Crunch. There went a rib.

Crack. That had to be something in his back.

“Malachi,” Severus choked out, his arms pinned at his side as his older brother continued to crush him—in a hug, at that. They had never hugged in the entirety of their relationship, unless Malachi secretly planting some horrid creature on him mid-embrace counted as a hug. “Y-you’re crushing me.”

His brother squeezed harder, this time splintering his collarbone. Pain bloomed throughout his body, but Severus could already feel the breaks healing, even in the confines of the chaos demon’s embrace. Finally, Malachi released him, setting him back on his feet and dusting his jacket off. With a frown, Severus swept his gaze up and down his brother’s figure; this was not the demon he had known all those years ago. Malachi had been a prized peacock in his youth, obsessed with style and reputation and influence. He strutted about, keeping his emotions hidden, always dressed in the very best that their parents could afford. He had been a trendsetter. A go-getter. The envy of all their peers.

Now, the chaos demon wore his relief like a second skin, and that outfit—the old Malachi would have never stepped out of the house with frayed hems and jagged rips. Never. He had thrown a servant off the balcony once when she had forgotten to replace a missing button on his pajamas, for fuck’s sake.

What the hell was going on down here? First, the gardens, the care of which his mother had micromanaged with an iron fist, were woefully overgrown. Wild, even. And now his brother looked like—that. Like he’d been wearing the same clothes for months, and his once-lustrous golden mane hadn’t seen a comb in far longer.

“I’m sorry, Severus,” the demon rumbled, still smoothing out his suit, dusting him off. “Do you know how long it has been down here since you’ve left?”

“Well, I’ve been on Earth for two centuries—”

“Nearly five down here, you fuck,” his brother snapped, scowling as he folded his arms across that great burly chest of his.

Brawn, brains, and pedigree—that was the Malachi Saevitia that Severus had once known.

So, what had gone wrong? Why did he look like this? Why were his emotions so, so, present?

“When I left, I told you all that I had no intention of returning,” Severus said stiffly. Malachi snorted, the annoyance fading away to something verging on—affection?

What. The. Fuck?

“I always thought it was just a tantrum, a snit,” his brother mused, that great booming voice Severus had long tried to forget echoing across the estate. “Figured you’d be home in a couple decades, but not this.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for—”

“No matter,” Malachi crooned, voice dropping to a purr and eyes snapping to Moira as soon as Severus gestured to her. “And who is this exquisite creature?”

Jealousy, possessive rage, flooded his system. His hands curled to tight fists, claws sinking into flesh, and he fought the urge to strike the leer off his brother’s face.

“Moira,” he forced out, swiftly falling to her side, grasping the nape of her neck with a growl. “We’ve come together.”

Malachi held his hands up, chuckling. “All right, all right. So, you finally found someone who wants to play, eh, little brother? Good. We were all worried you’d be some simpering virgin forever.”

“I wasn’t a virgin when I left—”

“Oh, fae don’t count—”

“Then neither do vampires, brother—”

“Okay,” Moira interjected loudly, glaring up at them both—but mostly at Severus. The demon pair fell quiet at the unspoken admonishment. “We’re not here to bicker.”

“Darling, you haven’t met the rest of the family yet,” Severus told her, eyes narrowing at his smirking brother. “All we do is bicker.”

And nitpick, abuse, torment—it was one of the many reasons he had seen fit to leave. To shuffle off to Earth, head hanging low, and try to rebuild what they had destroyed. Not this time. Severus was stronger now. He had a purpose. He had a life.

And he had a woman he loved.

They couldn’t touch him, the filthy ingrates—

“Well, all we did was bicker.” Malachi’s wheedling cut through his thoughts, and it took him a few long moments to process it. Did. Past tense. Slowly, he lifted his gaze to his brother’s; his smirk seemed hollow now.

“As if either of them has changed,” Severus said, hoping to have the higher ground here, the moral authority, just this once. Malachi merely stared back, until that smirk disappeared completely, until his hands hung limp at his sides and his brow furrowed. Puzzled. Severus had never seen his brother puzzled before; nothing in life had ever challenged him enough to puzzle him.

“Don’t you know?” Malachi asked, head tipped to the side, that great tatty mane giving him the appearance of a lion crossed with a bear—crossed with a pup who just didn’t understand. “Severus, Mother and Father are dead. They’ve been dead for over a century.”

Severus’s hand, which had been clutching possessively at Moira’s neck, suddenly slid down her back. Dead? They couldn’t be dead. In Severus’s mind, those two old fools would endure throughout the ages—crotchety, pathetic immortals until Hell finally splintered and withered away.

“Dead?” Why did his throat feel so tight? And why was Moira suddenly clutching his hand, her wide grey eyes boring into him, pupilless and dripping with empathy? “What do you mean—dead? They can’t—”

“Didn’t Cordie tell you?” Malachi shoved his hands into his pockets, unmoved by the announcement. Unmoved now, perhaps, but as Severus took him in, really studied him with his bewildered stare, he thought his brother appeared comfortably numb to it all instead. Malachi shifted his weight between his legs, then chuckled. “Doesn’t she visit you in that little pin-drop of a city?”

“We…” Severus cleared his throat, finding it thick and constricted. “We never really talk family when she visits. Hers, sometimes, if she’s feeling chatty. Mostly she comes by to moon over Alaric.”

“Ah, yes, Verrier’s boy, isn’t he? Poor soul. No one ever escapes our cousin’s whims, do they?”

Severus nodded absently, his mind sluggish as it digested the news. Dead. His mother and father, bitter, surely, to the last breath—dead. He had wished for it his whole life. He had no qualms imagining their lifeless bodies, their pale useless corpses. He’d laughed about it as a boy, daydreamed about it as they mocked him from across the dinner table.

He had thought he would be immune to feeling a single shred of anything save relief at the news of their death.

Not so.

Severus swallowed hard, suddenly aware that the conversation had stagnated, the air thick between the three of them. Malachi watching Moira. Moira watching him. Severus staring at the frayed edge of his brother’s right sleeve, the string a mere breath away from their father’s crested ring, which Malachi now wore on his middle finger.

Moira gave his hand a gentle squeeze, willing him to look at her—but he couldn’t. On Earth, he enjoyed being coddled by her. After all, he was a different creature on Earth. In Hell, he was raw—his entire being an exposed nerve that felt so much more viscerally. In Hell, he did the protecting, the comforting, the coddling. Otherwise, what use was he?

So he stood tall, wishing the news had just rolled off him like it was nothing—like he didn’t care. His silence suggested otherwise, and now he needed to recover.

“Well, that’s that then,” he said, forcing out each word, loud enough to distract his brother from Moira. “We’ve had a long journey and could do with some rest.”

“What? Not even going to tell me why you’re here?” Malachi barred the entryway with his enormous frame, countering Severus’s step to the side with one of his own. “Now that I know it’s not for a family visit…”

“Later, brother,” he insisted, readjusting the luggage on his back—dead weight that he had nearly forgotten about. “Is my bedroom still intact, or…?”

He arched an eyebrow. Or did they dismantle it the second I was out the door?

“I told them to leave it,” Malachi admitted with a sigh. Right—his things were definitely destroyed. “It’s a guest room now. I take it you two will be sharing?”

“Indeed,” Severus said gruffly, finally shouldering his way into the enormous foyer, keeping a firm grasp on Moira’s hand as she tried to keep up. While the white and gold colour scheme remained, the structure of his enormous childhood home untouched, the interior décor—his mother’s plants, her rugs, her paintings—had vanished.

“I let the staff go a few decades back,” Malachi said, leaning on the doorframe. When Severus glanced at him, he shrugged and rolled his eyes. “They were stealing things…and they just got in the way. The thieves I impaled at the yearly Saevitia summer gathering. The rest serve the extended family these days.”

“Then I believe we both have stories to tell,” Severus remarked before looking to Moira. While she was paler in Hell, she was paler still at the news of his brother’s extracurricular activities. Malachi was an excellent impaler. He’d won awards for it when they were children. However, he needn’t boast—especially when Severus knew he was doing so to test Moira. See how squeamish she was, how far he could push her. Needling—it was another one of his family’s specialties.

Well, not with her.

“I suppose we do,” Malachi said tightly. “Five centuries apart will do that.”

“Two centuries by my count.” Severus raised his eyebrows, issuing a challenge as he never would have dared in the past, then pulled Moira deeper into the foyer, its ceiling stretching all the way up to the roof three stories above. “We’ll talk later.”

“Come find me once you’ve tucked her in, brother,” Malachi called as Severus led a mystified Moira, her grey eyes wide and her pale pink lips parted, toward the enormous stairwell. It spanned the breadth of the foyer and was made entirely of alabaster and marble; Severus had fallen down it once and knocked out all his baby teeth, whether they were ready to go or not. Fallen. After Malachi had pushed him.

His older brother finally slammed the front door, his voice cutting through the echo. “I’ll break out Father’s good scotch, and we’ll really get into it…”

* * *

“If you were so fucking bored down here, why didn’t you just leave?”

His brother let out an exhalation rife with annoyance, then took a sip of his drink. His silhouette in front of the towering hearth, flames snapping and hissing within its depths, was even more foreign to Severus than his new look. He was still broad, tall, imposing, yet his big brother had lost muscle mass—with no servants, he was likely eating less, and poorly at that. And that hair, that tangled mane, stuck out in all directions. Where had his pride gone?

Dead. Dead like their parents.

“You know the laws, brother,” Malachi growled. “If I left, our home could have been taken. It would have been abandoned. I needed two signatures to put it in the care of Aunt Circe. Mother and Father were dead and you had been gone for centuries. What else was I to do?”

Severus swirled the contents of his drink, then gulped down the rest of the molasses-brown liquid. This was an entirely new experience—having a frank conversation with his brother. Before he had left, Malachi talked, Severus listened. Sometimes Severus would fight back, whine, but Malachi had never engaged with him in the past—not meaningfully, anyway. Most of their conversations had consisted of childish squabbles that evolved into full-blown brawls through the white and gold halls of their home, Severus forever the loser and Malachi the golden child who could do no wrong.

This was uncharted territory. Murky waters. He couldn’t decide whether his brother spoke to him now with respect or not, but Malachi hadn’t sneered—much—or insulted him—much—since they had joined one another in the dimly lit third-floor lounge. In an age gone by, this was where the men of the family would retreat, cracking open expensive liquor and Earth-smuggled cigars, while the women chattered away on another floor entirely. Like much of the enormous estate, the décor had disappeared—no rippled silk curtains over the windows, no oil paintings of the gardens, no marble busts of their father. The furniture remained, dusty and unused, and Malachi had admitted to giving most of the decorative pieces away to family after their parents died.

“It’s never been to my taste,” he’d sniffed, seated on the other end of the long, rock-hard couch that Severus had always hated as a boy—hated and wished he had been invited to sit on all the same, as Malachi had, for late-night chats with their cantankerous father. Naturally, he was never sullen with the golden child. The two would sit up here, before a fire much like this one, and talk well into the wee hours of the morning.

“Your father is preparing Malachi to take over the family,” his mother had always insisted, her eyes sparkling at the thought of her favourite son. “It’s a monumental undertaking, running the Saevitia clan. Something you will never understand.”

Much to his surprise, Malachi hadn’t wanted to run the clan. Apparently, after their parents’ deaths, he’d signed away all legal responsibility to their father’s younger brother, Heuric. He ran the clan now with the same rigidity as their father had. All gatherings were held at his estate—which, coincidentally, had taken in most of their mother’s old décor.

It was all such a mess down here. Severus couldn’t help but delight in it, if only a little.

After he had settled Moira into what was once his childhood bedroom, in the far corner of the third floor, tucked away from all the other suites on the second, he had searched the entire property, top to bottom, to ensure that Malachi was truly the only one there. Sure enough, there wasn’t a servant in sight—and from the amount of dust that had settled over everything, there hadn’t been any in quite some time. With only Malachi for him to keep an eye on, he had felt confident that Moira could get a few hours of undisturbed shut-eye. Safe, wrapped in layers of blankets to brace her against the nighttime chill.

She hadn’t said much since they’d arrived, her eyes heavy but curious as she’d watched him check the room for any bits of magical trickery that Malachi might have hidden for kicks.

“Just talk to him,” she had urged softly. “He’s all you have left, Severus, but at least it’s someone.”

He had almost reminded her that her father was all she had left, but she didn’t deserve that. So, he had tucked her in, checked the manor for other beings, then met his brother in the formal lounge for drinks and what he assumed would be a very forced conversation.

His first question, of course, had been how his parents had died.

“Father killed Mother’s lover,” Malachi had told him, sounding painfully bored with the whole thing as he poured their drinks, “and then Mother killed Father, and then our beloved uncles killed her. Quite grisly, but I’ve washed my hands of the whole affair.”

It seemed Malachi had withdrawn from most familial events in the aftermath, and Severus couldn’t help but wonder if the solitude had changed him. After all, they were talking as equals now—perhaps almost like true brothers, even. As a creature built for chaos, Malachi seemed deflated. Lesser. Still the strutting male with his golden mane, but aged and wiser, his voice shaded by a heartache Severus had never heard before.

The deaths of their parents affected him far more than he let on.

But then again, the same could be said for Severus.

They had moved away from the topic swiftly, with Severus giving a very brief rundown of recent events with Moira, then Malachi whining about how dull the last century had been, stuck here all by himself in this big, old house, unable to come and go from Hell as he pleased.

“Yes, I know the law,” Severus muttered, then cleared his throat and shook his head at his brother’s back. “Malachi, the law doesn’t stop you from leaving the property, only leaving the realm. No one says you can’t go to the city, see the rest of the clan—”

“And what? Fraternize with the bastards who butchered our mother?” His brother let out a hollow laugh before grabbing an iron poker and stabbing at the black, charred wood in the hearth. The fire hissed back at him, spitting sparks that burned more holes into his tattered suit; the demon carried on rearranging, unfazed. “Not likely. And Mother’s side of the family is all witchy and close-knit. Hardly space for another chaos demon in their midst. I was far more content with my own company, anyway…for a time.”

To limit squabbling over land and property, and to cut down on outright thievery, one of the residential laws of Hell dictated that should you leave the realm, and by extension your home, without a member of the immediate family tending to it, the property would be considered abandoned. Given this was their father’s ancestral estate, it appeared Malachi wasn’t ready to give it up just for a bit of excitement on Earth.

In order to keep a home in the family name, the deed needed to be signed over to another relative, who would claim temporary ownership in your absence. Unfortunately, such a contract required two blood signatures from the immediate family. Without Severus, Malachi had been stuck with the place.

“I tried it once,” his brother continued, standing there, back to him, fire poker in hand. The sharp tip glowed a pulsing orange hue, and Severus could see the way his brother’s fist clamped down around the other end. Malachi exhaled sharply. “Fraternizing with them. Once and only once after her death—that was it. I’m afraid I don’t have the tact to associate with those cretins anymore.”

Malachi—unable to swallow his pride and smile at those who had left such a gaping hole in his heart? Who would have thought. Severus had forced a smile at his tormentors for centuries.

Still, he couldn’t help but grin.

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” Severus mused, tapping his finger against the rim of his crystal tumbler. “Your lack of tact.”

His brother faced him with a scowl, one that weakened the longer Severus grinned. Slowly, his frown bloomed into a lopsided grin of his own, and Malachi set the fire poker back in its place with a sigh. Downing the rest of his drink, he started to pace, back and forth across the width of the stone hearth, a hand in his pocket.

“So, Diriel.” He seemed to roll the name across his tongue, tasting it, trying it on for size. “Hurt your woman, did he?”

“By order of her angel father, yes.”

Malachi chuckled coolly. “Tricky business, those angels.”

“They’re much more powerful on Earth than we are,” Severus told him. “Hardly seems fair.”

Well, no. The sheer wanton destruction demons would unleash should they be allowed to operate at full power on Earth, unrestricted and unchecked, was too insane to fathom. As much as Severus loathed to admit it, his kind needed to be monitored by a more powerful species. Dripping with arrogance and an exceedingly high, usually undeserved, sense of self-importance, demons would burn the human world to the ground just because they could without the angels keeping them in check.

Not that that logic made his situation with Moira any easier.

“Perhaps I ought to lend a hand then. You know, make it a fairer fight,” Malachi said, finally stopping in front of Severus, that hulking frame looming over him, dominating his view.

For once, Severus didn’t cower. Not even a hint of fear circulated his system. Severus was a different demon than the one Malachi had known—it was reassuring to feel it, to prove it now in this conversation. However, his brother’s offer to lend a hand did not compute in the slightest. Severus blinked rapidly and sat up straighter, an incredulous smile flashing across his face.

“What?” He arched a skeptical brow at his brother. “Malachi, you’ve never lent me a hand in your entire life.”

And if he had, it would have only been because he planned to screw Severus over in the end, preferably somewhere public, for maximum humiliation.

“No, I haven’t,” Malachi said with a curt nod, “and I’ve had a lot of time, alone, to think on that. You are my brother, Severus, but I’ve never treated you as such. And why? Because of some antiquated stereotype?”

Severus merely stared up at him, expression unchanged, unsure of where this could all be headed—unsure of what, exactly, he was ramping up to.

“I let Father dictate my relationship with you when we were children,” Malachi continued, his words edged in a snarl. “I let a vicious old man, weak, with no extraordinary abilities, tell me how I should treat my own brother. A brother who never schemed against me, never plotted my downfall. A brother who never stole from me, and who never broke my heart.”

The corners of Severus’s lips twitched, but he swallowed his smile, too busy trying to decipher the subtext of this rant to admit that he had, in fact, plotted and schemed against Malachi in the past. Hundreds of times. However, all those plots and schemes had lived squarely inside his miserable little head, for he’d known he hadn’t the strength to go through with them. Now, he saw no reason to scheme against his brother; circumstances had done enough of that already.

“And…” Malachi studied his hands, the empty scotch glass clutched within them. “And now you’re here, Severus. You’re home. I want things to be different between us. They need to be different between us. Please.”

Jaw clenched, Severus put some distance between them, standing and strolling around to the other side of the couch. He stood before the smaller of the two liquor cabinets, setting his glass on the empty silver tray.

“Malachi, you were the bane of my existence growing up,” he said stiffly. “You were one of the reasons I finally left. You cannot expect to say a few flowery speeches and I’ll embrace you as the brother I’ve always wanted—”

“Let me prove it to you, then,” Malachi told him, his booming voice drowning out Severus in an instant. “I’ll have my contacts locate Diriel for you by tomorrow morning. There will be no need for you to remain in Hell longer than necessary. I’ll find him, and together we will draw the truth from him. All you need is a name, correct? The name of the angel he serves?”

He spat the last bit, just as disgusted as Severus would have been had he still lived in Hell. The thought of a demon doing the bidding of an angel—it was sacrilege in the underworld. Corrupting an angel? Praiseworthy. Cowering before one, following orders? Pathetic.

He nodded all the same. Acquiring the name of Moira’s father was the only thing barring him from returning to Earth. The sooner they found it, the better. Diriel would be a hard creature to press for the information, but Severus would find a way to make him squeal.

He sighed, fiddling with the half-empty bottles along the top of the small cabinet, searching for something to replenish his tumbler with. “Looking as you do, brother, I have to wonder if you have any associates left.”

“Gold speaks just as loudly here as it does on Earth,” Malachi countered tightly, “and in your absence, the entire family fortune went to me. I can assure you—buying Diriel’s hideout, down to the exact room we might find him in upon arrival, will be simple enough.”

Whether he believed in Malachi’s change of heart or not, he couldn’t deny that their family had wealth—none of which Severus had helped himself to before he had gone topside. In fact, said wealth had been a critical piece in his plan to locate Diriel, and he was pleased to learn that he wouldn’t have to fight for what rightfully belonged to him.

“Do it then,” he said tersely, “find Diriel, but I cannot fathom what you expect to gain in return—”

“For you to have a modicum of trust in me,” Malachi told him, “and nothing more. You’ll see, Severus, that I am not the same demon I once was…” His brother gestured toward him with his glass, a smidgen of leftover scotch sloshing around the bottom. “Just as I can see that in you. You’ve grown up, little brother.”

Severus rolled his eyes. He hadn’t come back to Hell in search of his brother’s approval—nor did he want it. Rather than lashing out, he merely held out his hand and snapped at Malachi’s glass, which the golden-haired demon passed over without a word. Popping the crystal cap off one of the dozen bottles of expensive liquor, Severus refilled both glasses, then strolled around the couch. The heat of the blaze warmed his weary legs; the steadily darkening room, touched by the descending night outside, was a mere reminder that he had crossed between worlds today—and he needed some time to recharge.

Malachi accepted the glass with a half smile, one that grew as Severus lifted his own too-full tumbler for a toast.

“To a modicum of trust,” he offered.

“To Diriel’s head on a spike,” Malachi crooned back, and they clinked their glasses together. The scotch scorched a path down his throat, even now with his third drink. Scotch might have originated on Earth, but demons had perfected it in Hell. Severus smiled thinly when he realized his older brother was still watching him, then returned to his spot on the ridiculously uncomfortable couch.

“Yes, well, I suppose I’ll have to see it to believe it.”

“I’ll come through, brother,” Malachi told him, drifting back to the fireplace. He rested against it, propped up on his arm as he watched the flames dance. They flickered and crackled, intensifying under his presence, the firelight catching in the black pits of his eyes. “I will do this for you. You’ll see.”

“Hmm.” Severus had nothing more to say on the matter. He would believe it when he saw the results. Malachi had never been the sort to just do a good deed for anyone without expecting something grand in return. So, while he could almost, maybe enjoy this new demon his big brother had morphed into over the centuries, he didn’t trust him.

Not yet. Not until Malachi proved himself.

Until then, Severus would keep him at an arm’s length, in no mood to be burned for the thousandth time in their relationship.

So, they watched the flames hiss and spit, drinking their scotch, neither moving, neither speaking again—not until the thickening clouds outside split open, the weather extremes of Hell finally unleashed. Setting his empty glass aside, Severus stood and nodded to his brother when the reds of their eyes met, then strode out of the room to check on Moira, eager to get back to her after what had been the most surprising, and confusing, conversation with Malachi of his very long life.

* * *

Moira awoke with Severus’s arms wrapped around her and a chill clinging to the tip of her nose. Inhaling deeply, she tried to shuffle about, but even the slightest movement made his arms lock tighter. With a wince, she glanced over her shoulder and found him dead asleep, his eyelids dancing and his jaw slack. A stiffness permeated her limbs, courtesy of the unfamiliar bed and the inability to move as she slept. She stretched as best she could, trying not to wake him, then blinked the sleep out of her eyes as she studied the dark, silent room around her.

Severus had been so thorough when he checked it, searching under the bed, between the sheets and the mattress, inside the bedside table drawers. Apparently his brother had liked to hide little magical bombs around his room when they were children; Moira could only imagine the distrust that would create, and the pranks seemed like the tip of the iceberg with these two. Still, the fact that he was back here and sleeping as soundly as he was had to mean something had gone right.

With some effort, grunting, Moira managed to roll herself over in his arms, facing him now. His breath hitched in the process, brow furrowing, but it all evened out once she settled, and Moira pressed her lips together, smiling, when she felt him fiddling with her hair in his sleep. Coarse black claws, likely capable of unimaginable savagery—twirling her hair as his eyes continued to twitch under their lids.

Moira snuggled closer to his bare chest. While his skin had cooled somewhat in Hell, the tip of her nose was colder still, and she warmed it in the hollow of his throat. She listened to his deep, even breaths, the constant, slow thud of his heart. If she hadn’t felt so alert suddenly, the combination would have lulled her back to sleep. Instead, she cuddled up to him, enjoying him, relishing these few peaceful moments before the real work began.

Although she hadn’t admitted it, not even to herself, really, Moira had feared what Hell might do to Severus. The inner demon usually flared whenever he was angry or aroused, and the thought of dealing with a forever angry, horny Severus had made her stomach turn. Thankfully, he was more or less himself, even with the physical changes. Less himself in the way he touched her—always touched her, his hand on her lower back, sometimes clasping hers. Severus was more forthcoming in Hell—more upfront to the rest of the world—realm?—about the fact that they were together.

She blinked.

Were they together?

Had it happened so naturally that she hadn’t even noticed?

Her cheeks warmed at the thought, but Moira could acknowledge that the incubus’s possessiveness here was a tactic. You know, announce to all the demon creeps that she was taken. Mark his territory.

Keep her safe.

It would have been easy to get indignant over the fact that his touch, his kiss, his caress was basically just him peeing a circle around her. As much as she wanted to prove herself, to withstand Hell on her own two feet, Moira knew she needed Severus too. She needed his support. She needed him standing behind her, glowering at anyone who dared show too much interest. Because this was a land of demons. Demons took what they wanted. They consumed. They stole. They were self-indulgent and cruel, petulant and unpredictable—she had experienced it all with Diriel and his cronies.

Now, there were thousands of Diriels around her, and she had no idea whom she could trust.

But she knew she could trust Severus. He’d keep her safe. He’d bring her home. He’d stand by her side in this fight until the bitter end.

Because they were partners. Just you and me, that’s all I want. Moira had meant it when she said it.

So, really, was it such a stretch to consider them together, in the grand scheme of things?

She inhaled deeply again, forcing the thoughts away, the frantic, rushing, racing thoughts that hammered her skull. Thoughts of Severus, Diriel, her dad—the rest of her life, if she even had one. Instead, she traced the swell of muscle across his chest, tracked the corded bands up his arm, taut, even in sleep. The bulge in his throat. The sharp lines of his jaw. The thick black lashes twitching with dreams.

Only when her body screamed, in need of a good stretching in every direction, did Moira finally try to wriggle free. Severus refused to budge, dragging her up against him to the point where it was difficult to breathe. Wincing, Moira managed to wrench her arms loose, then cradled his face and peppered it with a dozen soft, fleeting kisses.

Slowly, he relaxed, loosening his grasp. His downturned lips quirked up, and when Moira finally had the freedom to get out, she took it. To make up for her disappearance, she slipped a pillow into her place, sitting at the edge of the bed as Severus tugged that to him instead.

A chill washed over her now that she was out from under the thick blankets. She had thought they were ridiculous when Severus first pulled them back—Hell was hot, and she had been sweating up a storm under her leather jacket. However, now that night had fallen, the temperature had taken a nosedive to the point that her teeth chattered.

Her skin erupted in little goosebumps the second her bare feet touched the tile, and she dug through her duffel bag at the side of the bed, rooting out a long black sweater dress to cover her baggy sleep T-shirt and shorts combo. The dress tickled her knees when she stood, and she tugged the material about, finding it tighter and itchier than she would have liked—just one of the many new items Ella and Alaric had bought for her yesterday.

Today?

She blinked, feeling strangely out of sorts not knowing the time difference between Hell and Earth. It was night now, a storm raging outside, but how long had she been gone from Earth? Minutes? Hours? How did this all work?

Shaking her head, she did a quick scan of the room, blanketed in shadow and sparsely furnished. A king-sized bed dominated most of the space, paired with small tables on either side. While white and gold threaded throughout Severus’s childhood home, visions of eighteenth-century French palaces coming to mind, sparkling and opulent with a Marie Antoinette aesthetic, most of the furniture in this room was dark, a stark contrast to the light, airy structure of Severus’s childhood home. From what little she had seen, the place was enormous, and his old bedroom was no different. A positively cavernous space stretched out around her, but as far as things went, items to make it feel lived in and homey, there was just a bed and some tables. Bland. Dark and boring. Like the rest of the house, the room lacked décor, unless you counted the shaggy black rug in front of the fireplace near the bathroom door—a fireplace that hadn’t seen fire in quite some time.

In fact, nothing in this house—mansion, estate, whatever—had seen much of anything. While the architecture was beautiful, the amount of dust and spiderwebs was insane. It made her itchy and wheezy just thinking about it.

One enormous window faced the east side of the property, and she padded toward it, arms crossed as she fought to still her shivers. The view overlooked the dense gardens below, the towering white wall surrounding the Saevitia estate, and then barren grey waste beyond, as far as the eye could see.

Or, could see on a clear day, anyway.

The night was anything but clear. In fact, as Moira stared, her jaw hanging open and her brows knit, a snowstorm bustled across the landscape outside.

A snowstorm. In Hell.

Thunder boomed over the property, drawing her gaze up to a black sky. Thick, oppressive clouds hung, and she gasped when a dozen lightning bolts splintered the darkness, illuminating the red tinge in the clouds she had seen earlier. Another onslaught of lightning, so close, so vivid that she flinched back, fearing it would strike the house. But it didn’t. The light flashed like fireworks in several more impressive displays, followed swiftly by another rumble of thunder that she felt in her bones. All the while, hail billowed across the landscape, catching the bright white shimmer of each lightning bolt.

It was almost…beautiful.

When Moira realized she had pressed herself up against the window, desperate to see more, her breath fogging the glass pane, she made a beeline for the balcony. Severus had locked the door earlier, but it was nothing more than a simple latch—hardly a deterrent. After gently nudging the towering glass door’s handle down, she glanced over her shoulder to see if her rustling had woken Severus. Nope. He continued to snooze away, hugging the pillow.

It was the most relaxed Moira had seen him in weeks. A new pang of guilt wedged itself into her heart, one of many. He hadn’t been relaxed because of her, because of what she had dragged him into.

She owed him the world when all this was over.

And Moira intended to give it to him—however she could.

A gust of cold, howling wind barreled in as soon as she opened the door, and Moira slipped outside before any of it could reach the nearby bed. While the bedroom had been chilly, the outside air was positively freezing. She gasped, the chill burning down her throat, then hugged herself tighter. The frigid wind, brutal across the cracked grey terrain, batted her about on the small semicircular balcony. Situated at the back of the house, it was as if Severus’s parents had wanted to put him as far away from everyone else as possible.

The hail blitzed sideways, not down, just beyond the balcony, and her heart dropped to her stomach at the next boom of thunder, the stone tile rattling underfoot.

She drank it all in with a wide-eyed stare, mouth hanging open unabashedly now. The raw power of the lightning strikes illuminated the entire realm, the sky ablaze with red, white, and black. Moira gathered her hair in one hand, trying to contain it as the wind whipped it about. Her breath fogged in front of her, briefly, before being swept up in the storm. As she padded to the edge of the balcony, still sheltered by the corner of the building, she realized she couldn’t feel her toes.

And it didn’t bother her. The pain. The cold. It was worth it to experience this. Standing just outside of the storm, even Moira felt powerful. Hail whizzed by in a steady current about a foot out from the edge of the balcony. It glittered and shimmered, carrying a tune, a melody, that had her thinking of bells—the sweet, tinkling high notes of bells. Curious, she reached out with her free hand, wanting to touch snow in Hell. Out, out, out her long fingers stretched, her arm tensing against the wind. Her mouth lifted into a smile, a laugh on the tip of her tongue, no more than a breath away from touching the…

Shards of glass.

It was raining shards of fucking glass.

Moira screamed as soon as the first batch pelted against her, razor-sharp edges slamming into her skin, embedding themselves in her hand and wrist. Pain scorched up her arm, a thousand tiny knifepoints stabbing her over and over again in the span of three agonizing seconds before she snatched her hand back. The wind sucked up her screams, the gale dragging them out—milking it, stealing her hoarse cries of agony before she finally staggered away from the edge. She lost her footing, tripping over her numb feet, and landed hard on her knees, sinking onto her side as she cradled her hand to her chest.

Shaking, she risked a look at it, her stomach roiling at the sight. As if she’d been struck by a porcupine, glass shards stuck out everywhere—embedded in her palm, the undersides of her fingers. They sliced through the coarse fabric of her sweater dress, biting into the tender areas of her bony, pale wrist, dangerously close to vital veins. Her stomach dropped suddenly, mouth dry and head spinning, as hot, thick tears cut down her cheeks.

“Moira?” The balcony door flew open, Severus striding through, shirtless and alarmed. His black and red eyes dropped to her, and in an instant he was by her side. “What did you do?”

She dragged in a ragged breath, light-headed but blushing, and weakly lifted her glass-riddled hand. His whole being seemed to tighten as he grasped her forearm.

“Of course it rains glass in Hell,” she choked out. Pain thrummed through her as Severus quickly assessed the injury, then started to help her to her feet. “Of course it isn’t hail.”

You fucking idiot.

He tsked, an arm around her waist to steady her. Even the slightest movement had the dozens of puncture marks burning, and she whimpered, her knees giving way.

“Now, now, darling,” he murmured, and when she dared look up, she swore he was trying not to laugh, his lips twitching, “I think it looks like hail too. An honest mistake.”

“A stupid one.” She whimpered as he helped her inside. Severus quickly seated her at the end of the bed, then jogged into the bathroom. As soon as he disappeared through the dark doorway, she glared at her quivering hand, hovering above her lap, every muscle, every tendon, screaming for her to just put it down. Severus emerged moments later, towels and a white opaque bottle in hand. She looked up at him miserably. “I’m so stupid. I don’t—”

“Enough, Moira.” He knelt in front of her and set his supplies aside. A ghost of a smile still played on his lips. “You made a mistake. You’re tired. You’re in Hell for the first time, and you made a mistake. At least this mistake we can fix.”

“I guess,” she muttered, pleased that the wooziness had started to pass—although it came raring back as soon as he lifted her hand for inspection.

“We’ll just take all the shards out, which,” he met her eye briefly, “might hurt, but then we’ll bandage it up and you’ll be healed within the hour. Sooner, even. And then we’ll all laugh about it.”

“I don’t want to laugh about it—” Another scream tore from her throat when he pulled out the largest shard, which had settled in, nice and deep, where the base of her hand met her wrist.

“Sorry,” he murmured, setting the bloody chunk of glass on the bed. “I’d hoped you were distracted enough.”

Warm red liquid spilled out of the wound, trickling down her arm, the other shards splitting the bloody river into little streams. Moira nodded mutely, her hand numb, her teeth starting to chatter again, as a fresh batch of tears sliced down her face. Head down, Severus worked quickly and efficiently, plucking the sharp bits of glass with more tact than she would have on her own. Still, she couldn’t hold back her screams, not as pain seared up her arm, a stark reminder of what an idiot she had been.

The bedroom door flew open after Severus had pried a particularly jagged piece from her palm, her hoarse cry echoing around the room.

“What in Lucifer’s name are you doing to her, brother?” Malachi demanded from the doorway, his face brimming with morbid curiosity. Moira wanted to turn away, to hide her tear-stained face, to keep him from seeing what she had done to herself, but it was too late. A few steps in and he saw everything, a bark of a laugh flying from his lips. “Did you… Did she really—”

“Start a fire, Malachi,” Severus ordered sharply, continuing his task without missing a beat. “I need some better light.”

The larger, burlier demon snorted, then crossed the room to the hearth. By then, Severus was down to just a few pieces, but Moira could still feel the miniscule bits of hard, unrelenting debris whenever she flexed her fingers.

It was a wonder Severus could even see what he was doing, there was so much blood. At the sound of the first flames crackling to life, he grabbed a towel and started to dab down her hand, gently, carefully. Face screwed up in concentration, he wiped it all away, the dusting of glass shavings gone too.

“Up we go,” he murmured, helping her to her feet and steering her toward the fireplace. Malachi stepped out of the way with a huff, making space for Severus to set her down on the thick carpet in front of the hearth.

“Why did you need to touch?” Malachi asked, arms crossed, head cocked to the side—that grin of his in full sneer mode. “Was it just too pretty to resist?”

“Malachi,” Severus growled as he returned to the carpet, white bottle in hand. “Enough.”

“I truly did think you were murdering her up here,” the demon mused as Severus twisted off the cap. “I came running in the hope of a little something to liven up the night, and I find you playing nursemaid? Really. It’s most unbecoming, brother—”

Moira cried out again when Severus poured the thick liquid across her wounds, more out of surprise than anything. She had expected it to burn, to sting—something. Much to her delight, it was more like a salve, soothing the pain away as Severus delicately massaged it in, the milky white paste blending with her blood to produce a rose pink.

“You’re wasting the last of Cordie’s stock on—”

“Don’t you have associates to be paying off?” Severus snarled, finally glaring up at his brother. Moira nibbled her lower lip, her heart hammering, the light-headedness gone at last. Severus was always ready to defend her, to stand up for her, to comfort her. He could have responded the same way his brother had—and she would have deserved it. What a ridiculous thing she had done, but beyond his barely-there, noticeably amused smile, Severus hadn’t once made her feel like an idiot.

Cool in a crisis.

Comforting to a fault.

Always her best interests in mind.

Three reasons why she loved him.

“Oh, don’t you worry about me,” Malachi announced with a long, heavy sigh. “My little birds are searching the kingdom. You’ll have Diriel by morning, so long as this one doesn’t maim herself further.”

Severus had gone to and returned from the bathroom in the terse silence that had followed his snarl, broken now by his brother as if it hadn’t even happened. Moira watched the firelight dance across his handsome features as he knelt in front of her again, wrapping a long, thin, soft bandage around her arm and palm. The wounds on her fingers had stopped bleeding. The others were reduced to a trickle. The pain had disappeared.

As he towered over the pair, Malachi’s expression hardened, and she noticed that when he flicked his hand toward the hearth, the flames soared. Petulant. A child demanding attention, insisting they acknowledge his dramatics. Moira flinched, the heat of the fire too much against her already-flushed skin. Severus remained focused on the task at hand, not even blinking at his brother’s antics.

“Did you hear me, brother? By morning, you’ll have—”

“Yes, I heard you, Malachi.”

The older demon poked at Severus’s head with a rigid finger, and Moira pressed her lips together when the incubus looked up at her, visibly annoyed for the first time since all this had started.

“The respectful thing to do is acknowledge me, then,” Malachi carried on. “I know you’re busy tending to your ridiculous lover, who thinks it necessary to throw herself out into a maelstrom—”

Finished with Moira’s dressings, Severus caught Malachi’s hand this time when it went to stab at his head again. His brother grinned, the slight lift of his brow suggesting the move surprised him.

“Enough, Malachi.” The flames responded to Severus too, crackling angrily, a shower of red flakes sprinkling onto the carpet, extinguishing on impact. “If you say one more word about Moira, so help me, I will—”

Moira silenced him with a kiss. She couldn’t help it. Grasping his chin with her good hand, she pulled him back to her, into her, their lips colliding as Severus let out a sharp, startled exhale. Overhead, Malachi groaned, but he was already off her radar. She focused on the soft fullness of Severus’s mouth, the cool touch of his skin, the way he growled against her as she climbed into his lap. He toppled backward to accommodate her, eyes heavy-lidded and tongue eager as it slipped between her lips, which parted when she giggled.

“Oh, for Lucifer’s sake.” Malachi huffed down at them a moment longer, but when they didn’t break stride, the kiss growing more frenzied by the second, a perfect rival to the roaring fire, he finally seemed to give up. “Fine. I’m going.”

His footfalls clicked noisily across the tile, followed swiftly by the bedroom door slamming shut—hard. Fingers threaded into Severus’s hair, her bandaged hand cradled to his chest, Moira whimpered softly when he broke the kiss, their foreheads resting together. Thunder rumbled outside, the bedroom briefly illuminated by another lightning display. Silence blanketed them, a welcome, easy quiet punctuated by the crackling flames and the chorus of their panting breaths.

“Why?” he murmured, nuzzling her cheek before stealing another hard, firm kiss. Desire blossomed within her, a raw, dark heat unfurling in time with her racing heart.

“You know why,” she whispered back, breathing the words against his lips—the unspoken declaration. Because I love you. Because she had only just realized it, accepted it. And because she wanted to kiss the man she loved, over and over again, until they forgot about the storm, forgot that they were in Hell.

Until it was just the two of them, alone in the universe—alone and content.

So, grinning, she kissed him again. And again. And again.

And again.