Chapter fourteen: Tea and Treachery

Chapter fourteen- Tea and treachery

"Then, Gadreel is truly dead."

The pronouncement hung in the oppressive air of Levistus’s Stygian palace, each of Azadiel’s guttural words a hammer blow against the chilling silence. He suspects me. The realization, sharp and cold as the Stygian ice, pierced Benzosia’s carefully constructed composure, stealing the breath from her lungs. If he dared give voice to the silent accusation hanging between them, the truth – raw, undeniable, and utterly damning – would spill from her lips. She could already taste its acrid bitterness.

"He fell…” Pushed. “and was swallowed by the infernal fires," she managed, the words brittle. The nine circles were abuzz with gossip regarding the Herald’s demise, each one a different, more outlandish retelling. She restlessly shifted on her feet, her heavy silk gown whispered against the suffocating stillness, her gaze sought fleeting respite in the twilight vista beyond the frosted window. Outside, the City of Ice sprawled: a monochrome nightmare of bone-white glaciers and peaks that clawed at a sky bruised with violent purples and churning blacks. Far below, the Styx, a coiling ribbon of liquid night, mirrored the volatile, treacherous currents of her own spirit. The wind moaned a desolate song against the citadel walls, carrying the scent of perpetual winter and forgotten sorrows. “A truly terrible incident”

"Terrible? For Gadreel, surely. For others, it merely clears an obstacle.”Azadiel’s voice, when it came, was laced with a dangerous, inquisitive edge, his words echoing Basileus’s earlier insinuation with such chilling precision that Benzosia flinched, a betrayal her rigid posture couldn't entirely conceal. 

"Perhaps," she conceded, the admission barely a breath. Shame, hot and corrosive, burned through her, making it impossible to meet his eyes. He would see it all – her guilt, her fear, the terrible, triumphant satisfaction – laid bare in a single, penetrating glance. "Asmodeus," she began, forcing a steady, even tone despite the frantic tremor in her core, "appears… remarkably unmoved by Gadreel’s demise." 

A cold dread, heavy and suffocating, coiled in her stomach. He should have cared. Gadreel was his Herald, his confidant… his lover.

"Aza," she whispered, her voice nearly swallowed by the heavy, dust-laden tapestries that seemed to absorb all light and sound, "The vow between a Herald and their lord… is it truly binding? Do you… genuinely care for Levistus?"

"Enough to die for him," Azadiel stated, his brutal honesty a chilling blade cutting through the air. "Without hesitation." His scoff had shattered the fragile silence like breaking ice, and his certainty left no room for doubt about the fierce loyalty between a king and his herald.

“I see…” If such was the bond – that unwavering, fiercely loyal devotion between a King and his Herald – how could Asmodeus remain so icily – so utterly detached in the face of Gadreel’s violent end? A naïve, foolish part of her, a fragile remnant of a forgotten innocence she scarcely recognized, had once believed that love, true love, possessed the resilience to endure even the searing, soul-flaying fires of damnation. The bitter, dawning realization that love could be as fickle and weak as a dying ember, or worse, a weapon to be wielded, was a wound that festered deep within her.

"Benny," Azadiel’s voice dropped, low and laced with a dangerous, investigative edge she had heard him use in war councils, honing in on a weakness, "did you–"

“Oh, I've been meaning to ask,” Benzosia smoothly interrupted before Azadiel finished his damning question. "I've heard other whispers in court." She turned, briefly meeting his gaze before flicking to the hearth. His focus was locked on the ravenous flames. Dancing, grotesque shadows emphasized his harsh angles and grim jaw. The fire crackled, underscoring the tense silence. Azadiel's expression was a noble facade, but Benzosia, attuned to him since childhood, caught the jaw twitch, the taut muscle clench—betraying a raging tempest. 

"The courtiers speak of you," she continued, her voice meticulously casual, yet carrying an undercurrent of calculated urgency. "It seems vengeance has been exacted for the theft of your wings."

A beat of silence, thick with unspoken accusations and the palpable weight of suppressed fury, stretched taut between them. Then, Azadiel finally spoke, his voice unnervingly flat, utterly drained of its usual playful mockery or righteous fire. "Levistus… made a start on my behalf." His tone was clipped, precise, each word a carefully chosen stone dropped into a still, dark pool. His hands clenched into fists, knuckles white against the dark velvet of his tunic – a fleeting, stark glimpse of the inferno he struggled to contain.

How desperately she wished she could reach into him, absorb his burdens, take the crushing weight of his grief and incandescent anger onto her own already overburdened shoulders. As his queen, his sister, she should be his bedrock, his unwavering sanctuary. Instead, she felt like a crumbling, treacherous foundation, a source of his pain rather than solace. Yet, she knew Azadiel. Prying, however well-intentioned, would only drive him deeper into his fortress of stoic silence. He would confide when, and if, he was ready, and not a moment before.

“Benzosia” She tensed the moment Levistus’s voice cut through the silence. “You seem much improved.” He entered, bearing a heavy silver tray with a steaming tea service. His dark hair, slightly disheveled, softened his stern features, lending an unexpected, boyish charm. A shadow of weariness marked his aristocratic jaw. The blend of refined nobility and untamed allure sent a confusing flutter through her. His potent magnetism, suggesting both sharp intelligence and chilling ruthlessness, drew her gaze, astonished she had failed to appreciate his remarkable features. 

"Thank you." Her voice held a steadiness she hadn't anticipated, a small victory in itself. 

She reached for the silver tray as Levistus placed it on a low table of petrified wood, its surface gleaming dully in the firelight. Serving tea, a familiar, almost mundane ritual, felt like an attempt to anchor herself, to impose a semblance of normalcy on the swirling chaos of her existence. But as her fingers brushed his—a fleeting, accidental graze across the unexpected warmth of his hand as he adjusted a cup—she saw a flicker in his storm-cloud eyes, a momentary tension around his mouth before his expression smoothed again into unreadable neutrality. The contact, though brief, sent a sharp, unexpected jolt through her, a confusing warmth that spread up her arm. He hadn't recoiled, not physically, but there was a subtle shift, a tightening, that left a cold, hollow ache in its wake. 

"I am  deeply ashamed you witnessed me in such a state, and am grateful for your aid." she said, her attempt at lightness feeling brittle, fragile. "I find myself… indebted to you, Lord Levistus." 

How weak, how utterly broken I must have seemed to him then, the thought seared her, sharp and unwelcome, a queen bloodied and broken, stripped of all grace, all dignity. A vivid image of his face when he found her – the shock, the urgency – flashed before her eyes. 

"There is no debt between us, my queen." His voice was quiet, yet held a resonant depth that vibrated through her.

The silence that descended was thick, heavy with unspoken questions, as both Azadiel and Levistus held her gaze, their combined intensity making the very air shimmer with anticipation. They craved answers, she knew, and a part of her, the part that still yearned for connection, for understanding, acknowledged that they both deserved at least some measure of the truth. But words of explanation, of confession, withered on her tongue, choked by shame and the instinct for self-preservation. Instead, she grasped at a diversion, a truth perhaps even more startling.

"I have found the lock that fits Lucifer’s key."

The reaction was immediate, electric. Azadiel's teacup clattered against its saucer, the sharp sound unnaturally loud, amber liquid staining the pristine linen like old blood. Levistus froze. His hand, mid-reach for his own cup, hung suspended, motionless. Only the slightest tremor, a minuscule, almost imperceptible flicker within the storm-cloud depths of his eyes, betrayed the sudden, violent turbulence he held so rigidly in check. "And?" he prompted, his voice low, deceptively mild, yet charged with an intensity that made the hairs on her arms stand on end.

"The door… it concealed a withered garden." She tried to diminish it, to make it sound mundane, but their combined gazes, sharp and incredulous, made her words feel insubstantial, fragile, their disbelief a palpable weight in the room.

"Our brother risked Heaven's wrath to pilfer a key, concealed it in the deepest hells for you to find… and it unlocked a garden?" Azadiel scoffed, a low, incredulous rumble in his chest. Levistus’s eyes, the shade of thunderheads gathering over a desolate, twilight sky, remained laser-focused on her, missing nothing.

"Hush, Azadiel," Levistus murmured, his gaze unwavering from Benzosia, a silent command for patience, for attention. "There is more to this."

"Well, it's… the garden," she whispered, the confession fraught with a fierce, unexpected protectiveness surging within her—a sudden, profound reluctance to expose this precious, impossible secret, this fragile, sacred anomaly, to even these two. "I found Eden."

"Bullshit." Azadiel's denial was raw, visceral, ripping through the strained atmosphere. "The Garden of Eden was taken back by the Heavenly Father! His inviolable, sacred domain!." He paced, agitated, his movements jerky, clinging to disbelief as if it were a shield against a truth too painful, too miraculous, to comprehend. "Are you absolutely certain, Benny?"

"I am." Her voice was firm, imbued with a bone-deep, unshakable conviction. She knew that garden as intimately as she knew the fading memory of her own celestial light, as surely as she knew the burgeoning darkness within her. The purest part of her, the essence she had sacrificed, now resided within its tranquil, resurrected sanctuary. "The key unlocks a strange door, deep within the Malsheem palace. But the garden itself... it feels... untethered from time, from this infernal reality." She took a slow, deliberate sip of her tea, her eyes narrowed, daring them to refute her, to deny the miracle she had witnessed, had caused. "A pocket dimension, I believe. Tethered to this realm, perhaps by Lucifer’s will, but existing outside its corruption."

"And it’s… surviving? In the bowel of Hell?" Azadiel scoffed again, whirling away, his shoulders tensed, his back to her, as if the mere concept was an affront, a heresy against the established order of damnation.

Levistus closed the distance between them, his presence more acute, more focused than ever. He refrained from touching her, yet she felt a faint, inexplicable warmth emanating from him—a paradoxical comfort amidst the charged tension, a silent acknowledgment of the impossible.

"No, and also…yes. You see, it was withered and dead when I discovered it this morning," she admitted, the memory of the ash and desolation sending a shiver through her. "Barren. A wasteland of dust. But then..." The weight of her secret, the sacrifice she had made, vanished, replaced by an intoxicating, dangerous thrill, a power she was only just beginning to comprehend.

Azadiel turned back, his voice tight with a mixture of disbelief and a dawning, fearful hope. "Then what, Benny?"

A reckless, defiant pride burned away any lingering shame, any regret for the light she had expended. She lifted her chin, her eyes blazing with a new, fierce light of their own. A slow, deliberate breath, and then, with a burgeoning, fierce power she hadn't known she possessed, she unfurled her wings. “I revived it.”

The inky black feathers, a stark, magnificent testament to her irreversible choice, her severance from celestial grace, unfurled like a sorceress's banner against the Stygian ice, absorbing the firelight, yet edged with a faint, silvery luminescence that hinted at the power within. Each feather felt like a plate of obsidian armor, beautiful and terrible. A dangerous, enigmatic smile touched her lips as she met their stunned, utter silence.

"You’ve lost your light." Levistus's voice, when he finally spoke, was a mere whisper, yet it resonated with a profound, aching sorrow that struck her more deeply than any condemnation. Yet, as his gaze lingered on her obsidian wings, sweeping over their vast, shadowed expanse before meeting her eyes again, Benzosia discerned not pity, not disgust, but a flicker of something akin to awe, of admiration, a spark of unexpected hope in her newly, irrevocably darkened heart.

“I didn’t lose it,” she countered softly, the truth of it settling deep within her. Asmodeus would have consumed it eventually, drained her dry, left her an empty husk. Now, her light, transformed and perhaps diminished, yet undeniably hers, sustained life of her own choosing, a defiant creation in the heart of destruction.

"No..." Raw, unbearable anguish cracked Azadiel's voice, a wound deeper, more grievous, than any her black wings could inflict. “This wasn’t supposed to happen, we were to get you out of here before this happened! Benny… don’t you get it? Without your light, you never return to the Heavens.”

"Azadiel," Levistus warned, his voice low, imbued with a sudden, sharp authority. "Don’t speak of what you do not – cannot – fully comprehend!"

His gaze, wild and horrified, clung to her defiant stance, to wings that were no longer emblems of celestial purity but of a proud, terrifying rebellion. 

"I do understand! Just look at her!" His carefully constructed composure shattered into a million pieces, his voice breaking as he spun away, unable to bear the sight of what she had become, of what they had all become. "I can’t – I won’t–" He stormed from the room, the heavy door slamming shut with a thunderclap that reverberated through the icy chamber, through Benzosia’s very bones.

"Michael…" Her brother's celestial name escaped her lips as a sigh, a mournful whisper laced with a universe of regret and a dawning, resolute acceptance. A tiny, involuntary tremor traced through her, quickly, ruthlessly suppressed – the phantom ghost of pain from his rejection, his inability to see beyond the shadow of her essence, to the light she still fiercely guarded.

"Your beautiful wings are a powerful, undeniable testament to his failure to protect you, my queen. As they are to mine." Sorrow, deep and resonant, echoed in Levistus's voice. Yet when he looked at her, his gaze sweeping over her transformed wings with an intensity that made her breath catch, she saw no horror, none of the anguished condemnation that had twisted her brother's beloved features. Instead, his eyes held a profound, consuming fire, an admiration that stripped away all pretenses, leaving her feeling exposed, vulnerable, yet exhilaratingly, undeniably seen.

“We should go after him,” she said, a knot of worry tightening in her chest for Azadiel, for the pain she had inflicted.

“No. His anger is the cry of a heart too heavily burdened, steeped too deeply in loss, let him take some of his anger out on the deserving denizens of the Stygia” Levistus murmured, his voice a low, calming counterpoint to the fading echo of Azadiel's righteous rage.

“But…” Her brother remained injured, vulnerable. And when it came to her brothers, they both claimed a dangerous talent for finding trouble. “What if he gets in a fight again?”

“I pity any demon foolish enough to cross his path today.” A spark of something akin to reverence, to fierce pride, touched Levistus's eyes as he spoke of Azadiel’s indomitable resilience. His hand rose, hesitating for the barest fraction of a second, then brushed a stray strand of hair from her cheek, his touch surprisingly gentle.

"You’re likely right.." she murmured, the words barely audible, feeling suddenly exposed under his unwavering regard. “And I must return soon.” Gadreel was no longer around to monitor her every movement, but that didn’t mean Asmodeus allowed her much freedom. 

“Benzosia.” His touch, light as a moth's wing, was startling, unexpected. It sent a cascade of confusing sensations through her – a dizzying flutter in her belly, a sudden rush of heat that made her cheeks burn as if kissed by an unseen fire. It was a physical reaction so intense, so foreign after Asmodeus’s cold possessiveness, it left her momentarily breathless, her heart hammering against her ribs. “The garden… might I see it?” His voice was low, almost reverent, his eyes holding an unguarded plea.

“Yes." A part of her, the part that had just faced Azadiel’s horrified rejection, fiercely clung to the garden's secrecy, to this one pure thing she had reclaimed. But in the face of Levistus's earnest request, his unwavering, understanding gaze, she found herself powerless, and perhaps unwilling, to refuse. "Next time, I will take you to it." 

"It is a promise, then." Levistus's eyes, for a fleeting, unguarded moment, burned with an intensity that laid bare a depth of emotion she rarely glimpsed, a startling vulnerability. It was an emotion she refused to define, dared not name—a potent, volatile blend of hope and something deeper, something far more dangerous.

"Thisss way, your highness." 

The imp’s sibilant whisper coiled around Benzosia like a serpent. Its whip-like tail twitched, a final, nervous gesture before it guided her through the waiting mirror, and away from Stygia’s icy, charged embrace. The fragile warmth of the promise exchanged with Levistus felt like a distant sun, already receding as she plunged back into the Malsheem's disorienting, soul-crushing hellscape. A shiver, not of cold but of nascent hope, traced her skin at the memory of Levistus’s intense gaze, the quiet vow to explore Eden together. But with every step deeper into the Nessus, a suffocating dread tightened its grip around her chest, the forbidden song of hope dwindling to a fragile, agonizing whisper. Asmodeus. The name alone was a gilded cage.

Her chamber door loomed—an ornate, monstrous edifice of dark, scabbed wood and tarnished gold, its carvings like leering faces. It was less an entrance and more the gaping maw of her personal, unending hell. Her hand, reaching for the cold metal, faltered; her breath hitched. It wasn't the usual oppressive silence that bled from beneath it, but sounds. 

Her skin prickled. 

Wet, rhythmic slapping echoed, a primal beat against yielding flesh. Sharp, feral gasps tore through the air, punctuated by low, guttural moans that vibrated through the heavy door, thrumming up through the stone beneath her slippers. A vile symphony. Her stomach churned. She knew its conductor. 

Not here. Never here. The thought was a silent scream. 

The acrid, musky reek of his arousal – metallic and rank – assaulted her nostrils, mingled with something sweeter, disturbingly familiar, and infinitely more treacherous: Basileus’s cloying, floral perfume. The combined stench, a violating, suffocating miasma, seeped from the cracks.

“Asmodeus?” The name tore from her, a choked, ragged sound. Bile rose in her throat. Her heart hammered, a frantic bird against her ribs. With a surge of adrenaline born of pure, sickening dread, a desperate, horrified compulsion, she flung the door open.

Her vision tunneled for a sickening moment. Before her, a tableau of grotesque depravity. Her husband, Asmodeus, gloriously, demonically naked, his powerful form a terrifying masterpiece of divine artistry warped by infernal might. His dark wings, vast and obsidian, beat slowly, casting monstrous, flickering shadows that writhed on the walls like tormented spirits. And Basileus. Basileus. Her confidante. Her friend. His name a silent, choked sob in her mind. He was splayed face-down across Asmodeus’s sacrosanct desk, a vulgar offering. His silken robes, hiked high, exposed the pale, quivering flesh of his backside, slick and violently reddened, already bearing the dark blooms of bruises. Asmodeus stood behind him, a dark pillar of relentless force. The desk shuddered with the brutal, punishing rhythm of his hips slamming into Basileus, scattering official parchments and royal decrees – testaments to his power and authority – like so many fallen, meaningless leaves in a desecrated garden.

Basileus’s head, a perverse halo of spun gold against the dark, polished wood, was thrown back, his neck arched at an unnatural, agonizing angle. His eyes, those deceitful pools of spring blue, were rolled back, pupils lost in a display of mindless, feigned ecstasy. 

“Deeper!” The word tore from his lips, a strangled, theatrical shriek, as his body arched, bucking back with the practiced, insidious skill of a seasoned whore into each violating thrust.

“Take it… yes…” Asmodeus grunted, his voice a low, bestial rumble, his face contorted in a mask of dark, profane rapture. His hand, strong and cruel, snaked around Basileus’s slender waist, fingers digging in, yanking him harder, more brutally, against his relentless assault. The wet, obscene slap of their flesh colliding echoed in the violated chamber, each impact making Benzosia flinch as if struck herself. 

Then, Asmodeus’s eyes—burning with infernal fire, devoid of any recognition, any remorse—found hers over Basileus’s arched back. He held her captive in that soul-flaying stare, a silent, brutal acknowledgment, just as he drove into his Herald one last, violent time. A guttural roar ripped from his throat as he found his release.

Still pinning her with that shattered gaze, he pulled out of Basileus. The slick, sucking sound turned her stomach. His seed, a glistening testament to his betrayal, spilled onto the polished wood of the desk, pooling amidst royal seals and pronouncements—a final, contemptuous defilement of his power, his vows, her very soul.

"Wait for me in bed, Benzosia." His voice, rough, utterly dismissive, a casual command thrown over his shoulder as he turned his back. He reached for a stray piece of silk, wiping himself with an indifference that was a fresh, deliberate twisting of the knife in her already bleeding, eviscerated heart.

Basileus, with a lithe, almost boneless movement that bespoke long, degrading practice and a chilling familiarity with this obscene stage, rolled over on the desk. His slender body still glistened with sweat and Asmodeus’s seed, a living monument to his treachery. He stretched languidly, a grotesque parody of sated pleasure, before pulling Asmodeus down for a deep, proprietary, and utterly revolting kiss. Their mouths melded with a hungry, practiced intimacy that screamed of countless such encounters, of a bond forged in deceit and shared depravity.

“I believe,” Basileus purred against Asmodeus’s lips, his voice thick with spent passion. His eyes, those false beacons of innocence, fixed on Benzosia, glittering with undisguised, hateful victory, a taunting, malicious amusement. “We’ve thoroughly shocked our delicate queen.”

“Kneel down, and clean me,” Asmodeus growled, his eyes, burning with a renewed, predatory fire, still fixed on Basileus, utterly oblivious—or perhaps, entirely uncaring—of Benzosia’s crumbling presence in the doorway, a ghost haunting the ruins of her own shattered life.

“I bid you both… a good night.” The words scraped from her throat, dry and brittle. Her tongue felt thick, alien. Each syllable was a supreme effort of will, a hollow charade of civility constructed over a chasm of shrieking despair. 

Her feet, numb and leaden, moved, detached from her will, carrying her to the adjoining dressing room. The air there offered no sanctuary; the cloying, violating scent of Asmodeus and Basileus seemed to have seeped through the very stone, clinging to her skin, her hair, an invisible, phantom residue of their sin she tried to rub away from her arms. The heavy door clicked shut behind her—a small, sharp sound that resonated like a death knell in the sudden, suffocating silence. Finality. A tremor ran through her. Miles would not be far enough. Galaxies would not suffice to cleanse this defilement from her soul. 

The sanctity of her marital bed, their once shared space, was now a grotesque mockery, a stage for his depravity, its memory a burning brand upon her mind. The thought of ever again crossing that threshold, of breathing the air of that desecrated chamber, of her eyes falling upon that accursed desk—now a monument to his betrayal—was not merely agony. It was a cold whisper of the madness that clawed at the edges of her sanity, its icy tendrils promising to unravel her, thread by fragile, screaming thread.