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“It’s rude not to drink the wine served to you,” Asmodeus said finally. His father’s eyes flashed to him and being left with no choice, Oleander took a sip.
“Is the wine not to your taste?”
“No, it’s fine.” Oleander said, taking a longer drink this time.
The truth was, he was wary of drinking wine around his father. Hazy memories tugged at his subconscious that he’d made this mistake before and been worse off for it. Asmodeus watched him until Oleander took another long drink, the wine now half-gone. The yellow squares of sunlight previously pastel grew so bright he had to cover his eyes. He felt a lurch, only to realise it was his body. Then nothing.
The next thing Oleander knew he was in a dampish room, lit only by clusters of luminous crimson mushrooms that gave off a faint glow. He was following his father, only he wasn’t sure why. Stumbling, he reached out and steadied himself against a wall. Asmodeus entered the room to the left, expecting him to follow obediently. The world around him swam too much for him to attempt to move, though. How much wine had he drunk? One glass had never affected him so.
A dank chill seeped through his sweater until he was sweating from it. His eyes moved towards the door to the right. Closed now, but he had a vision of an upturned shoe protruding from it. Pain burst from his head and he leaned over, trying very hard to keep from retching.
Asmodeus reappeared. His presence was almost spectral in the bright red glow, his figure sharp and demanding, watching his son with an unsettling calm. Their gazes met in a silent standoff, neither willing to break the tension until Oleander finally asked, “What is this place?”
Asmodeus inspected him, coolly. “I need your help with something. We’re performing a ritual. It’s been decided that you will assist us.” Asmodeus scrutinised him in a way that made Oleander’s stomach tighten. He slipped a hand into his pocket and rubbed his index finger along Perine’s handkerchief. “With what?”
“See for yourself.” A sneer slashed across Asmodeus’s face. “Just come in, already.”
Oleander’s heart raced with a conflicting mix of desire and dread. He’d long been making questionable bargains at Asmodeus’s behest—so desperate was he to earn his father’s favour. He must have finally proven himself worthy of a place in Asmodeus’s world. But in the shadows of this landing, standing at the precipice of something far larger than himself, Oleander wondered for the first time: What would it cost him?
The silence between them was thick, hanging like a bloody axe in the room, until Asmodeus broke it with a cold, sharp remark. “If you ever want to work with my inner circle—like the other two—then you’ll do as I say.”
Oleander stood frozen, his mind racing. Everything he’d ever wanted was within his reach, so why did he feel so weighed down with dread? His father was giving him an opportunity, a rare chance to prove himself—one that may never come again. He straightened and strode into the room.
Every Grand Duke was present, nodding their acknowledgment to father and son as they entered. In the midst of them stood a lilac demon with incandescent eyes; Perine’s grandfather—Moloch. His voice boomed through the cavern as he turned to face Asmodeus and Oleander. “He knows what to do?”
Asmodeus’s response was sharp, almost venomous. “He doesn’t need to. As long as the rest of us chant correctly, one silent participant won’t make a difference.”
A voice interrupted, rough with disdain. The speaker, Belial, a dusty rose-coloured demon, shifted in the shadows, his expression as arrogant as ever. “What if he’s as weak as Laurel? Can we really risk—”
Oleander glared at Belial… why the fuck was this demon talking about his mother?
“We don’t have time to find anyone else.” Asmodeus silenced him with a curt wave of his hand. “He’s strong. Stronger than her, anyway. We’ll get a healer if we need one afterwards.”
Oleander’s gaze flickered to his father, uncertainty flooding him—drowning out every other thought. He tried to breathe through an overwhelming rush of a panic, a cold knot forming in his stomach. But Asmodeus’s expression only grew colder. “Fine. I’ll prepare him for what’s about to happen.”
The other Grand Dukes exchanged murmurs and nodded, turning their attention elsewhere.
Asmodeus grabbed his arm, yanking him off to the side of the cavern. In a low, venomous tone, he asked, “You know how we create life, don’t you?”
Oleander’s fists tightened as he looked away, struggling to find his voice. When he finally found the words, they came out in a rigid cadence—each syllable forged rather than spoken. “There’s that room, a kind of psychic plane here in our Circle, where the demonkind chosen to be soul reapers can find vulnerable mortals on the brink of death. We force them to bargain away their souls. They get twenty-one more years of life, but we take half their soul and implant it into a demoness who wants a child. Then, we take the other half of the soul at Ascension, exactly twenty-one years later, the two halves of the soul are reunited.”
Asmodeus nodded sharply, the air around them heavy with his authority. “Right. Well, tonight, we’re doing a variation of that. Except this time we’ve found demoness souls on the brink of death and harvested them.”
Oleander’s heart lurched. “Is that—that feels wrong.”
Asmodeus’s lip curled in a sneer. “Ach. Find whatever scraps of masculinity you have left and don’t embarrass me.”
The logic was nonsensical, but Oleander found himself backing away slowly. “What do you need me to do?”
“Just hold your jar and follow everyone else’s lead,” Asmodeus instructed, sweeping his cloak dramatically before he joined the others. Oleander stood frozen for a moment, his stomach a tangled mess of confusion and dread.
He blew out a shaky breath and tried to make sense of things. First, he told himself, his father had to be exaggerating about sacrificing demoness souls. How would one even attain a demoness soul? They would have to essentially murder a demoness.
Gods below, no! The Grand Dukes may be unpleasant—even morally ambiguous at times—but they were not… evil.
Oleander felt marginally better once he realised this. Most likely, he reasoned, it was some kind of poetic wording for whatever magic they were about to perform. Because, there was no way that harvesting demoness souls was an accepted practice.
And yet.
