38. Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Belial

The animalistic sound that tore from my maw was foreign to my ears. It was a culmination of all the rage and despair pumping through me, raw and ragged as it tore my throat to shreds.

Everything stood still.

Time, my heart, Hell itself.

I had a decision to make: take the few extra seconds needed to smother Belphegor to death, or go to Rayven. The choice was life or death.

Through this entire nightmare, I’d chosen revenge. Death first, then once I had their heads, only then would I delve deeper through the Hells after her. I’d made excuses, convincing myself it was all for her, but inherently, it was selfish. I’d put my anger first.

Yet another way I’d failed her.

The room faded to nothing as I raced to where Rayven was strapped to the cross. She went slack in her cuffs, and I grabbed the chains and wrenched the bolts from the wood with a snarl. I lowered her to the floor and drew her into my lap. Her tear-filled eyes were wide with shock as she stared up at me.

With shaky fingers, I brushed her dark hair away from her face, my eyes slowly falling to the dagger protruding from her chest.

It had struck just to the left, a hair's breadth from the center of her chest. An inch or so of the silver blade protruded out from her pale flesh, the wound weeping tears of crimson around the metal.

He struck her in the heart. Fucking Hells!

“Rayven,” I gasped, her name lodging in my throat as emotion consumed me.

A pang of guilt shot through me as I drew her close, and she attempted to speak, but her voice came out a ragged whisper.

“I forgive you…” she said in a voice so weak, I could barely hear it.

“Fuck, I’m so sorry,” I said, lowering my face to graze my maw gently over her forehead.

I’d been so close—so fucking close—to saving her.

The urge to transform into my lesser form, to pull her against my chest and kiss away her tears, was overwhelming, but I couldn’t. Not yet. Not until she was safe.

Safe. The word mocked me even as it came to mind.

I’d fought tooth and claw, torn apart Hell itself, killed six of the demon lords, and it hadn’t been enough. All that, and she was still going to die in my arms. All I’d wanted was to keep her mortal heart beating, to revel in its rhythmic song forever, and I was going to have to listen to its chorus slow until it beat no more.

Only then could I revive her.

She first had to experience the pain of death, and when it claimed her, only then could I intervene.

“Belial…” Her voice was ghostly faint, and her eyelids started to drift.

I pulled back to take her in. “My grave treasure. All I wanted was to keep you safe, to make you mine.”

“I’m cold,” she whispered, and the sound nearly broke me.

I could set Belphegor’s realm on fire using his broken body as tinder, and it still wouldn’t be enough to keep her warm. Not now.

“It’s okay,” I assured her, my stomach dropping as her heartbeat began to slow. “You’re going to be fine, my treasure.”

“I’m scared,” she said, a tear sliding down her face and landing in her dark locks. “Please, don’t let me go. I don’t want to leave you. I—I want to be with you.”

She was struggling to get the words out as her heart rate began to slow.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I promised. ‘“I’ll be right here.”

It was coming; her death. There was no way to stop it now. Soon, her heart would give out, and her organs would shut down as blood stopped flowing through her veins.

Her fear was palpable, bleeding into the air. She didn’t have much longer, minutes at most.

“You’re going to be fine, Rayven. Just go to sleep.”

The heart I’d forgotten I had was breaking. It didn’t seem to matter that I had the power to bring her back to life once she took her final breath. It was fucking agony, seeing her in pain. I was so jaded to death, but with her, it felt terrifying and new.

“And then you’ll revive me.” Her paper-thin words wavered and split with fear. “R–right?”

“That’s right, treasure,” I assured her with a soothing purr, my hand rubbing one cheek while keeping her other pressed to my chest. “I told you I’m never letting you go. Not even in death. Especially not in death.”

I knew she was terrified—death was new for her—but she’d learn not to fear it. I would teach her how to be its master.

I plucked the dagger out of her chest as gently as I could. The flames in my eye sockets all but sputtered out when a cry of pain left her lips.

This human had completely fucked me, because how could a god of death need anything so terribly that he couldn’t live without? I fucking needed her more than I needed anything.

As evil a monster as it made me, I’d snuff out every life on Earth if that was what it took to breathe life back into my human.

Through the thin puncture in her chest cavity, I could see straight down to the pulsing muscle keeping her alive for the moment. The blade had pierced its strong wall, and it was gradually beating slower as a stream of blood poured from the wound.

Every pump had more crimson lifeblood trickling down her chest.

Gathering her in my arms, I pulled her higher to cradle her against my chest, rocking her like she was a child. All the while, I whispered that I would never leave her, that she’d never be free of me. That once I brought her heart back to life, everything would be fine.

“I’ll be the last thing you see when you close your eyes and the first thing when you open them again,” I assured her, the promise carrying all the weight of a demonic oath.

“You’re mine, Rayven. Never forget that.”

A lazy smile curved her lips. “You won’t let me go?”

“Never. Not so long as the River Styx flows and the Hells run deep.”

Normally, I didn’t have a kind bone in my body, but I tried my best to comfort her in her final moments.

I knew I was going to be completely fucked for this human the moment I’d dragged her into Limbo, and I couldn’t bring myself to regret it.

I’d likely be forever cold and cruel to the rest of the world. To hell with humans. But this one? This one, I’d worship with every breath I’d take from here until the world fell down.

“Close your eyes, Rayven,” I said, talking her through the slow crawl of her last moments.

“You’re being so…sweet to me. I didn’t know the Lord of Bones could do that.” She breathed in, then out, the smallest little sigh that let me know she was finally comfortable in my arms.

There was that twist of guilt jabbing at my ribs again. I’d let her down. I’d tortured her. I’d terrorized her. I’d taken pleasure in watching her fight me, no matter how high the odds stacked against her.

Her spirit was indomitable, and fuck me, if I hadn’t fallen horns over heels in love with that part of her, with all of her.

Even in death, she was brave.

Her fingers trailed to the gaping wound that exposed her still palpitating heart, its thrum growing weaker as more blood streamed from the hole. “Do you see it?”

Her words were barely intelligible, and I had to lower my skull to her mouth. “Do you see my heart?”

I swallowed and nodded, even though she couldn’t see me with her eyes now shut. “I see it, Rayven, and it’s fucking beautiful. Worth every second I’ve obsessed over its beat, teased it just to hear its flutter.”

“Belial. Don’t leave me.”

“I’ll never leave you again, grave treasure. This I swear.”

Her chest rose and fell one last time, her head going limp in the crook of my arm as her heart ceased to beat. I watched the throbbing muscle go still in her chest.

The agonizing silence that followed tore an anguished roar from my throat.

This wasn’t how things were supposed to be. She wasn’t supposed to get hurt, not like this.

She was never supposed to die.

Every second that Rayven’s heart was still, mine broke a little more. I couldn’t stand it, staring down at her lifeless body, feeling the warmth seep from her skin. I could feel the life bleed from her. Her skin grew colder, and her lips were already turning a shade of pale blue—nearly identical to the color of my own flesh. Death came fast in the Nine Hells.

I summoned the magic that would revive her. The power danced over my fingertips, and I placed my palm gently against her chest. It was complicated arcana, a spell I hadn’t performed since Catherine’s string of suicides, but the magic stirred up, like it had been dwelling just beneath my skin this entire time, and vibrated through my being.

Her skin shimmered for a moment, a silver glow cast over her form before her soul slipped out of its mortal vessel. It swirled and materialized into a visage of her, standing over us with horror-filled eyes, her mouth hanging open.

“Well, this is fucking terrifying.” The voice wavered, and I met her worried gaze. It almost broke me to look away, my eyes falling back to her lifeless body in my arms.

“I’m going to fix everything,” I assured her. “I promise. A few minutes, and you’ll be fine.”

I knew things would be fine. I’d brought Catherine back from the dead so many times; this should have been a simple fix. However, the thought of her staying this way forever—still, cold, and lifeless—had my confidence unraveling at the seams.

What would happen if my magic didn’t work this time?

Sure, I’d have her soul forever, but it wouldn’t be the forever I’d imagined since I dragged her to Limbo. She wouldn’t be my living slave queen. I wouldn’t get to revel in the way her heart raced when I did filthy, depraved things to her. The way it fluttered when my lips brushed hers. The way it skipped a beat when I ordered her to her knees.

With a growl, I focused on my magic again, letting it pour out of the deepest pits of my being.

It wouldn’t have been nearly as complicated if it was just a matter of putting her soul back into the human body, but it was more than that. I had to fix her wound, reconnect the muscle, and revive her before her flesh began to waste away.

“Belial…” The voice of Rayven’s soul resounded through my skull, but I was too immersed in the task at hand to pay attention.

I could feel it working, the sinews of muscle stitching themselves back together, the hole in her chest slowly closing to conceal the precious organ it guarded.

“I'm going to fix this,” I said, barely aware I'd spoken. “You’ll be fine.”

I was reassuring myself more than her at this point, clinging to the thin veneer of calm that masked my panic.

Rayven’s soul softly replied, “I trust you.”

Trust . As though I deserved it after all this mess.

I was so lost in trying to heal Raven, I almost missed the rustle behind me. I craned my head around in time to see Belphegor rushing toward me.

In my panic to save Rayven, I’d forgotten all about the Lord of Gluttony.

“You deserve to fucking die with her, Belial!” he cried as his nails shifted into six-inch knives aimed straight for my chest.

I tensed, gently lowering Rayven’s corpse off my lap, preparing to rip Belphegor limb from limb for killing the only woman I'd ever loved. Rage burned through me, the flames in my eye sockets leaping high, and I braced myself.

When he was a few feet from me, nearly close enough to sink my claws into, Belphegor let out a pained wail, faltering and stumbling to the ground. He writhed, frantically reaching for his back until his movements slowed.

“You…bitch…”

When he slumped forward, I saw it: Catherine's dagger buried hilt deep between Belphegor's shoulders, just missing his spine.

Rayven's soul stood behind him, her mouth hardened into a line, her eyes full of hatred.

“That's what you get, you slimy fuck,” she gritted out.

I stared up at her in reverence as Belphegor twitched. He was a demon, so he wouldn’t die from a simple dagger strike to the back. Rayven seemed to understand this almost immediately and wrenched the blade from him, only to bury it in him again. And again. And again.

He collapsed to the ground, and she kept stabbing him. She moved to his head, burying the knife in his face until it was nothing but a shapeless, torn-up pile of gore. In my periphery, I could vaguely make out Catherine.

She’d woken and was sitting up, the smallest of smiles perched on her mouth as she watched Rayven brutalize the shapeshifter’s corpse.

The other souls stood by, watching their master bleed out on the ground. Not a single one seemed to be broken up over the fact that he was gone.

I was completely in awe of my queen.

“Weeping Hells, you're perfection.”

“And I'm ready to get back in my body,” she said, her eyes falling to her corpse before me. “This is some freaky twilight zone fuckery.”

If I could have smirked in this form, I would have. Even in death, Rayven had a delicious, bratty mouth.

“As my queen commands.”

I finished the spell as quickly as I could, eager to hear the steady thrum of my grave treasurer's heartbeat. I sighed with relief when the delicate muscle started throbbing again, the air catching in my lungs when she opened her eyes and looked up at me.

“As long as I'm the Lord of Death, your heart will never cease to beat again.”