Thea

“In that case, please attend to the children, and avoid contact with Thea until I tell you otherwise.” I heard Lilith’s voice from the other side of the door and slowed as I descended the stairs. It hadn’t taken long for me to grab the few things from my room, or to fill Rose’s underwear drawer with nettles. So, I was hoping to meet up with Bryce before she started adjusting the wards. But apparently, our entire plan had been doomed to fail from the start.

I wasn’t sure what to do and was starting to feel awkward and anxious when I got a message from Bryce over my implants. Rose, Esme, and Lilith are back sooner than I expected. I explained the situation to Lilith, and she ordered Rose to return my mana before sending her away. If you still want to leave, we can.

I chewed on my bottom lip, unsure how to respond, because I did still kind of want to leave. Mostly because I didn’t want to be around when Rose found the nettles, which wasn’t exactly an excuse I could give without giving the prank up. Besides, Bryce had been really set on talking to Lilith.

We should probably stay. I replied, and the front door opened a few moments later.

Bryce was the first to enter, followed by Lilith, then Esme, and much to my surprise, Raith trailed behind the trio.

“You let her live?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Contrary to my reputation, I don’t enjoy killing people. Especially not members of my own household.” Lilith had clearly meant that last statement about me, and I felt a little chagrined. “Thea, I’m overjoyed that you’re home safe, and so long as you’re a member of my household, I will never hurt you.”

“But Rose—”

“I’ll handle Rose. She overstepped and nearly broke her oath to me in the process,” Lilith interrupted. “If you had been the one hurt instead of Bryce, then I would’ve been forced to take the matter to the fae courts and I likely wouldn’t have been allowed to defend her. Rose would’ve lost everything.”

My first thought was to just add that to the list of reasons I wish it had been me instead of Bryce who was hurt, but then I stopped myself. If Rose was willing to risk all of that to protect Lilith, then she must have been really afraid we’d hurt her.

“I understand, and I won’t do anything else to retaliate.” Lilith smiled softly, but Esme and Bryce both shot me a look. They had definitely caught my phrasing, and I tried to change the topic before they could interrogate me. “So… Bryce, you had some questions for Lilith?”

“Right, I suppose I do.” Bryce shook her head, and I smiled, knowing I had gotten away with the prank. At least for now. “Well, really just the one question. Who is Persephone?”

“My first instinct is to kill you for asking.” Lilith narrowed her eyes at Bryce, and I quickly descended the rest of the stairs to stand by her side. “But I’ll refrain for now, if only to learn how you know that name. Because I’m going to assume Thea wouldn’t carelessly share my secrets with somebody who she met less than three months ago.”

“Now, don’t forget what you said earlier about not hurting me,” I reminded Lilith as she switched her glare to me. “It’s possible that I might have maybe told Bryce about Stephy. Which I did, because she might have gotten involved with a plan to get something that could possibly be an elixir of lesser immortality, and why we needed it probably seemed important since that plan could have maybe backfired and threatened all of our lives.”

The glare turned to a blank stare as Lilith tried to decipher my word gymnastics. “An elixir of lesser immortality? Who could possibly have one of those?”

“Oh, I really should let the mastermind explain everything.” I slid up next to Esme and placed an arm around her waist. “I mean, I barely had anything to do with it. It was entirely, one-hundred percent Esme’s plan.”

“Esme? Care to explain?” Lilith shifted her weight and crossed her arms as she re-established her glare, this time directed at a very sheepish succubus.

“A few months ago, I heard a rumor that Malvoch was on a winning streak,” Esme explained. “And that he was so confident in his luck that he even bet an elixir of lesser immortality when the pot got big enough. I figured that Thea enjoys poker, and it’d be worth trying our hand at winning it.”

“Is that what this whole ordeal has been about?” Lilith asked. “Thea got caught cheating during a poker game?”

“Well, the game was at the VIP table in Vurdex’s casino,” I added. “And besides, I won that game fair and square.”

“So, you’re telling me that you didn’t cheat?” Lilith raised an eyebrow, and I deflated a bit.

“I may have cheated a little, but Malvoch was cheating too! So, it was entirely fair.”

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“Well, at least the solution is simple enough.” Lilith seemed to relax her stance. “I’ll contact Orrid and apologize on your behalf, and you’ll return everything you won to Malvoch, along with your bet. Then both of you will apologize to Vurdex, and offer to work at his tables for a few decades. No harm, no foul.”

Esme and I both looked at each other, begging the other one to explain why that wouldn’t work. Thankfully, Bryce saved us.

“That likely won’t solve it,” she interjected. “Both because they bet Esme’s soul stone, which no longer exists, and because Malvoch never wanted it to begin with.”

Esme and I shot Bryce a confused look, and Lilith froze.

“What do you mean, he never wanted it?” I asked. “He seemed pretty set on getting it.”

“They bet her soul!” Lilith shouted. It wasn’t exactly a question, and it didn’t seem entirely directed at Bryce, so much as at whoever was unlucky enough to be standing in front of her at the time. Which just so happened to be me and Esme. “How in all the hells can you two be so utterly irresponsible?”

“It was a sure bet! If Malvoch hadn’t cheated, then I wouldn’t have been caught, and I would have gotten away clean!” That was apparently exactly the wrong thing to say, because Lilith’s eyes flared with black flames as she seemed to tower over me.

“Lilith, I understand that you’re upset, and you have every right to be.” Bryce took a step towards the fuming arch-demon. “But Malvoch was never after Esme’s soul. He was just trying to get to Persephone.”

“Explain,” Lilith demanded, as she turned her fiery gaze on Bryce.

“Admittedly, it’s just a theory.” She took a step back, both conversationally and physically. “But I think Malvoch had planned on winning the bet, then using Esme’s soul stone to coerce Thea into exposing Persephone. Or failing that, manipulating Esme into doing the same thing. His plan was ruined when Thea actually won the bet, then again when she was summoned to the mortal plane with the elixir.”

“If that’s the case, then why did he try to have Thea kill me?” Esme asked.

“He didn’t.” Bryce shrugged. “I figure he was trying to trap Thea, or rather the elixir, on the mortal plane while he enacted his backup plan. Thea doesn’t know the magic required to send a message across the planes, and I’m assuming you don’t either?”

Esme shook her head, and Bryce continued. “Which means you would’ve needed to recruit somebody who does in order to contact Thea, and you mentioned before that all of your attempts were being blocked. Hells, the only way we were able to get a message to you was because Thea trusted me enough to let me use your soul stone.

"On top of that, the only reason you were able to find us was because I used a truly unreasonable amount of mana while standing directly on top of a leyline intersection. There’s absolutely no way Malvoch could have accounted for all of that, let alone orchestrated it.”

“So he just made a bunch of mistakes?” I asked. “That doesn’t exactly sound like him.”

“Sort of? It’s less that he made mistakes, and more that we got extremely lucky when you got summoned to me.”

“Assuming I believe any of what you just said,” Lilith interrupted. “That would still leave whatever backup plan Malvoch has cooked up. What is it, and how would we stop it?”

“I think we already did, at least for now,” Bryce explained. “We’ll still need to figure out what his next step is, but his plan seemed to be to kill you while having Raith’s goons subdue Rose and kidnap Persephone. I think Thea returning with the elixir forced him to act sooner than he would have liked, which is why we were able to stop him so easily.”

Lilith shook her head. “Raith was never given a contact or drop off location, and the binding circle she used had built in flaws that allowed me to escape. She was never intended to succeed.”

Bryce furrowed her brows and seemed to think for a moment before her eyes went wide. “We need to check on Persephone right now.”

“Esme, go find Rose and have her construct a soundproof cell to hold Raith. Ensure she puts it in a secure place that I don’t frequent.” Lilith waited for confirmation before pointing towards me and Bryce. “You two, come with me.”

We followed her up the stairs to her bedroom, and into her closet where a heavily enchanted door was hidden behind way too many heavy winter jackets. Admittedly, I hadn’t seen Lilith leave Hel a single time since I met her over 300 years ago, so any number of winter jackets was probably too many.

“The wards look undamaged,” Bryce observed. “And as far as I can tell, the seal on the door is still intact. Would it be possible for somebody to get in without bypassing the security?”

“Not easily,” Lilith replied. “Not without being able to replicate my mana signature.”

“Can somebody do that?” I asked.

“In theory, it’s possible, but I’ve never found a way to do it.” Bryce went silent for a moment before continuing. “Did you set up the wards yourself? Is it possible there’s a backdoor?”

“Orrid created them, but he tuned them to me, and I doubt he’d create a backdoor to the wards protecting his only daughter.”

“Ha! I knew Orrid was the father!"

“No Thea, you didn’t,” Lilith dismissed my claim before approaching the open door and empty bed where Stephy was supposed to be sleeping. “You just guessed every male demon you knew, and Orrid happened to be among them.”

“I thought Malvoch worked for Orrid. Why would he want to kidnap his daughter?” Bryce asked. “And this probably isn’t the time, but did you seriously have to name the daughter of the king of Hades ‘Persephone’? Isn’t that a bit on the nose?”

“Believe it or not, I have a soft spot for human mythology,” Lilith shot back. “Although I’m somewhat surprised you understood the reference.”

“I worked on a mostly human colony called ‘New Eden’ for a few decades. It would’ve been hard not to pick up a few of their myths along the way. But you didn’t answer my question. Why would Malvoch want to kidnap Orrid’s daughter?”

“And why wouldn’t he just give him the elixir?” I added my question to Bryce’s. “I mean, if I had something that could help Stephy just lying around then I would absolutely have given it to you.”

“I appreciate that Thea, but I suspect that elixir is fake,” Lilith smiled at me, before turning to Bryce with a frown. “And I don’t know why Malvoch would kidnap our daughter. It’s why I had been skeptical of his involvement until it was clear that she was missing. Now I’m not so sure, but it’s the first thing I plan on asking him.”