Chained to the Devil’s Daughter (Mating the Elements #1)

2

Ash’ren

S tone shrieked in that awful way it does when a sharpened claw slices through it. Three thousand two hundred and eighty-seven days. I didn’t have to count the lines to know.

Another count breezed through my mind. Two hundred and twenty-seven days since I’d been called on to do Devil’s dirty work. His devotees had taken weeks to fetch me before, but this was excessive. Perhaps the Fyre council finally made Devil cease his gods-forsaken digging. Or perhaps someone had killed him. Fucking flames, I hoped not. The honor of slaughtering that prick was mine, second only to Firefly.

With nothing better to do, I’m flooded with bittersweet memories of slippery thighs and midnight orgasms. If I could go back in time and tell my child self that my secret best friend would grow up to be my first everything , I would do it all again.

I eyed the door, overcome with the urge to walk right through it. Nah. I would wait three more days, avoid the beating if I could. For now, I’d read a book.

The tower was lined with empty bookshelves for a total of fourteen books. Only five weren’t bullshit religious texts about Devil and his stolen land of nightmares. The brainwashed people of the pit truly believed in that drivel. Anyone not from Hell knows it’s a fucking cult.

The Fire in my Belly . I blew dust from the famous demon chef Tiki’s memoir. Surely with that much dust, I’ll have forgotten some piece of it. Alas, no. By the third chapter, I set the book aside.

Two steps from the bookshelf to my writing desk, where parchment was already addressed Dearest Firefly in orange blood . One look at the scabs on my left arm and I retracted my claw.

With a huff, I tilted my chair back and ran a hand over my forehead, coming to rest on the stump of my right horn. Was it taller than yesterday? Or three hours ago?

I could always jerk off. My hand slipped down my trousers, and I closed my eyes, trying to picture her face. My cock swelled. Though her features faded in and out of focus, I could still see her lips curled into a smile or stuffed with my cock. It seemed the only time she wasn’t smiling was when she had a mouthful of cock, and even then, she was pure sunshine. My Firefly.

My spine went taut at a particularly passionate memory. Not our first time, which had been full of fumbles and nerves, but the first time we’d risked fucking in her bed, her father home somewhere in the palace. With all our practice in the garden, the Soul Springs, and the Flamewoods, we knew how to please each other by then. It was the first time we’d addressed the bulb at the base of my shaft. She’d licked it. Though she’d taken me in her mouth before, I’d always guided her, stopping her above my knot of nerves. Didn’t want to scare her away. Similarly, she’d been squirmy at first when I tended to her cunt with my mouth, but she’d gotten over that eventually. That night, she’d decided it was time for me to get over it. Fires help me, I’d groaned so loud and deep, she’d burst into giggles.

“I’m yours, Firefly. Every inch of me. My knot will know no other cunt’s warmth.”

“It will never fit, Ash.”

“It will. You were made for me.”

I stroked the swollen bulb at the memory. My declaration had brought a beautiful pink shade to her cheeks and transformed our late-night fucking into something deeper.

The thought of my knot brought a much less sexy memory to mind. Our final night together. Desperate, I’d made my case, my voice rising in anger. I was all teeth and terror, knowing she slipped further away with every suitor she courted at her father’s insistence. She’d met my ire pitch for pitch until we came full circle. Though she’d claimed to no longer love me only moments before, she stroked my knot with a wisp-like tenderness, sorrow a bitter taste in her kiss.

“You forget, Firefly. My knot is yours. You will take it, and see your womb flooded with my seed until you’re plump with my babies.”

“Ash, we aren’t kids anymore. I’m to be the queen of Hell, and you—you’re just a beloved memory.”

Her words rejected me, but her moonstone eyes churned with grief.

Feeling suddenly filthy, I took three steps to the washbasin spelled with Hydran magic, but before I dropped my dingy trousers, a whistle drew my attention. Not the tune the guards used. It went quiet and then, moments later, came again. The same tune but different, with a little trilling at the end.

“A bird?” In this wasteland?

Again, it sang, and again my fool heart lurched. I craned my neck around the massive tungsten chain poisoned with dark magic that filled most of the window.

The tangerine sky was ribboned with clouds of soot and sand. The same dismal horizon I’d seen since being banished. But there—in the distance—a streak of pink and the barest sliver of blue.

The bird chirped again. Before ever meeting Devil and his daughter, a bird sang simply because it was a bird. Now everything’s a sign.

I strained for a view of the land below, hissing as my proximity to the chain singed my cheek. The ground was red sand and gray ash. Long streaks of charred black smeared the landscape like the blood of the earth. A deep trench cut the land in half. The tenth ring of Hell remained incomplete. As incomplete as the last time I’d been forced to haul myself down the chain.

“That can’t be right.”

The bird tweeted again. This time, I copied the sound. The bird went quiet. I whistled again and then I saw it—a flame raven. It zoomed through a narrow gap in the window, landing on my writing desk.

“Hello, pretty bird.”

Obsidian feathers tipped in mulberry fire tucked behind the bird’s abdomen, settling on its rump, where fire snuffed out. Its crown was fanned, displaying warm shades of red violet. The season of frost was well on its way, and all the Firefolk beasts and fire-touched creatures were changing their hues.

“What are you doing in this wasteland, pretty one?” Intelligent black beads flicked over my shoulder, dimming before returning to me. The bird opened its beak and spat out a little purple seed. “Sorry to disappoint, my friend. I cannot be your mate.”

The raven cocked its head silently.

“What a lucky bird they would be,” I cooed, slowly reaching for the raven, who nudged its head into all my soft pets. “Beauties like you don’t belong in this destitute place.”

I stilled. Wait.

Foolish heart. Whatever the creature sensed in me caused it to chirp and back away from my touch. I turned to the door. One step. Two steps. Three.

Heart beating in my throat, I rapped a knuckle on the door. “Hello? Guards?”

No answer. I fell to my knees and pressed an ear to the stone floor, squinting through the tiny sliver under the door. Boots, their tread lined with clumps of red sand, and a spatter of orange blood nearby.

It was risky. The guards claimed Searra was beaten every time I tried to escape. They said that Devil wasn’t only angry with me. Despite his evil tyranny and horrific parenting skills, Devil loved Searra. The only thing Devil loved more than his stolen human princess was his stupid fucking rings and the gold mine of magic bones underneath.

The raven chirped from the washbasin. A smoky feather fell from the bird’s flank and drifted into the crystalline water. Immediately its sizzling stopped, and after one, two, three, four ripples, the water was clear again.

“RAAAAGGGGHHRRR!”

I slammed a shoulder into the door with a battle cry. The wood groaned but didn’t give. I geared up to slam again, but the raven twittered in my face like a morning songbird. Fighting the urge to swat wildly, my new friend perched on the door handle and cocked its head.

“You can’t be serious.”

The raven flew off as I approached. I twisted the handle. There was a soft click as the door opened.

“Ha! Ha, ha! Ha!” I jumped back, hands covering my mouth, running over my horns, pumping in the air. “You fucking genius, you!”

I spun, searching my prison for the bird who’d just basically barf-fed me freedom like I was a hatchling, but it was gone.

I blew out a low whistle, tensed against the sting of tears and breathed deeply. She was out there somewhere. My Firefly. My mate.

Oh fuck. Searra. My cock swelled in tune to my thumping heart, both filled with hope for the first time in three thousand two hundred and eighty-seven days.

The guard directly outside my door had a hand outstretched, a silver key at his fingertips, and a dart in his neck. I scaled the unending stairs of the tower for the first time. What I found outside was carnage. Men, women, demons, humans; some of whom I’d worked alongside for all of the nine years of my banishment. Anyone wearing Devil’s crest had darts in their necks, and some had laborers skewered on their tungsten swords. Someone had wanted the guards dead, but their discreet methods were thwarted. A riot, perhaps. Judging by the corpses, it was over quickly. I couldn’t bring myself to care much past that.

Leaning against the rough stone of Ring Nine’s massive entrance gate, I extended the claws on my right hand and dug into my neck. The magic-suppressing bone of the Forgotten Ones didn’t want to tear from my flesh. Its spikes burrowed deeper with every movement. I gritted my teeth, my skin squelching as I blindly tore into flesh and muscle. Finally, I found it, my fingers pricking on the thorn-like spikes.

“Fucking elements!”

The strange sensation of laughter ripped out of my chest. I called to my magic, expecting to see the bright carmine flames of my youth. The flames that flickered to life weren’t on the red or orange spectrum, not even the blue shades of frost.

Black as the void and devoid of temperature, my magic raced to meet my call.

“Fucking elements.”

Annoyed, I urged more power forth. The black flames roared to life, hotter than anything I’d touched for three thousand two hundred and eighty-seven days.

“Fuck!”

I hissed and danced around, begging my magic to cease. It obeyed, eventually, and that strange feeling bubbled in my chest again. Elements, it was SO GOOD to laugh!

The first time an overseer pushed me too far, causing my magic to spill out as black vapor-like wisps along my fingertips, they’d replaced my suppressant with a girthier Forgotten Ones bone, its spikes longer and sharper. Without the implant, I’d expected my normal magic to return. Fuck it. Even with this void-dark, unruly magic, wild as it was, I would find her.

It took seventy-eight surreal steps into Ring Nine before a laborer screamed. Once the shriek pierced the air, my simple stroll got a lot more difficult. Wide eyes were framed by dirt-stained hands. Feet with rotting flesh stammered back, trying to run. I grimaced and held my bloody palms before me.

“Wait. I won’t hurt you.”

But my hands chose that moment to burst into black flames.

This wasn’t going to be a waltz through Hell to reach my woman. This was going to be a gods-damned bloodbath.

I smirked. I didn’t believe in gods, and Devil was just an opportunist.

The rings were a whopping five kilometers below the surface, the prime depth for excavating Forgotten Ones' bones. Without beating wings to carry me up to the bridge system that connected all ten rings, I would have to cross each 40-mile ring by foot. With the sand eating my every step and enemies in the skies, the 8-day trip to the inner rings could take ten or more. Assuming Devil’s devotees didn’t stop me first.

An overseer’s flames leaped toward me as if shot from a hose. A beast of pure instinct, I raised my arm to block the torrent. Only a weak black shield materialized, and I lost one step backward into the sand.

The overseer laughed. More of his ilk appeared, dotting the sky. Those without wings would soon swarm down the bridges.

That’s right, fuckers. Come straight to me. As long as the unpredictable magic in my veins would fucking listen, I would. . .

“Burn! Fucking burn, motherfuckers!”

The first overseer succumbed to my odd flames, but their skin didn’t even burn. They simply poofed away in a cloud of ash. My jog faltered a halfstep. I stumbled over a body—not one of mine, a random laborer worked to death—and I studied my hands, my arms, alight in black.

Another enemy surged forward—another chance to study my new power.

The muscles in my legs fell into a numb pace. Dodging laborers and keeping sights toward the bridge far above, I discharged overseers and guards as the sun briefly graced each stripe of sky between the next cliff I raced towards and the ones I left behind.

Days passed. My muscles burned. I couldn’t imagine smelling anything but ash ever again. I needed food, and rest.

Through another gate, the sight of laborers thinned, replaced by skin sellers, haunted eyes wavy with intoxication. Ring Six. I barreled through any dismal establishments I came across, swiping food from tables as I tried and failed to keep pace, one thought keeping me on my feet.

Firefly.

After crossing into Ring Five, I coughed with every inhale. Bone dust permeated the air, and no one in sight was without a mask. Microscopic bone remnants pelted my skin as I ran.

I grew increasingly less lucid with every step.

Searra.

In Ring Four, I almost fell asleep on my feet, narrowly dodging smithy fires as workers forged weapons and tools of dark magic with ground-up bones of the Forgotten Ones.

Violins and the scent of salt-less meat. Ring Three.

Was it day or night? I saw nothing but black and gray.

Reduced to a primal state, there was no recognizable piece of me left. Maybe this was how Firefolk felt. Only one thought pumped my limbs, using my magic like a brainless animal.

Mate .