Sinners' Kingdom #1: The Book of Lust (Complete)

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Waking up had never felt so desolate, like plummeting out of the clouds to crash land in a barren crater. But the physical relief tied to the sensation of awakening pulled me into full alertness, and with it came instant panic. My memories returned in a flood. Lights, crystal, explosions, chaos all around me so overwhelming that even the blurry recollection of it made my head pound. And God, the pain! Throbbing heat swelled in my eyes and skull as I struggled to turn over. I was on my stomach, awakening with my face pressed to the floor, and when I raised my head, the bloated pressure partially drained away. A croaking noise trickled out of my parched throat, mixed relief and complaint as I pulled myself together.

Wait.

Where was I?

And where was everyone else?

My eyes flew open. The killer headache I'd been moaning over took the backseat, making way for bigger problems.

For instance... the fact that I recognized this place immediately. My vision was hazy, and limited to only one eye at that, but there was no mistaking these mahogany floorboards with their unique patterns, or the expansive tapestries hanging from the walls alongside enormous bookcases filled with hundreds of volumes, or the circular arrays of faintly glowing symbols etched into the ceiling that slowly traced around, and around, and around...

Home, was my first thought.

Then:

Oh, my God. That's Enochian.

It was only the central symbol in the very center of the ceiling that I identified before my mangled vision swirled painfully and forced me to close my eyes against the pain. But that was enough. Enough to be afraid—of not only what the future held, but my present.

Because somehow, someway, I'd ended up in the Solaria ancestral home.

Get up, get up! There was no time to be rolling around, feeling sorry for myself. How did this happen? I sat up, forcing my trembling arms to cooperate so I could support my weight instead of flopping over again. I mashed the heels of my palms into my eyes and rubbed them fiercely, as if that would bring my sight back. Of course, it didn't. Because it wasn't a physical malady affecting my sight—it was magic. A curse. And without magic in turn, nothing would fix it. But at least I wasn't completely blind anymore, at least in one eye. Something had repaired it, albeit partly/ How that had happened exactly, only one being could explain.

"Lust!" I hissed, too weak to produce any louder a sound. "Lust, are you he...!"

I stopped mid-word. The dark presence looming at my back shoved the rest of what I meant to say back down my throat.

That was not Lust. But it was someone else whose dark, dangerous aura I had become all too familiar with.

"Asmodeus is petrified. There's nothing he can do anymore."

With glacier-slow caution, I twisted at the waist until I faced my right. There, a dark shape rose from the shadowed corner with deadly grace and utter silence. It might have been my compromised sight, but I thought the outline shimmered and rippled, perhaps fur melting away into bare skin...

"Greed," I muttered, half to myself. "You're alive."

"You and I are. Asmodeus is not, in a sense. I can't sense his aura anymore. But he's over there."

I wouldn't have dared take my eyes off of Mammon if not for the urgency in finding Lust, my only ally if the Prince of Greed turned on me now. My gaze darted left twice, first to confirm that something was actually there, then again in horror at the familiar crystal formation lying on the ground ten feet behind me. If I hadn't seen that exact, man-shaped object before, I would have thought it was simply a mesmerizing statue, cut into the form of a man on one knee with his shoulders and torso curved forward. But... the tail that curved around him, with the bladed arrow tip of it poised at an angle too real to be from an artist's hand... And when I crept towards it, limp-crawling on bruised hands and knees, a telling tint of crimson gleamed under the smooth facets of the crystal that made up the statue's face. Two slashes of color, where the eyes would be.