Entice: An Ignite Novella Read Online Free Page B

anymore—someone knocks on my door. When I roll out of bed, fighting off the sheets that scrabble at my ankles, to answer the knock, I find an empty hallway. I lean out of the room, glancing down the corridor both to the left and right, but no one is there. On the floor waits a small page of parchment addressed to me with three words scrawled on it in large, jagged letters.
    Presence required. - Lucifer.
    I consider crumpling it up and ignoring the summons but think of Azael. I haven’t seen him in weeks—probably—and if he’s there, maybe we’ll get a chance to speak. Maybe I can convince him to stop kissing Lucifer’s ass, trying to get us fancy titles that mean less than nothing to me. I pull the door to my room closed behind me and start walking to meet the King of Hell Himself before I can change my mind.
    I follow the twisting passages down, deeper into the ground. Past the dining hall, the great hall, the armory, and the training room, where dozens of demons are gathered to practice combat. Screeches and screams pierce my ears and echo off the icy walls before they are swallowed by distance. I reach the end of a hallway that slopes down to the lowest part of Hell and stop at a pair of giant doors that are fashioned out of bones. My eyes are level with two empty, hollowed orbits of a dark skull.
    Two Greater Demons stand guard at the door and stop me from entering. I hold out the parchment letter for them, unfolding it so they can read the calligraphy.
    “He’s expecting me.”
    They move aside and the doors ease open behind them with a gasp.
    Lucifer spends most of his time in the tall antechamber that precedes his own annex, which breaks off into several grand rooms, each ten times larger than the one Azael and I share. The ceiling is hundreds of feet high, with large, dangerous-looking rock formations that drip from the ceiling like daggers. It has been decorated to look like a throne room, a mockery of the one in Heaven. But instead of cream marble swirled with the color of caramel, Hell’s facsimile is flat, blue, shining ice.
    The room is surprisingly bright for being buried so far underground. Only the throne, made out of solid black metal that is bent and snarled to look like an army of vengeful wraiths, is dark against the cold blue of the antechamber. Lucifer, with his shockingly white hair and ghost-like complexion, sits casually on the seat of the throne.
    He laughs when I enter. “I was wondering if you would show up.”
    “I almost didn’t,” I admit. With Lucifer, there’s no point in being anything but unreservedly forthright. He can see everything I hide anyway, can read a lie on my lips before I even have a chance to think of one. I look around for Azael, but he’s not here. “Where’s my brother?”
    “Busy.”
    “Then so am I,” I say, pivoting on my heel to march back to my room and wait for Azael to return. The two doors slam closed in front of me, locking me in the antechamber with Lucifer staring a hole in my back. I face him again, curling my fingers into my palm painfully to cut my temper off at its knees; my anger cripples before me. I build up my stone wall again—higher and higher. From behind my turret, I present the most convincing pleasantness I can muster. “Perhaps I’ll stay.” Not that you’ve left me with choice.
    Silence swells in the room, pushing up against me uncomfortably.
    “I’m assuming you called me here for a reason. What is it you want?”
    “I want to trust you.” Lucifer’s voice whispers sharply through the room, but his face is smooth and eerily peaceful. “But I’m finding it difficult.”
    I nod and let him interpret the movement as he will. Maybe he sees it as an understanding, an apology, and pledge to prove myself.
    “There are a few different ways to come into power. By force or by the willingness of the people. Which do you think I prefer?” He waits, as if he expects an answer, but gives me no time to say anything. “It is so