Chapter 685 – Fair is What You Make With Power
Zehar glared. "You’re not scared?"
"I’m annoyed," Lux said flatly. "Because they made this personal."
He turned toward the hallway again. "Now go rest. I need to brief my girls. Especially Sira."
Zehar didn’t move.
"Also," Lux added, "if you ever try using the coffee machine again without supervision..."
Zehar hissed.
"I’ll shove a mug so deep into your core it’ll percolate."
Zehar groaned and slithered out of the kitchen, muttering curses in a long-dead demonic dialect.
Lux drained the last of his coffee.
It tasted bitter now. Burnt even. Not because it was bad, but because his mind had shifted into that other space. The one where pleasure slipped off like a coat, and calculation took its place like a second skin.
Zehar’s confession replayed in his thoughts like a glitching ticker on a stock feed.
They’re coming for you.
They think you’re too strong.
They think you’re too fast.
And Lux? He wasn’t disagreeing.
He left the kitchen with that sharp silence only he could pull off. His footsteps were asured. Clean. The kind that echoed without making sound. It wasn’t rage. It wasn’t fear. It was precision wrapped in charm, Hell’s CFO resetting the board mid-ga.
To the bedroom.
Sira.
Maybe a talk.
Maybe sothing more.
Maybe both.
When he reached the double doors to his private chamber, he didn’t knock. He pushed it open, quietly. No flourish. No warning.
And froze.
Inside the room, bathed in soft daylight and scented candle haze, were two won. Not posed seductively. Not tangled in silk sheets or lounging like teased lovers waiting for their prince.
They were talking. Seriously.
Sira was seated at the edge of the chaise near the window, her long legs crossed, a glass of dark wine in one hand. Her horns caught the sun like crowned blades. That effortless dominance in her posture. The scent of Pride and cinnamon lingered in the air like perfu and war.
Across from her, curled on a velvet pouf like a cat, was Lullaby. The daughter of Sloth. Barefoot, half-awake, hair ssy, expression half-lidded as always. But listening. Fully.
And it was Sira’s voice that cut through the haze first.
"...Seems like the King of Hell is involved too. Sohow. But you know him. He doesn’t like to dirty his hands."
Lux froze in the doorway.
They didn’t know he’d entered. He made sure his presence was quiet. Shadow-wrapped. Polished like a habit. He waited. Listening.
Lullaby’s voice followed, soft and warm like a pillow soaked in holy magic. "I see... so that’s why Lux has such a hard ti?"
A pause.
"But why?" she asked. Her brows furrowed slightly. "Why him?"
Sira tilted her wine glass, watching the liquid swirl like thoughts she couldn’t say aloud. "Because he didn’t play by the rules. Everyone else waits. Crawls. Makes deals to climb. He didn’t."
Lullaby blinked slowly. "He climbed?"
"No." Sira’s voice was sharper now. "He jumped."
Lux remained still. His eyes unreadable.
And his heart?
Just a little louder now.
Not because he was surprised. He’d suspected the deeper moves beneath the surface. Zehar’s presence. The weight of old debts. The whispers of the overlords who watched from their golden coffins in the dark corners of forgotten vaults. He knew.
But hearing it, confirmation, said in Sira’s voice, not ant for him?
It felt different.
Inside the room, Lullaby hugged a velvet pillow to her chest, her legs folded beneath her, tail lightly thumping against the floor as she processed Sira’s words.
"Yeah," she murmured, "that’s why they want him gone. That’s why they want Lux... and want to erase him."
Her voice was soft, but the edge was there. The kind of slow-burn fury only Sloth-born could carry... quiet, steady, and impossible to extinguish once lit.
She rested her cheek on the pillow. "But... he held Hell’s economy together for centuries. Stabilized Greed’s flow. Balanced the sin-bonds. Managed infernal soul-trading so well that even the Celestials started copying his thods."
Sira’s jaw clenched. Her gaze locked on the window, not Lullaby. Her voice ca slower now. Not unsure, just heavier. asured. Like every word dragged sothing behind it.
"He worked himself to the bone, Lulla. To the soul."
She gripped the armrest slightly tighter. "Every ledger. Every system rewrite. Every new contract he enforced, it wasn’t just numbers. It was him. He burned for it. Every sleepless night, every realm-hopping negotiation, every betrayal he buried under charm and strategy, he endured it because he thought it would matter. He believed it would an sothing."
Lullaby exhaled. Quiet. "And this is what he gets?"
Sira’s silence answered.
Her lips pressed together, brows knitting in frustration. "This isn’t fair."
Sira let out a breath, slow and dry. She didn’t disagree. She didn’t need to.
"Nothing’s fair, Lullaby," she said.
Her voice wasn’t cruel. Just tired. Resigned in that dangerous, elegant way she carried herself when reality confird her worst instincts.
"Fair is what you make with power. And Lux made power out of chaos." She glanced at her wine glass again, but didn’t drink. "They admired it. They praised him in public. But they hated it underneath."
Lullaby blinked. "Because he didn’t obey?"
"Because he didn’t kneel." Sira’s tone was sharp now. "Not to Zavros. Not to the Elders. Not even to Lust herself. He walked his own path and made the rest of us follow it."
She looked up at the ceiling for a mont, eyes distant. "They can’t control him. So now... they want to remove him before he becos a god they can’t leash."
Lullaby bit her lip, hugging the pillow tighter. "Are you going to tell him?"
Sira was quiet.
For a second. Two. Then...
"I will," she said finally. "But I need the right ti. This isn’t light news, Lulla."
Her voice softened, but not her resolve.
"This is everything he’s worked for. Everything he’s been fighting to protect. The entire Greed system he rebuilt. The contracts he rewrote. The empire he stabilized after Zavros nearly lost it all."
She set the wine glass down without sipping it.
"And now... they want to betray him. After all of that."
Lullaby looked down. "That’s cruel."
Sira’s lips curled, barely. "That’s Hell."
Lux stood just beyond the doorway.
Breathing.
Listening.
Bleeding silently behind his smile.
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