*Chiara

Since the battle, since she'd been brought to the underworld, days blurred. Time was meaningless, except that it continued on and on. There were hours that she was awake and being tortured, and there were hours that she was left in the dark. Sometimes she slept. There was a cup of water that was filled from time to time, but it was brackish and left her thirstier than before when she drank it. Soon, she trained herself to ignore it existed.

Dreams were a new form of torture for her. She'd never had vivid dreams before. At least, it seemed like the life she'd known before was soft and filled with deep, reviving sleep. Was it possible?

That life before was also a sort of torture. She wanted to fight her former self—slap her for being stupid and naïve. For allowing herself to be captured alive and brought to hell.

Nights were broken and long. When she slept, it was never much. And when she dreamed, it was almost always of the battle. Her first and last.

Daviid was always there. In life, he had been killed so quickly, she hadn't had time to register the fact that he had been slain by demons. He fell and then she turned to face the horde. She was ready to join him in the lasting sleep. There was no regeneration after death. An angel could recover from almost any wound, so long as the heart was still beating.

But in her dreams, he turned to her, still alive. "Coward. You disgust me."

"I thought they would fight me. I didn't know—I didn't mean to survive."

"And yet every single one of us perished on that field, except you. You hid behind the others while they died. You deserve your pain."

"No," she said, trying to convince him. "I fought them. I fought with you."

"I saved you and you barely looked my way when I fell."

"Daviid, Captain, please I didn't—"

A sword piercing his chest stopped her words. She was holding the sword. She cried out. And jerked herself awake.

The stone floor bit into her bones, and the cold cramped her muscles. She tried to curl into a ball for warmth. Her fingers had regrown since being cut off. She touched her belly. Everything was back in place. Only her wings refused to mend. The pain of being broken never faded, and she could barely move them. The feathers were matted and grey. But at least they were warm. She reached back to pull one over her the best she could without setting off the lancing pain.

"Nightmare?" the demon from the other side of the room asked. He had a name, but she willed herself not to even think it. He didn't deserve a name. Images of him flashed through her mind. Parts and pieces only, though, as if imagining him in his entirety was too much. Too dangerous. Tousled, dark brown hair with unruly curls on his forehead. Golden-brown eyes. His jaw clenched, neck muscles corded as he struggled to not scream. The rough, unshaven scruff that covered his cheeks. His chest heaving. Arms straining against the cuffs.

Arms strong enough to hide in from the world.

She ached in silence, inside and out.

They played a strange game, competing to show who was stronger. Each pretended to be only mildly annoyed by torture and lack of sleep. They talked in the darkness as if they wouldn't kill each other on the battlefield.

She couldn't let him know the truth—her lies protected her when nothing else did.

He protected her.

Chiara had to keep up her shields, though, no matter what.

"Your smell woke me up. Try to breathe in the other direction, won't you?" she said. On top of the torture was the humiliation of his witnessing it. She was weak, and he saw it all.

He chuckled. "Tell me your true feelings, why don't you? I've seen you watching. They had my shirt off, and your eyes were nailed to the show."

She was grateful to the darkness for covering her blush. Clothes were a thing that came and went depending on Dirk's and Lucius' moods. Only Lucius touched her skin, though. So far, he had stayed with pain-inducing torture. But she could see the lust in his eyes. It was only a matter of time. He was waiting for something.

When the demon on the wall across from her looked over, it was always to her face—to meet her eyes at a distance. They were in it together. All this pain and misery. Sometimes he would even grin and wink, like they were sharing a good time in secret.

The games kept her going.

She forced her mind to the present. "You've gotten considerably softer since I first arrived. Torture is hell for muscle mass."

"I have other masses to make up for it, don't worry about me."

"Well, you certainly aren't bragging about your brain mass, so to be honest, I have no idea what you are talking about."

He chuckled again, lighter. "Sleep tight, darling, and keep dreaming I'm holding you in my arms."

The next day, Lucius didn't come. There were many days he didn't come personally, but sent instructions for Dirk to snip off parts or put her in the burning collars. Dirk had strict orders not to touch her, though, except to put her on the wall and take her down again. No message came from Lucius, though. She hung limp in her chains.

However, a new demon came for Logan.

Don't think his name! He is the enemy.

But she thought of the others by their names. Why did his bother her? Why was he different to her? She tilted her hanging head to watch from the corners of her eyes.

"Zeigfel," Logan said, greeting the stony-faced demon cheerfully. "Good to see you."

Zeigfel. An original fallen. A new sliver of fear bit deep in her chest, gnawing and chewing with icy teeth. He was devastating in his cold beauty. Pale, nearly translucent skin, perfectly smooth, gleaming white hair and glacier blue eyes. He kept his heavy daemonium horns though, curling back and up from his temples. They were icy-white with black etchings. He was devastating in his endless in his cruelty. She could sense rolling from him in waves and she shook harder with every step he took into the room. Her instincts warned her to run—to save herself. Her hands twisted in the sharp iron cuffs above her head.

It still amazed her to see how beautiful demons appeared on the outside. During the fight, they were hideous, each in a different way. The heavy horns, scaly, cracked skin on some, others skeletal and decaying. Huge yellowed eyes, or black holes glowing with unholy light. Gaping mouths, jagged teeth or fangs, claws. Some didn't even carry weapons, their claws and whipping, barbed tails tore through angelic bodies fast as any sword.

Chiara's stomach clenched as the memory played out in her head. The true demonic form, daemonium, was the twisted mirror of her kind's angelic form, the angelii.

Before this, she had imagined they were always hideous. But here in the underworld, the warrior class demons were impossibly handsome, if you could get past the fact that they were dipping you in boiling oil. Demons were spawned from fallen angels, it made sense in an odd way.

Was she losing her mind down here? Demons weren't beautiful. It was simply another trick.

But Logan, despite the sweaty grime that streaked his body from days of torture, was sinfully sculpted. He was work of art to set in her sacred grounds. She glanced furtively across the space at him, hands above his head like hers, chest and legs bare. Muscles rippled under smooth, light brown skin. Gold firelight shone on the ridges of his shoulders and the cords of muscle in his arms and legs as he breathed. He lifted his chin, mouth set in a cocky grin.

He winked at her. Actually winked. From the tension flowing off the demons—Dirk, Zeigfel, and Logan, Chiara knew there would be trouble, but she almost laughed at that wink. No matter who walked in that room, Logan was ready to be a bastard to them with no regrets

She knew he was the enemy, but she couldn't resist this pull to him. This intertwining of their fates. She knew the pain so well, that when he was being tortured, her body felt the echo, as if she was a part of him. She hated it, but she couldn't stop it. Breath caught in her chest, she waited.

Zeigfel was unnerving in his calm. He strode into the room, let his eyes linger on her a moment too long before turning fully to Logan. His jaw clenched. "I promised to pay you a visit. To take out of your flesh what you stole from me."

"You have excellent taste, my lord, the flesh is weak," Logan quipped, as if he were a mortal. "I could not resist that whiskey."

"If it had only been the whiskey you tasted, you might not be in here." Zeigfel strolled around the table at the center of the room, studying the tools and torture devices on display. "You also took pleasure from what belongs to me. That makes me very angry." He ran his fingers down the barbed whip.

When his hand reached the handle, he glanced up to meet Chiara's eyes.

*** Thank you for reading!!! ***