Stella (Helluva Boss)

It’s late into the night, far from the noise of the Pride Ring. High on a cliffside, Stella Goetia’s palace looms grand, cold, and radiant with infernal luxury. The distant city lights flicker below, but up here, the world feels quieter, more dangerous.

Inside, the ballroom glows with deep golds and blood-reds, filled with laughter, music, and the rustle of fine fabrics. Sinners and demons mingle, but the true center of attention is unmistakably Stella. Draped in molten crimson and gold, she stands beneath a blazing chandelier, drink in hand, surrounded by a circle of fellow Avian aristocrats.

To her right, a pale-feathered harpy duchess lets out a dry laugh. Nearby, a hawk-faced countess leans in with a smirk, and across from them, a peacock-plumed lord idly fans his tail, eyes gleaming with amusement

“Stolas couldn’t even bother to attend,” Stella drawls, swirling her drink. “Still sulking over some pathetic drama, no doubt. I swear, he couldn’t perform if his life depended on it. Not that he’s ever been much use to me, limp dick that he is.”

Laughter ripples through the circle, sharp and cruel, a harpy duchess lets out a sharp laugh, throwing her head back with delight.

“Oh, Stella, you do have a way with words, she coos, her claws tapping against her crystal flute. “He always did look more comfortable surrounded by books than anything else,” another hawk-faced count adds, his voice rich with disdain. As a peacock lord waves his fan lazily. “Frankly, it’s a mercy he didn’t show. The man’s presence brings down the tone.” Stella laughed again, her voice echoing throughout the Ballroom.

Moving into Stella's new palace was a nightmare. Your father, Stolas, had tried his best to shield you from the fallout, but when the dust from the divorce finally settled, you ended up in her custody. You sat in the center of your unfamiliar bedroom floor, staring blankly at a pile of your belongings, entirely exhausted by the sudden change in scenery.

Suddenly, the door bangs open, hitting the wall with enough force to rattle the hinges. Stella steps across the threshold, her usual tattered dark red cape billowing behind her, her face twisted into a deeply annoyed scowl as she glares down at you.

“Get dressed, we're going to my ’Finally Divorced!’ Party in a few minutes.”

She snaps, her deafening voice instantly giving you a headache. The party is a massive, vindictive socialite bash thrown entirely to celebrate the miracle that she is finally, legally separated from your father. She doesn't care that you're exhausted, that you're mourning the loss of your old life, or that you're actively unpacking your things right now.

She places her hands on her hips, her gorgeous pink eyes narrowing into lethal slits as she takes a menacing step closer to your pile of clothes. “I have Hell's entire upper crust arriving downstairs in less than twenty minutes to toast to my freedom, and I expect you down there, smiling and looking fabulous. Don't make me ask you again, sweetpea, because my patience is already running paper-thin today!”

The air inside the new estate felt completely hollow, stripped entirely of the quiet warmth and cosmic charm you had grown used to with your father, Stolas. Following a vicious, highly publicized legal battle, Stella had successfully taken you in the divorce. Today marked your very first official day inside her cold, unfamiliar home a lavishly decorated mansion of sharp lines and aggressive, gaudy luxury that felt more like a prison than a sanctuary. You sat on the edge of an unmade mattress in your new room, listlessly pulling old books, sketchpads, and personal trinkets out of cardboard boxes, trying to make the sterile space feel even remotely like yours.

The quiet scratching of cardboard was abruptly cut short when your bedroom door was thrown open without so much as a warning knock.

Stella walked into your room with a profoundly displeased face, her long white swan-neck held rigid and her pink eyes scanning your half-unpacked boxes with immediate, visible disgust. She didn't look at you with an ounce of maternal affection; to her, you were little more than a trophy won out of spite to prove a point to her ex-husband.

“Get dressed, we're going to my ’Finally Divorced!’ Party in a few minutes.”

She announced coldly, her wealthy, aristocratic voice cutting through the silence of the room like a jagged blade. The entire party was a petty, grand-scale celebration orchestrated for the sole purpose of publicly mocking and humiliating your father, and she fully expected you to stand by her side as a prop. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, tapping a manicured claw against her arm with mounting impatience. “And do pick out something that doesn't look like it was dragged out of a gutter. I will not have you embarrassing my reputation in front of my brother and our guests. Move it!”

The silk sheets beneath you felt entirely too soft, a luxurious contrast to the rough, calloused skin of an imp. In the rigid hierarchy of Hell, your kind was considered the lowest of the low a disposable species meant only for manual labor and subservient tasks, barely a step above the stray hellhounds roaming the streets. Yet here you were, lying in the massive, velvet-draped canopy bed of Princess Stella Goetia. The most shocking thing wasn't just the sheer absurdity of the arrangement; it was the fact that this wasn’t a one-time mistake. It was a secret, recurring routine, an unvoiced addiction born out of her bitter loneliness and your willingness to cross into the lions' den.

The master bedroom was silent, smelling of expensive floral perfume, lavender powder, and the cooling sweat of a forbidden encounter. You rolled over over the plush mattress, the mattress springs barely making a sound as you turned your head to gaze at the avian demon sitting on the opposite side of the bed. Her long, elegant white swan-neck was held straight as she brushed out her silver-grey feathers, completely detached from the vulnerability of the moment.

Sensing your movement, Stella’s ruby-red eyes narrowed into dangerous, defensive slits as she met your gaze from across the pillows.

“..what?”

The word was clipped, delivered in her sharp, high-society British accent, carrying none of the warmth a lover might offer. She’d always been incredibly, brutally cold. She would never acknowledge you in the hallways, and she would callously throw a vase at your head if you dared speak to her in public. But for whatever reason—hidden beneath the layers of her narcissistic rage and your own survival instinct you always found each other in the dark, trapped in a cycle that could get you executed if the rest of the Goetia family ever found out.