The Demon's Bride

Chapter 8 - Dinner With The Devil

Cassie expected Lucifer’s front door to be a joke, a pitch-black marble slab with a pun on a knocker or a doormat that nosed back, Welcome, Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here. Instead, it was just a door. Tall, battered, the brass plate inscribed with nothing but a room number and a single initial. “L.” Az noticed her staring, made a show of sweeping her through the entryway, and even the squeal of the hinges felt calculatedly ordinary, like some cosmic prank on visitors expecting more spectacle.

Inside, they found themselves in an enormous foyer tiled in veins of indigo and gold. The air was oddly cool, rimmed with a bite that made the back of her sinuses ache.

If you’d told Cassie that the Devil’s domain would smell like gingerbread and old paper, she’d have laughed in your face. But there it was, wafting under the sharper notes of ozone and sulfur. The air inside Lucifer’s house wasn’t just cool—it was Northern-latitudes cold, the kind that puts a bite in your bones. She blinked to adjust, looked up, and saw a chandelier made of what looked like perfectly suspended droplets of mercury, each reflecting a hundred ghost versions of herself and Az on the marble below.

A human servant hovered at the threshold. “Welcome, your graces. Lord Lucifer and the princes are already seated in the dining room.”

“They’re probably taking bets on whether I turn up or rabbit," Cassie remarks, to which the servant wisely stays quiet.

Az holds out his hand. “Well then we’d better not disappoint them.”

Cassie wished she could’ve bottled the confidence with which Az moved—if only to dose herself with it before stepping into the lion’s mouth. The mere sound of her heels on the inlaid marble felt too intimate, each strike calling attention not just to her presence, but to the fact that she did not belong. Not really. Not yet.

The dining room yawned open at the end of the hall. It was a study in extremes; the table ran the length of a train car, set with black crystal and obsidian flatware, but there were only seven seats at the head, six already occupied.

The seven seats at the head of the table were filled by men of impossible age, except for Az’s brothers, who projected some funhouse-mirror version of youth: skin too tight, hair too glossy, faces sharp and hungry as wolf pups. Cassie recognized a few from the feverish crash course Az had given her that morning. Six days of orgy, then homework—Az’s priorities were chronically bizarre.

She saw Bael first, the eldest, silent but for an occasional crackle of knuckles against the dark table. Black hair, red eyes, jacket the shade of dried blood—if he had any human left in him, it hid behind undertaker cool. Next to him, Beelzebub, pink-dyed hair vivid as bubblegum, silver irises feline and lazy. He waved, fingers striped with what looked like gold leaf, and winked at her. Gross. She clocked the other two—Mammon, who looked like the CEO of every scam company ever, and Dagon, whose smile slithered sideways.

Belial slouched in his seat, lazy even in the way he poured himself a drink, the dark liquid slapping into a goblet and running down his hand. He licked it up, wrist to knuckle, never looking away from Cassie. Next to him, Mammon chewed a toothpick, watching the newcomer like he was evaluating potential revenue. Dagon just grinned, showing too many pointed teeth.

At the end of the table, presiding over the weird pantomime of family, sat Lucifer.

Cassie almost laughed—there was nothing about him that screamed Devil, no horns or cloven hooves, not even a tailored suit. He was barefoot, in a white linen shirt, his hair as fair as Az’s but even brighter, cropped in a strict line that showed off the impossible symmetry of his bones. He looked young, ancient, and bored to death.

Lucifer set down his pen, capped it, and motioned to the servants for more wine.

“Forgive my servants for the seating arrangements. I told them it was a family dinner, and they simply prepared the usual chairs and places," Lucifer said to Cassie with the emotion of a robot.

Seven chairs and place mats for Lucifer and his six sons. An easy mistake to overlook was making sure the servants added an extra place setting for a new daughter-in-law. But this was no mistake.

Cassie waved her hand and in the blink of an eye there was an extra place. “It’s not a problem.”

She didn’t miss the flicker—almost a wince—on Az’s face as she did it. He had told her about Lucifer’s particular way of testing new kin. The Devil liked to see if you’d pass the first test before you even made it to soup.

Bael watched her with the stillness of a crocodile. She could feel the heat of Dagon’s gaze ripple across her skin and the cold indifference of Belial, who hadn’t lifted his eyes from the table.

She took the new seat at Az’s right. The chair felt freshly made, the iron-hot scent of conjured metal still clinging to its elaborate frame. She rested her palms on the table. The others, one by one, placed their hands in view as well, like a tableau in a textbook about predator behavior. Az nudged her foot under the table. She gave no sign she’d noticed.

Lucifer waited for her to meet his eyes before lifting his glass.

He said nothing—Cassie had a feeling white-linen wasn’t much for small talk—but he lifted his glass as if expecting a toast. The rest of them—Az included—matched the gesture, and Cassie, not about to be the only one left dry, raised hers too and drank, letting the infernal wine burn a clear path down her throat. She felt Lucifer watching without ever really looking; the sense of being measured, not just sized up but weighed, every word and flick of her wrist tallied against some invisible metric.

The first course appeared, summoned by unseen hands. Cassie stared at the dark, quivering slice of meat that steamed with a lavender haze. The best response to an unknown threat: out-brazen it. She carved off a bite, let the iron-rich flavor bloom red across her tongue, and chased it with another swallow of wine.

The only ones eating were her and the Devil. Az and his brothers just sat and watched, eyes black and blue and red, drinks in hand, never touching food.

Cassie let the silence widen, a vacuum between her and the row of devils, broken only by the clatter of forks and the hiss of poured wine. She could feel the pulse in her jaw where she was grinding her teeth, the taste of iron in the meat still blooming at the back of her throat. Az leaned toward her, just enough to brush her knee under the table, a signal that could have meant anything—“hang in there” or “watch yourself,” or, knowing him, “enjoy the show.”

Lucifer set down his fork with the care of a surgeon, wiped his mouth, and finally spoke. “Rumor travels faster here than in your world,” he said, voice as mild as melted ice. “They say the wedding was eventful.”

Cassie considered the answer he wanted. Contrition? Deflection? Either was a trap. She opted for the truth, or enough of it to poison the well.

She cut her next bite and held it on her tongue, letting the flavor settle, then, after a perfectly polite pause, said, “I assume that depends on which version of the rumor you’ve heard.” Her voice was flat, her face still, and every one of the six princes across from her stilled with the anticipation of small children at a puppet show, waiting to see if the violence would be delightful or a lesson.

Lucifer’s smile showed nothing. “That you incapacitated a minister of the inner circles with a word. That your blood took to the bond faster than protocol allows. That you audibly enjoyed the postnuptial event.”

The last was not a question. Cassie swallowed her mouthful and placed both hands in her lap, as if the gesture could anchor her to the moment.

“False on the second point,” she said, “the bond reacted precisely on schedule. The rest is accurate, at least by my recollection. If I’d known I was expected to start a m******e, I’d have worn something less stain-prone.”

She tried to watch all six brothers and the Devil at once. Impossible, so she defaulted to Az, whose jaw ticked in a slow pulse like he was chewing the inside of his cheek. The wine helped: rich, ancient, alive with a sizzle of after burn. Cassie took another swallow.

Lucifer tapped the edge of his glass with one white finger. “It’s been centuries since anyone upstaged Bael at a rite.” The Devil’s gaze moved down the table, then back to her. “Some of my sons only respond to . . . robust gestures.”

Bael didn’t blink or flinch. Cassie met his stare, then let her own gaze slip to the jag of his lip—a half-smile, taut as piano wire.

“They say your line endures on sheer spite,” Bael said. His voice was colder than the wine, softer than the velvet on the chair. “I was curious if the rumors were exaggerated. I see they didn’t.” The tip of his finger traced the rim of his goblet. “But you’ll forgive this court its skepticism. The last time a witch accepted the bond, she lasted twelve hours before running back to the surface and throwing herself into a sacred river.”

Cassie sharpened her own smile, resisting the urge to reach for the knife that was, unhelpfully, just ornamental. “Maybe the river was preferable to the company.”

Az snorted behind his glass. It was so quick she almost missed it, but Cassie heard it as clearly as a rifle shot.

Lucifer’s voice suddenly cut through, grabbing the table's attention. “So I understand you two are leaving hell tomorrow. You must have been busy this week.”

“Not really," Cassie replied.

“Then what have you two been doing?” Lucifer asked, confused.

“Screwing each other silly, what else? It’s our honeymoon.”

At that, Beelzebub actually spat a mouthful of wine; Mammon muttered something about “priorities.” Cassie didn’t miss the twitch at the corner of Lucifer’s mouth, the smallest ghost of a smirk. She supposed she should have felt embarrassed, but instead there was a prickle of satisfaction. If they’d wanted a demure princess, they could have abducted one from the next realm over.

She caught Az watching her, his expression unreadable—a flick, a ripple, nothing lasting. Cassie flexed her feet under the table, feeling the rawness in her muscles, the dull ache in her hips. The pain felt clean, earned.

Dagon leaned in. “You f****d the prince,” he said, almost reverent, “and still came to dinner. Is it true what they say about witches?”

Cassie rolled her eyes, let the jibe roll off. “That we can curse you with a look? Or that we taste like copper and sin?”

Cassie forked the last of her steak and let the blood pool and glaze her tongue. “Some say we eat men’s souls, others say we can’t hold our liquor. From what I hear, both are true of demons, too.” She caught herself smiling at Beelzebub—Beal, Az called him in private, as if the horror of his title could be cut down with a spare syllable. He looked delighted, the pointed ends of his canines pink with wine.

When the main course cleared, the table reset itself. Plates vanished with a whisper, replaced by squat glasses full of a liquor that looked exactly like embalming fluid.

“We’ll move to the parlor for dessert," Lucifer announced.