by Nadine Mutas
Two demon younglings ran around—Aleksandr’s nephews, Lucas and Jordan, aged five and ten. Aleksandr currently chased them around the patio with a toy that looked like a sword made of light, and their screams and giggles filled the air, the eyes of the adults riveted to their play.
Arawn was about to make his presence known when something tugged at his pants leg.
Someone.
He looked down at the tiny duhokrad girl. Dimitri’s toddler daughter, Chloe, gazed up at him with her silken blond hair fastened into a wobbly pony tail, her small frame clad in a pale rose miniature dress of tulle and sparkles.
“Pick up,” she said in her tiny voice.
He raised a brow.
“Pick up.” With an expression of utmost concentration edged with budding frustration at his obvious slowness, she stretched her arm higher.
Demon Lord and god he might be, but he took the only course of action when faced with a toddler holding out a toy phone to him demanding he accept the call.
He picked up.
“Hello,” he said, putting the plastic thing to his ear. “Who is this?”
She held the twin of the phone she’d handed him to her own ear. “Me. More cookies!”
“You want more cookies?”
An earnest nod. “Yes. Need more.”
“Is that so?”
More nodding, her ponytail swinging. “We’re all out!”
“And why is that?”
“Daddy ate them all,” Chloe said, lowering her voice to a dramatically loud whisper. “But Mommy needs them. She had a baby, and she’s hungry. She needs alllllll the cookies. So.” She took a breath. “Bring more cookies.”
Arawn nodded in understanding, amusement a prickle in his veins. “That sounds like an emergency. I will bring you more right away.”
That’s when he noticed the silence. Looking up, he took stock. Every single person in the backyard stood or sat frozen, gaping at him with varying degrees of shock written on their faces. Before anyone could move, the door to the house burst open, and Dimitri’s mate, Tori, stormed out.
She ran over to Arawn and Chloe, grabbed her daughter, and screamed, “She’s not yours! You won’t take her from me!”
His powers hushed in darkness.
Dimitri dashed up to Tori as she hauled the toddler away from Arawn, the male duhokrad’s despair over his irate mate yelling at the Demon Lord a pulse in the night.
Tori, all protective mother demon, shook her head wildly, her eyes a feral, swirling red-and-black. Baring her teeth, she shouted, “I won’t let him steal her away!”
Dimitri managed to herd her back into the house along with his two sons, shutting the door behind them.
Arawn’s control over his breathing was an iron shackle, his magic threatening to pool darkness around him like a cloak of death. He clenched his jaw, the only outward sign of the corrosive anger inside him…and the barbed-wire edges of a hurt that pierced too deep. He dropped the toy phone on the grass.
Turning to the others on the patio, he caught Merle’s wide-eyed stare. “A word, fire witch.”
She blinked, shook herself, and came over to where he stood. Rings of exhaustion lined her eyes, her face a mask of worry and painful determination. He did not give a shit about it. Not tonight, not when his mood was dark enough to blacken the world.
“Did you tamper with your sister’s mind?” he asked without preamble, lethally soft.
Merle reared back, her mouth falling open. “What?”
His voice turned to a whip. “Did you?”
“I don’t know what business of yours that—”
“Do not,” he snarled through gritted teeth, “try my patience tonight. You will find it stretched precariously thin.” He stalked closer, his force pushing against her. “Did you alter Maeve’s memories of how your family was killed?”
“Yes,” Merle gasped, crumpling under his pressure. “Yes, okay? I did.”
“Why?” His powers coiled around him.
“It was too much for her.” Merle’s eyes glittered hard. “She was falling apart. When we got her out, that demon had just told her what happened back then. She never knew it was her magic—our grandmother had changed her memories, too, told her the same story I believed, but that fucker of a demon made sure she learned the truth, to break her even more. I had to delete that knowledge again.”
“Did you ask her permission?”
Her brows drew together. “What? No, I…” She narrowed her eyes, her hands clenching to fists. “What’s it to you?”
“You messed with her mind when she already suffered manipulation worse than you can possibly imagine. You took away her choice.”
She scoffed, her face a study in outrage. “That’s rich coming from the guy who bought her with a bargain!”
His power exploded.
Black velvet energy suffused everything, filled the air with crackling magic, snuffing out all light. The earth rumbled, rippled, quaked, broke apart on a crack just as he yanked himself back under control again, called his powers back into his pores, under his skin.
Light returned to the world, the moon’s glow illuminating the ashen face of Maeve’s sister—whom his magic hadn’t touched. In all his cold rage, he hadn’t harmed a hair on her head. Obviously intimidated, she glanced around at the flattened grass, the leveled trees, the hairline fissure in the earth that stopped just before her feet.
At the reminder of just how much power he kept on a tight leash most of the time.
“She has a right to know,” he said, and stopped the approach of her friends with a flick of his hand.
They froze, stumbling against an invisible wall.
Merle’s face became impossibly whiter. All confrontational attitude and biting defensiveness apparently sucked out of her, she stared up at him. “Please, don’t tell her. Please. It will break her.”
He curled his lip at her.
“You don’t know what she was like when she came back.” She shook her head, her voice breaking. “I was losing her. I wasn’t sure I could hold her here, she was so distraught… It was the only way. I had to make her forget.”
“And you would keep her oblivious still,” he growled.
“She won’t survive it!”
Stepping closer until she started to inch back, he softly said, “Such little faith you have in her. She deserves more credit than that.”
Utterly disgusted, he turned his back on her and stalked out of the yard, over the leveled fence, and through traces of glittering dark power hanging in the air, ignoring the sobs following him into the night.
Chapter 29
By the time Arawn found Maeve in her cabin again, he’d ruthlessly beat back the cold fury biting at his nerves because he didn’t want her to see it. She’d have enough of her own emotions to battle if she accepted his offer.
He’d perfected his facade of bored indifference or cold cunning over lifetimes, fooling even those who knew him best about his feelings and thoughts, but Maeve…when she opened the door to him for the second time this evening, she took one look at his face and asked, “What’s wrong?”
Deciding to take that as his lead-in, he indicated her to sit down, and said without further ado, “Your memories have been tampered with.”
Her mouth flattened into a thin line. “The demon.”
She never called him by name, the vile piece of shit who’d scarred her in the most vicious of ways, and Arawn understood the—probably subconscious—psychology behind it. To name him was to acknowledge him in a certain form, whereas to keep referring to him by pronouns and generic terms relegated him to insignificance.
He didn’t deserve to be named, his personhood acknowledged. Who he was should sink into oblivion, his name forgotten in history.
“No,” he corrected Maeve’s assumption. “By someone else.”
“Who?”
No matter how little he cared for Merle, he didn’t want to drive a wedge between the two sisters—for Maeve’s sake—so
his first impulse was to give an answer for which Maeve would undoubtedly call him out as evasive again. But as he told Merle, Maeve had a right to know, not just that her memories had been changed, but also who did it.
“Your sister,” he said, adding gently, “She meant well. It does not excuse the fact she did it without your consent, and without ever letting you know afterward, but her intention was to protect you.”
She swallowed, glanced to the side, and though her eyes were soft, her jawline hardened, her hands curling to fists. “It’s all she’s ever done.” She rubbed her upper arms. “I know she loves me, but sometimes…”
“Love can be suffocating.”
The look she sent him said he’d guessed right. “She came for me,” she whispered, deep emotion in the shimmering amber-gray of her eyes. “When I was dragged into darkness and pain, and he told me everybody had given up looking for me”—a hard swallow—“she came.”
That barely leashed anger snapped at him again, though this time for the cruelty of an experience her description only hinted at. Her lived reality was a thousand times worse, could never be expressed in simple sentences.
“I love her so much it hurts sometimes,” Maeve went on, “and I’ll always be grateful for how she relentlessly searched, and found, and came for me. But I think the…protectiveness in her, it’s almost too strong.” Shaking her head, she brushed a lock of her hair off her face—and didn’t push it right back. “It blinds her sometimes.”
“I can restore those memories for you,” he said into the heavy silence that followed. “If you wish.”
Her copper lashes trembled as she looked at him. “You know what she made me forget?”
He heard the question behind her question, nodded. “And it would hurt you more than anything you lived through in that warehouse.”
Her breath left her on a rush.
“Your sister thinks it would break you.”
“And you don’t?”
He touched her cheek, ran his fingers down to her lips, deliberately over part of her scar, but only as in passing any other part of her face, because that mark wasn’t what defined her. Her mouth opened on a soft gasp, as if she read his gesture correctly.
“I happen to believe,” he said in an intimate murmur, “you are made of fire and darkness and the strength to harbor a force inside you that even gods fear. The beast in you”—he laid his hand on her chest, over her heartbeat—“would never have chosen to be reborn in a body and soul too weak to house it.”
He stroked up to her throat, all the while watching her face and the tiny tells of her body with utmost alertness, and curled his hand around her nape. She didn’t flinch, didn’t shrink back, her eyes glowing and focused as she held his gaze.
“I think,” he continued, “your flame is so strong it will not be snuffed out by this.”
He squeezed her nape, caressed her with tiny movements of his fingers. “It is your choice,” he said after a moment. “You can decide to keep that particular box closed and the demons in it forever confined. Knowing of a sore spot and choosing to leave it alone can be as wise a choice as facing your darkness.”
She laid her hand on his arm, close to the hand grasping her nape, but not to push him away—she stroked her thumb over his skin, held onto him.
“However,” he continued softly, “if you choose to open that box, I will be here, facing that darkness and its demons with you.” Another squeezing caress of her neck. “It does not have to be tonight or tomorrow. Take the time you need to think about it.”
She closed her eyes, her facial muscles tightening. “You’ll be here?” she whispered.
“Every step of the way.”
When she looked at him again, her eyes were ash-kissed flames. “Then let’s take the lid off that box.”
Maybe, Maeve thought, she was a certain kind of insane to willingly tap into memories that could likely destroy her. Maybe the demon had given her a taste for pain, to the point she now sought it out. Because this was masochistic.
Or maybe she was simply tired of hiding, of cowering, of shying away from a challenge at the slightest flicker of fear. She’d indulged in that kind of evasive, escapist behavior all summer, spent months holed up in her room, in the safety of the Murray mansion, not daring to fight back against her anxiety. She’d let her fear control her, but she was done with that.
She started spitting in the face of her demons the moment she decided to walk into Arawn’s lair, and she wasn’t backing down now. Not confronting those memories was the same as locking herself in her room. Even with the demons confined to a box, they still controlled her. Because if she was afraid to open it, it was just another way of caving in to their power.
Aside from this deep determination to never run from her fears again, the other reason that made her decide to poke that hornets’ nest was a simmering, inappropriate curiosity about what could possibly be worse than her memories from the warehouse. She’d already scraped the bottom of hell.
“Just tell me when,” Arawn said, his voice of rough silk a sensual caress.
She still held on to his arm, to the strength in those corded muscles, the power vibrating beneath his skin. She wanted to sink into that power, wrap it around her, until every breath she took was of him.
With a nod, she said, “Now.”
He entered her mind on a whisper of darkness, and just like the times before, when he’d looked at the spell inside her, his presence was a consuming kiss of unadulterated energy to her mental senses—even though she suspected it was only a fraction of his full power.
That ancient otherness inside her stretched toward him, fiery filaments licking out from a yet-locked vault in her core. But this time his awareness didn’t veer in that direction, instead heading for another corner, the one holding memories of the second most painful time in her life.
The day her mother and sister burned to ash, her father turned into a living corpse.
She jolted under a dizzying suspicion. Why would he go for that time, those memories? What could—?
You are strong enough. A stark reminder, unwavering faith in his mental voice.
His power touched upon her recollection of that day…and what she’d believed for the past sixteen years melted away, dissolved to reveal the harrowing truth.
The backyard behind the old Victorian. Moira, smiling at something their father said from his chair on the back porch. Her mom, tending to the herbs close to the cherry tree, glancing up to wave Maeve over.
“Look at how the sage is growing,” her mom said, stroking the big leaves. “Want to help me dry these when I harvest them?”
Maeve nodded, giggled when her mom tickled her with the rosemary she’d just cut. Moira, caught in that time between childhood and adolescence, joined them and sorted the harvested herbs neatly into little bags, rolled her eyes when their mom tried to tickle her as well.
“Mooo-oooommm,” she said in that drawn-out tone her teenage friends used perfectly at any and all occasions.
“Come on, Monchichi.” Maeve grinned, knowing she’d get a rise out of her sister with that hated nickname. “Don’t be a spoilsport.”
Moira shot her a look, opened her mouth to give her some no doubt snarky comeback—she never got the chance.
A feral force of primeval fire hurtled out of Maeve on a wave of pure destruction. Screams rent the air—her own, and two others that shattered her flame-encased heart. A storm of red and orange and heat that caressed her, and then—a blast of witch magic, shaking the ground, compressing the air, pushing back against the blaze.
The flames let up enough for Maeve to see…two charred lumps where her mom and Moira crouched before—and the firestorm died down in a keening wail that tore from her throat.
The next second her grandmother ran through the swirl of smoke and ash, stumbled at the sight. With a choked sob, she fell to her knees, reached with trembling arms for Maeve.
Her grandmother’s face fell when she met her eyes. Cupping her
cheeks, using pulses of magic to feel deep inside her, she whispered, “Your powers…they shouldn’t be this strong.” A shake of her head. “It’s not possible. You—” She swallowed, stroked Maeve’s face, her voice breaking. “You need to sleep, child. Sleep, and I’ll…take care of everything.”
“Mom,” Maeve sobbed. “M-moira. They’re—I—”
“Hush now.” Tears thickened her grandma’s voice. “I’ll take care of you, darling.”
Blessed darkness like a velvet embrace, the mercy of oblivion.
Gasping, Maeve tried to haul in air—her lungs seized, her throat burned.
Burned, like the bodies of her mom and sister when she turned them to ash.
“No,” she rasped. “No.”
The light of the cabin filtered back into her eyes, Arawn’s hand on her nape a brand, a promise kept, and yet it wasn’t enough to stave off the roiling horror of the truth.
“No,” she cried again, her voice breaking, a thousand serrated knives slicing through her heart, her soul, the very fiber of her being. “I killed them.”
“Maeve.”
“I killed them.”
“Look at me.”
“I killed them!”
The scream that ripped her apart was nothing human, nothing mortal, echoing with the screech of a beast from the dawn of time. And, rolling out like flaming thunder, that same primeval power that had torn a charred hole in her family blazed its way out from the confines of its prison to consume the world.
The fire exploded out of Maeve with her scream of agony, threatening to tear Arawn to shreds. Not because of its power—because of the pain that razed her.
A shock wave of heat and flames hit him straight on, scorched the clothes off his skin and filled the cabin. He threw himself over her, wrapped his power tight around her small frame, a kiss of darkness to her blaze.
Delving deep into her mind, her core, he found the disintegrating spell, its layers giving way to the force of her pain, found the beast clawing out of the darkness.
He shoved out his power toward it.
