Brimstone Prince. Barbara Hancock J.

the light from the dancing flames was hypnotic in its familiarity and the startling newness of seeing it animated, alive, life-size and so achingly appealing.

      “Lucifer’s wings. When Rogues like the ones that just attacked us revolted, they cut them from his dead body and coated them in molten bronze. They hung above the Rogue Council until the council was defeated and driven from hell by my grandfather. He’s the king now. The wings rightfully belong to him,” Michael explained. “The only problem is that they’re currently in heaven.”

      “Bronzed wings singed black by Brimstone,” Lily whispered. She’d seen them once or twice or a million times as a child, but the daemon king, Ezekiel, looked nothing like her doll. A daemon who looked exactly like her kachina searching for black wings caused an eerie awareness of destiny to prickle along her skin.

      “Yes. I must retrieve them from heaven and deliver them to my grandfather in hell. It’s complicated...but doing so will complete a bargain between us,” Michael said.

      “Lucifer’s wings are in heaven,” Lily repeated. She could easily imagine the kachina doll in her pack with its dark wings and Michael’s face.

      “The elemental spirits you call might be able to guide us to find them,” Michael said as if he was certain of her abilities. More certain than she. He had no idea how unpredictable spirits could be. And he had no idea that she had her own obligation to his grandfather.

      “It’s possible. It’s also possible they’ll refuse to help you. Sealing a portal to hell is one thing. Stealing from heaven another. Where is my sword?” Lily asked.

      He had stopped very near her. The fire now backlit his features until they were entirely in shadow. Her chin lifted in response to his height and his nearness, but she could no better read his eyes in shadows than she could in firelight. In a way, she’d known him all her life, but in much more tangible ways he was mysterious, a threat to her and to her duty and possibly even her soul. He obviously denied his Brimstone blood. He refused to live in hell and his heat was tamped down so that someone without her level of affinity might not even detect it but his controlled burn seduced in ways that a more rampant fire never had. It was a distant intrigue to her senses. One she had to work to resist.

      “I’ll give you your sword and help you close the portals you promised your mother you would close. You’ll lead me to Lucifer’s wings,” Michael proposed.

      Gone was the almost lyrical quality to his speech. He had spoken in a loud, clear voice as if a proclamation had been made.

      Lily’s chest tightened. The air had gone thick and still around her. The dancing flames slowed. Her mother had warned her. Daemon deals were dangerous. They’d lived in hell for years because of a deal her father had forged with the daemon king before he died. But Lily couldn’t turn away. She was held in place by the universe pausing around her as it waited for her to accept or reject this daemon prince’s plea.

      Because it was a plea. She could feel the tension in the man before her. He didn’t touch her, but he stood so close that his Brimstone heat caused her cheeks to flush. He’d said that retrieving the wings would cement a bargain between him and the daemon king. In her bag, the kachina doll had black wings that had been carved hundreds of years ago by a Hopi ancestor she’d never known.

      Michael D’Arcy Turov should have wings.

      Lily knew it. The dolls in her bag were wrapped and silent. She didn’t summon any spirit for guidance. It was her heart that whispered the truth.

      “I’m Lily Santiago. Give me back my father’s sword and I’ll guide you to Lucifer’s wings,” she agreed.

      The flickering flames halted. Sparks above them hung suspended in the air. Her lungs froze. Her heart paused, but after a moment of panic everything resumed as it should. The fire flickered. She breathed. Her heart pounded. And Michael Turov, the daemon prince, turned away. But not before she saw the flash of triumph in his suddenly illuminated eyes.

       Chapter 2

      Hell had no stars. The sky above the palace was as thick and impenetrable as velvet. There was no moon. No planets. Only a nothingness of an atmospheric blanket that existed to separate a lower dimension from another. One had to rise up to the outer earth to see the stars, moon and sun. In hell, day was divided from night by the passage of time and by a slight violet haze that distinguished the coming of dawn and a deeper purple hue that signified the fall into dusk.

      The hell dimension was beautiful—different, dark—but beautiful. Ezekiel often wondered that anyone could find it frightening or ugly.

      Of course, the purple haze illuminating the carnage of battlefields was hideous. A sight he would never forget. And for a daemon king, “never” was a very long time.

      He had been a warrior king during a time when war was inevitable. But it was time for a shift. Hell needed different leadership. Even a warrior king could dream of peace.

      He stood on his own private balcony looking up at the velvet sky of hell’s night and instead of thinking about war he thought about children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He thought about Samuel Santiago and the deal they’d made. For a human, Santiago had been surprisingly capable of planning for the future. Ezekiel had cared for them separately—Lily and Michael, but he’d watched them grow and he’d waited for the right time for them to meet. His grandson was almost twenty-one. It was time, but that didn’t stop Ezekiel from worrying about his ward outside the palace walls for the first time. Her affinity had always taken his utmost ability to dampen in the palace, but he’d had to keep her presence mostly hidden until the time was right.

      Rogues would be drawn to her. She was in terrible danger. Ezekiel fisted his hands and placed them on the cold stone rail in front of him. A daemon king had to take risks sometimes. Bold moves had to be braved. Even if it meant he risked losing them both. To Rogue daemons, to each other, or, worst of all, to a betrayal of all he held dear. Michael was only half daemon. Lily was human. Yet the fate of hell was in their hands.

      Ezekiel stood for hours watching the black velvet sky lighten to purple. The passage of time was tricky in the hell dimension. They had yet to completely understand and master it. He had manipulated time to bring Lily and Michael together as peers. Time in the palace didn’t stand still. It was only infinitesimally slowed. Lily had actually been born first, but she’d needed to wait for Michael. Now, they were together. Santiago and D’Arcy. Kindling waiting for a spark. Things would proceed quickly. Yet it seemed an eternity passed as he watched and waited.

      * * *

      Lily cleaned and polished the sword with the same reverence she’d shown the kachinas. Her entire world had been one wing of a dark Gothic palace for many years. There was plenty of time to devote to ritual and habit when your world was one of confinement. Her mother had filled their days with art and music as well as exercise and training. Lily continued the practice after her mother had died.

      “There are prayers scribed on my sword...it didn’t hurt you to touch them?” she asked.

      Michael still stood near her after he’d given her back her father’s sword. She tried to ignore the intensity of his gaze, but it carried an almost tangible heat that flushed her cheeks.

      “My mother was human. My father was a daemon. I’m only half-damned. Your sword is uncomfortable for me to touch, but not impossible,” Michael said. “Your father was a daemon killer?”

      “Yes,” Lily responded. “Until he decided he wasn’t a killer after all.”

      “But you decided you would kill in his stead?” Michael asked.

      Lily noticed him take a step toward her, but she wasn’t sure he noticed himself. There was nothing she could do about the affinity for daemons in her blood. The daemon king was the only being she knew who could dampen her call. It was a vulnerable feeling to be fully herself in the New Mexico desert, but it was liberating as well. She would deal, come what may.