Hellfire Crown by Meg Xuemei X.
CHAPTER 3
Tessa
“How did you know more about our king than us?” the Duke of Wickedness barked at me. “How did you know our king’s true heritage?”
“Who are you exactly?” The Duke of Deception joined the shouting. Pythius loved to deceive others, but he definitely hated to be deceived or cheated. “Is Tessa even your real name?”
“Why did you come to the Underworld?”
“What’s your secret mission?”
“Who sent you?”
Loki’s circle bombarded me with heated questions all at once, and their king wasn’t helping. He wanted me to suffer some form of punishment, since I hadn’t really apologized for taking the bounty on his head, but I wasn’t the apologetic type.
At least he didn’t eye me suspiciously and sternly like the dukes were.
We’d all gathered in Loki’s temporary suite in the Morningstar Palace, after the king and his dukes had suppressed the uprising. Loki had no love for Lucifer’s old lair, but it was the best he could do at that moment. Esme had also moved everyone from the red castle to the palace and gotten them settled down while the king’s army patrolled around the Underworld.
The dukes perched on the sofas around me to prevent me from escaping. They had even placed two elite guards outside the door. I nearly rolled my eyes. I couldn’t be that much of a threat. Loki let the dukes do whatever they wanted. As I said, he wanted me to feel bad.
The bad-boy king leaned against the wine cabinet across from me, studying me darkly with his muscled arms folded across his broad chest. I had traced that delicious, toned chest just a few hours ago.
He was now intentionally putting distance between us, as if by doing so he could assess me objectively.
On the other side of the spacious room, Marigold and her four demigods lounged around the island, eating and drinking and occasionally glancing at us with mild interest.
They’d come right after they’d gotten wind of the archdemon uprising. By the time they’d arrived, Loki had already wrapped it up.
I pressed my temples at the continuing onslaughts of the dukes’ interrogation.
“I let you question her since you deserve answers as much as I do,” Loki grated. “But don’t yell at my mate. Don’t you see you’re giving her a headache?”
He’d finally developed some sympathy for me, I guess, even though his attitude toward me had shifted from overprotectiveness to this. I bet that he hadn’t gotten over the shock of me being sent to assassinate him by his father and then our passionate mating.
But it wasn’t a honeymoon, I was sure. I might never get my honeymoon.
“You should just punch them in the jaw and knock out a few fangs, Tessa, even if it’s not in you to stab them,” Mari offered up her keen observation. She picked up a red cake with a strawberry and thick cream on top and bit it in half. She swallowed it quickly. “That was what I did when the dukes tried to interrogate and intimidate me upon my first arrival in Hell.”
“You stabbed me in my thigh when I just tried to ask you a question nicely, Princess Celeste,” Asmodeus accused. “You’re the meanest girl I’ve ever met.”
Axel, the war demigod, chortled. “My kind of girl. When you try to be mean, Cookie, you turn me on every time.”
Zak, the sky demigod, caressed Mari’s cheek with his thumb. Lightning sparked on the Earth princess’s skin, and she moaned in delight.
Letting her mate pamper her, she grabbed a fluffy cake and studied it to see if she wanted it or not. She put the fluffy cake on Héctor’s plate to let him finish it and went for a variety of cookies.
“You should go out more often, Asmodeus,” she said, “if you even think I’m a mean girl. But if Loki hadn’t stopped me, I’d have cut off your cute little Japanese horns.”
Asmodeus scowled. “I’m not Japanese!”
Mari arched an eyebrow. “Half-Korean then? Or Chinese? How can I tell the difference?”
Asmodeus shook his head in disgust.
Héctor chuckled and brought Mari’s hand to his lips. He was about to kiss her palm, then he saw the cream and sugar on her fingers and licked them instead. She giggled and gazed at the death demigod with burning love.
Paxton, the sea demigod, was massaging her shoulders to make her feel even better. I’d heard that they’d gotten off on the wrong foot in the beginning, as he’d tried to tame her, not knowing the Titan Princess could never be tamed.
Took one to know one. I wondered if the King of the Underworld knew that it’d be a huge mistake to tame a woman like Mari or me. Was he trying to tame me, by allowing his dukes to push me around and get under my skin? They’d have lots of fun with that, and I’d make sure of it, though I wasn’t as explosive as Mari.
I extracted a hairpin from my pink-silver hair and held it in my palms. “I’ll start stabbing eardrums if I hear anyone shout at me,” I said coolly. “That was in my job description as a former assassin. Your king knows that already. We’re acquainted.”
Loki’s inner circle stared at me hard, as if they saw two heads sprouting out of me.
“Even better, Tessa.” Mari’s silvery, giddy giggle broke the silence. “Kick their demonic asses with guns blazing.”
“We aren’t acquainted, Bunny,” Loki corrected me. “We’re mated.”
No one looked like they were surprised at or cared about the mating at this point.
“She’ll do as she said.” The Duke of Envy rubbed his chin. “I watched her fight. She maintained her cool when she beheaded her opponent. She didn’t even blink an eye. That chick might not be an emotional train wreck like Marigold, but—”
“Watch your mouth,” Zak, the most level-headed demigod, warned. “My Rosebud isn’t an emotional train wreck.”
“Thank you, Zak,” Marigold said. “I appreciate it. In this age, very few men still defend a woman’s honor.”
“I’m old fashioned,” the sky demigod told his mate.
“Fine, I’ll just come clean,” I blurted out. “I was sent here to kill Loki—by Lucifer.”
There, not as hard as I’d thought, even though pain blossomed in my head at the bold confession.
The room turned completely silent. Even Marigold ceased her giggles, commenting, and eating.
“What?” someone whispered. “Did I imagine hearing things I wasn’t supposed to hear?”
Then everyone was shouting again. I sighed.
“I took a blood contract on your king!” I shouted over them.
If I hung out with this lot any longer, I’d become a very loud assassin or a loud queen if I made it to the end of the trials.
At my rowdy declaration, I darted a sheepish and resigned glance at Loki, who still leaned against the glass cabinet. His brooding midnight eyes never left me. His lips thinned in displeasure, but his muscles were taut, as if he was ready to spring into action.
What he would do, I had no idea.
Axel whistled. “And I thought I’d had a bad day.”
Marigold gave him a sharp look.
“The amount of gold Lucifer offered me could buy me the best mercenary army, and I need an army.” I licked my lips as I scanned all the glares trained on me. The tension and hostility were too thick for my liking. “You might not know, but I was dethroned in the Ice Kingdom and greatly humiliated. My royal family was slaughtered. All these years, all I could think about was revenge, getting back home, taking out my—my ex.” I kept going, afraid that if I stopped, I wouldn’t have the nerve to finish what I’d started, especially now the pain in my head was growing. “I took the bounty before I met Loki, your king, before I knew he was my mate.”
I spread my arms to signify that this was the gist of the story, trying hard not to grasp my head to stop the pain. “I’m sorry.”
That was my best version of apologizing, and I did it.
The room exploded. The dukes jumped up and drew weapons.
“You’ll be more than sorry, lady!” snarled the Duke of Envy. “I used to like you! And I don’t even like most people!”
I nearly sneered at him. The way he’d said it, it was as if the fact that he didn’t like most people was also my fault. Once you were down, everyone came to stomp on you.
“I told you not to fuck my king up, didn’t I, in the library?” the Duke of Wickedness shouted in barely controlled rage.
A beastly growl punctured the air. Then, in a blur, Loki zoomed toward me. I instinctively raised a hand, ready to defend myself with whatever power I had left. I might be a traitor in their eyes, but I wasn’t going to roll over and die, or in this case be besieged and cut down.
I just wasn’t that kind of girl, whether I was in the wrong or not.
I blinked as Loki put himself between me and his inner circle, instead of dealing me a blow or letting anyone else do it. Then slight shame washed over me. I’d grown so used to always assuming the worst in a man that I kept forgetting Loki wasn’t Ragnarö.
“Put down your fucking weapons!” Loki ordered, his voice sounding more wolfish than human. “Stay the fuck back.” More threatening growls tore out of his throat. “Don’t make me say it twice.”
I felt moisture well in my eyes, yet I smiled. The wolf would never let anyone hurt me. Even if I couldn’t rely on the Demon King at times, I knew I could always count on the beast in him. He was on my side through and through, right from the beginning. He didn’t give a crap about politics or even hurt feelings. It was like he breathed to protect me.
I wanted to ruffle his fur to show my affection and appreciation.
“I was waiting for Tessa to fight off your douches,” Mari sighed. “It would’ve been a good show. You always ruin everything, Loki.”
Loki glared at her before turning to his inner circle.
Esme had remained unmoving this whole time. She lifted a porcelain mug and drank her cold coffee.
“How’s your coffee, Esme?” Loki seethed.
Esme glanced at me, then at Loki. “I didn’t join the gang.”
The dukes glared at her, but they’d all withdrawn their weapons and avoided making eye contact with their king.
Fury blazed in Loki’s eyes.
The dukes stayed where they were for now, several feet from me, to play it safe. I was fine with them acting as if I were a rattlesnake.
“This is as good as we can get it,” Esme said with a small shrug, but she put down her coffee mug. “Tessa revealed some dark secrets under certain pressure, but she’s also volunteered more information. Yes, she came here to kill you. She had a mission, but then Your Majesty knew that already, which was why you destroyed part of the red castle in the first place. Before she joined us to stomp out the uprising, fighting bravely by your side, it was obvious that you’d mated. Your possessive scent is all over her, my king. So, I don’t think I need to worry about a thing. I’m just going to enjoy my coffee and see what comes next.”
“Mated?” the Duke of Deception cried out. “Mated! Your Majesty, you can’t take such a significant event so lightly.”
“Yeah? Should I put it in the royal record with every detail?” Loki asked. “Or should I ask your permission before I sleep with my fated mate?”
The dukes traded glances, as if they thought that was the proper procedure.
Marigold snapped her fingers. “So the gist of it is that while Loki got horny and went to pursue his Bunny, the pureblooded demons all got excited as well and took the opportunity to burn down my brother’s castle.”
“Something like that.” The Duke of Envy nodded. “My king took off after the lady right after he burned down the nightclub and drove away the angel of death.”
My heart skipped a beat. I hadn’t had the chance to inquire what had happened to the angel.
“Damn it.” Mari turned her beautiful face toward her demigods. “We missed a lot of juicy stuff. And I hate to admit it, but Hell has become more interesting than our Earth.”
“We got sidetracked again,” Zak reminded everyone.
“Right, let’s definitely get back on track,” the Duke of Deception said. “Our lady here was sent to off our king, but she hasn’t acted on it.”
“So the question is, when?” the Duke of Wickedness said.
“Or if she will,” the Duke of Envy added. “This guessing game is making the job of protecting our king difficult.”
Their tone was light, no longer carrying the former menace. Everyone was visually more relaxed after hearing that their king had gotten into my pants.
Men thought with their dicks.
But the dukes had grown on me. They had short tempers, but they were also quick to laugh. They never let heaviness bear them down; in that they were just like their king. Even though Loki had gone through incredible hardships and abuse for centuries, he was lighthearted most of the time despite the massive darkness in him. He reined it in and made it his powerhouse instead of being its bitch.
“If Tessa had set her mind on hurting our king, she’s had plenty of chances.” Esme rolled her eyes. “Have you seen any holes in him?”
“Other than his asshole?” the Duke of Wickedness asked, then swiftly stepped two paces back to avoid being backhanded by Loki.
Axel chuckled. “Everyone knows that your king is an asshole.”
The demigods and Mari gathered around us, and one of the demigods brought her a plate of cookies. I’d heard that every demigod was truly an asshole, except to their mate.
Loki lifted me, took my spot, and parked me on his lap. I’d love to stay on it if there weren’t so many people staring at me. I wiggled out of his lap.
“Why? We are mates now,” Loki said. “That’s what mates do. We cuddle.”
I flushed and rolled my eyes, but I didn’t want to get into an argument with him in front of everyone. He didn’t insist, knowing I was a modest kind of girl when I wasn’t killing someone. He wrapped his heavy arm around me and let me lean on him. That I could do.
Mari took the seat previously occupied by the Duke of Envy, and then her mates all sat around her, pushing the dukes out of the circle and crowding us with their big, powerful presence.
The dukes exchanged a disgusted, dismayed look and found side chairs instead of challenging the demigods.
With even more people surrounding me, I sighed, bracing for the next onslaught of interrogations.
“I know the look, girlfriend.” Marigold grinned at me. “You got yourself in a bind, but don’t worry about a thing. We’re here to get you out of the mess.”
I looked at her warily. “If you say so, Icy Dagger.”
She looked pleased.
Her demigods also knew that I shared their mate’s bloodline, but I hadn’t revealed my tribrid heritage to Loki and his inner circle. At the moment, we should focus on Lucifer.
“Don’t beat yourself up too hard,” Mari advised. “Always blame others for whatever has gone wrong. It’s too late to blame Loki now, since you already mated him before consulting me. I have a reputation for handing out good advice like candy.”
The dukes sneered, and the demigods shot them a harsh look.
“I don’t blame you for wanting to kill Loki.” Marigold trained her brilliant green eyes on me. “He’s annoying on his best days. So many beings have tried to off him, but all have failed.”
“Thank you very much for the support,” Loki snorted.
“Run this by me again, Tessa,” Mari said, flipping her purple hair. “Did you mean that Lucifer sent you?”
“How many Lucifers do you know?” I sighed. “And for the record, I don’t really want to kill Loki.”
The king squeezed me against him fondly. I guess at this point, he’d completely forgiven me.
“Even one is too many,” Mari said and shared a look with Loki.
Pure hatred burned in their eyes.
“Where and when did you meet Lucifer?” Héctor asked, taking over the interview. His intense sapphire eyes fixed on me. “We’ve been tracking him for a while in other realms. We found him once. Before we could take the fight to him, he disappeared again. Tell us where he is, and we’ll take care of the problem for you right away.”
No love was lost between the demigods and Lucifer, considering what the devil had done to their mate.
“The last I saw him, he was in the galaxy of…” I couldn’t finish, as pain exploded in my head like thousands of volts zapping my brain.
I screamed and rolled on the floor, my hands grasping my head. It took seconds for me to realize I was still breathing, and the gasping came out like nails scratching in my ears.
The next thing I knew, I was cuddled in Loki’s warm arms. Esme rushed to me to wipe the trails of blood dripping out of my nose with soft napkins.
“No more fucking questions!” Loki turned to shout at everyone in the room while he kept rocking me soothingly, wrapping me in his protection. “Don’t answer. Don’t even think about it. Now ease your mind, Bunny. I’m sorry I put you through this, but I’m here now. Shush, lean on me.”
“Lady Tessa took a blood contract,” Zak said, regarding us with an incredulous look, as if he couldn’t wrap his mind around how Loki could get a mate. They used to be enemies. “Revealing her employer’s whereabouts or any intel leading to his capture or demise will backfire on her. The blood vessels in her brain will burst if she keeps at it.”
The sky demigod and the death demigod were the oldest among their peers. They’d been around for a very long time, so they knew what the blood contract meant.
Loki glared at Héctor, veins jumping on his temples, violence ready to explode from him. “How dare you ask my mate about Lucifer when you knew what the blood contract would do to her!”
“I took a chance.” The death demigod stared back, harsh light glinting in his eyes. “I only needed one word from your lady. Things are dicey with Lucifer on the loose, and you knew that.”
“Would you risk Mari like that?” Loki seethed.
“Never,” the death demigod said without a blink. “My lamb is everything to me.”
Rage poured out of the King of the Underworld. Before he could explode into violence against the death demigod, I grabbed him to me despite the throbbing pain still coursing through me.
“Stop, Loki,” I said. “You know them. You know every demigod has a lack of empathy and compassion if it doesn’t involved Mari. We can deal with it. We don’t need their compassion, but we’ll need their power when it matters. Mari is on our side, and she’ll always be on our side. As soon as she’s with us, so are her demigods. And they understand that to deal with our powerful enemies, they need to be ruthless.”
Loki gradually calmed a little, but he could still go off at any time.
“Wow, that’s a good way to put it,” said the Duke of Envy. “Everyone knows the demigods are psychopaths, but no one has dared to say it to their faces, except our king and his lady.”
“They’re psychopaths?” Marigold frowned and mused for a second. “I’ve never seen them that way. Well, that might not be true. I called them assholes and all sorts of names and fought them a lot in the beginning, except for my Héctor. But Héctor might be a sweet psychopath too. He once beat the crap out of Paxton and literarily broke every one of his bones.” The princess winced and paused for a heartbeat. “Merely because Paxton got me beaten up.”
My jaw dropped. That was kind of a rough history between her and one of her mates. The sea demigod paled, shame and regret twirling in his purple eyes.
“We do not live in a fairytale.” Marigold shook her head to shake off a memory. “Even if my mates are inhuman monsters, they’re mine. I wouldn’t change a damn thing about them. However.” She clasped her delicate hands, her green eyes bright as she watched Loki scoop me up and carry me to the large sofa and cradle me to him.
“Where were we?” she asked.
“You wouldn’t change a damn thing about us.” Axel gave her a cue.
“Thank you,” Mari said, smiling at him, and the war demigod grinned back. She turned to me, a deep concern for me in her eyes. “You’re a member of our clan, Tessa. We need to work together on all those psycho boys and be a united front.” She swept her hand over the demigods and Loki. “I usually close my eyes and let them fight out their differences, but your way is better. Let’s be grownups and focus on the important matters.”
“Don’t ever think about asking my mate about the fucking contract again.” Loki stared hard at everyone in the room, the menace emanating from his eyes thinning the air. “You can do a lot of things to me, but cross this line again, and we’re no longer friends or family. We’ll set up a meeting with Lilith. She caught a glimpse of Tessa’s deal with Lucifer. Lilith should have more information, and we’ll get it from her, find Lucifer, and kill him.”
I gazed up at the king as my breathing gradually evened out. I wanted to iron out the fear and worry darkening his midnight eyes. I liked to see him laugh. For a second, I was taken aback at the idea that I might be in love with the King of the Underworld.
“Even if we know where he is,” said Esme, “we can’t leave this realm before the Bride Trials are over.”
Loki cursed.
“Leave it to us,” Paxton said. All the demigods nodded. Hatred burned through their eyes. They’d never let anyone who’d hurt their mate live. No matter how long it took, the demigods always hunted down their enemies.
“My king, you knew about Lady Tessa’s contract and you didn’t let us know about it beforehand?” Pythius asked unhappily. “How are we supposed to guard you when you omit such important information and let an assassin get so close to you?”
At his reminder, the rest of the dukes glared at me again like I was a rattlesnake. They looked like they wanted to lunge and tear me from their king’s embrace and only backed off at Loki’s harsh, warning glare.
“So you could kill my mate before I even had a chance to know her?” he barked at them, and his wolf growled threateningly. “She came across the universe to find me!”
“To kill you,” Esme said coolly, ignoring Loki’s nasty temper, “to be precise.”
“A fact,” the Duke of Envy backed up Esme.
“That was in the past,” Loki said, but uncertainty tainted his voice.
“Is it?” the Duke of Deception drawled. “We’ve now learned that it’s not an ordinary bounty contract. It’s a bloody blood contract!”
“You should say that with an Australian accent, Pythius,” Marigold offered.
“He should go for a British accent,” Zak said, correcting his mate sincerely. I’d heard that the sky demigod didn’t have much of a sense of humor. More often than not, he took things at face value.
Marigold snapped her head toward him and squinted at him suspiciously. “Are you sure?”
“Very sure,” Zak said, lightning flashing in his blue eyes. “I was formerly stationed in the United Kingdom, Germany, and a few Eastern European countries. Other than battling demons”—he gestured at Loki and the dukes to stress who the demons were—“I had no life before you came along.”
“Oh, Zak, my love,” Marigold said with sympathy, not caring as Loki and the dukes all glared at Zak in displeasure.
The sky demigod grasped Marigold’s hand and kissed her knuckles in gratitude, and Mari beamed. They pressed their lips together and shared a kiss.
The dukes grimaced as if Zak and Mari’s display of affection sickened them to their stomachs. I think they were also jealous. Who wouldn’t be? The other demigods looked a bit green-eyed as well. They were frenemies and rivals whenever they didn’t have a common enemy to fight.
“We’ll find a loophole in the blood contract and put a stop to it.” Mari put out her hands. “Loki just has to hang in there and be cool while we take care of the problem.”
“How are you going to find the loophole, princess?” the Duke of Envy snickered. “And what do you think it is?”
Héctor sent the duke a harsh look. “Either kill Lucifer or Lady Tessa.” He ignored Loki’s threatening growl. “Since none of you are willing to sacrifice your high lady, we’ll get Lilith to work harder to find Lucifer.” He pulled Marigold away from Zak and folded her in his embrace. The sky demigod sent him a hard look but didn’t fight him.
“Let me work on Mom,” Marigold said, wrapping her arm around Héctor’s corded neck. “Nothing good will come of it if any of you push her.” She gazed up at the death demigod fondly. “She still holds a grudge against you, not only for turning down her advances but also for kicking her in the middle.”
I blinked. What?
Even Loki sat up straighter, wanting to know more about the family’s dirty laundry.
“I do not permit any woman to touch me other than my lamb,” the death demigod grated. “Not even your mother.”
The truth was that Marigold was the only woman who could touch Héctor and live to tell the tale. Maybe her mother was immune to his death touch?
“Fine,” Marigold said, a dismayed, sad look coming over her beautiful face. “But we probably have to postpone our engagement party to go look for Lucifer.”
“No way,” the demigods said all at once.
“We won’t postpone our bachelor party because of that motherfucker,” Paxton said.
“But we’ll use it to lure him out,” Héctor said with a manic grin.
“Let’s pay Mom a visit first,” Marigold said. “We must dig out Lucifer and kill him once and for all. He sent an assassin to hunt my brother. Who knows what else he’s up to? Oh, Dad will be so thrilled and give us more gold. We should bring five trolleys just in case.”
“We have a lot of gold already,” Axel said. “We don’t need his gold.”
Marigold gave him a slanted look.
“The more we take, the more he’ll have a say in our engagement and wedding,” Zak reminded her.
Marigold blinked a few times. “When you’re right, you’re right, Zak. And we’re giving you the task of persuading him not to come to the wedding while we’re in the Void.”
“If I want a Titan hammer to bash my head in,” Zak murmured. “I’m only a demigod.”
“It won’t come to that,” Mari said, but she didn’t look too sure.
“Even in his prison cell when he’d first met his daughter,” Paxton said with a chuckle, “the first thing your dad got upset about was that we’d deflowered you before you had a proper, splendid wedding.”
I watched them, forgetting the pain throbbing in my head. Their relationship was fascinating.
“Let’s focus on my immortal enemy,” Marigold said, flushing. “And let’s not get Tessa involved since she has her own issues. We’ll use the spyglass to look for Lucifer in Mom’s place. With the five of us, how hard can it be to flush out that motherfucker and stab him to death? Sounds like a plan?”
Before anyone could answer, loud snores from the fireplace rippled across the room.
No one had noticed when Snow White had snuck in to take a nap.
They let me off the hook, but guilt and fear for what I might do under the influence of the blood contract thrummed deep in my bone marrow.
