Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-eight: Revelations

She sat before her vanity, her damp hair still clinging to her back from the bath, her mind a reluctant battlefield of a thousand terrifying thoughts. She should be thinking of the war, its unseen horrors a distant scream in the palace halls. She should be worrying about her two brothers, summoned and now missing in the chaos. Most of all, she should be focused on her own survival. But her thoughts were only of Levistus.

He survived. It had felt as if her heart had stopped beating entirely, only to be shocked back to life by his presence.

“Not even death can come between us.” He’d whispered the vow between words of love, each one a balm to a broken heart. She could vividly feel the press of his fingers tracing her body, hear the rumble of his moans joining her own in ecstasy. She thought of his hands, rough with the calluses of battle, and the fierce, possessive tenderness of his touch. He had not sought to own her; or to break her down. He had worshipped her.

The ghost of her momentary happiness shattered as a sudden, unnatural chill slithered into the chamber, leaching the stifling heat from the air and replacing it with a vacuum of cold and dread. The chamber door hissed open with a soft, insidious breath, and a figure appeared behind her. Asmodeus didn't walk in so much as he materialized, a breathtaking figure of casual, dreadful beauty.

"My light," he murmured, his voice a silken caress that sent a shiver of revulsion down her spine. 

He moved with a predator's grace, his hands coming to rest on her shoulders. His touch was a cold, heavy weight that made her bones ache, a king claiming his throne. He leaned in, his scent of brimstone and cold dominion filling her senses. Her mind screamed in silent protest, a wall of pure, defiant revulsion, but her body, a thing of flesh and instinct, responded against her will. A sickly, alien fire flared beneath his touch, a dark magic that burned away the memory of Levistus’s caress and bowed her body to his command. It was a compulsion, a control she had foolishly mistaken for love before, when she hadn’t known any better.

"What brings the king to my chamber this evening?" she asked, her voice a hollow echo of the proper question. She’d hoped with a desperate, silent plea he had already sought his release elsewhere—in the harem or in Basileus’s bed—anywhere but here.

His fingers tightened, a subtle possessiveness in his grip. "Our chamber."

She met his gaze in the reflection, a defiant spark in her eyes that betrayed her trembling hands. His lips, a cruel, beautiful curve, lifted into a slow smile. "Such fire," he purred, his voice a low rumble. "even with your celestial light extinguished."

He lowered his head to her neck, his lips a cold, possessive brand on her heated skin. He inhaled deeply, a soft, purring sound escaping his throat. She closed her eyes, clutching the memory of Levistus’s hands—the desperate, uninhibited way he had taken her, giving her body back to her with a ferocious hunger that made her feel whole.

The air thickened, charged with the sheer force of his will. He pulled her closer, his hips a demanding weight against her, the hard bulge of his desire against her back a cruel promise of what was to come. 

His voice, a low rumble against her ear, shattered her thoughts. "You smell different, my Queen. Like a garden after the rain." 

He turned her to face him, his bottomless sapphire eyes raking over her face and body. A flicker of raw vulnerability, swift and terrifying, crossed his face before it was replaced by a chilling, predatory triumph. 

His voice dropped to a venomous whisper, laced with brimstone and dark command. “Tell me that you love me, Benzosia.”

A choked gasp tore from her throat where her voice should have been. She fought, a desperate internal war against the words trying to claw their way out. The phantom heat of Levistus’s touch was a fading memory, replaced by a cold fire that ignited her skin wherever Asmodeus touched. He waited, his eyes fixed on her, until a low whisper, thin as a glass shard, finally escaped.

"I love you." The words were a surrender, a poison on her tongue. The sound was so quiet, so broken, she could barely hear it herself, yet it was all the encouragement he needed. 

His hands moved, gentle and methodical, pushing her gown from her shoulders until the silk pooled at her waist. He bent, his lips—a cold, consuming brand—moving from her jaw to her throat, a path of possessive kisses that felt like a numbing poison seeping through her skin. Every touch was a claim, a reminder that she was an object, a vessel. Her body, a traitorous thing, flared with that sickening heat again, an unwanted response that humiliated her to her core. His hands, like a vise, cupped her waist as his lips descended further, pressing against her bare abdomen. She felt the icy fire of his kiss and the chilling possessiveness of his touch.

He inhaled deeply, the soft purr of his triumph a poison rumbling against her skin. A cold jolt of power coursed through his fingers, down into her body. Her womb, a thing of soft, warm flesh, seemed to shudder under the force of his dark magic, recoiling from the intrusion. He lifted his head, a vision of divine beauty marred by a smile of chilling, absolute certainty. 

"My son," he breathed, the words an ecstatic, possessive whisper that vibrated through her bones. 

Benzosia's hand, a traitorous shield, fluttered instinctively to her stomach, a desperate attempt to push him away, he caught her wrist, his fingers a cold, heavy vise, and lowered her hand, pinning it beneath his own on her bare abdomen. The smile on his lips widened into a terrifying smirk. 

"You are pregnant," he murmured, his thumb stroking her lower lip, silencing any protest before it could form.

The world did not tilt. It shattered. “Are you certain?”

"The womb-stitchers discovered your condition this morning, I came to confirm it for myself." His lips brushed over her belly as he spoke,the whispers a caress across her flesh that made her shiver. "I feel his life forming within you. This one is already so much stronger than the last."

The palace, the brimstone, the war—all of it dissolved, consumed by a single truth that pulsed through her veins like a fever. A child. And in the space between heartbeats, a chilling, desperate certainty bloomed in the void. Not his. Her fingers dug into the sturdy wood of her vanity, the only anchor in a world that had just been torn asunder, and made whole all at once.

A child. Mine… and Levistus.

"My king," she whispered, the words a hollow parody of affection. "You will have your heir."

The triumphant smirk on Asmodeus’s face didn't vanish—it solidified, becoming a chilling mask of unyielding possession. A fist, like a vise of molten iron, clamped around the nape of her neck. He didn't tear her from the vanity; he simply lifted her, her chair scraping across the floor with a shriek of protest. He twisted her head to his, his lips—a cold brand of absolute ownership—claiming hers. The kiss was not one of heat or fury, but a cold, slow violation, a silent declaration of possession.

For one horrifying second, her mind went utterly blank, consumed by the brutal reality of the kiss.

An urgent, frantic knocking hammered against the chamber door, a desperate, panicked assault that shattered the brutal intimacy of the kiss. The mercy of it nearly forcing her to her knees.

"My King! A thousand apologies!" Basileus's voice was a frantic screech from the other side. "The invasion... The portals... They have broken through the first circle and move toward the Nessus, unchallenged!"

Asmodeus froze. The name of the central circle of Hell, the seat of his power, was a curse that broke his trance. The blissful euphoria on his face vanished, replaced by a coldness so absolute it promised not just ruin, but annihilation. "It seems the charade has ran its course" he said, the words a low, lethal promise.

He seized her arm, his grip a vise of pure, molten fury, and dragged her from the vanity. "Come, my dear, I have something to show you."

She stumbled after him, her silken nightgown dragging on the floor, the flimsy fabric a humiliating testament to her helplessness. The cold vise of his hand on her arm was her only anchor as he moved with terrifying speed, a hurricane of anticipation sweeping them through the palace halls. Servants and lesser devils scrambled away or dropped to their knees, their faces masks of terror as they scattered from the king’s unbridled fury. Her bare feet slapped against the polished gold floor, the sound echoing in the sudden, terrified silence of the palace. The humiliation of her exposed state burned hotter than the hellfire in her veins, a public display of her complete and utter subjection.

The great doors of the war council chamber burst open, their fury echoing through the tense, fear-choked air. Asmodeus marched to his throne, his rage a palpable force. He did not sit. Instead, he forced Benzosia down onto the smaller throne below his, his hand a cold, possessive brand on her shoulder, a silent promise to all who saw that she was his and his alone.

"Let the regents be summoned!" he bellowed, his voice a low rumble that vibrated through the floor, a sound that brought Hell to a standstill.

A moment later, they began to arrive, appearing into the chamber in flashes of fire and brimstone: Mammon, his golden eyes darting nervously; Dispater, grim and calculating; the silent, watchful archdukes and lords. All of them knelt before the infernal throne, a display of fealty and fear. All but two. Levistus and Zariel remained standing, their heads bowed only in a mandated deference. Benzosia's eyes found Levistus's across the chamber. The moment their gazes locked, the world shrank to only the two of them. She drank in the sight of him—his warrior's body, the broad shoulders that carried the weight of a realm, his blade-sharp mind full of strategy. A mind that would see through every deception...

Except for my own.