Devil of a Chance, page 14
Seeing no reason to put off giving her the bad news, I entered Ashmielle’s chambers. She sat on the couch with Cara. I’d known her for nearly all of my life. She’d been one of the few demons I considered a close friend, close enough to be family. When she first saw me after I returned to the fortress with Ashmielle, she hadn’t been able to stop crying, hugging me, and smacking me for waiting to let her know I was finally out of the cell.
Ashmielle and Cara were talking quietly, but as soon as I approached, they fell silent. The temperature in the room rose a few degrees with Ashmielle’s pointed gaze. Cara’s brows went up and down a few times while she tilted her head, first toward me, then toward Ashmielle. Great. So they’d been in here talking about me. That was fantastic. No wonder all I’d been feeling from Ashmielle was annoyance.
“Cara, I need to speak with Ashmielle alone,” I told her.
“She can stay,” Ashmielle argued.
Cara was already standing. “No, it’s fine. I don’t mind leaving.”
Ashmielle gave her a pleading look. Cara bent over and whispered something in her ear. Whatever it was had Ashmielle rolling her eyes and muttering under her breath. Cara laughed, patted her on the shoulder, and walked toward the door. Her friendly smile fell when she drew next to me, and she pointed her finger in my face.
“You better figure it out,” she whispered. “And do it fast, you hear me?”
“What are you even talking about?” I demanded.
Cara’s thin brow arched. “What do you think, genius?” Then she stomped past me and slammed the door shut on her way out.
“So, are you actually going to talk to me today?” Ashmielle muttered, picking at the edge of the couch’s cushion.
“I was giving you space.”
“That’s what you want to go with? Really?” she scoffed, rising to her feet.
“Do you want me hovering over your shoulder every minute of the day?” I shot back louder than I meant to, but her aggravation was pricking at me as if she dragged her nails down my back again. It was too damn easy to picture myself storming across the room and wrapping my arms around her while I kissed her. I licked my lips, cursing under my breath, and turned my gaze from her flushed cheeks. A flicker of desire that could’ve been from either of us pushed through the aggravation. I was only a couple of steps away from Ashmielle, and yet had no memory of closing the distance. Her breath caught, and fire sparked at her fingertips.
“Samazrael?” she whispered.
What was I doing? With a firm shake of my head, I backed up, wincing at the slap of frustration hitting me in the face. “Lucifer requests your presence at dinner tonight.”
“About damn time,” she muttered.
I grimaced with a growl.
“There’s a catch, isn’t there.”
“He’s presenting you to Hell’s elite,” I informed her, and the temperature shot up another few degrees, “establishing you as his daughter and heir, to the demons who matter.”
“I don’t want to go.”
“You don’t have a choice. I tried to get you out of it.”
Her jaw worked back and forth then she spun around, stomping away from me. “Asshole,” she spat, and the sparks at her fingertips turned into tiny flames. “Why is he doing this to me? Why? He doesn’t actually care about me. Why does it matter who sees me?” she yelled, kicking the armchair at the same time and sending it flying into the wall.
Her aura pulsed around her rapidly, crashing into me repeatedly. My gut twisted into knots in the face of her growing anger. I wanted to kick myself for pushing her the other day. It might’ve given her a breakthrough on dealing with who she was, but damned if she wasn’t bottling up any of her emotions now. She wasn’t even trying to put up mental walls.
And I felt all of it as vividly as if it were my own fury about to spill over.
“I hate him,” she shouted. “I hate everything about him. I can’t go to dinner with him and be sociable. How does he expect me to do that, huh? How?”
“Because he’s a bastard,” I said, every muscle in my shoulders and neck tense while I tried to keep myself together. “You’re right. He should’ve come to speak with you by now. He should’ve done a lot of things, but he hasn’t, and he won’t. He’s the King of Hell.”
“And what about all the shit he said that first night?”
I shrugged. “I want to say he spoke the truth, but I’m not him.”
The flames inched up her arms and appeared in her shimmering, silver eyes.
“You won’t be alone,” I tried to assure her.
“Oh, great, so you’re going to be there? That makes me feel so much better,” she muttered sarcastically, and the fire wound around her body in red and orange ribbons. “Not as if you’ll talk to me at all.”
“Can we not do this right now?” I bit the words off, her anger poking at mine with a very large and very sharp stick. My lip twitched while my fangs extended. I needed to get out of this room before her emotions set off my demon rage.
“Are we ever going to talk about it?”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
Flames roared, shooting to the ceiling and burning the floor around her feet. Despite what she was doing to my already scarred and mutilated soul, it was impossible for me not to admire how beautifully dangerous she was at that moment. She was going to be damned formidable if I ever had a chance to train her to control her Hellfire.
“You really want to lie to me right now? You want to be like him?”
I snarled, red blurring my vision, and charged across the room. I backed her into the wall, my face twitching with how much it wanted to morph and let the demon rage out. “I am nothing like him,” I seethed.
Hellfire continued to pour out of her hands, but it didn’t throw me away. The ribbons of fire reached out as if to pull me in closer. Heat pooled in my hands, but my own fire didn’t show itself. I hadn’t seen it since coming back here.
Ashmielle’s fire licked my palms, and a deep growl rumbled through my chest. There was hardly any space between as it was. Still, I leaned in, staring down into those eyes overflowing with defiance. Her gaze turned, searching. Slowly, she stretched her hand up to cup my cheek, and I flinched, meaning to move away, but I didn’t do so fast enough. Her skin met mine, and I froze, her other hand joining the first. She held my face.
“No,” she whispered, “you’re nothing like him.”
Swallowing hard, I waited for her to release me.
Do you really want her to let you go?
No, I didn’t, but nothing about this situation was going to end well. And even if I was willing to try and understand what she did to me, now wasn’t the time. Taking hold of her wrists, I removed her hands and stepped back.
“You need to get ready for tonight.”
Her disappointment quickly gave way to another rush of intense heat fueled by her hatred for Lucifer. It left me gritting my teeth and turning my back to her so she wouldn’t see me baring my fangs. If she pulled this shit tonight at dinner, it wasn’t simply going to be a mess. It would quickly turn into a nightmare neither of us was prepared to deal with.
Fighting against the rage attempting to break free, I turned back around and gripped Ashmielle’s arms. “Listen to me closely,” I whispered roughly. “Tonight, no matter what happens, you have to keep yourself under control. Do you understand me?”
“You’re warning me to behave?”
“I’m telling you that having you lose your shit again in front of Lucifer and all his top-level demons is asking for trouble for both of us.”
The Hellfire calmed but didn’t go out entirely at my words. “What are you saying?”
“The last thing you want to do is make it look like you’re challenging Lucifer.”
“That’s what you’re worried about?” she yelled, and the Hellfire erupted once more. “I don’t want to challenge him. I don’t want his damn throne or whatever. I want to not be here. I want not to be his daughter, but I can’t do a damn thing about that now, can I.”
I staggered away, trying to shake the urge to track Lucifer down and punch him in the face because that was precisely what Ashmielle wanted to do.
“Samazrael?”
I hadn’t noticed her follow me across the room, and I hurried to put more distance between us. “I’m fine. If nothing else tonight, attempt to block your emotions from seeping out.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
I bit the inside of my cheek to stop the angry retort I wanted to throw back at her for shouting at me. After her breakthrough, I should’ve been taking the time to show her how to control her emotions. Only I hadn’t because I hadn’t been able to be in the same room as her for long when she was this unstable. I’d only given her instructions on how to meditate on accepting and understanding her Hellfire.
“Picture a wall,” I told her. “A high, impenetrable wall that nothing can get through.”
“Just like that?”
“It’s a start. I’ll be back to collect you when it’s time.”
She called my name again, but I had to get out of this room. Once outside her door, I pressed my back to it, running a hand down my face. An onslaught of hatred, guilt, anger, and fear collided with the storm trapped inside me. Why had I stayed in the cell all those extra years? Why had I felt the need to keep torturing myself when Lucifer had set me free?
You know why, the voice said, startling me. You just don’t remember.
“Then tell me,” I snapped, hurrying away from Ashmielle’s door so she wouldn’t hear me talking to myself.
Don’t you think if I remembered, I would?
Snarling at the voice, I took up my post in the corridor, working on putting up mental shields of my own. So far, nothing I did was strong enough to block Ashmielle’s aura from reaching me, but I had to try if we were going to make it through tonight in one piece.
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Copyright © 2020 by Ciara Graves
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Ciara Graves, Devil of a Chance
