. Lily’s legs went numb and she fell to her knees as well.
But she played.
Behind Michael a great shadow had grown on the wall. It was as large as a dragon, but shaped like a man. Its wings spread wide while she watched and suddenly it wasn’t only her song influencing the Rogues. A chill had spread over the whole crowd, but from that chill the power of Michael’s Brimstone rose up. It was magnified by Lucifer’s wings. It joined with the aura of her affinity and called the Rogues toward the shadow on the wall.
They all climbed to their feet and moved forward as a herd. She continued to play, but though they came closer to her, too close, so close that she could smell the corruption of tainted Brimstone, their herd parted around her body. Only one paused. She recognized him from the attack at the Grand Canyon. He was the most gruesomely malformed of them all. More stone than man. The black striations of marble pitted and striped his flesh in uneven jagged slashes.
“D-daughter of S-Samuel. M-mine,” he croaked. With horror, she recognized the monk from the bridge. Like Reynard, he must have sold his soul to the Rogues. He’d lost his life sometime since she’d seen him last and he’d wound up in the walls of the palace just like his Rogue allies. His hands reached for her, but suddenly Grim was there. He stood between her and the creature. He growled a warning even a monster could understand. And the thing shuffled back from the fearsome hellhound. It moved around Lily as she forced herself to continue to play. Her affinity and Michael’s worked together as the Loyalists watched on bended knee.
Only when the first Rogue walked straight into the shadow on the wall did Lily understand that her warrior angel was helping them return the creatures back to their prison in the frieze. They seemed almost relieved, with each one hurrying faster to join its brethren back in an all-marble state.
“Our affinity is a blessing and a curse. We disturbed them. We called them forth,” Katherine D’Arcy said. She had come to stand beside Lily where she knelt. Lily allowed her flute to fall from her lips only after the last Rogue reentered the wall. She was completely drained.
Victoria joined her sister and together they helped Lily up from the floor. She welcomed the support. Her affinity had waxed so strong and then waned. The sight of Michael coming toward her crowned as the new daemon king was almost too much for her to bear alone.
She had been part of Ezekiel’s plan all along. Michael had been lured to hell in spite of her better intentions. Her only recourse was to give him a choice now that his deal with Ezekiel was done. If she left the palace, he would be free to step aside. His assurances weren’t enough. She had to be sure that he wouldn’t be held here against his will by her affinity.
“This is wrong. I don’t know how I could have prevented it, but I feel its wrongness to my bones,” Victoria said. Her throaty voice shook and her grip on Lily’s arm trembled.
“I feel it, too. It’s as if the affinity is out of tune,” Kat said quietly.
Was her despair magnified by this wrongness in the affinity they spoke of? Lily wasn’t sure. The music that normally filled her was overcome by a breaking heart. She pulled away from the other two women and stood as tall as she could manage to meet the new daemon king. Michael was burning bright. His Brimstone blood fully embraced for the first time.
But she searched his eyes and found the uncertainty in the affinity that they all felt. He was his mother’s son, too.
“Ezekiel used me to entice you to the throne. It was his plan all along. He knew that you wouldn’t be able to deliver the wings and walk away. He counted on my affinity to bind you,” Lily said. “I’m sorry. I tried to warn you.”
“I knew what I was getting into as soon as I discovered you were my grandfather’s ward. He plays us all as chess pieces in an elaborate but deadly serious game,” Michael said. “All of us. How can I hold it against you?”
In spite of the crowd, he lifted his hand to touch her face. The power of the wings he wore zinged into her skin and penetrated all the way to her heart. But its warmth didn’t heal. It only highlighted her pain.
“I’m here for you, Lily. Affinity or not. I’m here for you,” Michael said. “You can’t live at peace outside of the hell dimension, so I’ll make my home here with you.”
It was a confession that cut her to the core because it was a truth she’d suspected all along. He had accepted the throne because of her. It didn’t matter if the affinity had influenced him or if he was capable of feeling pity for her without the affinity’s call.
“I won’t keep you here,” Lily said.
Somehow she managed to turn away from his soft touch. In front of an audience of thousands of eyes including the eyes in the walls, Lily walked away.