48. GODRIC

At double the speed of sound, my pursuit of the Helldragon is short-lived. I already suspected where it would end. On the southernmost side of Jegudiel House.

Coming to a stop high above its destination, I watch the enormous beast land with utmost restraint on the terrace of the top floor. I would bet one of my wings it never scratches the angel-polished terram the Academy imported from Elysium millennia ago.

As it strides across the expansive floor, I again think it should be impossible for something of that—scale, to move with such primal grace. It does far more than that. Each of its steps is laden with ancient power, resonating with the weight of ages past.

An impressive sight, I have to admit. One I’ll never get tired of, evidently.

After it disappears inside the edifice, I still hang back. As usual, the injuries it caused me take longer to heal, and my ears aren’t functioning yet.

Once they do, only for me to mute them to my own specs, I touch down on the terrace. Flashing away my still semi-burnt wings, I regard the soaring double doors of the trap it has left wide-open for me.

Knowing I’m playing right into its hands, and that it knows I would, I exhale a curse I know it hears, and walk in.

Crossing the threshold into its domain, it feels I’m again in a perfect replica of the utmost in lavish Victorian surroundings, if in proportions befitting the legendary being inhabiting them.

A door at the far end of the chamber opens, and he walks out. A whiff of sage and cedar carries to me, more evidence, along with his glistening jet black hair, that he’d showered.

The burns I caused him are on the same parts, and to the same extent as when I inflicted them on his dragon form. Like mine, they’re receding slower than they would have, if any other being had caused them.

Without a word, he points to my right. I follow his gesture and find what he left for me, folded on top of an ornate, antique cabinet.

I consider disregarding it, and him. I should fly away, aborting this scene before I play any further into his hands.

But the shrewd Hellspawn knows me too well. He’d set the stage perfectly for getting what he set out to achieve. Me in his domain, and staying, until he enlightens me of his purpose.

Exhaling again, I look down where he burnt my clothes down the front. Since conducting this meeting with my cock and balls hanging out isn’t appealing, I take the bait he arranged so neatly for me, and reach for the garment.

My lips twist as I unfold it, and find it’s identical to what he’s currently wearing as he strides toward his elaborate, wall-wide mahogany bar. The only difference is that my black silk robe de chambre has ocean green accents, while his is adorned in midnight blue.

“Shall I get you something to drink?” he calls from the bar as I burn the rest of my clothes off.

I huff as I wait for my body to cool down. I wouldn’t want to damage this item from his specially-spun, hand-tailored collection. “A pint of Azazel’s blood would hit the spot.”

“I had no idea you developed a taste for blood.”

I have. For hers. From a mere drop when I pierced her lips. It’s still raging in my system even now.

“You should have done it when you had him down,” he says.

Exhaling, I lower myself onto one of his burnished-black leather Chesterfield sofas. “I already gave him enough ammunition.”

There is silence as he opens a cognac bottle, and pours four fingers into two crystal snifters.

Walking toward me, black-satin slippered feet silent on the Persian-rug covered hardwood floor, he doesn’t meet my eyes as he hands me mine. Putting his own down on the gold-leaf table before me, he straightens to produce two cigars and a golden cutter out of his chest pocket. He goes through the precise process of plumping them and snipping the heads off, before handing me one.

I gesture with it at our healing injuries. “Next time, just tell me it’s been too long since we had cognac and cigars.”

He lights our smokes, with an engraved gold lighter, when he could have done it with a flick of his finger. He’s always been one for ritual. He’s also is a stickler for order and reason, for subtle, patient and transformative planning. The only things we don’t share is his need for elegance and flair for aesthetics.

He remains silent as he finally sits down beside me. He waits for me to follow his example, taking a long drag, before he speaks.

As usual, it’s nothing I expected. “After what happened with Cadet White at the Transcendence Training class, I thought you could do with some—decompressing.”

Hearing her name flares this perpetual soreness in my chest.

I huff out the smoke, shaking my head. “So you decided to Helldragon me into it.”

“You never agree to anything to your benefit of your own accord. Now you’re doing everything to your detriment, I thought it was time we had a talk.”

Turning my head, I hold his gaze, and I see it in these tranquil, Abyss-deep eyes. The realization. More, the conviction.

I’ve seen the suspicion in his eyes before, but could see him rationalizing my involvement with proximity, with exposure, with her provocation, but mostly with duty.

He realizes now that it has nothing to do with any of that.

After all, I had more proximity and exposure, far more provocation, and was more duty-bound—with his offspring. The daughter I would have gladly ended, if not for my fealty to him. I certainly developed no allegiance, let alone attachments, to anyone else that I trained. Nowhere near the way I have with her. That way wasn’t even a possibility before.

Yet, he realizes it is now.

When Asmodeus did, I made the instant decision to end him, no matter how ill-advised and disastrous that would have been. With him, it’s not even an option.

A grumble of chagrined resignation escapes me. “It’s always the demons.”

One elegant eyebrow rises as he removes the cigar from his lips, puffs a perfect circle of smoke before he says, “Plural?”

“For a few seconds there, before you bathed me in your lahab tenneen, I thought you were Asmodeus.”

“Why would you think that?” Realization creeps over his hewn, aristocratic features in a wave of ferocity. He seldom lets this side of him show. Not that anyone would see it. I always did. “He’s been here recently, hasn’t he?”

I nod. “After the Trials. He paid me a visit—or rather, he tagged along with the others.”

A slight hardening of his lips is his only outward reaction. It means he’s in the throes of an apoplectic fit. Asmodeus irritates him that much.

It’s always been almost—entertaining, these two polar opposites’ dynamic. You’d never know they were brothers.

Or maybe it’s exactly that that says they are. I have my own “Azz,” after all. The blasted “Giddy.”

Taking a drag of the odious cigar, I expel its foul fumes as I add, “He made a move on me.”

A beat of silence. Then he leans forward to pick up his snifter in calculated calm. “And you accepted his advances?”

My left eyebrow quirks along with my lips. “That sounded like a rhetorical question.”

“I don’t believe anyone has ever withstood his—charms.”

“Advances, charms.” I huff as I swirl the cognac in my glass. “She would tell you to go back to the sixteen hundreds. She only relegates me to the nineteenth century.”

An elegant shrug. “This bottle of cognac does hail from that era, so she’s not wrong about our inclinations.”

“Your inclinations. I detest alcohol. And cigars.”

“Yet, you drink and smoke them.”

“You haven’t figured out that I merely do so to humor you?”

“You wouldn’t. Unless you derive a measure of enjoyment from them.”

“Humoring you is that measure.”

This engenders the merest blip of surprise in the depths of his dark gaze, which in turn slides a clutch of discomfort in my guts.

I pull again on the incomprehensible human invention between my lips.

Taking it out to stare at its glowing tip, I say, “She’d probably call us a ridiculous and insecure old boys’ club if she knew this is how we spend our times together.”

A longer beat of silence, before he exhales. “I see. This is how you weren’t even tempted by my irresistible sibling. It is all about her for you now.”

I attempt to shrug it away. “She’s my charge, and as such remains my priority.”

He purses his lips. “Bollocks.”

“Leave it.”

At my curt order, his expression becomes reminiscent of the last glance he bestowed on me in his dragon form. That amalgam of exasperation and disappointment, now tinged with ridicule. “I would advise you to do the same. But like some of my kind say?—”

“If you want to be obeyed, order what can be achieved.”

His onyx eyes grow wider. His head shake is even more stunned. “You even sounded like her.”

Astute doesn’t even begin to describe him. He somehow realized this wasn’t my quote, even when he knows my knowledge of demons is probably deeper than that of angels.

Did I actually mimic her just now? Am I that far gone?

Apparently.

We remain gazing into our drinks for an indeterminate moment, before he sighs. “I’m on your side, Godric.”

My sigh is as heartfelt. “I tried to convince them of that, Roth. They won’t accept you.”

He turns to hold my gaze, untold volumes in his. “I said I’m on your side.”

So he suspects I’m on no one’s side.

“Bring me in. You need me by your side.”

I shake my head, hating where this has to go. “You’re exactly where you need to be.”

“They refuse to have me when they accept him?”

“You’re—compromised. You know that.”

“You underestimate me.”

Sitting forward, I try to transmit at least my own conviction. “Never. But it’s not my call.”

He sits back, his lips tugging in calm resignation. “I wonder if you recall the fourth time we met.”

“While anyone usually reminisces about the first, at most the second time—yes, I recall.”

I don’t add that I recall everything. That I’m literally incapable of forgetting.

He knows much about me by virtue of being who he is, and on account of the shared horrors in our past. But the real insights come from what I’ve volunteered throughout the years. It might prove ultimately foolish to have provided him with a code to the workings of my mind, but it’s a risk I’ve long decided to take. He makes it easy to share. Makes it—rewarding. Relieving. And he reciprocates.

Not that I ever told him anything too damaging. Still, the fact that I told him anything at all, of my own accord makes him unique. He is, in general. But he is truly that, to me. Like she is, just in a totally different way.

Before her, he used to be my greatest dilemma.

As if realizing I won’t answer his leading question, he smoothly changes course, and punishes me for my prevarication with an even more stressful subject. “Did you find out more about her?

“Beyond her being a Null, you mean?”

“We both know she’s more than that.” When I don’t corroborate his verdict, he exhales. “Any ideas as to what else she might be? There can’t be too many options to choose from.”

At this stage, only three remain. The much worse things I feared. Her exposure as a Null was the least possible evil, and wasn’t even on that shortlist.

If I share my possibilities with him, he might work out the existence of her void. It disturbs me enough that the archangels and Lorcan are privy to her Angel Essence powers. I am not ready to share anything more about her. Not even with him. Not unless I’m forced to.

Implementing a course change of my own, I say, “I never commended you on your performance during the Amulet Ceremony. Even I believed your shock, and antagonism.”

His answer comes after a tranquil sip. “The latter wasn’t all an act. Rationally speaking, you shouldn’t have a hand in her training anymore. You shouldn’t even go near her. Earlier today proved that, yet again.”

I empty my lungs. “I did say I don’t disagree. But there’s no way in Heaven or Hell that I’m leaving her in the hands of anyone else.”

“Regretfully, I wholly agree on that.” He takes another contemplative drink. “The shock part had more authenticity, though. I’ve had my suspicions about her from the first time I laid eyes and senses on her. But it is one thing to suspect, and another to see it with my own Hellborn eyes, and suffer it in my Infernal bones.”

Emptying my gaze and vibe of any outward reaction, I shrug. “It was a revelation I could have done without.”

A beat of silence. “I assume you made no progress?”

“You expected me to calibrate the inscrutable powers of a Null in the week since we last spoke?”

“The Amulet Ceremony was over a month ago. Ample time to have at least a sound plan. Of course, half that time was consumed by your mysterious disappearance.”

My lips compress. “Don’t.”

“You mean don’t probe the incident that almost lost her to Azazel? I won’t. I’m certain you’re flagellating yourself enough over it. I am more concerned with the two weeks that followed it, which you spent hovering three hundred paces from her, as if under a restraining order.”

My heat rises as I hold his admonishing gaze. I rein it back before I set fire to his threads and drawing room.

Bloody Heaven. Only he can make me feel like this. Like a boy who needs to defend himself and explain his actions.

Since it was all indefensible and inexplicable, I grunt my exasperation, with us both, and take another swig.

“After her disappearing act during Transcendence Training, you can’t afford the luxury of lollygagging anymore.”

An explosive huff escapes me. “Lollygagging.”

He only continues to sear me with his sophisticated brand of scolding. “Would tarrying appeal more? Puttering? Meandering? However you describe your delays, no more time can be wasted in devising a plan for her containment, and investigating the further secrets that she harbors.”

I drain the last of the revolting liquid and sit forward to put the snifter down on the table carefully. I am a breath away from “Godawfuling” out, and forcing him to “Helldragon” to defend himself.

For pent up moments, I see us demolishing Jegudiel House, the first edifice built in the Academy untold thousands of years ago.

Instead, I turn to him with a nonchalant expression. “I’m sure there can’t possibly be ‘further secrets’ to her. It’s unfeasible for more than one precedent to occur in a single flimsy human.”

A hint of reproach enters his gaze. “I thought you believed you didn’t have to pretend with me.” He gives a heavy sigh. “I know you feel the need to protect her?—”

“Don’t you?” I tilt my head at him in challenge. “She told me you saved her.”

His nod is slow.“Yes, I did. In part, for you. But also for …”

When he lets his words taper off, it’s beyond me not to prod. “What?”

A shadow of a serene smile spreads over his face at my bit-off impatience. “If you won’t share your theories and motivations about her, I’m allowed to keep mine to myself.”

I sag back against the sofa with a growled exhalation. “Let it go, Roth.”

“Only if you promise me you will be more careful. I wasn’t being dramatic when I said you two were a disaster that always manages to happen. And that was before I worked out the true depth of your involvement.”

I shake my head. “There can be no involvement.”

“Yet there is. All the more prodigious because it’s forbidden.”

Another oppressive silence reigns over us for what feels like an eternity.

His inhalation interrupts our gloom. “I wonder if this is why your father assigned you to her.”

Everything inside me stills at his mention. “As another test? Or to sit back and watch the conflagration, as always?”

“Both, and probably more. He remains one of the most inscrutable entities in any existence.”

My lips harden and my teeth grind. “Yes. He is.”

“Have you talked to him lately?”

“Not since he ordered me to take her to the Divination.”

That day I came close to doing something totally uncharacteristic and ultimately damaging. Like punching him in his eternal face that looks so bloody much like me.

Astaroth sits forward, and does something he’s rarely ever done. He touches me.

His hand on my knee transmits a realm-full of worry as he says, “I understand your need to limit your exposure to him, I truly do, but with the developments, with her and you …” He shakes his head, his black eyes flaring with his singular Dragonflame again. “You have to pay him a visit, and this time, push through as long as you can. Do whatever you need to do. The true catastrophe would be finding ourselves mired in the coming storm, without knowing where he stands.”