The Devil's little Bride

Chapter One

Three Years Prior.



I was curled up on the chaise longue in our library, when a knock sounded. Emilia’s head rested in my lap and she didn’t even stir when the dark wooden door opened and our mother stepped in, her dark silver hair puller back tightly and fastened a pony tail at the back of her head. Mother was pale, her face drawn with worry.

“Did something happen”? I asked.

She smiled, but it was her fake smile.

“Your father wants to talk to you in his office”.

I carefully moved out from under Emilia’s head and put it down on the chaise. She drew her legs up against her body. She was small for an eleven year old, but I wasn’t exactly tall either with five foot four. None of the women in our family were. Mother avoided my eyes as I walked towards her.

“Am I in trouble?” I didn’t know what I could possibly have done wrong. Usually Emilia and I were the obedient ones, Gianna was the one who always broke the rules and got punished.

“Hurry. Don’t let your father wait”. Mother said simply.

My stomach was in knots when I arrived in front of my father’s office. After a moment to stifle my nerves, I knocked.

“Come in.”

I entered, forcing my face to be carefully guarded. Father sat behind his mahogany desk in a wide blank leather armchair; behind him rose the mahogany shelves filled with books that father had never read, but they hid a secret entrance to the basement and a corridor that led outside the castle.

He looked up from a pile of sheets, greyish silver hair slicked back. “Sit”.

I sank down on one of the chairs across from his desk and folded my hands in my lap, trying not to gnaw on my lower lip. Father hated that. I waited for him to start talking. He had a strange expression on his face as he scrutinized me. “The Helio empire and the Divine Theocracy are trying to claim our territories. The are getting bolder and stronger by the day. We’re luckier than the House of Archivste who also has to deal with the rebels up north but we can’t ignore the threat the Empire and the Theocracy pose any longer”.

Bewilderment filled me. Father never talked about business to us. Girls didn’t need to know about the fine details of the Kingdoms affairs. I knew better than to interrupt him.

“We need to lay our feud with the Blood Imperium to rest and combine forced if we want to fight back the empire and the theocracy”. Peace with the Imperium? Father and every other member of the House of Silva hated the Imperium and it’s royal family. The Dilhveas. They had been killing each other for decades and only recently decided on ignoring each other in favour of killing off the chasseurs and paladins from the theocracy. “There is no stronger bond than blood. At least the Dilhvea got that right.

I frowned.

“Born in blood, Sworn in blood. That’s their motto”.

I nodded but my confusion only grew.

“I met with Devani Dilhvea”. Father met with the boss and Head of the Dilhvea, King of the Imperium? A meeting between the Kingdom and Imperium hadn’t by taken place in a decade and the last time hadn’t ended well. It was still referred to as the bloody fall. And father wasn’t even the Head. He was merely a prince and right hand man to Fyodor Silva. His father. Who ruled over the allied kingdoms in the west.

“We agreed that for peace to be an option we had to become family”. Father’s eyes bored into me and suddenly I didn’t want to hear what else he had to say.

“Devani, and I agreed that you would marry his oldest son Lucifer, the future Head of the Dilhvea and King of the Imperium”.

I felt like I was falling. “Why me?”

“Devani and Fyodor have been having dinner together several times in the last few weeks, and Devani wanted the most beautiful girl for his son. Of cause, we wouldn’t give him the daughters of one of our soldiers. Fyodor doesn’t have any daughters. So he said you were the most beautiful girl available”. Gianna was just as beautiful but she was younger. That probably saved her.

“There are so many beautiful girls”. I choked. I couldn’t breathe. Father looked at me as if I was his most prized possession.

“There aren’t many girls in the family with hair like yours. Fyodor described it as snow”. Father guffawed. “You my darling, is our door into the Imperium’s royal family”.

“But father. I’m sixteen. I can’t marry”.

Father made a dismissive gesture “If I were to agree, you could. We make the laws.

I gripped my armrest so tightly, my knuckles were turning pale white, but I didn’t feel pain.

“But I told Devani that the wedding would have to wait until you turn eighteen. Your mother was adamant you be of age and finish school. Fyodor let her begging get to him”.

My grandfather told my father the wedding had to wait. My own father would have thrown me into the arms of my future husband now. My husband.

A wave of sickness crashed over me. I knew only two things about Lucifer Dilhvea; He would become the head of the Dilhvea once his father retired or died and he got his nickname The crimson devil at ten for mercilessly slaughtering hundreds with his bare fist in the small kingdom of Cortia.

I didn’t know how old he was but my cousin Temari had to marry a man twenty years her senior. Lucifer couldn’t be that old, if his father hadn’t retired yet.

At least, that’s what I hoped. Was he cruel?

He had unbelievably slaughtered hundreds. He’ll be the Head of the Dilhveas.

“Father”. I whispered. “Please don’t force me to marry that man”.

Fathers expression tightened. “You’ll marry Lucifer Dilhvea. I shook hands on it with his Father Devani. You’ll be a good wife to Lucifer and you just meet him for the engagement celebration you’ll act like a obedient lady”.

“Engagement party”? I echoed. My voice sounded distant as if a veil of fog covered my ears.

“Of course. It’s a good way to establish bonds between our families and it’ll give Lucifer the chance to see what he’s getting out of the deal. We don’t want to disappoint him”.

“When”? I cleared my throat but the lump remained. “When is the engagement party”.

“ Late spring. We haven’t set a date yet”.

That was in two months. I nodded numbly. I loved reading romance novels and whenever the couples in them married, I’d imagine how my wedding would be. I’d always imagined it would be filled with overwhelming excitement and love. Empty dreams of a stupid girl.

“So I’m allowed to keep attending school?” What did it even matter if I graduated? I would never go to college, never work. All I’d be allowed to do was to warm my husband’s bed. My throat tightened further and tears prickled in my eyes, but I willed them not to full. Father hated it when we lost composure.

“Yes. I told Devani that you are homeschooled, which seemed to please him”. Of course it did. Couldn’t risk that I got anywhere near boys.

“Is that all”?

“For now”.

I walked out of the office as if in trance. I’d turned sixteen four months ago. My birthday had felt like a huge step forward to my future, and I had been ecstatic. Silly me. My life was already over before it even began.

Everything was decided for me.

***

I couldn’t stop crying Gianna stroked my hair as my head lay in her lap. She was fourteen only eighteen months younger than me, but today those eighteen months meant the difference between freedom and a life in a loveless prison. I tried ridiculously hard not to resent her for it. It wasn’t her fault.

“You could try to talk to Father again. Maybe he’ll change his mind”. Gianna said in a soft voice.

“He won’t “.

“Maybe Mama will be able to convince him”.

As if Father would ever let a woman make a decision for him. “Nothing anyone could say or do will make a difference”. I said miserably. I hadn’t seen mother since she’d sent me to Father’s office. She probably couldn’t face me, knowing what she’d condemned me to.

“But Eliza—”

I lifted my head and wiped the tears from my face. Gianna stared at me with pitiful eyes that had the hazel shade of falling leaves in the autumn, mine were a cloudless summer sky blue. Where my hair was a snowy silver, hers was ginger. Father sometimes called her a stubborn witch; It wasn’t an endearment.

“He shook hands on with Lucifer’s Father”.

“They met?”

That’s what I’d wondered as well. Why had he found time to meet with the King if the Imperium but not tell me about his plans to sell me off like a better w***e? I shook off frustration and despair trying to claw their way out of my body.

“That’s what Father told me”.

“There has to be something we can do”. Gianna said.

“There isn’t “.

“But you haven’t even met the guy. You don’t even know how he looks! He could be fat, ugly and old.

Ugly, fat and old. I wished that where the only features of Lucifer I had to worry about.

“Lets look for him”. Gianna Jumped up and took out some magazines from my desk. Then she sat down beside me our sides pressed against each other.

We found several articles about the Imperium and most of it was about Lucifer. It was almost hard to believe he was such a buzz in Britannia. He had the coldest obsidian eyes I’d ever seen. I could only imagine too well how those cold eyes looked down at his victims before he’s blade split their skull.

“He’s taller than everyone”. Gianna said in amazement. He was; in all the photos he was several inches taller than whoever stood beside him and he was muscled. The rest of the article was nothing but ridicules and rumours.

There was a blurry picture in one article. You could hardly see the shadowy figure in it except a pair of glowing crimson that seemed to stare back at you It was captioned. Blood sucking crimson devil; It was entire article dedicate to the rumour that Lucifer was the only demon that still drank blood. Photos of countless victims turned up on the next page. Goosebumps crawled across my skin. Was that going to be me soon?. The articles were all written by anonymous sources. Nobody was stupid enough to make fame of the Imperium be onymous about it.

“He’s with a new girl in every photo.”

I stared down at the emotionless face of my future husband. Despite the many rumours and hate that surrounded his name, the newspapers called him many things, the most sought out bachelor in two empires, Heir to a billion jewels. Heir to an imperium of death and blood, that’s what it should say.

Gianna huffed. “God, girls are throwing themselves at him. I suppose he’s good looking.”

“They can have him,” I said bitterly. In our world a handsome exterior often hid the monster within. He was a demon. He was a monster on the outside too. The society girls saw his good looks and wealth. They thought the bad boy aura was a game. They fawned over his predator-like charisma because it radiated power. But what they didn’t know was that blood and death lurked beneath the arrogant smile.

I stood abruptly. “I need to talk to Tamacti.”

Tamacti Jun was about fifty; you could tell from his shaved head and thin strands of grey hair on his chin, and my father’s loyal soldier. He was also Gianna’s and my bodyguard. He knew everything about everyone. Mother called him a scandalmonger. But if anyone knew more about Lucifer, it was Tamacti.

***

“He became a Made Man at ten,” Umberto said, sharpening his knife on a grinder as he did every day. The smell of Marjoram and rosemary filled the kitchen, but it didn’t give me a sense of comfort as it usually did.

“At ten?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even. Most people didn’t become fully initiated as full members of the House until they were sixteen. “Because of his father?”

Tamacti grinned, revealing a gold incisor, and paused in his movements. “You think he got it easy because he’s the son of Dilhvea? He slaughtered a couple hundred at 10, that’s why it was decided to initiate him early.”

Gianna gasped. “He’s a monster.”

Tamacti shrugged. “He’s what he needs to be. Ruling over the Blood Imperium, you can’t be a pussy.” He gave an apologetic smile. “A wuss.”

“What happened?” I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know. If Lucifer had killed his first hundred at ten, then how many more had he killed in the nine years since?

Umberto shook his shaved head, and scratched the long scar that ran from his temple down to his chin. He was thin, and didn’t look like much, but Mother told me few were faster with a knife than him. I’d never seen him fight. “Can’t say. I’m not that familiar with the Imperium.”

I watched our cook as she prepared dinner, trying to focus on something that wasn’t my churning stomach and my overwhelming fear. Tamacti scanned my face. “He’s a good catch. He’ll be the most powerful man on the North coast soon enough. He’ll protect you.”

“And who will protect me from him?” I hissed.

Tamacti didn’t say anything because the answer was clear: nobody could protect me from Lucifer after our wedding. Not Tamacti, and not my father if he felt so inclined. Women in our world be

longed to their husband. They were his property to deal with however he pleased.