Andrealphus slowly had begun to regain his composure ever since Lucretia had let him out of the chapel. His power was quickly returning to him, and he soon found that if he refrained from shifting his form for a while, the pain abated and the wounds healed much faster.
In his current form--that of a man pierced by arrows, his face hidden behind a featureless mask--he got up and began to pace, testing the limits of his chain. Surely, the thing was iron, and iron burned him in the material world, but every chain had a weak link. And if he ground his teeth and bore the pain and made the best use of it for long enough, he could use it to get his revenge.
And oh, what a glorious, bloody, horrible thing his revenge would be! During those long days he had spent in that chapel, he had made sure to devise new, unimaginable cruelties for her, the likes of which had not been thought of even by the master of Abaddon! Already he played them out in his mind, and it helped greatly in abating the pain of his wounds.
He knew that she had cast a spell of binding that held both him and the stoic angel captive here. He also knew that they were unable to harm her unless the spell was undone. But he needed to know the spell of binding and to utter it backward, thus negating its hold on them.
But to know the spell, he needed access to the library. And to do that, he needed to gain her trust. And that would take a steely resolve and a lot of patience.
Thankfully, his millennia-long experience as a citizen of Abaddon had supplied him with both.
***
Lucretia found that her little angel slave was more than a perfect match for her, serving to dispel her feelings of disgust and guilt, if only temporarily. She would go to him after she had dreamed of Eli, and he would soothe her with tales of grandeur of men that could have been. When she came home, haunted by the bitter stares of her subordinates, Hael would tell her of their woes, and she would address them. When she did not feel the need for carnal pleasure, he would sing to her the sonnets of Heaven.
What she also found out, during her regular trips to the old dining room where she held the demon, was that that creature proved to be an excellent advisor, despite his apparent lack of taste in choosing his forms.
The first time she asked for his advice, he had assumed the form of a decapitated woman, speaking to her through the severed head in her arms. It told her of impending treachery by one of the company's shareholders, and she planned ahead, eliminating her enemy before he could act.
The second time, he had the form of a large dog, sick by some strange disease, its hide covered in scabs. She asked him about the loyalty of a man she was considering as a financial advisor, and the demon told her to instead place her trust in his son, who was not as much of a bastard as his father. The man, though only twenty years old, was moral and put his client before himself.
The third time, the demon had abandoned his grotesque forms and had this time turned himself into a handsome young man in his late thirties, dressed sharply, with just a hint of brimstone all about him, and slitted eyes, like a snake's. This time, however, Andrealphus had known she wasn't there for business.
"Your angel is boring you," he said before flashing a grin.
"How did you know?"
