Still in Chef Dimitriadi’s body, Resent hurried onward through Vicearia’s streets, only stopping when he reached a skyscaler. A large nethntine sphere, essentially a more primitive equivalent to the humans’ aircrafts. Two malformed, required to carry the skyscaler to its passenger’s destination, waited by either side of the sphere. Though they were standard throughout Hell, if any of the great cities had the resources to build something more advanced, it was Vicearia. However, the fallen would never permit it. Even if developing such technology meant they could regain flight of a sort, for humans to also have access to such things would be the greatest insult to their pride.

  Resent dug into his trouser pockets and was relieved to find the chef was wealthy for a human, having a tidy sum of the hexagonal-shaped trigites. It was a good thing, as malformed were loath to converse with anyone outside their own race, making them far harder to barter with than most demons.

  “I require passage to the palace,” Resent said, as he approached the malformed, shelving the submissive act. The two gray, expressionless faces exchanged a look. He raised the platter in one hand in answer to their unvoiced question, and stretched out a fist full of trigites with the other. “Lady Devika has requested my services.”

  Whether because the two didn’t have a competent energy sense between them, or their fealty didn’t run deep enough to keep them from profiting, one of the malformed took the coins. He split the amount with his partner, both storing their gains in the pouches fastened to their waists. Then they urged Resent into the skyscaler, chaining the harnesses they wore on their torsos to either side of the sphere.

  As they lifted off, supporting the skyscaler between them from above, Resent’s mind wandered. He had never needed to ride in one of these when wielding the nebulae in his own body, and pondered what would happen if they dropped him while in this soft flesh. If they did, it wouldn’t be due to a lack of strength or faulty equipment, as the skyscalers were built to accommodate multiple riders. It would be because they wanted to kill him and loot his remains. But they would be in for a rude awakening when his soul jumped into one and offed the other.

  Fortunately, such eventualities didn’t come to pass as the malformed landed on the floating isle covered in lush greenery. They let him out just outside the opulent, blue-and-white palace trimmed with silver. With all the visitors the pseudo royals received, by the time Resent concluded his business, the malformed would have found others to ferry back to the mainland.

  Entering the palace from the front was foreign to him, as he usually came and went through one of the back windows when visiting Devika. Their trysts had been an open secret in both their cities. The furor it raised among the nobility only adding to the eroticism of it all, but they had still exercised some discretion to minimize the scandal.

  So when Resent approached the broad gates, he didn’t realize one of the guards was a diavolik until he had gotten close enough to see the red in his eyes. Posting a handsome demon in the guise of a fallen to sense intruders. Clever.

  “You! Come here!” the species traitor yelled. The fallen at his side, who hadn’t noticed anything off about the cook before her, stiffened.

  Resent considered ejecting from the vessel now, but he had had his fill of this cloak-and-dagger nonsense. Devika would respond with hostility to his presence regardless. His biggest obstacle in a confrontation would be killing his enemies while keeping the nebulae out of sight. Being spotted coming through Dreadmus’ portal was one thing. Being placed here was another.

  Resent continued forward, generating a compact mass of nebulae underneath the platter’s dome cover, sending the meal into disarray. The duo before him didn’t look particularly formidable, but to be posted here, their strength had to be comparable to any of Dreadmus’ disbanded royal guard.

  He began to weave a tapestry of lies, as he strode closer. “At ease, comrades. Lord Semiazas sent me on a scouting mission to evaluate relations in the city between the three species, but with his newfound obligations, wished me to report to the lady in his stead.”

  The diavolik’s grip on his spear shaft tightened. “How convenient that the lord is not here to confirm your story.”

  “The chef speaks true, Karlin,” a light, seductive voice said from afar, and yet as if whispering in his ear. The wind itself carried the sound. Beyond the gates, from one of the palace’s third story windows, Resent beheld the statuesque figure. She beckoned him with a crook of her finger. “He was indeed expected.”

  The two guards backed away as the wind roared behind him. Before he could brace himself, a sudden gust lifted Resent’s entire body into the air. He was catapulted over the gate, toward the palace, and shoved through the open window.

  He crashed to the floor in a heap of broken bones. His nebulae dissipated, the tomato sauce from the dropped platter mingled with his spilled blood.

  “Would you look at the mess you have made?” Devika drawled, standing over him.

  Resent thought his run-in with Michaela might have prepared him, but she had always been a pale imitation. Devika had the same intense, upturned sapphire eyes, sensuous mouth, and curtain of golden hair that he remembered. The white shoulder exposing gown she wore clung to her svelte physique, accentuating every dip and curve. Skeletal wings stabbed out of her bare, toned back, flaring out behind her. Her beauty was an assault on the senses, as if one was suffocating the longer they looked at her. It made him lust for and despise her in equal measure.

  It was only after he drank her in, that Resent realized she had brought him into what served as Vicearia’s throne room, far more ostentatious than the genuine article. The throne, upholstered in turquoise, was wide, more bench than chair, allowing its occupant to recline in it or sit with another. The dais it rested upon was at least twice as high as the one that held the tri-horned throne, and was overhung by a pair of giant, gilded metallic wings. One resembled an angel wing in chrysalis, the transformation their wings underwent after half-a-millennium. The other was the withered wing of a fallen, the jagged wingtips overlaid with a cardinal red.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Devika clapped her hands with child-like glee and stared down at him, those full lips curving into a wicked smile. “Now, I am confident you have come here with some ploy or the other to reclaim your crown, but before negotiations begin, I am afraid you shall need to lick my heels clean. And the floor besides.”

  She was throwing his words from their duel in the arena decades ago back at him. In retrospect, he had perhaps gone too far in making a mockery of her. Yet at the time, all he could recall was the repulsive scene he had stumbled upon in her quarters the night before. Assuming the angels were prudish hypocrites casting out anyone who deviated from their impossibly high standards, he had never inquired about why Devika had fallen. It hadn’t mattered.

  Until he had heard the moans and grunts. Seen the mass of golden hair and their writhing bodies. And flown into a rage of the likes that would have made the half-breed question if he knew the meaning of the word. He would have eviscerated them both, but hadn’t been up to the task at that age. So, when she had been deluded enough to challenge him with a hundred Vicearians in tow, he had enjoyed it to its fullest.

  Though without an audience, this was a far less humiliating request. Perhaps even a sensual...No! This was a power play, pure and simple.

  With his injuries regenerating, Resent began to shove himself to his feet. “Still nursing that grudge I see. Remind me, how was it you responded when I offered you the same?”

  Devika removed the winged serpent choker from around her slender neck, and lashed forward with it. The silver necklace lengthened into a whip that coiled around Resent’s throat, as she dug a knee into his back, pinning him down.

  She leaned closer and a shiver coursed through Resent as her breath tickled his ear. “Oh, my poor twit of a prince. Either you have vastly overestimated yourself, as has already proven fatal for you once. Or you lack comprehension for your predicament. You are in a body I can asphyxiate with a flick of my wrist. And from the moment I got word you came through the portal, I posted necromancers on each floor, and put them on alert for stray souls. You do not leave here, unless in my good graces.”

  “High...lord, lady, what have you,” Resent choked out. Devika loosened the whip around his throat so he could speak. “Semiazas being on the throne is an inconvenience, but even with backing from another high lord, unsustainable. Now, we both know that whether or not it was within your power, you would never slay your precious father. However, retrieve my crown, and after I deal with him, I shall not only support your bid for high lord, but grant Vicearia autonomy.”

  Devika scoffed, retracting her whip and replacing it at her neck. She rose, the distance between them leaving Resent with a mix of gladness and frustration. “Father has always lowered his guard around me. If I wished to be high lord so badly as to stoop to patricide, like you, I would have done so ages ago. As for autonomy, you offer it only because we already have it in every way of import.”

  “What else is it you want? I hope you do not still cling to aspirations of queenship,” Resent said, rising to his feet. She was perhaps the closest thing Hell held to his equal, and yet the idea of joining in a union with her and sharing sovereignty was ludicrous. His laughter-filled rejection of her proposal had lit the spark for everything that followed.

  “Such hubris. To think I would desire to rule by your side after all that has transpired between us. No. You possess very little of interest to me.” Devika paused as if considering, but he knew her intimately enough to know it was for effect. She was a good century older than him, yet prone to fits of immaturity. “But I will take the boy.”

  “What?” Resent hissed.

  “Please do not insult us both by playing a bigger clod than you actually are. Your younger brother. Father tells me he is an adorable little thing, and I find myself in need of a new pet.”

  “Why?” Was she one of the fools who actually thought a half-breed could be a contender for the throne? Or did she imagine if she sank her claws into the boy while he was an adolescent, that she could use him to her own ends over the next several centuries of his lifespan? The natural lifespan of a cambion, which Resent had not yet made the boy aware.

  Devika shrugged. “Who can say? Perhaps I wish to relive the years when you were young and eager to please, instead of a miserable cuss. Or maybe, I want to dole out punishment on one who bears a countenance close to yours. Is it envy, or have you developed some sort of fraternal protectiveness in your months together?”

  Resent contemplated the ramifications of such a trade. While there were always other lesser lords vying to become a high lord, Devika was a shoo-in for her father’s replacement. And while granting Vicearia independence might encourage some of the other great cities to strive for the same, it also meant the fallen would no longer have any say in demon affairs.

  But Rodrigo was ever a thorn in his side, and one bigger than Devika realized. Were he indeed his brother, the boy could fade into obscurity once Resent ascended the throne. But as his son, he was his heir, albeit it an invalid one. And for how long could such a truth stay hidden while he was in her clutches?

  “No matter,” Devika said, having strutted her way over to the throne and stretching out on it, a shapely leg peeking through the slit of her gown. He knew that every move she made was calculated, weaponizing her femininity to compromise his judgment. And yet, it titillated him. “When I receive word you have recovered your original body, I fetch the crown for you, and you simultaneously relinquish the boy to me. After that, by all means, try your damnedest to kill father, and we shall see if you survive long enough to deliver on your other promises. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” Resent said, all the while ruminating on how to deceive her. A shape-shifter wearing a fade periapt under their clothes was the surest bet. And if he bound the shifter, Devika wouldn’t immediately notice his inability to use the nebulae.

  “Good. You can let yourself out,” Devika said with a dismissive wave.

  Resent turned on his heel, storming for the door before the vixen could amend their deal any further in her favor. And he would be forced to acquiesce, because by now Semiazas had to have discovered the obsidian gemstone in the crown’s center. A gemstone that teleported the wearer into Dreadmus’ throne room with a touch. A convenience, that while in the hands of his enemies, meant the castle could be infiltrated instantly at any time.

  Devika called after him, “Oh, and one more thing, Prince.”

  Resent heaved a sigh as he halted, glaring over his shoulder at her.

  “I imagine swindling me may have crossed your mind. But what a tragedy it would be if before your reign even began, you were recorded in history as the king who forever lost the crown. One that nearly dates back to the origin of the demon species itself. Yes, that would be tragic indeed.”