Chapter 149 The Meal
Six months later.
Beelzebub had been planning the meal since before the battle was over.
He had spent two days preparing, not cooking himself but standing in the kitchen, giving orders and going over every detail with his head cook until everything was exactly what he wanted. When people started arriving that evening the table was set, the food was out, and he was standing at the head of the room looking like a man who had done something worth doing.
Asmodeus walked in first and looked at the table.
“You actually did it,” he said.
“I said I would,” Beelzebub said.
Asmodeus sat down and reached for something immediately and Beelzebub moved his hand away.
“Wait for everyone,” he said.
“I’ve been waiting six months,” Asmodeus said.
“A few more minutes.”
Asmodeus sat back and crossed his arms.
Cain came in with Lucian behind her and Asmodeus looked at them.
“Together?” he said.
“Don’t,” Cain said, and sat down.
Lucian sat beside her and poured two glasses of wine without being asked and set one in front of her and she picked it up without looking at him.
Mammon arrived with documents under his arm and Beelzebub looked at them.
“No,” Beelzebub said.
“They’re important,” Mammon said.
“Not tonight.”
Mammon set them on the sideboard and sat down.
Belphegor came in with Sera and they found their seats beside each other without discussing it, the way they always did now.
Sera looked at the table.
“This is nice,” she said.
Beelzebub looked pleased.
Azrael came in last with Lilith and the table was full. Eight of them, all of them, no agenda between them, just the food and the candles and the evening ahead.
Beelzebub looked around the table.
“I said one condition,” he said. “One meal. All of us. No arguments.” He paused. “We’re here.”
“We’re here,” Sera said.
“Then let’s eat,” Cain said, and reached for the bread.
The meal was long and moved the way good meals moved, not in a straight line, conversation starting in one place and ending somewhere completely different, plates passed and refilled, wine going around the table more than once.
Lucian poured the second round without being asked and Mammon looked at his glass.
“Eastern valley,” he said.
“Yes,” Beelzebub said.
Mammon nodded, satisfied, and he drank.
Asmodeus had been telling a story since the first course and it had grown considerably in the telling and Cain was listening with her chin in her hand, knowing exactly where it was going and letting him get there anyway.
“That’s not what happened,” Lucian said.
“You weren’t there for the whole thing,” Asmodeus said.
“I was there for enough of it.”
“You left before the interesting part.”
“The interesting part is what I’m questioning,” Lucian said.
Asmodeus kept going and Lucian looked at Cain and Cain looked back at him with an expression that said she agreed with him and was not going to say so right now and Lucian accepted this and refilled his wine.
At the other end of the table Sera and Belphegor were in their own conversation entirely, low voices, heads close, and occasionally one of them said something that made the other smile in a way that wasn’t for anyone else at the table, and nobody interrupted them.
Lilith sat in the middle of all of it and looked at the table, really looked at it. Asmodeus is still going, Lucian is still pushing back, Cain choosing her battles, Mammon eating with focused appreciation, Beelzebub watching everything with deep satisfaction, Belphegor and Sera in their corner, and Azrael beside her.
She thought about waking up in a bed she didn’t recognise with three moons outside the window and Sera bursting through the door and the two of them clinging to each other not knowing what any of it meant.
They had done considerably more than survive.
Azrael leaned close to her.
“You’re quiet,” he said.
“I’m watching,” she said.
He looked at the table the way she had been looking at it and then looked back at her and she felt him understand it without her having to explain it.
“We did this,” he said quietly.
“We did this,” she said.
Beelzebub stood when the plates were mostly cleared and the candles had burned lower.
“I want to say something,” he said.
The table went quiet.
“I have been alive a very long time,” he said. “I have sat at a lot of tables. I have rarely asked for anything simple because simple things always seemed too small for what I was.” He looked around at all of them. “I asked for this. One meal. All of us together. No arguments, no politics, just the people I have spent centuries alongside.” He picked up his glass. “And here it is.”
Nobody spoke for a moment.
“That was sentimental,” Asmodeus said.
“It was,” Beelzebub agreed, and sat back down.
Cain looked at him across the table.
“It was a good meal,” she said.
“Thank you,” he said.
They stayed long after the meal was finished. None of them in any hurry. The candles burned lower and the wine was finished and the conversation moved at the easy pace of people who had been through something enormous together and had come out the other side of it and were sitting in the proof of that.
Eventually, people began to say goodnight.
Mammon first. Then Lucian, quietly, with a nod around the table. Beelzebub stayed until nearly everyone had gone, and when he finally stood he looked at the table one more time, the cleared plates and the burned-down candles, and he looked satisfied in a way that went all the way down.
Cain and Asmodeus left together still arguing about his story, their voices carrying back through the door and then fading down the corridor.
Belphegor and Sera left last, side by side, her hand in the crook of his arm, and Lilith watched them go and felt something settle completely in her chest.
Then it was just her and Azrael and the quiet dining hall and the burned-down candles.
He looked at her.
“Ready?” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
They walked out together into the corridor and the palace was quiet around them and the night held everything and the demon realm stretched out beyond the windows dark and peaceful and entirely theirs.