It was clear who was in charge from the moment one of the angels had swung open the door. Immediately, I felt my heart plummet. A pit had begun to root itself in my gut, an ugly, tangling weed. 

The moment I had been waiting for, this questioning. I waited weeks and yet, in that moment, there was no going back now. I tried to swallow down the sliver of regret in my throat and wipe my mind of all the raw emotion from just minutes ago. 

Comet was behind me, guiding me. Her hand latched onto my shoulder, a firm reminder of her presence and her pledge of loyalty to me from back in the courtroom. 

Her touch was somewhat of a strange comfort, though I couldn't describe it. 

It was somewhat extraterrestrial in a way. Never have I ever had such a parental sort of protection or sort of safety net as just a simple touch of someone's hand settled on my shoulder. 

As a younger demon prince - in my Underworld life, rather my Earth life - I had never known such a touch. 

My father was always absent, always busying himself in other Kingly tasks around the Underworld, never really caring to stay too long for me nor Tom. 

It was the reason why Tom and I were close, only relying on each other and running around the Earth streets, scaring the humans. We had nothing better to do really, as our father was never around. 

As funny as the memory was, I couldn't help but think how Tom had become so two-faced, so hard to figure out. He may seem tender and fragile in one moment, yet the next, he fights back with inexplicable rage and aggression. 

It was his anger and hostility after my nightmares back in the Underworld that he had seemingly changed. The way he had chained me to that wall, tried to tear out my wings, left me to rot in that damn cellar. 

Only then, did Tom turn his back on me, his own 'brother.'

Though, the more I think about it, he probably never saw me as a brother anyways. Besides, he wasn't the one with those fake memories. He wasn't the one who felt the tug of a betrayal of a brother, someone I thought I'd always known. 

Fourteen hundred years. 

Fourteen hundred years of immortal years that we had spent together. 

The memory of him stapling my wings to the wall for beating him in ping pong. The memory of him coming back an hour later to discover I was still there. I can still recall how he laughed at me as I sobbed and struggled to free myself from the pitchforks on each side of me. 

It was that feeling of true pain and aggravation that I had found my demonic powers, my green fire. I had mustered so much anger and fury at Tom that day that I had summoned everything in me, all of my pain had exerted outwards in a sort of intensity, an external fire. 

My power was so fierce and unexpected that it had knocked Tom clean off his feet and his smile had been wiped clean off his face at the force of exerted energy. 

The pitchforks had practically flew outwards, both passing by Tom and missing his head as they soared across the room. They landed with a clatter behind him and his laughter was long gone. It was the first time I'd ever seen him stunned to silence, driven speechless by a power much greater than his. 

I will never forget the look on his face that day. I had never seen so much fear in his eyes as when he had looked at me. Though for some reason, I had never felt so superior to him. 

He had always been undeniably better than me in almost every way. He was the older sibling, the first to the throne of the Underworld, the first to discover his powers before me and Dad's favorite because Tom was more resilient to Dad's physical attacks, whereas I took a few more seconds to stand up after getting a kick in the gut. 

It was Dad's test of resilience and embrace of pain that earned us his affections. 

Tom was the one that survived the dinners with our dad, as he liked to give us a little extra scare and put poison in one of our bowls of soup. 

Tom was always the one to get poisoned.

He would start a coughing fit and then his eyes would water and his breaths became more panicked and hoarse. He would grip his throat in an attempt to breathe and slam his fist repeatedly on the dining table until finally, his eyes rolled to the back of his head and Tom would collapse out of his seat. 

Through the continuous torture of his own son every family dinner, our dad would burst into a fit of laughter and I would watch him wipe the tears from his eyes at the sight of Tom gasping and wheezing. 

In the end, Tom would always get back up after having one of his many immortal souls visibly leave his body and would practically claw at the table to get back up. 

As for me, I was lucky enough to never get that poisoned bowl of soup, however Dad never did let us know when the soup was poisoned, and if so, who's. 

When I recall the memories now, I think I understood why my bowl was never poisoned. 

Because Dad was too afraid to try it on me. Because he knew of my mortality. He knew of my longer hesitation to get up after a heavy blow to the stomach, whereas an average demon can take the dramatic, yet casual pain. 

In his own way - a very twisted, disgraceful way - he loved us. He was able to kill Tom on multiple occasions, yet was never seemingly able to abuse me in the same way. It was Tom that was always the joy for our dad to come home to, meanwhile I made it by just being ignored, unfavored, unseen. I was simply just a shadow and Tom was the demon. 

In a way, it made it a little easier, I presumed. I was mostly left unbothered and on my own. I guess I always preferred it that way. 

Until one day, Dad had actually looked me in the face. 

"Why aren't you laughing? It's funny!" He had demanded one night at dinner, after witnessing Tom die for the third time that week. His question was threatening and booming and antagonizing. 

Frankly, the reason I never laughed was obvious. Watching Tom die the first time when I was only one hundred and two was more than frightening, especially because Tom was just as frightened as I was the first time he had fallen over, hunched over and unable to get in a shallow breath. 

I stood so still in that moment, rose from my chair at the table at the sight of Tom clawing and collapsing to the floor. I could only imagine the look on my face - of grief and horror - as Dad had slowly risen from his chair as well. 

He exploded with some sort of fury or frustration of my disobedience to laugh at Tom that he had thrown me into the lava pit of the Underworld only as punishment. 

"If you knew what was best for you, you would start acting like the demon you are! Now fly like one or die like the mortal you reek of!" 

I felt a shiver crawl up my spine remembering his words. They feel too real to be just a fake memory. It was a day I remembered so well, with so much clarity, I still can't believe it was just a memory of the swipe of Tom's magic hand. One swipe of a demonic spell to wipe away all the years of my life, however old I was before I was a demon. 

That was the night I had learned how to fly out of my own instinct to live. It was my own real mortal fear of being burned alive that opened my wings, gilded me just above the searing lava pit below, the soles of my shoes feeling the scolding heat radiating off its surface. 

The dangling laces of my shoes were just so very close enough to catch a flame from the bubbling fire. The air was so thin and strangling, I felt my throat become swollen shut. 

And yet, Dad remained unimpressed when I re-emerged from the lava pit he threw me in. 

I didn't return home that night. I didn't even dare to. I never looked back. I flew to the surface. I flew higher than my father cared to survey. 

And what I discovered on Earth was more than I could have ever imagined, so much more than boiling lava and suffocating, thick gases. 

Cool, crisp, refreshing air. Clamoring voices and sounds and colorful lights from the city streets below as I observed from the safety and security of the darkened rooftops of buildings. Above me, a gaping, neverending infinity - a sky, full of twinkling lights - stars. 

That was the first time I have seen the stars. 

Every chance of my newfound freedom I got, I went to the surface to bask in the beauty of the mystical world. I used the open, empty night skies to practice my flying. I used the utopia as a sort of getaway from my father. 

The only real reason and logic I could find in returning back home every night was Tom… my former brother. 

Now, there is nothing the Underworld can offer me but a dark cellar in Level Five, where the heat is so excruciating, that you can practically feel the true temperature of the molten core. 

I wished to never have to catch a glimpse of that place ever again. 

However, the more I used my wings, the more they would tire and give out easily from being neglected for so long. The sudden exertion and strain of overworking my dormant wings had brought on an infection quickly. 

After finally using my wings, they had been in disuse for so long before my first flying lesson that I overused them, abused them. I had to have Tom help me medicate them. Still, I envied how strangely fast his injuries healed compared to my own. 

Strangely, that was the last time Tom treated me as a brother without any hesitation. It was the very last time that he ever did anything for me truly and not for his own benefit. 

But that was before he began treating me like a traiter, as if I had wronged him somehow, yet I wasn't sure why. 

All of it seemed to make my head hurt. Trying to piece it all together still confuses and irritates me. 

Maybe I really am mortal. Maybe King Lucitor and Tom are really not my family. Maybe my wings are not infected from lack of use and sudden strain from overuse. Maybe my wings are infected from mortal injury and bone reconfiguration to make way for wings. 

I shook my head noticeably and shut my eyes tight, trying to push away the vivid flashback of my transformation by the lake that night and focus on following Comet's guiding hand on my shoulder. 

We were going down a corridor in the courthouse and the light of it all was still overwhelming - the white walls and white marble floors I walked on. Even the chandeliers above my head were adding a pounding pressure inside my skull. I had to squint just to look ahead. 

I guess a few weeks in a dark and dreary holding cell to a bright and blinding outside world can really alienate a person. 

I was watching my feet move one at a time down the hall that I hadn't even noticed we had reached the door until Comet had steered me back, latching her hand onto my shoulder more tighter as if to hold me back. 

I could feel someone's eyes looming over me, tracking my every movement. When I braved myself enough to finally look up, I found myself face to face with an angel, James, the one who had led us here and had gone ahead of us to hold open the door. 

They sat me down in an isolated room, an otherwise empty room with a rectangular, white table and two chairs on each end. Not only that, there was a blacked-out window to my right in the room, a one-sided window, I had concluded to myself. 

I wondered how many other angels were surveying me. 

Comet had gestured me to sit down in the open chair, opposite to James. There were two other angel men in the room, both of which appeared to be around the same age as James, if not, younger. One, of which, had begun to near closer to me, something gleaming in between his hands. 

He took my arm and began attaching the shining, metallic contraption onto my wrist until I heard a noticeable click that must've fastened it into place. 

It wasn't until it started to beep in a high frequency, in a sort of rhythm, that my noticeable bewilderment is what made James exchange a look of amusement, an enjoyment. 

"What is this thing?" I asked, turning my wrist to further observe the bracelet. 

“Oh, don't worry about it." James spoke up quickly, matter of factly. "It's just tracking your heart rate and will let me know when you are lying." 

I looked up at Comet, a sudden panic striking through me. I was searching for a sign of confidence in her face from James' words. Instead, something about her appeared uneasy as she stood next to me, her arms folded across her chest while she bit down on her thumb's nail, staring blankly down at the ground. 

Something about her unsure demeanor had unnerved me. I turned back to James as he continued. 

"Usually, we use them if we suspect an act of falsehood in an angel. You should feel somewhat lucky to be the very first demon to try it out." He went on in an unsettlingly boasting manner. He proceeded to roll up the sleeves of his button down polo and then set his folded hands out in front of him on the table. "So... are you ready?”

...

Hey y'all! It's Liv. Things are getting serious in this book! I'm so excited!

But a while ago, I got a comment on my first PL&DE book saying, "OMG, this is so cute! I can just imagine Marco learning how to fly with his father in the Underworld!"

And to that I said, "Challenge accepted."

This was the Underworld afterall. Why would you assume the best? Everything Marco has had to learn in his fake memories has been learned the hard way. King Lucitor was never the easy parent. He raised his son, Tom, to rule with an iron fist, just like him - so why not Marco too?

Anyways, there's a little food for thought for ya!