Hell On Wheels

Chapter 1

Cruel and diabolical, those were the best words to describe Valeda’s wedding.

It wasn’t some low-key affair but the kind Valeda despised: all frothy with importance, all frou-frou with ceremony. The kind that made her want to set her own head on fire—or someone else’s—just to escape.

But the bride was never allowed to escape.

Her, a bride. She wished it were a dirty lie, but it had to be true because there she stood in her stupid white gown making a bunch of promises she had no intention of keeping. The remnants of those promises, an even more loathsome concept than weddings, stuck on her lips, greasy and unnatural.

What she’d give for a moist towelette to wipe them away.

Six waxing moons mocked her as they illuminated the marble room and gloated over the lustre they coaxed from the orchestra’s instruments, all made from monstrous beetle carapaces.

Gloating just like her mother.

Valeda should’ve known that forcing her to marry a bastard soldier wouldn’t be enough for her mother, Queen of the Ninth Realm, peeved as she was by Valeda’s long absence from Hell. No, the queen had to invite a hundred of her closest frenemies as witnesses. Like rows of multicoloured crows they perched, eyeing Valeda like the roadkill she was, Valeda who had been knocked flat by a speeding family feud and thrown under the wheels of an arranged marriage.

Homecomings sucked when your home was Hell. They sucked even more when home could kill you and your mother’s summoning spell trapped you there, and your mother was less approachable than a meat grinder.

The notary read out the contract, his voice reedy with nerves. ‘Do you, Princess Valeda Ronove, agree to dwell with the Captain of Bloodshed and Slaughter, and not attempt to kill him until the contract period of two full lunar years has elapsed?’

‘I do.’ She didn’t glance at the groom. His sizeable frame and savage expression interested her not a bit. What use did she have for a giant bastard with inky stubble and a black halo? None. None at all. But ‘dwell’, thank Lilith, was a very loose term that could be interpreted many ways. As could ‘kill’. A wicked smile almost curved her lips.

The buck-toothed notary droned on. ‘And do you, Captain, agree not to kill or otherwise dispose of Princess Valeda unless she, or her mother, violates the military pact with your king’s realm, the pact which you are about to sign?’

There was a pause as Valeda’s betrothed took one, two, three seconds too long to answer. She slid him a pointed look, so pointed she hoped it would stab him right through his chest plate and skewer his plebian heart.

‘I do.’

Her gaze collided with his, and as she met his steely scrutiny, a scarlet glow lit his silver eyes for a millisecond.

Unease caressed her skin and stroked a scaly finger down her spine. Meet your new husband, Valeda, how do you like his eyes of blood? Her insides knotted as if someone were trying to knit a bridal bouquet with her guts.

Oh, how Paimon would laugh to see the result of his military flirtations. Her brother’s familiar face—angular, intense—flashed before her eyes, the vision followed by the shock of what felt like a fist slamming into her chest with the force of a pile driver.

Fire, fire in her ribs, burning hot as if real splintered shards of bone had ripped through her flesh and arteries.

Her breath hitched.

She tried to catch it but it was a slippery thing, almost as slippery as her mentor, the archdemon Lore, who’d been the one to build Valeda’s mental memory wall, who’d warned her not to think of her brother, who’d stitched sweet little neural trip-wires into her brain to keep her from doing so.

For if that wall crumbled, it would open a floodgate of memories so vile that they would swamp her sanity before pulling her very life’s breath deep beneath their oily, black undertow.

Blub, blub, blub.

Memories were her enemy, and not once in the three centuries she’d been absent from Hell had she needed a reminder of that. She had to escape.

Valeda let out a slow breath in the hope of releasing some of the pain setting fire to her ribs. The captain glanced at her, his black brows drawing together in a slashing frown. Had he heard her released breath? No, impossible. More likely he was checking whether she’d turned into a turnip. All low borns loved a nice, big, juicy turnip.

‘And Princess, do you swear by Lilith that you’ll use all the infernal powers at your disposal to assist the captain and his king’s realm in decimating your brother and his legions?’ The notary raised his brows at her.

Another brutal fist slammed into her screaming ribs at the mention of her brother’s name, and the salty taste of blood filled her mouth.

More blood.

Soon she’d drown in the stuff.

Valeda smoothed her face into an expressionless shield. A true princess of Hell did not whimper. Ever. ‘I do.’

The notary’s gaze shifted. ‘Captain, do you swear by Lilith that you will crush the queen’s son beneath your boot heel in exchange for her daughter’s hand?’

‘I do.’

Valeda almost rolled her eyes. What a redundant question. As if the Captain of Bloodshed and Slaughter ever missed an opportunity to crush something beneath his boots. His boots were made for crushing. They were as big as ships, the scarred black leather crusted in mud and other things best not too closely inspected, and they were anchored to the ground by inch-thick don’t-fuck-with-me soles. The captain’s boots looked as out of place as the flower girls he’d selected: two scarred giantesses called Fira and Missy.

The flower girls wore flouncy, buttercup yellow dresses—Lilith only knew where they’d found them—that emphasised their rippling muscles. Their lack of shadowy aura meant they had zero elemental powers and made Valeda suspect they were nothing more than common soldiers, as did the way both of them steadily chewed iboga root and spat streams of it on the floor. The wedding organisers hadn’t thought to bring spittoons for the flower girls. No-one had thought to.

A frown stole across Valeda’s forehead, marring her carefully cultivated resting bitch face. How had this happened to her? How had she ended up with flower girls who required spittoons? How had she ended up back in Hell, the one place her memory wall couldn’t survive and where her brother could find her, something else she wouldn’t survive?

How had she, the one demon so immune to love she’d willingly given away her heart, ended up a bride?

The flower girls yawned, cursed and stuffed fresh iboga root in their cheeks. They hadn’t stopped chewing it since they’d arrived two moons ago when, still reeling from her forced summoning home, Valeda had spied on their approach from her bedroom window, using a telescope to study the long line of riders led by her husband-to-be. He’d appeared a giant angel of death in his black armour; all he’d been missing was wings.

The castle’s hellhounds had bayed, uneasy at the new guest in their midst. And they hadn’t been the only ones made uneasy.

The notary indicated where she should sign.

She picked up the pen, the chilly steel further numbing her already bloodless fingers, and signed the papers that would ensure her mother had the military might to slay her own son, papers that would bind Valeda to the darkness by her side.

When it was his turn, the captain shocked her by actually using letters to sign his name. Well, well, he was a literate low born. Next she’d run into a satyr saving himself for marriage.

As the captain straightened from signing, the candlelight cast deep shadows over his temples. Beneath his savagely straight brows his eyes squinted as if in fatigue. Perhaps he’d been up all night with his troops carousing.

She loathed carousing.

‘Captain, you may kiss the bride.’

Don’t even think about it, turnip-breath. Lilith only knew where those lips of his had been. But as she sneered at him, she felt as if a steel-tipped boot were smashing the inside of her skull. The wedding ceremony and the indignity of marrying a commoner all paled beside the bloody, concussive battle raging inside her skull. A battle she was losing. Soon, the seething darkness of her memories would pulverise the wall designed to prevent their return and make mince of her brain.

A tickle at the back of her nose made her tilt her head up. Another nosebleed? She’d already had five since arriving home.

Two sleeps, five nosebleeds.

Hell forced far too many memories to the surface. Memories with sharp teeth and claws for eyes, memories with edges more painful and disabling than any neural punishment the memory wall in her head could dish out. But her forced summoning kept her firmly trapped in Hell until her mother removed the spell.

And Valeda would sooner let her head be used as a piñata than explain to her mother why she couldn’t remain in Hell. To do so would lift the outer bark of appearances and expose rotting, worm-ridden family truths, along with the steps Valeda had already taken towards becoming an archdemon—something her mother would stop if given the opportunity to interfere. No, as usual the truth was not an option.

When the captain took her hand and raised it to his lips Valeda wanted to scream, but since a true princess of Hell only screamed when delivering a deathblow to her enemies, she swallowed it down and allowed a wintry smile to settle on her lips. ‘My mother has high hopes for this alliance.’

Lips as soft as his eyes were hard brushed her knuckles. ‘Like the queen, I long for nothing more than your brother’s blood.’

At the mention of her brother, acid coated her tongue before corroding its way down her throat. Her toenails carved grooves in her inner soles as she dealt with the bag of angry snakes in her head.

The wolfish eyes watching her narrowed.

Acid trickled down her throat. Stop, just stop. Please.

But the pain wouldn’t go away, not until she left Hell, and if she left it up to the armies slugging things out on the battlefield to decide her fate, that could take months. She’d be nothing but paste by then. Princess paste.

Paste of princess.

The serrated edges of that thought nibbled at her hapless nerves.

But there was another way out: she could seek help from Lore. Lore could be indifferent, self-absorbed, and capricious, but she was also old and powerful, powerful enough to repair the wall she’d built. Plus, Lore wanted to see Valeda, her protégé, become an archdemon, though how she would take Valeda’s marriage and tethering to Hell was uncertain. Valeda loathed uncertainty. ‘I’m so glad you and my mother share an aim in common,’ she murmured to her husband, smiling at a spot just above his left ear.

‘I’m glad you’re glad.’

What? She studied his lean, hungry face. Was that … mockery?

She almost jumped when one of the gargantuan flower girls handed her a blade. The knife ceremony.

Valeda nicked her palm lightly, just deep enough to draw a single drop of sapphire blue blood—proof of her elemental demon powers.

Her mother handed the captain a blade and Valeda studied him as he opened his palm and sliced deep, never flinching, until black blood welled up.

Black blood, red eyes—you’re all the wrong colours, husband.

Yet he was handsome, so handsome it made her eyes bleed. The scar on his cheek only underscored the savage good looks he’d inherited along with his black blood. The coloured blood that gave Hell’s nobles their elemental powers was hereditary, and every noble family could name the forbear who had swallowed a single, precious tear of maleficence—a gift from Lilith herself for her children with Samael. And then there were those demons who trod the dangerous path of eating and drinking the maleficence of other demons to become archdemons, Hell’s most powerful and ruthless beings.

That was her path, and the only way to save herself. There was no time for husbands, marriage, or playing fair.

In the middle of that thought the captain seized her hand.

Hot guilt tap-danced across her skin, burning hottest where his skin touched hers.

When he pressed their palms together, his silver gaze as intrusive as a stripsearch, she feigned indifference. But in truth his stare made her as uneasy as the meaningless bloodletting ritual. Her thoughts, her personal space, her plans, her knowledge, her blood—they were all hers, hers alone. Sharing was for pre-adults and demons with the brains of pasture nymphs. She had her own agenda and no battle-scarred, lowborn turnip-lover was going to derail her train of awesomeness.

She eyed the midnight tattoo on the side of his skull. Like the savages they were, the demons from his realm favoured brutal undercuts, and the shorn area beneath his glossy black hair revealed a slavering hellhound. Jaws snapped at his left ear while the length of the hound’s body extended down the thick column of his neck.

She got the subtext: he was a predator. But she was not prey.

She refused to be trapped, no matter how much was riding on the military alliance and her marriage. Since her mind threatened to split wide, spilling the entrails of memories she couldn’t survive, she had to create some wiggle room, a little leeway for survival, even if that meant bending the terms of the contract a bit.

Otherwise … well, paste of princess.

The captain’s grip tightened as if he’d read her mind and she frowned as she tried to extract her hand. She would not be coerced or controlled. With an arctic smile she drew on her elemental powers and drove them into the nerves of the fingers holding hers so that the searing cold forced him to drop her hand.

Ha!

Oh, he didn’t like that, no, of course not, not at all.

The two sweeping, straight slashes he called brows drew together into the Frown of the Apocalypse.

Ignoring the look designed to fillet her, she handed her ceremonial knife back to her flower girl. But instead of handing his blade back to her mother, the captain shoved it flat between her breasts and held it there, the steel in danger of smearing her ivory finery with his black blood. He locked gazes with her. ‘Betray me or my king and I’ll cut your heart out.’

She bared her teeth. ‘Too late.’

***

Too late. What did that mean? Adriel barely refrained from shaking the answer out of her. At least he’d finally elicited a hint of emotion from the ice princess. She was pissed off, she had to be given the way her skin glittered with a dusting of frost that extended to the ends of her long lashes. White lashes that veiled navy eyes with ocean depths. The reflected light in her eyes resembled ice floe afloat at sea, and whenever he looked too long into the dark, silent depths of that sea he felt a tug, like that of an undertow.

It was unsettling.

It had to be that tug which put him so on edge. It had to be. As did the fact that in a room full of beating hearts, hers was strangely silent.

He would get to the bottom of her heart’s silence, along with the way her brother’s name made her wince, and the way her eyes called to him like ocean song. He didn’t know her at all and yet there was something about her that pricked his blood.

He smiled to himself. He would work it out. She couldn’t keep all her secrets submerged forever.

His eyes narrowed as she turned her back on him to talk to another, her frosty aura raised like a defensive shield. Given her family’s reputation for treachery, her words had probably been nothing more than a clever brush-off designed to make him retreat.

But he never retreated. Ever.

That was how he and his brother had risen from the gutter, two lowborn bastards with elemental power in their veins. It had been a risk to join the king’s legions and reveal his and Hakan’s gifts, but instead of having Adriel and his brother murdered the king had given them a chance to prove their loyalty. After a century of service, Adriel was now a captain and his brother Hakan a general.

His marriage to the princess made him a duke.

The title held no appeal, but given that the king was already married, and his children too young to marry, someone trustworthy had had to do the deed of marrying this icy princess. Otherwise his king couldn’t secure the military alliance he needed to fight Paimon and his legions.

So Adriel had stepped up. And while he’d kept busy fighting the enemy he hadn’t thought too much about his impending marriage—until he’d met his bride and her family and realised that all the rumours he’d heard about them were true.

Adriel eyed them where they sat a few metres away as the notary droned on, mumbling his essential nothings.

Semya the Voracious, lushly beautiful with jade hair, viridian eyes and a shadowy emerald aura, was infamous for her talent at healing and killing with poison. She was by nature so viperous she probably sloughed her skin at night. She was famous in all nine realms of Hell for penning her earthly sexcapades in a twelve-volume series called Mea Terra Lupinar, which roughly translated to Topside is My Brothel. Adriel’s highly developed sense of smell picked up an odd mix of cucumber and marshmallow from her.

By the viper sat Lymenia the Furious. Rumoured to be as intractable as a scurtbeast and prone to pyromania, her smile—the same shade of vermillion temptation as her hair and aura—held a bloodthirsty edge even at her sister’s wedding. Her scent of ash and smoke nearly overpowered all other smells.

Next to the pyromaniac princess sat Cinna the Vigorous, slight of build with gold hair and skin shot through with hundreds of tawny threads, her eyes a speckled straw color, her hazy aura nut brown. Given her charming, perky chatterbox persona, her scent of damp, decaying leaf litter had puzzled Adriel. Until he’d learned she was a necromancer. A kleptomaniac necromancer. While exploring the castle he’d stumbled upon her pilfering her parents’ silver, and yet she’d never blushed or stammered. Instead she’d dazzled him with charm before flitting from the room.

She was a puzzling she-demon, but not nearly as mysterious as his bride, the frozen enigma standing by him and seducing his senses with her crisp, sharp scent—the smell of newly fallen snow. He ran his eyes over her, from the ice tiara crowning her white hair to her pearly white boots lightly coated in frost.

It was a shame there was no armour to protect him against the sight of her, the way her wintry beauty chipped away at his self-control and threatened to bury the icepick in his heart once done.

Stiff and silent as a plank in his presence, she usually looked away the second their eyes met. After several hours spent in her company all that he really knew about her was that for some reason she believed him to be fond of turnips, and that she was prone to lowering the room temperature by several degrees when displeased—and his presence displeased her.

Oh, did it ever.

Either she feared he might piss on the furniture or she simply feared him, though he told himself it was impossible that she sensed the terrible beast that grew in him daily, the one that mauled judgement and rutted upon reason. The curse created by her brother had fallen upon Adriel as soon as his engagement to the princess had been announced—and it had fallen on him hard.

Already Adriel had been involved in several regrettable incidents involving still-beating hearts displaced from chests. The incidents had so far been confined to the battlefield, but what happened when they shifted? Only his brother was aware of the curse and the dark, terrifying void of self-control yawning at his feet. His secret was safe with Hakan, who would never betray him, but would Adriel be able to fool his bride? Could he hide from her that something other than reason now dictated his actions on and off the battlefield? That the very nature of Hell itself was transforming around him? Footprints, scent and wind now told elaborate stories, while sounds that others remained deaf to could rake claws down his insides with their unbearable intensity.

He was becoming … something else. Something strange. If the legions found out they might desert his command.

It was a precarious state of being, like fighting on a battlefield covered in black ice.

The scrape of a bow on violin strings plucked at his ears. The wedding dance. He glanced at his bride. He couldn’t deny he’d been itching to skim his hands over her curves since she’d appeared in her gown of finely woven silk and bone fiber. The gleaming fabric—one shade deeper than her ivory complexion and hair—clung to her, highlighting an arse so deliciously round the temptation to bounce his hand off it was nigh overwhelming.

Imagine how she’d react to that.

He took her by the elbow. He was surprised to discover that while her skin appeared to glint with frost, it was as soft and warm under his fingers now as it had been when he’d held her hand during the knife ceremony. The aura of deep freeze was an illusion, a sensory trick.

What else about her was not as it seemed?

He led her onto the marble dance floor as tango music floated up from the orchestra. He’d had his advisor school him in the steps rather than give the nobles present another opportunity to sneer at his lack of education, but though he was confident he knew the moves, the dance floor still appeared as treacherous as black ice to him.

The princess arched an eyebrow at him as they came to a halt, no doubt wondering if he knew what to do next.

An elusive quality rose from her, like mist from dry ice. Yes, that was it: she was smoke and vapour and other things that couldn’t be pinned down.

But pin her he would.

Sliding an arm around her waist he pulled her provocatively firm against him, deliberately resting his hand low on her back as they stood chest to chest.

Her muffled sound of displeasure drew his eyes to her mouth. Her lips were suspiciously rosy and generous for someone who pretended to have antifreeze in her veins. Perhaps he should test their softness with a gentle nibble, a kiss. How would she react to that?

He raised their clasped hands high, hers so very small and still within his. A burst of staccato steps and they sailed forth, their entwined bodies moving in sync with the tango music’s playful yet provocative rhythm. He revelled in her hands on him as their feet moved together in incisive steps, bodies synchronised with each elegant snap, glide and turn.

Their reflection flashed by in the mirrors lining the ballroom, his black shoulders looming above her ivory form, their movements mesmerising, graceful, sleek, sinister. Erotic.

They looked good together.

He allowed her to twirl away before reeling her back in, capturing her hand to lead her through a series of fierce, gliding steps. Another couple threatened to collide with them and he used his body to shield her from the impact.

‘Sorry,’ the other male dancer muttered.

Adriel barely heard the apology. Valeda was pressed up hard against him, a hand resting on his chest, eyes wide with a surprise he would bet had nothing to do with the collision.

He twirled her away, pulled her back to him, and took the opportunity to breathe in her scent.

‘Please refrain from sniffing me.’

Such freezing words. He dipped her almost to the floor before slowly raising her all the way back up to his chest and locking gazes with her. ‘Why? Why should I?’

She swallowed hard and he enjoyed the way her long, slender throat rose and fell with the action, a column of grace. He hooked a leg around hers, entwining their limbs, and brought his mouth close to her ear. ‘Does it make you nervous? Or do I?’

‘Neither.’

So quick to deny it. ‘You seem a little breathless.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘It’s the dance.’

But it was more than that. He trusted his instincts and they told him she lied—either because he made her nervous on some feminine level or because she was up to something. If he were able to hear her heartbeat, like he could every other demon’s, he would bet it would now be tapping a furious Morse code. Lies always made the heart dance faster. It frustrated him that he couldn’t hear hers.

He twirled her and when they came together again he caught the way her downcast gaze rested on his lips for three steps.

Clearly the princess was not as icy and disinterested as she would have him think. She surprised him further by condescending to speak to him.

‘I’ll admit I’m surprised you know how to dance. I thought your hobbies ran more along the lines of ripping still-beating hearts from chests.’

A smile twisted his lips at her ambush. He stroked a thumb over the back of her hand. ‘Don’t believe everything you hear about me.’

She looked away as he led her into a corte. Several beats later they were face to face again and her eyes met his, very serious, almost troubled. ‘You know this won’t end well, don’t you?’

He raised a brow. A direct admission of planned treachery on her part? He sensed her desire to flee but would not allow it. ‘I know no such thing.’ He dipped her again and raised her slowly. He savoured the tease of her hair cascading around her shoulders and breathed in her perfume once more just to provoke her. ‘Look how well we dance together. Imagine what we’ll be like in the sack.’

He leaned back to gauge the impact of his words and inhaled the sharp spice of panic as her eyes widened a fraction, before an icy blanket of indifference settled over her once more.

‘That will never happen. Ever.’ She pulled free from his arms and slipped away to vanish among the couples crowding the dance floor.

Remember what they say about saying ‘never’, princess. His gaze followed her. Though she’d disappeared from sight, an almost visible scent trail formed in her wake, the thick and distinct smell of freshly fallen snow. He could track her anywhere.

Chapter 2

Valeda took a deep breath.

Silence and solitude at last.

The bone gazebo in the garden provided the perfect refuge from the captain, the busy dance floor, and the annoyingly sensual music that had done strange, unpleasant things to her insides.

Although perhaps it hadn’t been the music that had affected her insides but her weakened state. Unlike archdemons, most demons who inherited their elemental powers from their parents had to continually build and refresh that store of power through torment. As a knowledge demon, Valeda earned her powers