Chapter 2: Solace with Royals
The scent of Beastman flour and sugar usually anchored me, but today it just smelled like dust. I stood in the House of Lamentation kitchen, staring at a bowl of unbaked batter Beel had left for me. My hands wouldn’t move. The silence of the house was a pressure against my eardrums, heavy with things unsaid. I hadn’t seen Lucifer in three days. He’d vanished into his study, and meals were delivered by a silent, somber-looking Leviathan. Beel’s presence was a constant, warm guard, but his silence on the matter was louder than any rant.
I couldn’t breathe here.
A polite knock at the front door echoed. It wasn’t the brothers’ style. Before I could move, Barbatos materialized in the kitchen doorway, his posture immaculate, a small, pale blue box in his hands.
“Good afternoon, Miss Nicole,” he said, his voice a calm lake after a hurricane. “His Lord Diavolo was concerned. The recent… atmospheric shifts in the House are detectable even at the castle.”
I let out a shaky breath. “That’s one way to put it.”
He offered the box. “A lemon-verbena tart. New recipe. I believed the citrus might cut through the lingering bitterness.” His dark eyes, ancient and knowing, swept over me. They didn’t linger on the faint yellowing bruise peeking from my collar, but I knew he saw it. He saw everything. “His Lord also extends an invitation. The star-flowers are in aberrant bloom in the private gardens. He finds the light therapeutic for discordant thoughts.”
It wasn’t an order. It was a lifeline, thrown with impeccable grace. To refuse would be to choose to drown in this oppressive silence. “Yes,” I said, the word leaving me in a rush. “Please.”
The air in the Starfall Gardens was cooler, sweeter. It didn’t smell of hellfire and old paper. Twisting trees with bark like polished obscretion glittered under their own light, and the path was carpeted with moss that pulsed softly underfoot. Diavolo stood by a fountain that spilled liquid silver, his broad back to me. He turned, and his usual vibrant smile was softer, tempered.
“Nikki,” he said, and the way he said it held no residue of recent history, only genuine warmth. “You came.”
“Thank you for inviting me.” My voice sounded small.
“This place exists for respite,” he said, gesturing around. “The flowers here absorb sonic turmoil. They thrive on it. Scream, if you like. They’ll just bloom brighter.” He said it lightly, but the offer was real.
Barbatos had laid out a tea service on a wrought-iron table. He poured, the steam carrying the scent of celestial bergamot. “The tart pairs best when the mind is unclenched, Miss Nicole. Try to unclench.”
I sat. Diavolo took the seat beside me, not opposite. His presence was different—solid, radiant, but without the jagged edges I’d grown accustomed to. He spoke of inconsequential things: a mischievous imp in the treasury, his attempts to understand a human game called ‘fantasy football.’ Barbatos interjected with dry, perfectly timed remarks about his lord’s flawed logic. It was peaceful. It was normal. It was a beautiful lie, and I clung to it.
As the twilight of the Devildom deepened, the garden’s glow intensified. Bioluminescent insects danced like tossed embers. The tart was gone. The pot was empty.
Diavolo’s hand, large and warm, covered mine on the table. “The look in your eyes,” he murmured, his thumb stroking my knuckles. “It’s the look of someone who has been shown a fundamental truth about a person they trusted, and the truth was ugly.”
The careful dam inside me cracked. A single tear slipped out. Then another.
“Ah, no,” he sighed, not with pity, but with a kind of gentle frustration. He rose, pulling me up with him. “Come. Respite takes many forms.”
He led me not out of the garden, but deeper into it, to a pavilion shrouded in weeping vines of crystal. Inside, it was draped with silks the color of a deep-space nebula. A vast bed, more a nest of cushions and fabrics, dominated the space.
Barbatos was already there, turning down the covers. “The sheets are infused with dream-moth silk,” he stated. “They adjust to body temperature and emotional resonance. They will feel cool where you are warm, and warm where you have gone cold.”
It was too much kindness. It undid me. A sob broke from my throat. Diavolo drew me into his arms, holding me firmly, letting me cry against the rich fabric of his coat. “He was wrong,” he said into my hair, his voice low and certain. “What he did was a failure of control, of respect, of everything that separates us from mindless beasts. You are not a thing to be claimed in fury.”
Barbatos’s hands were suddenly on my shoulders, deft and sure, sliding Diavolo’s coat away. “You are a treasure to be appreciated,” the butler said, his voice close to my ear as he unbuttoned my blouse. “With patience. With reverence.” He said the words like a fact, but there was a heat beneath them I’d never heard before.
They worked in quiet tandem, undressing me with a slow, deliberate care that was its own form of hypnosis. Each button released, each zip lowered, was a deliberate act of unwrapping. They didn’t comment on the fading bruises, but their touches avoided them, tracing the unmarked skin around them with a feather-light reverence that made me shiver.
Soon I stood bare between them in the softly glowing pavilion. Their eyes on me weren’t hungry like Beel’s, or furious like Lucifer’s. They were… appreciative. Diavolo’s gaze was one of warm, coveting admiration. Barbatos’s was one of clinical, precise appraisal.
“Stunning,” Diavolo breathed, his hands coming to rest on my waist.
“A canvas worthy of care,” Barbatos amended, kneeling before me. He didn’t kiss me. He pressed his lips to the inside of my knee, a touch so gentle it was almost a whisper. Then his tongue followed, a slow, deliberate stripe up the sensitive skin of my inner thigh.
I gasped, my hands flying to Diavolo’s shoulders for balance. The demon lord kissed me then, his mouth capturing the sound. His kiss was deep, languid, and overwhelmingly sweet. It tasted of power generously offered, not taken.
Barbatos’s mouth found my core. There was no aggressive assault. It was a meticulous study. His tongue parted my folds with the same precision he used to pipe frosting, tracing intricate, maddening patterns against my nerve endings. He licked and suckled with a focused intensity that built a slow, deep coil of heat in my belly, so different from the frantic sparks I was used to.
Diavolo broke the kiss to murmur against my lips, “Listen to him. He’s composing a symphony. Let him work.” He lowered me back onto the bed, the miraculous silk cool and soothing. He stripped off his own clothes, his body a masterpiece of demonic power—broad chest, muscles that spoke of latent, unfathomable strength. He joined Barbatos, not to compete, but to complement.
While Barbatos continued his devoted oral worship, Diavolo took one of my nipples into his mouth, sucking and rolling the peak with a playful, attentive pull. His large hand palmed my other breast, his thumb stroking in time with Barbatos’s tongue.
The pleasure was a slow, rising tide, not a crashing wave. It was everywhere, lapping at me from all sides, administered by two masters of their craft. “That’s it, sweet one,” Diavolo coaxed, switching his attention to my other breast. “Let go for us. We have all the time in the worlds.”
Barbatos slid two fingers inside me, curling them with exacting knowledge. He added a third, stretching me with a steady, undeniable pressure. The feeling of being so thoroughly opened, so meticulously prepared, pushed me higher. My hips began to move of their own accord, seeking more of his mouth, more of his fingers.
“She’s ready, my lord,” Barbatos said, his voice slightly thickened, his face glistening with my arousal.
Diavolo smiled, a radiant, possessive thing. He moved up my body, his heavy cock, thick and ruddy with need, nudging against where Barbatos’s fingers had just been. He positioned himself, his eyes locked on mine.
“This is yours,” he said, not a question, a granting. “Take what you need from me.”
He pushed in. The stretch was profound, dizzying, but there was no pain, only a relentless, filling fullness. He sank to the hilt with a groaned prayer in a demonic tongue, holding himself there, letting me absorb him.
Barbatos moved up beside me, kissing my shoulder, my neck. His hand trailed down my stomach, finding the bundle of nerves above where Diavolo was buried. He began to circle it, his touch perfectly calibrated.
Diavolo began to move, a deep, rolling rhythm that pressed against every internal place Barbatos had sensitized. It wasn’t a pounding. It was a claiming worship, each stroke a deliberate act of devotion. The bed, the air, my very skin seemed to hum with the energy of it.
“Look at her, Barbatos,” Diavolo gritted out, his composure fraying at the edges as he watched my face. “See how beautifully she accepts us.”
“I see, my lord,” Barbatos murmured, his fingers working me faster. “Her body is a perfect instrument. And she is so very close to her crescendo.”
Their voices, the dual sensations, the sheer overload of deliberate, adoring attention shattered my last reserve. The orgasm didn’t rip through me; it unfolded, a vast, blooming supernova of pleasure that started deep in my core and radiated out to my fingertips, my toes, leaving me breathless and shaking, my internal muscles clutching rhythmically around Diavolo’s length.
He cried out, his own control evaporating. With a final, deep thrust, he held himself still, pulsing inside me, his release hot and endless. He collapsed slightly, bracing his weight on his arms, and pressed his forehead to mine, his breath ragged.
Before the sensations could fully ebb, Barbatos guided me onto my side. Diavolo, softening, slipped out. The butler’s hands were on me, positioning me with quiet authority. He was already bare, his physique lean and strong, his erection proud and insistent.
“My turn,” he stated, his usual composure now a thin veneer over raw hunger. He nudged my thigh up, and without ceremony, he pushed into me from behind.
The feeling was shocking, different. He was slightly narrower but impossibly deep, his angle precise. He set a faster, more urgent pace than Diavolo, a driven, focused rhythm. One arm wrapped around my torso, his hand splaying over my stomach to hold me tight against him. The other hand wound into my hair, not pulling, just gripping.
Diavolo, recovering, watched with heated eyes. He leaned over, capturing my mouth in a lazy, spent kiss as Barbatos fucked me with relentless efficiency.
“You feel that, Nikki?” Barbatos grunted in my ear, his breath hot. “That is the culmination of perfect patience. Every tart I baked for you, every quiet walk, was an investment in this moment. In claiming my due.”
His words, so filthy and so utterly him, sent a fresh jolt through me. He felt it, and his pace became punishing, his hips slapping against my backside. “Come for me again,” he demanded, his voice a sharp whip of command. “Now.”
He bit down on the juncture of my neck and shoulder, not hard enough to break skin, but with a possessiveness that triggered a second, sharper climax. I screamed, the sound swallowed by Diavolo’s mouth. Barbatos followed with a choked, guttural noise, his body locking as he emptied himself inside me.
For long minutes, there was only the sound of our struggling breaths in the perfumed air. Slowly, carefully, Barbatos withdrew. He and Diavolo shared a look over my head—a look of deep, understanding satisfaction.
They cleaned me with warm, scented cloths with the same tender care they’d used to undress me. They settled me between them in the nest of silks, Diavolo at my back, Barbatos facing me. The demon lord’s arms were secure around me. Barbatos’s hand rested lightly on my hip, his thumb stroking my skin.
“Sleep, Nikki,” Diavolo whispered. “The garden guards your dreams here. No shadows can reach you.”
I floated on the edge of exhaustion, my body humming, the aches pleasurable and tired. For the first time in days, the image of Lucifer’s enraged, horrified face didn’t immediately claw to the front of my mind.
But as I drifted off, nestled between the ruler and his butler, a cold, lucid thought slipped through the blissful haze. This was sanctuary, yes. But it was also a political statement. I was now under Diavolo’s explicit protection. The game had indeed changed. I had just left one brother’s fractured care and willingly climbed into the bed of his oldest friend and master.
The cost of this comfort was yet to be tallied. And as Barbatos’s final, claiming words echoed in my memory, I knew the ledger was already open.