Chapter 43

ChapterForty-Three

He stood on the horizon beyond the Tower, his shoulders heaving with every angry breath he took. Lust had denied any help. His brother had offered a great army to ride at his side, but Lust knew what waited for him here.

Weak sorceresses who were afraid of their leader. A High Sorceress who thought she was far more powerful than she was and would stop at nothing to trap him. He’d seen this before. He’d endured worse.

Minerva thought she would hold Selene captive, and that she would trap him. She thought he would waste his time trying to save Selene first, and then ignore the rest of their people. But if she wanted a bloodbath, he would give it to her.

There were enough sorceresses in that Tower who deserved to die. He’d avoid the one with white hair, who had been kind to Selene and had thrown herself in front of Selene when Minerva had first enacted the curse. That one had earned his pity, and he would make sure she was rewarded for it.

The rest?

He ached to feel their skin parting beneath his sharp claws. Baring his teeth, his mind already screamed for their throats in his jaw.

He had become more than Lust, now. He had become the monstrous being behind the name demon king. If they wanted to see what he was capable of, then they had done the right thing. Minerva had finally provoked him enough to become the creature she so feared. Now he would show her why she should be afraid.

The snow parted for him, melting in the wake of the heat billowing off his body. He must have seemed a blur if any of the sorceresses were watching for him, and he knew they were.

Selene had come here to save herself. But her mother wanted her here for one reason. Him. Lust knew that Minerva would get desperate. Her plan hadn’t worked, and her daughter had a mind of her own. The lack of control would drive Minerva mad. And mad people did desperate things.

There would be a trick waiting for him. Some attack or cage, or perhaps she thought she could use Selene as a shield. He had to anticipate every possible outcome.

The doors to the Tower were open for only a split second. Just long enough for him to see through and notice Minerva standing in the center of her domain. She lifted her arms higher, magic pouring out of her in so much energy that it made the world crackle.

Then the doors slammed shut, sealed with magic more powerful than he’d anticipated. As if that would ever keep him out.

He took a deep breath, inhaling the acidic scent of rain and lightning in the air. But there was also her scent, the faintest hint of peppermint that filled his lungs and calmed the worst of his anger.

He’d get her back. There was no other option.

“Demon!” Minerva called out from inside the Tower. “I have laced the walls with runes that will trap you forever. If you take one step inside this Tower, you will be forever entombed within it.”

He doubted that.

“And you will be stuck with me, Minerva.” Lust stalked the edges of the Tower, dragging his claws along the stone as the screeching noise burned in his ears. “Do you know how long I can keep you alive? Torture is too simple of a word for what I plan on doing to you. You took everything from me.”

“I didn’t take her from you, Demon. You took her from me.”

How was she projecting her voice? He glanced up at the electricity crackling through the clouds and thought perhaps that was it. She used the storm to make her voice sound like it was coming from everywhere. As if that would confuse him. He knew where she was.

He could smell her.

“Runes will not trap me,” he growled.

“Demonic energy can always be trapped.”

Perhaps it could, but he was no demon. Obviously Selene had kept his secret, and his heart thudded hard in his chest at the knowledge. She hadn’t come here to betray him, though it would have shocked him if she had. She’d come here to beg for her life, and her mother had little pity left to give even her dearest daughter.

Baring his teeth in a snarl, he flexed his own magic and sent it out into the walls. The runes were old, ancient even. She’d found the right ones, but she’d missed a single line in the center rune that was easily over a hundred markings.

That mistake would cost her.

“Where is she?” he called out. “I will leave you all alive if you tell me where she is.”

“You are in no place to be making bargains, Demon. She came home because she doesn’t want you. Because she knows you cannot give her what we can. She needed someone to save her life. You failed her, and that means she’s mine.”

Goading him? No, gloating, he thought. Minerva didn’t think he’d come into the Tower and if he did, she was certain that she’d won.

“We both know this is a small chance you’ll actually trap me. It’s even smaller of a chance that I won’t get her back.”

“Perhaps I will kill her in front of you, just for the insolence of your belief that you are better than us.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“I would dare much to keep my children alive.”

And just like that, his anger snapped again. Lust drew back his fist and pounded it through the rune that she’d made a mistake on. Over and over again as the dust grew around him and the stone broke beneath the hard plating of his fist. A scream lifted and then more, until they were a symphony to every strike.

The sorceresses had scattered by the time he stepped through the rune and into the Tower. Power crackled around him, and his horns scraped the stones as he moved through them.

But Minerva? She stood in the center of all her chaos with fanatic jubilation on her face. “You are trapped.”

He pointed to the destroyed rune. “You missed a line.”

Her eyes only had a fraction of a second to widen before he was upon her. Demon he became, as his claws flashed and his teeth bared in frightening brilliance.

She fought. Her power lifted her into the air as though she were flying, only for him to catch her ankle and throw her onto the ground. Another sorceress screamed at him and he felt the strike of something hard on his back.

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the pieces of a chair shattered on the ground. Snarling, he reached for the woman, who glared at him with anger and not fear. She would die, he decided. And so she did.

The spray of blood from her throat painted the white walls red. She spun away from him, her hands pressed against the wound as though that would save her. It would not.

Another sorceress launched at him, orbs floating in circles around her, each one filled with burning oil. A telekinetic, rare in these parts. He’d thought Minerva had trained them all out of strong powers.

Tilting his head to the side, he watched as she tossed one at him. Catching it in midair, he threw it back to the young woman, who went up like a candle. Her screams echoed through the walls and that’s when he heard the others. So many more sorceresses than he thought lived here.

It was time to end this. Growling, he turned back to Minerva, ready to cut the head off this snake.

But she wasn’t there.

She’d somehow scrambled up when he’d been certain he had hit her against the floor hard enough to knock her out. That damned wind magic, or whatever it was she called upon must have softened the blow. Baring his teeth, he spun toward the stairs and saw the dark outline of her body as she disappeared around a corner.

Did she think she could get away from him that easily?

He leapt, claws digging into the sides of the stairwell before he began to climb. The railings gave him handholds. He launched himself time and time again, climbing up the center of the Tower’s circular stairs. He became their nightmare, a spider creeping up their walls to hunt them down.

A few sorceresses shrieked, and some tried to attack him. One held twin blades in her hands. He let her stab his shoulder before grabbing onto hers and tossing her into the open air. Her scream was cut short by a sickening crunch. Good enough. Another tried to throw fire in his eyes. An elemental? Where had Minerva been hiding these women?

The fire did little more than annoy him. He let her lob a few flame balls as he passed by before he leapt past to the next level.

Now, where was the bitch who controlled them all? He’d hunt her through the entire Tower and kill every last one of her daughters if he had to. But Minerva didn’t care if they died, which meant she must have a place to hide.

On the seventh level, a sorceress with blood red hair started toward him with her hands raised. And somehow, Selene stood beside her.

He froze. Selene was so pale it frightened him. Her eyes were wide, her hands held out as though in prayer.

“Wait,” she said, but it wasn’t her voice. It was the woman’s who stood next to her. “You have to stop.”

He shook his head, trying to clear some of the bloodlust that raged through him. He needed to listen for a moment, but that new power consumed him. It was similar to his normal control over lust, but different enough to be hard to control. Oh, he lusted for flesh, but not in the same way any longer.

“Please,” Selene said in that voice that was not her own. She took a step closer to him, and he saw blood leaking out from beneath her thick skirts. “You have to help me. Let them go, Lust. Help me instead.”

This was... wrong. It wasn’t her. It couldn’t be her, and yet, she was standing right in front of him. Should he...

“I never wanted you,” Selene whispered. “I only wanted to come home and you wouldn’t let me go. What other choice did I have?”

He swallowed hard, his chest cracking open in fear. Had he trapped her? Had he forced her to stay with him when all she had wanted was her freedom? He’d never been that man before. His claws dug into the stone, and he shook his head again, like a beast trying to dislodge a thorn in its paw.

“Stop it,” he snarled. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but this is not her.”

“It’s me. Of course it’s me, demon.”

She had stopped calling him that long ago. Lust’s eyes narrowed upon the figure, and he noticed the details that his breaking heart hadn’t let him see before. Her skirts weren’t real. The very edges revealed the lines of the marble beneath her.

“Now!” the woman standing beside Selene screamed.

Another sorceress barreled out of the darkness. He didn’t have time to brace himself before she struck him. Her arms wrapped around his waist, squeezing impossibly tight as they fell to the ground. Even this height would hurt him, and he prepared himself for the pain that would soon hit his back. But the woman? She was going to break his ribs.

Grunting, he spun them in the air so that she would hit the ground first. Her eyes widened in fear the moment before they landed. She hit harder than he’d expected, and her body made a noise he would remember for the rest of his life as it cushioned his fall.

Breathing hard, he glared back up at the stairs where Minerva was getting away.

Cursing out a breath, he stood and shook out his hands. Blood splattered on the ground, and he didn’t need to look to know he was covered in it now.

“It’s no use,” a quiet voice whispered from the shadows beside him. “I’ve already seen it.”

A fucking soothsayer. He should have known Minerva would have one of those. He moved nothing but his head to glare at her. “The future is malleable.”

“She dies.” The dark haired woman pointed above them. Her hand trembled. “She dies from the top of the Tower.”

He looked up and flexed his hands. “Then I will climb faster.”

“You can’t get there from the inside. The peak is protected by our strongest sorceresses. If you think these women are powerful, you’ve seen nothing yet.”

“They were not powerful.”

Another woman joined the other, her hair white as snow, with sad eyes that met his. A wind whirled around her, and he wondered if, given the chance, she might have been as powerful as Minerva. “This was the plan the whole time. We fight you, so Minerva has a chance to get there first.”

“She wanted to trap me.”

The pale haired woman shrugged. “That plan failed. She had many plans, but this is the one I wanted to avoid.”

“Why?” He was wasting time talking to them, but this felt important. He knew he had to listen to them now more than ever.

“Because she wants you to go outside. She wants you to see what she has hidden.”

Every muscle in his body locked as he looked at the soothsayer beside the other. Both women nodded, but it was the one who had seen the future that he wanted to confirm.

“Good,” he said. “She wanted me to go outside. Then I will climb instead.”

He turned his attention to the top and let loose all the power he’d consumed from Selene.

All he had to do was walk this time. He strode up the stairs and sneered at the women on their knees or backs, their hands tunneled in between their thighs as they gasped at the sight of him. They had forgotten that he was a spirit of lust and he would use every ounce of his power to get her back. If that meant debasing them, or breaking his rule to never affect those who did not want it? Then he didn’t care. They would all be on their knees before him, whether they wanted to be or not.

His stomach rolled as he passed the few women who felt violated by his actions. He’d deal with that guilt later, but first, he would save his woman.

This was better than their death, he told himself. Even as he made it to the top of the Tower.

He threw the door open and froze when he saw no one other than Minerva facing him. The High Sorceress stood with locked knees, battling against his magic as she stood over Selene’s unmoving body.

“So,” Minerva said. “We meet again.”

“Let her go and I will let you live.”

“You keep saying that as though life is better than death,” Minerva spat. “You know what I want.”

“And you know I will not give it to you.”

“Then I will share with you a secret.” Minerva twitched forward, as though her lust for something to fill her affected her more than she wanted him to see. “I realized I don’t have to have a weapon to kill you.”

“Is that so?” His eyes strayed to Selene, willing her to move. Even just a finger. “How do you think you’re going to kill me without a weapon?”

Minerva hissed out a long breath. “You’re the fool who fell in love with her. What a shame to find out you can feel something other than lust after all.”

“I’m not in love with her.” Just saying the words hurt. He wished he could. He wished he wasn’t lust, that he was another spirit who...

“Then all I have to do is kill her, and you’ll follow.”

His heart seized in his chest and he lunged forward.

Not fast enough. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t fast enough.

Minerva planted her foot on Selene’s side and shoved her off the side of the Tower.