CHAPTER SIXTEEN

For the next two days, Clarise remained with Avis. During that time, she watched his strength return with each passing hour until he could move around the room unaided. It was difficult to say which of them was more pleased by his progress. Columbine spent a lot of time with them as well.

Perhaps a little too much, but Avis seemed to adore her company and Columbine was determined to prove her worth to him. She danced and she sang, and Clarise was surprised by the perfection in which she did both. Not a foot or a note went wrong, something the child had never been able to achieve before, no matter how hard she tried.

Avis was delighted by her performances, so Clarise held her tongue and snuggled into her husband’s side. There would be plenty of time later to learn how she accomplished this feat.

Besides, she had … other matters on her mind.

Beelzebub and their son were never far from her thoughts—though she didn’t view her former demonic lover in a romantic sense. Their relationship had never been one of true romance. Not the way it had been with Avis.

After her husband’s drunken attack and her subsequent return to Hell, Clarise couldn’t bear the proximity of other males. Any other males. Looking back at things objectively, she could see the mess she’d been in. The ladies and their servants fussed over her tirelessly, yet the moment any male came to help or even visit to say hello, she would scream herself hoarse until he left.

Her father had only tolerated that mindset for a short while before he removed her and Cora from the relative safety of the unmarried ladies’ quarters to those where Lords mingled freely with married Ladies. Cora had suffered horribly during those early days.

Her behaviour had been atrocious towards any of the males that crossed her path, and no amount of discipline curbed her vile opinion of them. Males were all like her father in her young mind. Scum to be stomped out. Not knowing what else to do to protect herself and her daughter, Clarise walled in her room, re-establishing their isolation from the males.

Belial had broken it down seconds later. For all her shapeshifting trickery, Cora had at least been wise enough to hide behind her mother as Belial informed them that his most trusted Military Commander would become Clarise’s personal bodyguard and remain at her side until further notice.

Clarise had felt her world fall apart upon hearing those words, and she remembered the depth of her despair when she’d thought it was a punishment of sorts for giving herself to Avis without his approval. For months, the relationship between herself and Beelzebub had been distant, to say the least.

She’d kept the width of a room between them always. Columbine’s birth didn’t change much. She was too young to have an opinion and Beelzebub was too combat orientated to be bothered by Cora’s laughable attempts on his life as he followed Clarise everywhere.

The intimacy between Clarise and Beelzebub came much later, but still not out of love. Clarise had needed to prove to herself that not all males would be like her husband, and Beelzebub had shown her a gentleness that his great size and stature would not have ordinarily afforded him.

When they finally created Charon, it had been done with all the tenderness of Cora’s conception. But the most telling moment of all was when Beelzebub didn’t turn on her when he was presented with his son for anointment. To this day, Clarise had never asked Beelzebub if he’d been ordered to her bed. He wouldn’t lie, and even if he did, she would know. Whatever his reasons were, his kindness had permitted males back into her life.

But Avis would never understand. Nor could she expect him to. Marriage was for life—or at the very least until a very painful divorce was arranged. That which was shared, needed to be extracted by a divorce ritual, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience for either side. The entire time she had given herself to another, she had done so wearing her husband’s marriage bracers while his blood flowed through her veins in ownership. It was beyond inexcusable.

And after two days of dwelling, she decided to act. Beelzebub deserved more than a highborn decree made from across the High Court where he had no voice. She waited until Avis was asleep before she slipped from their marital bed and silently reshaped her Mystallian uniform around her naked body.

Although her shapeshift made no noise, Avis must have sensed something was amiss for he snorted sharply in his sleep and rolled over, his hand unconsciously reaching for her. Clarise knew she only had a few seconds before he realised she wasn’t there and moulded her side of the mattress to include a pillowed lump roughly her size for him to snuggle against. Her breath caught in her throat as he manoeuvred himself closer to the pillow, but when he promptly fell back into a deep sleep she sighed in relief.

She could have made the mould her perfect double, but she never wanted Avis to believe her capable of such deception. It was one thing to place a pillow where her body should be—and another entirely to fool him with a body double when he came awake. He was so handsome in his sleep.

Without the woes of the realm and his life choices to haunt him, the hard lines of his face took on an almost childlike quality and she realised almost too late that her hand had reached out of its own accord to touch his cheek. She looked at her hand and fisted it, hiding it in the folds of her cloak. I love you, she mouthed, not daring to add her voice to the words.

It was with a heavy heart that she left the room in search of Beelzebub.

After an hour of searching the various levels of the Highborn Compound known as Hell’s Well, she finally found the elusive fighter in the first place she had looked—speaking to a guard outside her father’s private chambers. The two turned on instinct as she approached and while the fighter bowed at the waist, Beelzebub dipped his horned head respectfully. “Milady,” he said.

Own the space, she told herself as she squared her shoulders and kept her back ramrod straight. “Do you have a moment, commander?” she asked, fighting the urge to hide her hands beneath the cloak where she could clench them nervously. This had to be done. The discomfort she felt would pass—she hoped. Own the space.

Beelzebub’s eye ridge arched momentarily in surprise, then his head dipped lower than before. “Of course, Milady.”

Clarise turned and led him into a quieter chamber not far from the conservatory for privacy. For two days, she’d been trying to sort out in her mind how to have this conversation, but now that the moment was upon her, she didn’t know how to start it.

Her lips tightened and she felt her mouth dry uncomfortably. Beelzebub stood just inside the cavern with both sets of his arms folded patiently across his chest. “This is how it must be,” she began.

Beelzebub coldly tilted his head towards her, just as he had in the throne room days earlier. His silent acceptance of her decrees irked her and she thrust her hands against her hips. “Oh, enough with the professional distance, Beelzebub. You and I are beyond that.”

Almost as if a magic wand had been waved, the demonic commander’s lips parted into the friendlier smile he’d shared with her during their more intimate moments. At the same time, much of the militant stiffness in his stance disappeared.

“Forgive me, Milady. It was my presumption that you had already said all you planned to say during your meeting with your family,” he said, lowering both sets of arms to his sides and dipping his head forward so she didn’t have to crane her neck.

Clarise didn’t believe his casual dismissal of the subject for an instant. She of all people knew Beelzebub’s cool exterior was a necessary evil to keep everyone at arm’s length, but he was too powerful to not have an opinion on the matter. “And you have nothing you wish to say to me about it?” she asked, arching one eyebrow and tilting her head dubiously.

She caught the expression that flickered across his face and knew her instincts hadn’t let her down. “I have already given you permission to speak freely, Beelzebub.”

Beelzebub sawed his lower jaw behind his upper fangs and for a moment he seemed torn between holding his tongue and speaking his mind. Then, just as she was about to ask again, he straightened to positively tower over her. “For the sake of our son, I must ask why you are choosing to remain with Avis.”

It was a fair question. Avis had treated her atrociously before his capture, and any sane woman would never risk such an abusive relationship again. Beelzebub, on the other hand, had treated her with nothing but kindness and respect. He was also of her own kind. Avis was … different.

He didn’t know how to treat a Lady, but he was willing to learn. He was also his own man. Beelzebub may or may not have had genuine feelings for her, but those feelings would never be permitted to interfere with his loyalty to her father. She would always be his second priority. Avis was the man she loved. The man she would put above all others. The man she believed would hold her just as high. “He is my husband.”

“In name, only.”

Clarise removed her glove and exposed one of her marriage bracers, holding it up between them like a shield of ownership. “In deed as well, Beelzebub. I never divorced Avis, because in my heart I always felt my place was with him and one day, he would return for me—for us. You knew what you and I shared was never meant to last. You are Father’s Military Commander and your position will always be at his side, commanding his legions. He may have been happy to overlook my marital status in the hope that I might find happiness in your arms, but just as your place is with him, mine will always be with Avis and our children.”

“Have you informed Avis of our son?”

Clarise broke Avis’ cardinal rule of maintaining eye contact by looking down and away rather than answering that … which in itself became an answer. The silence that grew between them hung heavily in the air and as she struggled to regroup her thoughts until thick, heavy smoke fell across her head and shoulders from above. Clarise automatically reached out and placed her hand on his nearest wrist.

“I will,” she promised, squeezing it lightly in the hopes that he would believe her. When she looked up, all the warmth was gone from his expression. He met her eyes, then pulled his hand away from her and folded his dual sets of arms, returning to the impassive warrior he’d been outside.

Clarise pursed her lips together. She hadn’t realised owning the space would be so … hard. “I swear, I will,” she said, making no further attempt to touch him. “But not until we are far from Chaos. Perhaps he will forgive me for sleeping with another and bearing your child. Perhaps he will not. But either way, Charon will remain at your side, far from my husband’s reach.”

“Your husband’s belief in his reach does not concern me.” Beelzebub’s words were layered in ice. He really didn’t care. “He will not touch my son.”

My son. Not our son. Already Beelzebub was distancing himself from her and letting her know it made no difference to him if Avis was her husband or not. Any action taken against Charon would be met with absolute savagery of the legendary kind.

Clarise couldn’t bear the animosity that rolled off him in waves. Not with the history they had. Without breaking the integrity of the room around them, she absorbed enough mass to double her natural height and morph back into her demonic form to match his immense size.

Now on eye level with her former lover, she pressed the ebony plates of her forehead firmly against his. “Do not be like this, Beelzebub,” she whispered tenderly, puffing smoke into his face and inhaling his in return. “Please.”

Thankfully, after a moment or two, the tension in Beelzebub’s huge shoulders relaxed again and he slid both sets of arms around her. “He does not deserve you, Milady.”

Those six words summed up the opinion of the whole realm. Neither mercy nor forgiveness existed here and no one could understand why Clarise was willing to entertain either. Especially where a god like Avis was concerned. A bender, of all things.

She sighed and hooked her arms around his neck, suddenly bone weary of the entire affair. “So, I have been told on numerous occasions. Perhaps in time, you will all not think that,” she said against his ear.

“Perhaps,” Beelzebub replied, though she could hear the unspoken not likely that accompanied his words.

She gripped his neck tighter as if to convince him he was wrong. Then, with another sigh that sounded the beginning of the end between them, she released him and stepped back, away from his embrace. “Charon needs to know I am leaving,” she said, shrinking back into her petite Mystallian form and returning the excess mass to the surrounding area it came from.

Beelzebub nodded in agreement. “Of course, Milady. Do you wish me to—” His words ended abruptly and he twisted his great head back and to one side as if someone were behind him, whispering in his ear.

No one was with them, but before she could ask who he was speaking to, Beelzebub dipped his head in a curt nod. “Understood, Milord,” he murmured, straightening where he stood. Gone was his look of compassion and understanding and in its place was the Military Commander of all Hell’s Highborn Guard.

The unexpected change startled Clarise and she drew away from him. “Beelzebub?”

Beelzebub met her eyes. The icy lethality in that gaze sent a chill along her Mystallian spine and without a word of explanation, he held up one taloned finger at her …

… and vanished.

More times than she would care to count over her long life, Clarise had witnessed Beelzebub’s almost magical disappearing trick, but never whilst they were in the middle of something so important—so personal. It was like a switch had been flicked inside him and she was suddenly alone, in every sense of the word. It reinforced her awareness that if anything ever was to come of their relationship, she would never be his priority.

Since he could be gone any length of time from seconds to centuries, depending on the reason for his summons, Clarise knew there was little point in waiting for him. She had hoped to have Beelzebub’s support when speaking to their son about her eventual departure, but that did not appear to be likely. She drew in a deep breath and released it in a calming sigh, squaring her shoulders beneath her cloak.

But, when she went to step towards the cavern opening, Beelzebub appeared before her in precisely the same position he had vanished from. The warmth was back in his eyes and he lowered his horned head towards her. “… accompany you to Charon’s chambers, Milady?” he asked, as if the strange interruption had never taken place.

His ability to pick up right where he left off never failed to throw her, and for a moment she had to remember her own derailed train of thought. Her first instinct had been to demand where he had gone and what he had done during those moments, but she knew from experience he’d never answer either of those questions. It was Highborn Hellion Guard business—the end.

“I would like that, yes,” she said, wishing with all her heart that the next few hours were already in the past. “You are Charon’s father, and when I inform him of my impending departure, he will automatically turn to you to deny it.”

“Which I will not.”

“Which you will not,” she agreed.

Beelzebub turned to one side and gestured to the opening with a slight dip of his head. “After you, Milady.”

* * *

The supposed discussion with Charon went even worse than she feared. It started the moment she and Beelzebub entered the boy’s chambers and found the youngster hiding in a crevice high over her head. On her initial sweep of the room, she hadn’t seen him at all. It took a flick of Beelzebub’s horned head to pinpoint their son and without another thought, she ordered him to the ground before them.

He rolled off his perch and fell the short distance to all fours, his emaciated hands and feet burying into the stone with the impact. Very little flesh hung off his young bones and what there was belonged on an ancient nearing the end of his long life. His blond hair hung like dried straw around his shoulders and his ribs and lined the withered skin beneath his chest. He had no armour to speak of. If anything, he almost looked …

… Mystallian.

Clarise raised her hand to cover her mouth. Her own, shapeshifted Mystallian mouth. His lips were thin and cracked and his cheekbones were pronounced under the thin layer of skin and flesh that curled under his jaw and sat against his larynx. But his eyes. His pitch-black eyes were what she now recognised as the most Mystallian feature about him.

The way they narrowed in contempt at her, like she was the vilest thing in creation. She’d seen that look every time she crossed paths with her husband before Cora was born. “What?” the boy snapped, rudely.

“Keep a civil tongue in your head, son, or lose it in the worst possible way,” his father warned.

Charon looked sharply at the ground between them, but the way he clenched his fists and ground his teeth, he was not abandoning his anger.

Clarise couldn’t begrudge him that. Nor would she belittle his reasons by offering him comfort, knowing she was going to rip it away from him in the very near future. She squatted down to face him.

The ease in which the Mystallian leather conformed to her every need, unlike the cumbersome dresses, restrictive corsets and dozens of petticoats that she and Columbine had been enduring thus far almost distracted her from the situation at hand—almost. Her elbows rested on her knees and her fingers were steepled in his direction.

Beelzebub stood behind her, stoic as ever. “There is no easy way to say this, Charon, and I suspect from your behaviour, you have already been told. Yes, you are staying here with your father, to grow into a Demon Lord in your own right.”

The withered flesh across Charon’s face tightened as his teeth clenched together and he lifted his head to glare at her accusingly. “Bu’ chu’ ’r goin’?”

The confirmation that someone within the family had told him did nothing to ease the situation. If anything, it made things worse. They were both heart-broken and there was nothing either of them could do about it.

Clarise would have given a lot at that moment to have her husband’s ability to go inside his mind and find out just who had broken the news ahead of her. Instead, she rubbed her hands together tightly. “Yes, sweetheart. I am.”

Whatever reaction Clarise had expected in that moment of confirmation, she hadn’t anticipated his agonised screech of denial as he surged forward and shoved her backwards into Beelzebub’s shins. “No!” he screamed, rebounding off her to dash towards the cave entrance. “NO!”

Clarise recovered almost immediately. She shifted her weight and was back on her haunches with one gloved hand on the ground between her knees for stability almost as quickly as she’d been knocked off-balance, though the sheer ferocity of his assault stunned her. He had struck her. His own mother.

True, he’d only done it to ensure his escape, but the forceful contact between them had been made, and he’d done it deliberately when he knew better. Before Clarise could snare his retreating form with her ranged shapeshifting, she felt a vacuum of air suck inwards behind her. It drew her cloak off the ground and cracked it like a whip and suddenly Beelzebub was across the room in the doorway with their son squirming helplessly in his arms.

Charon squealed all the louder by his surprise capture and arched against his father, digging his tiny heels into the great demon’s stomach and wailing pitifully. Clarise straightened and dusted her gloves against her leggings.

“Enough, Charon, please,” she chided, for although Beelzebub had him incapacitated, Clarise wanted … needed him to behave as a Highborn Hellion. Right now, more than ever. For his own sake. He had the appearance of a wrinkled old Mystallian, and if he started behaving like one, the family would turn on him without hesitation, just as they’d already done to Cora. “Stop this.”

But Charon was inconsolable, and instead of calming down, his efforts to free himself doubled, then tripled as he realised his father’s physical contact prevented him from shapeshifting. “I HATE’CHU, MU’VER!” he screamed, leaning forward to spew the words at what he considered was the source of all his woes.

Beelzebub bristled, but Clarise held out her hand before he could take their son to task for his vile outburst. “Beelzebub, no,” she said, for in her mind there was no need to punish him, not when she knew the solution to his emotional instability would be punishment enough.

The Mystallians would always defend their own, but they’d never defend a child out of wedlock who had somehow managed to secure physical aspects from the trace amounts of Mystallian blood that flowed in her veins. Not even enough to give him access to their mental powers. Just enough to influence his natural shape … and his attitude.

If she thought she wanted Avis’ mental power before, what she contemplated now took that desire to an entirely new level. Avis could go in and bury certain memories, preventing them from triggering Charon’s more volatile emotions. That would have been far easier than what she was contemplating now, not to mention much kinder.

Clarise lifted her eyes to Beelzebub, wishing with all her heart that their son had taken after him, instead. The Military Commander dominated whatever room he stood in, without ever saying a word. Proud, strong, powerful Beelzebub. Nothing ever fazed him. If only Charon had taken after him, she would never need to consider what she now saw was her only alternative.

But, as the Mystallian saying went, if wishes were fishes … “Enough, Charon,” she repeated, only this time she shifted portions of his blood into the same sleeping agent Frash had used to put Avis down in his weakened state. With his much smaller size and mass, the quantity had Charon slumping in his father’s arms without another word.

There was no denying what needed to be done. With his own actions, Charon had taken the choice out of her hands. He may have only been a child, but already he couldn’t be reasoned with. No … he wouldn’t be reasoned with. In a realm where control and obedience meant everything to the ruling house, his emotional outbursts would not be tolerated by the family. She had to stop them. She had to stop them all.

May the realms forgive me. I am about to lobotomize my own son. She sank her teeth into her trembling bottom lip and closed her eyes, breathing through the tears that welled behind her closed lids.

“Milady?”

Clarise took a moment to reabsorb her tears before she opened her eyes again, as if her grief were only a passing thing and unworthy of his attention.

Instead of standing in the doorway as he had been, Beelzebub was just a few steps in front of her, his brow ridge arching downwards in a concerned frown. She resisted the urge to reach out and touch Charon in his lower arms. It seemed too hypocritical.

“If I leave him the way he is, sooner or later he will share Cora’s fate for going into a blood rage, only there will not be a Mystallian to rescue him at the thirteenth hour. The only way I can ensure he lives a long and healthy life, if not a happy one, is if I remove the part of his brain that houses his emotions.”

Beelzebub looked at the child in his arms. “I will do it,” he said, stepping away from her. He shifted Charon into his upper arms; high out of her current physical reach. “The agony of knowing this was done by your hand would forever haunt you.”

Clarise watched her son being lifted out of physical reach, then pursed her lips together and sadly shook her head. Even now, after her lover knew she had returned to her husband, he was trying to protect her. She stepped to his side and placed a hand on his lower arm, squeezing it appreciatively.

“As powerful as you are, my sweet Beelzebub, the blood in your veins is not Highborn and your shift will never hold him. The moment you lost physical contact, his Highborn blood will rebel against your changes and he will revert.”

They both knew this was true, but Beelzebub didn’t command all of Hell’s forces because he gave in easily. “Lord Uriel would do it for you, to save you from your guilt and heartache.”

All of her brothers would do this for her, but only Uriel would do it willingly and for the right reasons. A week ago, she’d have taken Beelzebub up on that offer without a single hesitation. She’d have given her consent for the deed to be done and then removed herself from the difficult situation until the task was completed.

Clarise closed her mouth and breathed slowly through her nose. Because a week ago, she hadn’t been introduced to the three words that were virtually a Mystallian mantra. Own the space. It meant more than just taking possession of the area around them. It meant owning what was going on within as well. Own one’s thoughts—one’s words—one’s decisions.

It meant never saying what you don’t mean and never shying away from anything. “He would,” she begrudgingly agreed, squeezing his arm again. “But this is not his burden to bear. I chose to birth Charon and now I am choosing my Mystallian family over him. The burden of those decisions and the consequences therein are mine alone to bear.”

Beelzebub grew another arm and squeezed her shoulder through the black cloak. “Not alone,” he corrected forcefully.

Clarise smiled. A little. Two simple words of comfort, and they meant more to her than all the flowery speeches combined. Life had been so much easier when she was one of the Highborn Ladies, hiding behind her status whenever anything unpleasant was presented to her. The men took care of things like this. But that was not the way of Mystal.

And by her own choice, she was now Mystallian.

Steadying herself for what must be, Clarise looked up at her son. She easily identified all the sections of his brain that housed the physical representations of his emotions, but as she wasn’t a healer, she didn’t know how to tone them down. Only how to excise them.

With a very heavy heart, she began severing the thousands of neural networks that controlled his emotions, changing their fibrous mass into harmless life fluid that flowed through his body. He wouldn’t feel. He wouldn’t react. He’d be as glacial as his father and he’d remain safe because of it.

When it was done, Clarise wanted to break down and weep. Or be sick. Her stomach knotted and her chest heaved, but it was done. She had effectively stripped her son’s childhood from him. He would never laugh. He would never love. She had done this to him.

“Yimmen,” she heard Beelzebub call.

Clarise barely acknowledged the centipede-like demoness appeared behind him. She couldn’t take her eyes off her sleeping son, though she fought the rising lump in her throat and the growing threat of tears that built in her eyes by constantly neutralising them.

Beelzebub stepped to one side and slid the sleeping toddler into his governess’ awaiting arms. “See to your Lord,” he commanded, then moved forward and curled a lower arm around Clarise’s shoulders. “Come,” he said more gently, guiding her towards the mouth of the cave.

Clarise allowed herself to be led. Her feet moved of their own accord and her eyes focused on nothing as they silently made their way through the family levels and up towards Belial’s private chambers again. Her heart felt withered and useless. She had lobotomised her own son. What kind of a mother did that to her own child?

It was only when an eruption of colour overhead caught her eye that she realised he’d taken her to her place of peace and comfort. The Conservatory. “Cry, Milady,” Beelzebub whispered into the back of her head, having bent down low to do so. His dual sets of hands rubbed her shoulders and her forearms. “We will take as long as you need, and no one will bother you here.”

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

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