Hell's Consort

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Archdemon Empress Luna

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Apollyon did not doubt that they would bleed as her long, sharp fingernails dug into her palms,  "It boggled my mind how she had successfully possessed me without my knowledge."

"I—I'm pregnant with your child, Apollyon."  As she bit her lip, Luna admitted shyly and averted her gaze. She would rather stare at her husband's chest rather than deal with his probing sapphire eyes, afraid that she might say the wrong thing.

Apollyon didn't respond.

Luna could feel a rising warmth on her cheeks as the seconds went by.

She clenched her fists, waiting... waiting...

Her husband must have blinked at her shocking confession in disbelief if the rise and fall of his muscular chest with a smattering of thin hair was any indication.

Her husband would believe her, right?

What if he doubted her and assumed it was an Archdemon's baby.

Luna's soul was cold--so cold.

Apollyon jerked his head back and lifted her chin with his finger, forcing her into intense eye contact.

Luna couldn't hide away from her husband because he didn't allow her to look away, not even once.

"What? When? How?"  His voice raised its pitch with an excitement that was barely contained.

If he were happy with the news, then it would be fine!

Apollyon's breathless queries made her heart flutter like a burst of light had infiltrated inside her chest.

She giggled at Apollyon's priceless reaction.

He glanced at her stomach as his hand on her sensitive flesh moved upwards.

Frowning, he asked, "Your stomach is still the same, though."

"I just came back to my body. It's still very much a seed." Luna explained, chuckling at her husband's words.  Did he want her to immediately have a big stomach when the baby hadn't grown yet? "I think it would grow in a couple of weeks now that my soul had returned to my body along with the baby's."

"I can't believe this," Apollyon exclaimed as he cupped her cheeks, landing a cute smack on her nose. "We had been separated for almost a decade!"

"You know that the time frame in Hell was different from this Realm, Apollyon." Luna's eyes closed of their own accord during the kiss, but her ear-to-ear grin remained.  "To me, I was just missing for months."

"But for me, seven years of missing you felt like forever." Sighing, Apollyon enveloped her in his embrace. "I suffered more than you--"

"I know it's unfair, Apollyon, and I'm so—"

"No! No! That's not what I meant."  Apollyon waved a hand in dismissal. "I'm not comparing your suffering with mine, wife. This isn't a competition on who suffered more during our separation."

Apollyon placed his hand at the back of her head and proceeded to caress her hair, giving her a sense of comfort, "I'm just glad that it was harder to be away from you in my situation compared to you because I don't want you to get hurt and drown in your sorrow for a longer time. That's bad for the baby."

Luna whispered as she began to tear up. "I know."

"I'm worried, my beloved." Apollyon's eyebrows were drawn together as he lifted her nightgown.

He scrutinized the soft flesh of her stomach.

Apollyon caressed her womb and scowled, "I couldn't feel her presence yet."

"It's there. I could feel our baby's spirit in my womb, but it needed to get settled in my own body first before it grows." Burying her face on Apollyon's neck, Luna stored her husband's scent in her brain for eternity just in case they get separated again.

"It must be a shock of her life when you had taken her spirit with you, and suddenly she had a physical vessel."

"She?" Withdrawing from him, Luna raised an eyebrow, amused. "Now, you were assuming the gender of our baby again."

"I told you I wanted a girl." Her husband's eyes looked darker and melancholic, "I remember when you were gone, wife…"

"Hmm." Luna gave her husband a questioning gaze. "What is it?"

"There was a ghost of a silver-haired child who looked like you visited the Ivory Tower," Apollyon told her, his lips quirking at the memory. "It was funny how she had claimed that you were her mother."

"My heart ached so bad when she couldn't recognize me as her father if ever she was our child for real." He said in regret. "Mayhap, it was a mere hallucination because I have missed you so much."

"Tell me more."

"She had the same eyes like me." Apollyon noted, amazed, "I thought--"

He sighed. "I had this inkling that she was our daughter, but maybe it was just my depression playing tricks on me."

"Did she stay long?"

"No. She said she had to get back home because her father might scold her for wandering into our Realm." Luna felt like the mood in this bedchamber had turned a little bleak compared to before. "Now that I think about it, if she insisted her father isn't me, then she wasn't your daughter, either. She can either be a ghost or a figment of my imagination."

There was a heart-stopping pause.

Apollyon looked like he was choosing his words carefully before he spoke, "This baby you're talking about is ours, right? Not your baby with other Archdemons?"

Luna couldn't speak and let out a nervous laugh instead. "Of course, it's yours, Apollyon."

He released a tension-filled sigh.

"I'm just kidding, wife." Apollyon's eyes crinkled, his kissable lips displaying a wide grin, "I heard only 'truth' when you said it was mine because your voice had resonated in my mind.''

"Ah." Luna nodded, and her voice trembled, "Really?"

A drop of sweat trickled down her forehead.

"You don't have to look so pale. I know you are loyal to me, just like I was loyal to you. I trust you wholeheartedly, and I believed in you." Apollyon playfully pinched her cheeks when he noticed her strained expression, "I know you only have eyes for me. You proved it to me when the Archdemon of Gluttony had taken you in the Dream Realm."

Luna immediately blocked her thoughts using the Archdemon Magic she learned from her Master, just in case her husband had tried to read her mind at that moment.

"You were missing for two weeks, and not once did you give in to his advances. You didn't stay long even if he had convinced you. That is what you told me." Apollyon's eyes sparkled, and it made Luna grimace. It was weird that her husband wasn't suspicious of her at all, treating her as if she could do no wrong. How would he react if he found out the truth about Luxen?

"It wasn't my intention to stay longer, husband, but the Archdemon of Envy had trapped me in Hell so that she could take over my body," Luna replied, shifting about the bed, trying to roll over to the other side.

Unfortunately, Apollyon had gripped her in place so that she couldn't even escape him.

Luna didn't like to look at her husband for too long, afraid that he would sense the lies in her eyes and words coming out of her mouth, hiding a secret that could potentially destroy them.

She sighed, giving up, and focused on the subject of Lilith instead. "I have observed that the Archdemon of Envy was obsessed about you for some reason. You don't know how much she angered me when she addressed you as her husband as if she had already taken my identity when she was merely sharing her plans to make me suffer in paranoia."

Luna gritted her teeth in anger. "Lilith was the one who admitted that her plans of taking over me had failed because of the baby inside my body."