Entice: An Ignite Novella Read Online Free PDF

effort. I would love to flay your skin open and wring every ounce of pain I could out of you. But you wouldn’t mind dying, would you?” He appraises me, balancing the worth of my life on some invisible scale that only he can calibrate. “You don’t fear for your life, isn’t that what you said?”
    Ice leeches through my limbs. It climbs into me, cements me to the ground. I am frozen.
    “Seeing your brother die would be much more torturous than any pain I could cause you.” He speaks slowly, letting his words pull my mind apart. “I could kill you a thousand times and it would be only a slight sting in comparison to you carrying the weight, the responsibility, the blame of your brother’s demise.”
    I blink against the truth of his statement. Any amount of torture would seem like nothing if I knew Azael would live. Sacrificing my life for his wouldn’t require a second thought.
    “What can I—how—” My words try to tie themselves to my tongue, but I cut the knot and throw them on the ground at Lucifer’s feet. With the simple knowledge he holds over me, of how my true allegiance will always lie with Azael, he has me beat. The fight drains out of me; I accept the ice that stirs within my veins. “How may I serve you?”
    It’s hard to accept that it has come to this as I fall to my knee in a defeated bow. I bend my head and stitch my eyes closed, hiding my true feelings in the black pit of denial that wells within my chest.
    There are several beats of satisfied silence before he answers in a proud, imperious tone. “I quite enjoy the image of your shoulders hunched at my feet.” I can taste the smile in his voice. “But you must look at me when you bow.”
    My shoulders are stiff with fury, but I raise my face to him anyway. The ache of my neck throbs lazily, and I concentrate on the pain.
    “Very good.” He grins, and I fight bile back down into my stomach. My throat burns with the acid of my disgust. “I am assigning Azael to a priority assignment, and I want you to join him. A test, of sorts. I will be watching, and if I do not believe you are fully committed to your orders—to doing what you’re told —he will be executed and you will be graced with a front-row seat.” He drags one slender, sharp finger along my jaw. “Do you understand?”
    I swallow past a knot in my throat that has stolen all of my air. “I understand.”
    “Are you absolutely sure?”
    “Yes.”
    “Yes...?” He smiles at me cruelly.
    “Yes, sir. ” I nearly choke on the word.
    He claps his hands together and steeples them under his chin. “Wonderful. You may leave now. Go find Azael. He will tell you all about your new assignment.”
    I unfold myself to my feet unsteadily and turn to leave, wanting to run out of the room as fast as I can but not willing to give him the satisfaction of seeing me flee.
    “Oh, and Penemuel,” he calls out as I step into the hallway. I stop but don’t face him again. He talks to my back. “If Azael does not believe you, if there’s any doubt left in him, he will die slowly.” He pulls the word thin, stretching it out until it peels back like paper curling away from flames. “You had best be convincing.”
    I move forward again, turning the corner and disappearing from view. I sprint down the twisting maze of hallways until I’m back at the rough door of my dormitory, but I can’t bear to enter. I turn around and run the other way, finding a dark, vacant hallway to fall apart.
    Throwing myself into the small corner of the passageway, I collapse onto the ground, out of breath and feeling sicker than I ever have before. The strangled sounds that wheeze in and out of my body betray my weakness. I’m an open wound, raw and inflamed.
    But I have no choice but to heal. With Azael’s life in the balance, I will readily relinquish everything. I’ll drop my skepticism to the ground so it shatters apart like glass; I’ll tear apart my apprehension, mutate my disgust into delight.