Thirty minutes later, the doors to the throne room opened again.
Maze walked in.
John’s attention drifted away from the reports surrounding him.
The throne room did not actually pause, but to Maze, it felt as if it had. Maps still burned in the air, contracts continued shifting through silent commands, and Hell still screamed beneath their feet, yet the distance between her and John seemed to tighten with every step she took.
She wore a blood-red dress.
For once, it was not leather, straps, blades, or anything designed to make enemies lose focus before she slit their throats. The dress clung to her without exposing too much, elegant in a way that made her feel more vulnerable than she liked. Red heels clicked against the black stone floor with each step. Her lips were painted the same deep shade, and a faint trace of perfume followed her through the throne room, sharp and warm beneath the usual scent of smoke, ash, and blood.
Maze hated how aware she was of herself.
The fabric felt strange against her skin, almost gentle, which made it worse. She had spent most of her existence treating clothing as armor, temptation, or distraction, but this dress felt like none of those things. There was no blade at her thigh, no familiar weight of leather against her body, and nothing about it made her feel ready for a fight.
Walking toward John like this made something restless crawl beneath her ribs.
She stopped in front of the throne and lifted her chin.
John finally looked at her properly.
'HOLY SHIT!' he thought. 'HOT! HOT! HOT!'
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Maze shifted her weight. Irritation rose quickly, mostly because irritation was easier to manage than whatever else she was feeling.
“What?” she asked, her voice sharpening before the silence could get under her skin. “I know I look weird, but this is all I have that doesn’t look like a BDSM costume.”
John slowly stood from the throne.
His focus remained fixed on her as he walked down the steps one at a time, calm and unhurried, until he stood directly in front of her. Close enough that Maze had to lift her head slightly to keep looking into his eyes.
His gaze moved over her once.
There was nothing careless in it. No greed, no crude hunger, and none of that thoughtless staring she had received from men, demons, and lost souls who forgot she could remove their heads for it.
John looked at her as if he was actually seeing her.
That made it worse.
Maze almost snapped at him to say something before she did something stupid, but his hand rose first. His fingers brushed a loose strand of hair away from her face, gentle enough that her body almost forgot how to react.
“Have some confidence in yourself, Maze,” he said quietly. “Because right now, you look gorgeous.”
Maze froze.
'Wha... What’s this feeling?' Her mind seemed to catch on itself. 'I... he... what?'
There it was again.
That strange, stupid feeling she still did not have a name for.
Lust was easy. It had shape, heat, hunger, and an ending. She understood it well enough to control it, use it, or ignore it whenever she wanted. This was something else entirely. It slipped past all the places she knew how to guard and settled somewhere deeper, tightening her chest while warmth spread through her body for reasons she could not turn into violence, sarcasm, or anything familiar.
She hated it.
A worse part of her wanted him to say it again.
Maze narrowed her eyes, forcing her face back into something sharp before he could notice too much.
“You better not be saying that just because you want me to behave.”
John’s mouth curved faintly. “I would never insult you by assuming one compliment could make you behave.”
“Smart answer.”
“I try.”
Before Maze could decide whether to threaten him or smile, John snapped his fingers.
The throne room vanished.
Space folded around them, and Maze tensed instantly. For half a second, darkness and heat swallowed everything, enough to wake every old instinct in her body.
Then the air changed.
The screams were gone.
Maze stood beneath a clear blue sky. Sunlight warmed the grass under her feet while birds drifted lazily overhead, their wings cutting through the quiet air. Nearby, a small lake glittered beneath the light, and beside it stood a massive tree with wide branches and deep green leaves that swayed in a breeze Maze could actually feel against her skin.
The place had none of Hell’s familiar comforts. Smoke did not sting her nose. The ground held no blood beneath her heels, and no chains dragged across stone beneath the cries of begging souls.
Suspicion rose out of habit as she studied the open space.
Peace had never been something Maze trusted. Peace usually meant someone was hiding a knife behind their back or waiting for the right moment to reveal the trap.
Here, there was only sunlight.
Somehow, that felt more unsettling.
“Why is it so quiet?” she asked.
John stood beside her with his hands in his pockets, watching her reaction instead of the scenery.
“I thought we were going to torture some souls and play with them for fun,” Maze said.
John laughed.
The sound pulled her attention back to him faster than she wanted to admit.
“Okay,” he said. “You really need to get out of that monotonous life of yours and do something new for a change.”
Maze stared at him.
“Monotonous?” she repeated. “I live in Hell.”
“And somehow, you still made it boring.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Careful.”
John’s smile widened slightly. “For our first date, we’re starting with something peaceful.”
The word seemed to offend her more than the scenery did.
“Peaceful,” she said slowly. “Like what?”
John started toward the giant tree, and after a brief hesitation, Maze followed. The open field made her feel exposed in a way she disliked. There were no walls to put her back against, no deep shadows to hide threats, and no screams to cover movement. Only grass, wind, water, and John walking ahead of her as if this was perfectly normal.
“Well,” he said, “we sit under the tree and relax for a while without worrying about torture, souls, demons, rebellions, throne politics, or punishment schedules. Then we have some wine and food. Maybe after that, we can take a swim around the lake.”
Confusion settled across Maze’s face.
“And then have sex?”
John stopped walking and looked back at her.
Maze lifted her chin as if daring him to laugh. “What? I’m trying to understand the rules.”
Amusement warmed his eyes. “You really don’t know how to do anything else, do you?”
“I know how to do plenty of things.”
“Name three that don’t involve stabbing, torture, seduction, or avoiding an honest conversation.”
Maze opened her mouth.
Nothing came out.
Her silence lasted long enough for John’s smile to turn smug.
She pointed at him immediately. “Don’t look proud of yourself.”
“I’m extremely proud of myself.”
“I could still stab you.”
“You could try.”
There was no real bite behind her glare this time.
John continued until he reached the shade beneath the giant tree. With another flick of his fingers, a blanket appeared across the grass, followed by a low table covered with food, wine, fruit, and several dishes. Everything looked painfully normal.
That made it suspicious.
Maze stopped at the edge of the blanket and studied it like it might reveal teeth.
John sat first, then looked up at her. “Relax. It’s not a trap.”
“That’s exactly what someone says when it’s a trap.”
“If I wanted to trap you, you’d already be trapped.”
After a brief pause, Maze nodded. “Fair.”
She sat across from him with a stiffness that made her want to kill anyone who might have witnessed it. Her dress shifted around her legs, and for a moment she did not know what to do with her hands. In Hell, she always knew where to stand. She knew how to threaten, how to strike, and how to make someone afraid before she even drew a blade.
Here, beneath a tree beside a quiet lake, with soft grass under her hands and sunlight on her skin, she felt completely out of place. Even her time on Earth with Lucifer had never given her this much stillness.
Worse, John noticed.
He noticed without mocking her, and somehow that made her feel even less steady.
Instead of pointing it out, he poured wine into two glasses and handed her one.
Maze took it and sniffed cautiously. “Is this poisoned?”
“You’re a demon.”
“So?”
John leaned back against the tree. “No, Maze. I did not bring you to a quiet pocket dimension for our first date just to poison your wine.”
She took a sip, expecting something ordinary.
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
“It’s good.”
“I know.”
“Arrogant.”
“Accurate.”
Maze looked at him over the rim of her glass. “So this is what humans do on dates?”
“Some of them.”
“They sit around, drink wine, eat food, and talk?”
“Usually.”
“That sounds terrible.”
John picked up a piece of fruit and bit into it calmly. “You haven’t tried it yet.”
The lake drew Maze’s attention again.
Water moved gently beneath the sunlight, and birds circled above it without screaming, burning, or turning into monsters. Nothing lunged from the grass to attack her. Nothing waited beneath the soil. No threat announced itself from the sky.
The quiet pressed against her from every direction, uncomfortable in a way she had not expected.
Beneath that discomfort, however, something softer waited. Something dangerous precisely because she did not understand it.
A part of her wanted to stay.
Maze hated that part immediately.
After a long moment, she looked back at John. “Why did you make this place?”
His gaze followed hers toward the lake, and for the first time since they arrived, something in his expression shifted.
“At first, for training,” he said. “I needed isolated spaces where my magic could expand without damaging Hell’s structure. Then I started making different environments. Deserts, storms, oceans, cities, battlefields, empty voids.”
Maze tilted her head. “And this?”
“This one was for me,” he said.
Maze’s fingers tightened around the wine glass.
“For when the screaming gets too loud?” she asked.
His silence told her more than a speech would have.
“Yeah,” John said eventually. “Something like that.”
Maze looked away first.
The answer bothered her more than she wanted it to. She had watched him sit on Hell’s throne without breaking. He had killed rebellious demons, restructured punishment sectors, judged souls, studied infernal law, and commanded ancient horrors like he had been born for it. The calm with which he handled Hell had made even old demons whisper.
But this place revealed what the throne room never did.
John had not become immune to Hell.
He had simply learned how to endure it.
Maze stared at the lake, pretending the sunlight on the water was more interesting than the ache spreading quietly through her chest.
“I still don’t understand what I’m supposed to feel,” she said.
“You don’t have to understand it immediately.”
“I hate that answer.”
“I know.”
“It sounds like something annoying people say when they don’t know the real answer.”
John turned his head slightly toward her. “Sometimes the real answer is right before your eyes. You just have to look at it long enough.”
Maze let out a quiet scoff.
Her fingers shifted against the blanket. For several seconds, she sat there without moving, glaring at the lake as if the water had personally betrayed her. Then her hand reached out and grabbed his.
The gesture was rough, almost aggressive, as if she wanted to make it clear that she was choosing to do it rather than asking for permission.
John looked down at their joined hands.
Maze kept staring at the lake.
“Don’t make it a thing,” she warned.
His fingers closed gently around hers.
“I won’t.”
For a while, neither of them said anything.
Maze did not know when her body finally stopped holding itself ready for a fight. It happened slowly, without her permission. The tension in her shoulders loosened first. Her breathing became quieter. The hand gripping John’s remained firm, but the pressure lost its edge.
Ten minutes later, the fight had finally gone out of her.
Her head slipped against his shoulder, her fingers still caught in his, and for once, Mazikeen of the Lilim looked almost peaceful.
John stayed beneath the tree, his back resting against the bark as he looked down at her face.
A faint smile touched his lips.
'Rest well, Mazikeen.'
--
Next Ch: Azazel Awakened