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

42

"Oh, that," I said. "No, I was completely lying."

Silence.

Lots of silence, actually. What were they doing? Staring at me? Staring at each other? I couldn't tell if Mammon had calmly accepted my retraction or if he was waiting for me to say something more, like psych! Got your ass! Yeah, okay, let's make a contract —

"You should have figured that out by now," I added, if only to break through the heavy lull that fell between the three of us. "Lust is — I mean, Asmodeus, is a Prince. It would take a top-of-the-line class of contract to bind him at all, and any contract of the higher tiers protects itself against self-sabotage, doesn't it? Of course I can't just cancel the contract on a whim, and I can't help you kill him in order to negate it either. Obviously."

"You said..." Mammon's voice was guttural and strained as if speaking out of a squeezed throat. "You said the words. You offered to break the contract."

"Doesn't the contract let me say whatever I want as long as it's not actually sabotaging it? I'm not invoking spells. They're just words. Besides, the contract would let me say it regardless, because Asmodeus killing those people was directly acting against me."

"I was?" Lust sounded bewildered.

"Yes, even if you didn't know it." I turned my attention back to Mammon. "The contract didn't punish him because he wasn't doing it maliciously, but every action he takes criminalizes me more. If he'd massacred them all and I ended up caught by the Coven, the consequences would have fallen on me. I want everything to go back to normal. I want to be exonerated, too. That was what I wanted when I proposed the contract, so of course it'll respect that. So I can act against Asmodeus if it's to stop him from acting against me."

... I think.

That was right, wasn't it?

It had to be. It wasn't fair otherwise. There was no way a contract wouldn't have provisions against unilateral violations. Even regular human contracts had those. How much more a contract bound by original magics?

More silence. Okay. Maybe I was getting a little nervous now. Mammon couldn't attack Lust because of that Shard connection, but that didn't mean he couldn't attack me. Even if I had some intrinsic secondhand protection because of the binding magic that connected me to Lust, it must be weak. He could probably snap my bones right through it.

The pressure on my shoulder squeezed, reminding me of how close Lust stood.

Right. He had my back. If Mammon attacked, he would have to go through Lust first. Thanks, contract.

But it would be nice if they didn't start killing each other again in the first place. I didn't do anything that wrong, did I? Yeah, I'd offered a contract under false pretenses which was a shitty thing to do, but even if I hadn't been desperate and out of options, lying was nothing new to demons. They lied all the time. How many times had Grandma warned me about how dangerous contracts were, because demons could never be trusted? I wasn't the bad guy here. I'd had no choice, and...

"You heard her," Lust said, gloating thickly. I'd never heard him sound so delighted. "She's mine, and no one else's. Though if you behave, perhaps you'll earn a few scraps here and there."

"The scraps will be your bones. You don't deserve her."

"Of course not, but I have her anyway. And oh, yes, I've had her. You know it well." He moved behind me, the movement so fluid that he was already pressing me back into him before I knew it. His hands wrapped around my hips, fingernails sharpening to dig into my skin through the robe. "Can you imagine it? It was like cream, satin, honey..."