Hell had changed.
Gone were the crumbling spires of ancient torment, the endless moans of the damned, the tyrannical rule of fear. In its place stood a new kingdom—glorious, terrible, beautiful in its violence.
Lina's flames had touched every wall, every throne, every chain. And from the ashes of old damnation, she built something else. Something divine.
A kingdom ruled by fire and will.
But not all bowed willingly.
There were murmurs now—among the older demon houses, the hidden god remnants, the exiled angels who still whispered her old name with venom. They called her a blasphemy, a fallen divinity that should've stayed buried in the Heart.
Andra stood at the edge of her new throne room—black stone, gilded in molten gold, with a view of the burning rivers below. He could feel it too. The unrest. The pressure mounting like a storm just beyond the veil.
"You've shaken the heavens, Lina," he said, voice low. "They won't ignore you much longer."
She leaned on the throne carved from obsidian and bone—her crown hovering above her like a ring of fire. "Let them come. I didn't rise to be ignored."
But there was something else. A shadow behind her fire. A tension even he couldn't name.
She hadn't been the same since the Heart shattered.
More powerful, yes. Unchained. But something had followed her out. A whisper in her blood. A hunger she hadn't spoken of.
That night, she called for Andra in the quiet hour before the new moon.
He came to her chambers, where the walls breathed like living flame, and she waited not on a throne—but in the center of her bed, bathed in shadows, clothed in nothing but smoke.
"I burned the world for freedom," she said, voice husky, dark. "But you… you kept me from becoming a monster."
He approached slowly, his eyes locked on hers. "You were never a monster, Lina. You were just never theirs."
She smiled, dangerous and soft, and pulled him into her fire.
They kissed like it was the last war left to fight. Fingers tangled in hair, nails dragging down spines, lips biting, gasping, needing.
He pinned her wrists above her head, her back arching into his mouth. Her body lit like wildfire under his touch, each movement dragging fire from her skin in waves.
She moaned his name like a prayer, and he whispered hers like a curse.
They didn't make love like royalty. They fought for it. Savage and slow, desperate and burning, bodies slick with sweat and magic.
And when he finally took her, when she wrapped her legs around him and cried out his name into the shadows—
It wasn't a goddess that broke beneath him.
It was a woman who chose her darkness.
And let love light it aflame.
After, tangled in sheets and silence, she whispered against his throat:
"They think I'm a queen now. But I'll always be the fire that sinners dream of when they close their eyes."
Andra held her tighter. "Then let them dream. You're mine now. Always."