She shivered. Didn’t he realize? The agony had been unbearable. “My body was on fire.”
He flashed a smile, and she knew he was thinking of the kiss.
“I don’t mean with lust. I mean my skin was literally charring, and so were the trees. My body was blistering with flames.”
He arched an eyebrow. “When you were on top of me?”
“No, before that. I was angry. Enraged. And everything was aflame. And then when I—when the mage jumped on you, I guess she felt something else. The pain subsided, and it felt calm again.”
“See? I’m magic.” He rose, pulling a stray leaf from his hair. “Maybe the flames were a vision of your future if you give yourself back to the Brotherhood. I don’t know what else it would be. Your spirit isn’t a fire mage. Ambrose said you tasted of hawthorns.”
Rosalind nodded. “She’s a forest mage. That explains all the tree stuff. I should have felt it through her aura, but it’s too intense for me to even think straight.”
“My spirit worshipped Nyxobas. Yours was aligned with Druloch, the god who lurks in the woods’ dark shadows.”
“The mage was drawn to the darkness. Something about the cycle of life and death. But the flames were so strong. She must be using fire magic.”
“It’s not possible. There are three shadow gods—sea, night, and forest. They’ve been warring with the gods of fire and light for millennia. That means there’s no way you’re connected to fire magic.”
The sea god. A chill whispered over her skin. She’d scented a sea-witch on the Thorndike Campus. Could that mage be connected to all this? Something told her not to mention it to Caine. It was entirely possible that Rosalind was responsible for yet another mage’s capture, and she had no way of knowing if that mage had been evil or just another poor idiot caught up in things beyond her control. She wanted to change the subject. “I’m not well versed in the shadow gods and fire gods. I’ve only been taught about Blodrial, the one true god.”
“Blodrial fell from heaven after the celestial wars, just like the others. The only thing that sets him apart is that he doesn’t believe humans should speak Angelic.”
Of course they shouldn’t. She’d just seen evidence of what the Angelic language could do to a human mind. “Right. Because it’s evil in human bodies, and it screws people up. Blodrial is right.”
“He’s against it because the gift of magic to human kind was the original sin that banished our gods from heaven. The gods are all trying to free themselves from their punishment.”
She’d never heard this version before. “And what is their punishment?”
“The celestial gods—those who won the war, trapped them in matter. The shadow and fire gods are trying to gain freedom by collecting human souls, competing with each other. But Blodrial thinks he can repent by stamping out magic on earth. Erasing the original sin. None of them can accept their punishment, and we all lost something. Even humans.”
“What did we lose?” She was grateful for the temporary reprieve from thinking about the flames.
“Ignorance. Knowledge comes with a price. When humans learned to speak the Angelic language, they also learned about something else—their own mortality. Pedestrians have a story about a snake and a fruit tree that covers that concept.”
“Don’t eat from the tree of knowledge, or you’ll die.”
“Exactly.”
She rubbed her throbbing temples. This was all too much for her now. She didn’t want to think about her own death, not after she’d felt so close to it just moments ago. “Okay. So you have no idea why I felt like I was on fire?”
“No idea. It never happened to me. I had a whole lot of rage and bloodlust, but no flames. Still, as long as you stay near me while you learn to control the aura, I can help. You said it didn’t hurt when you were near me.”
He still wasn’t telling her the whole story. “Why are you and Ambrose so invested in my power?”
“Unlike the Brotherhood, we want you alive. Isn’t that enough information for you?”
“No. It isn’t. And I don’t get it. How are you able to stay sane with two souls?”
“I had to accept the mage, and then bend him to my own will. I had to become stronger than him. Now I use his knowledge and power, but he doesn’t control me.”
Shuddering, she thought of her blackening skin. “If I don’t wear the ring, she’ll consume me from the inside out. I won’t be me anymore.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
She wanted to see Tammi and Josiah, and walk the halls of Thorndike University. She didn’t want to live in a world where people casually tossed human hands onto the floor, and she definitely didn’t want to live with a violent lunatic invading her brain, forcing her to do things against her will.
How could my own parents have done this to me? Magic had obviously twisted their minds into insanity. “I don’t want to be a mage. I don’t want to be like you. I need to at least try to get my old life back.”
“The Brotherhood will not give you your life back.”
“Josiah will help me. He’s my Guardian.”
“That’s absurd. No one in the Brotherhood is trustworthy.”
“I’m in the Brotherhood. And anyway, am I supposed to believe you’re trustworthy? You still won’t tell me what Ambrose wants me for.”
Josiah simply had to help her. Even if she couldn’t rejoin the Brotherhood, she needed to claw some kind of normal life back.
His voice grew cold. “Your Guardian obviously hasn’t guarded you very well so far, but it’s your own life if you want to throw it away. I hope the burning you endure at the hands of the Brotherhood is somehow less painful than the illusion of burning that so terrifies you. Though it’s highly improbable.”
He turned, striding down the overgrown slope, and she followed, trying to maintain her balance on the slippery rocks. At the bottom of the hill, Caine paused to look at a small, flowering shrub.
His hand hovered over a cluster of white flowers before he plucked them from the plant. Wordlessly, he handed them to Rosalind, then stalked into the parking lot.
She twirled the delicate stem in her fingers. Hawthorn blossoms.
Chapter 16
After they returned to the waterfront, Caine parked his bike under an oak. He climbed off, and Rosalind followed him across a patch of grass by Salem Harbor. The briny wind kissed her face, skimming over her tattered dress.
She had no idea what they were doing now. It wasn’t like he’d filled her in or anything. But she had a bad feeling he might change his mind about his promise to help her exorcise the spirit. He seemed to think she was making a terrible mistake, but he wasn’t the one who had to feel the flames when the ring came off.
He paused before a small gray stone in the ground. Chanting, he flicked his wrist. She gasped as a dark, steep-peaked house glimmered into view. She had to catch her breath at the illusion—or maybe it was the other way around. The house’s invisibility was the illusion.
Caine opened a red door into a hall, warmly lit by candles. “My other home. The secret one.” He motioned for her to enter, and she followed him into an ivory-walled hall. “Right now, you’re the only person who knows this exists. Aurora will be only the second person. If you’re still going to insist on rejoining the mage Hunters, I’ll have to steal this particular memory from you before you leave. Or I’ll have to kill you. Your choice.”
Rosalind cocked her hip. “I don’t really like the idea of you rooting around in my brain.”
“What are you afraid I’ll see?”
She toyed with her ring. You’d slaughter me if you knew the terrible thing I did. She pushed the thought away. “It’s more that I don’t particularly want brain damage.”
“I’m an artist of dark magic. I’d leave all your computer science jibber-jabber intact.”
“Mmm. Sounds like you really know what you’re talking about.” She frowned. “When are we going to see the sybil? Where’s this nightclub?�
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“We’ll go tonight, once Aurora gets here. Hopefully, none of Elysium’s patrons have heard about your little incident with Bileth.” He motioned for her to follow him into a high-ceilinged living room. “In the meantime, let me introduce you to my parlor.”
Parlor. It was a strangely old-fashioned New England word for a delicately beautiful place. Silvery wallpaper covered the walls, decorated with ethereal spider-web patterns. Midnight-blue curtains hung from bay windows overlooking the water, and candles burned in silver candelabra. The entire place was impeccably tidy. He probably had cleaning spells to do the work for him.
She sat on a deep blue sofa, smoothing out her tangled hair. She looked like a mess. At least the tattoos had faded from her skin, but her dress was hanging off her—probably shredded around the time she threw herself at Caine.
He sat next to her, and she glanced at him, trying not to stare at his beautiful features, his strong jawline and glacial eyes. “I think I might remember you. I remember glimpses from when we were kids. I remember someone like you on the beach. A young boy with gray eyes.”
He eyed her cautiously. “I’m older than you. My memories are a bit clearer.”
Curiosity bloomed in her mind. “What do you remember? What were my parents like?”
“Powerful.”
He wasn’t giving details, and she had the unsettling feeling they’d done something terrible to him.
A sigh slid from her. “I remember feeling loved. Even if my parents were witches, I felt safe then. But you weren’t safe. They threw you out.”
He gazed into the candle flames. “Nothing I didn’t deserve,” he said, so softly she barely heard him.
A lump rose in her throat. “You were just a kid.”
“Is that so?” A muscle feathered in his jaw. “You don’t think like a Hunter with all that empathy of yours.”
“Maybe the Brotherhood isn’t as bad as you think.” She thought of Mason, making a mental correction. “Some of them are awful. But most of the Brotherhood made me feel like I had a home again. I felt valued, and important. I had a place among them. They give me a purpose.”
“Is it worth your life?”
“They have to take me back. I don’t have anything else,” she said.
“That’s quite a lot of faith you put in them.”
“It’s not so much faith. It’s more like—”
“—A desire,” he said. It was the same phrasing Ambrose had used, but on an incubus’s lips, the word had an entirely different association. Her mind burned with the memory of his lips on hers, of her body pressed against his, fingers coiled into his hair.
But he’d put a stop to their kiss. It was stupid, but she almost felt the sting of rejection.
“You know when I kissed you earlier?” She flinched at her own question. Shut up, Rosalind.
His lips curled in a faint smile. “The image is fresh in my memory.”
“I was just wondering, since you’re an incubus…” Why in the gods’ names was she bringing this up? She’d lost all her impulse control since she started hanging out with demons. “Why did you stop me? I thought incubi fed off—” She cleared her throat. “You know.”
He arched an eyebrow. “You know. Is that what you call it in the Brotherhood?”
Her chest flushed. She had no idea why she’d gotten sidetracked by this conversation. She should be focusing on the sybil right now, and finding a way to piece her life back together. “You know what I mean.”
He ran a finger over his lower lip, studying her. “Why did I stop it? Because you weren’t in control. I can tell you it took a tremendous amount of restraint on my part.”
Rosalind stared at him, entranced by the flickering candlelight dancing over his skin.
“Hello?” Aurora’s voice broke the silence.
Rosalind let out a long breath, letting some of the tension uncoil inside her.
“Caine!” Aurora shouted from the doorway. “Am I invited in?”
“Of course you’re invited in,” he said.
Beaming, Aurora glided into the living room. “So this is the secret lair of the great shadow mage.”
Rosalind arched an eyebrow. “Vampires can’t enter without an invitation? I thought that was a myth.”
“It is,” Aurora said. “But I just feel awkward barging into someone’s house. I mean, Lilu led me here—but she’s a bird so it wasn’t, like, a proper invitation with words. And I didn’t want to be a third wheel in case you were banging.”
“You’re welcome here,” Caine said. “Bileth won’t find this house. He may track us to the waterfront, but we’re invisible to him.”
Aurora threw herself down on a chaise lounge. “I would have stayed to help with the fight, but I had a feeling you’d be doing that bone crunching thing, and I didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire. You need to tell me everything that happened.” Her eyes landed on an oak liquor cabinet, and within moments, she was across the room, rooting around the glass bottles. “I’ll need a cocktail for this.”
“Bileth knows I’m a Hunter,” Rosalind said.
“How the hell did you make it out of there alive?” Aurora pulled out three Martini glasses, laying them on a tray. She filled them with whiskey. “You must’ve blinked your big eyes at him to charm him. Showed off a little of that perky cleavage.”
“Not exactly,” Caine muttered. “She impaled him with a fire poker.”
Aurora whirled, the tray of cocktails in her hands. “She did what?”
“I’m a Hunter,” Rosalind said. “I hunted him. I didn’t know he was some kind of demon royalty. And I was worried about Caine.”
Caine quirked a smile. “You were worried about me? I thought you were a Hunter. I’m pretty sure I’m among your intended prey.”
Flustered, she plucked a cocktail glass off the tray. “Maybe, but right now you’re my one hope at exorcising the spirit.”
Aurora shoved a glass in Caine’s hands, before downing her own in one go. She collapsed into a chair. “None of that matters now. We’re all dead. For real this time. Did you know Bileth is known as ‘The Scalpel’ for the way he removes people’s skin just for fun?”
Rosalind’s stomach turned a flip. When Caine had been trying to convince her that demons and Hunters were somehow morally equivalent, he’d conveniently left out the bit about The Scalpel.
Caine traced his finger along the rim of his glass. “It’s not a good situation. And, to make matters worse, we can’t kill Bileth without provoking a major war.”
“If you gave him the Hunter,” Aurora said, “he might forget the whole thing.”
Rosalind tightened her grip on the Martini glass. “You can’t give me up. It wasn’t my fault. I thought I was helping Caine.”
Aurora arched an eyebrow. “You’re really caught up in this fault thing, aren’t you? Hasn’t anyone ever told you that sometimes bad things happen to good people?”
“We’re not going to give her to Bileth,” Caine said. “Ambrose would never forgive it—and anyway, the Hunter is growing on me. At least in the rare moments when she’s quiet.”
Aurora was already refilling her drink. “You’re directly defying Ambrose’s orders to train her, so I’m a bit confused why you’re suddenly worried about his forgiveness.”
“I wasn’t going to defy him entirely,” Caine said. “I have a solution that meets Ambrose’s needs as well as hers.”
This was the first Rosalind had heard of this concept. “Wait. What solution that meets both our needs?”
“Ambrose wants the mage’s spirit to survive,” Caine said. “The spirit will simply need another body. And I have a willing host who would gladly accept this power.”
“Who?” Aurora asked.
He sipped his drink. “Me.”
Rosalind straightened. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. The mage’s mind will break you. It was physically painful. Her body was on fire. And can you really handle another soul?”
Auror
a glared over her Martini glass. “What do you care what happens to him? Once you run back to the Brotherhood, it will be your job to ram an iron spear through his heart. You get that, right?”
“I won’t come for him, even if he doesn’t erase my memories.” It was the first time the thought had ever occurred to her, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew them to be true. Even if he was a demon, he’d done nothing but help her so far.
The longer she spent with the demons, the less she wanted to hunt them.
“Oh, really? You won’t hunt him now, and he’s growing fond of you?” Aurora’s eyes raked over Rosalind’s dress. “Did something happen between you two? And would that something have anything to do with the state of your clothes, and the fact that you both smell like you’ve been rolling in dirt?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Rosalind said.
Aurora rolled her eyes. “I was wondering how long it would take. At least maybe now that she’s taken the edge off, she can relax a little and listen to some sense.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Rosalind said. “We were trying to take the ring off to see what would happen.”
“I get you. I haven’t ‘taken the ring off’ in weeks and it’s making me crazy.” Aurora sloshed her drink.
Rosalind blushed. “I meant literally. My actual iron ring.”
Aurora’s face brightened. “Thank the gods. Taking that off is the first good thing I’ve heard you say since I’ve met you. You’re going to let Caine train you, like Ambrose said?”
Rosalind tightened her fist. “It’s not possible. There’s something wrong with the spirit. She was on fire, and so was I.”
But Rosalind was almost starting to see Aurora’s point. With a demon lord hunting her, she needed the protection of someone powerful. Once she exorcised this spirit, there would be no more Caine and no more Ambrose.
Only the Brotherhood, who wanted her dead.
Her chest tightened. What if Caine and Aurora were right? What if the Brotherhood would never accept her innocence?
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