by Bella Klaus
My vision blurred with tears, and I blinked, letting them fall down my cheeks. I swallowed hard and asked, “Were those bullets enough to kill a demon?”
“Unfortunately not.” Hades appeared behind us, wearing black leather armor that looked like it had been made with the skin of a dragon.
I whirled on him, my hands clenched into fists. “How could you attack Theodore?”
His magic crackled across the room like bursts of lightning, and his irises burned with flames. “Do you think I would be callous enough to order the maiming of my own man?”
Clamping my lips shut, I met his glower with a determined stare. What the hell did I know about Hades? If I hadn’t seen him burned to ash, separated into jars, and with a fifth of his remains defiled, I would suspect him of working with Kresnik. Hades was unpredictable, unprincipled, and did whatever he pleased.
Valentine stepped between us and growled. “You will treat Miss Griffin with respect. Now explain yourself.”
Hades exhaled a long breath, sounding like it was an effort to even speak. “One of the enforcers I sent to shoot at Theodore’s pursuers was a preternatural.”
“What?” I peered out from behind Valentine, my mouth falling open.
“They’ve already invaded Logris.” His voice was sharp with bitterness. “This one wore an enchanted vest beneath his jacket to simulate a heartbeat.”
“No.”
Hades pinched the bridge of his nose. “On the plus side, each of the bullets, including those that hit Theodore, contains trackers.”
I stilled, letting the implication of those words soak through my skull. Valentine’s tense muscles relaxed, which I took to mean that he viewed this new development as hopeful. If we moved quickly, we might be able to reach Theodore before they tortured him anew.
“Please tell me we’re going after them?” I asked.
Hades swept an arm upward, creating a cheval mirror. “My enforcer research unit worked with all the people we collected from the Flame to track all possible locations of Kresnik’s new hideout.”
My brows rose. “You’ve been gathering information from them?”
He swept his arm down the contours of his armor. “Don’t let the tantalizing exterior fool you into thinking I’m all about the sex.”
“Enough,” Valentine snarled.
Hades stepped through the mirror, leaving us to follow.
Our next location was another control room, except this one was rectangular, twenty feet long, with desks manned by a dozen enforcers staring into computer screens. Firearms charged with white magic hung behind their chairs, making me wonder if the bullets contained some form of firestone.
Apart from the lack of movement and the faint scent of brimstone in the air, the place reminded me of Captain Zella’s bus.
“Captain Caria, did you get a lock on the tracking bullets?” he asked.
A tall figure in black emerged from the other side of the room. She was a slender demon about six feet tall with similar pale-skin and red-hair to both Coral and Namara’s human glamor.
She bowed low. “My lord, the signals paused beneath Trafalgar Square before scattering into eight locations across London.”
“Why would they do that?” I asked.
The enforcer stared down at me with a twist of her lips that said, ‘who the hell are you?’
I pulled back my shoulders and raised my chin. It was one thing to be intimidated by highly specialized ward masters, but I refused to cower under the stare of a woman who had probably participated in missions to capture and slaughter infant fire users.
“Answer Miss Griffin,” said Hades.
“It’s a common tactic when approaching enemy territory,” replied the captain. “In case they’re followed, the team will split into smaller units with most of them acting as decoys.”
“Or lead the pursuers into an ambush,” said Valentine.
Captain Caria inclined her head.
“What are these locations?” Hades crossed the room, placed his hand on a monitor, and turned an entire wall into a map of Great Britain.
Red dots concentrated around the Greater London area. He double tapped on the monitor, which made the map on the wall zoom in on the capital city.
London was shaped like a bottom-heavy hexagon missing most of its south-west. The River Thames cut through its middle in a wiggly line that passed a number of its boroughs, dipping down at the south-west side through Richmond and Kingston.
Captain Caria walked to the screen and pointed at the series of dots flashing beneath that stretch of the Thames, indicating that some of the bullets were still in Richmond Park. “A team of wraiths are scouring the surroundings for signs of Kresnik’s minions.”
I was about to ask about the level ten lockdown when my mouth clicked shut. Wraiths came from Hell, which wasn’t on restriction, and they could probably move through wards.
Glowing dots appeared and disappeared all over Greater London, from the Borough of Enfield in the north, to Bromley in the south-east. Only about four of them remained still.
“We can’t assume that the moving dots are not Captain Theodore,” said Valentine. “Those stationary signals could be traps to distract us from the ifrit transporting the captain around London.”
“We considered that, Your Majesty,” said Captain Caria. “If we had information to narrow down the locations to possible hideouts, we could stage a rescue in minutes.”
I turned to Valentine, placing a hand on his bicep. “Kresnik had a study in the derelict mansion. Is there anything you can tell us from your research?”
His brows drew together. “Which derelict?”
My heart sank. Didn’t Valentine remember it? “It was on a piece of land Kresnik made your father buy for him. He built a house on it in the eighteen-hundreds, but it got raided by Theodore and his team.”
“Forgive me for losing track of what you know and don’t know,” Hades snapped.
I leaned against Valentine’s side. “If you regained your memories—”
“Not if it involves absorbing that thing.” He stepped back.
Hades cleared his throat. “Perhaps you should discuss your lovers’ tiff elsewhere and refrain from distracting my trackers?”
I reached down and tried intertwining my fingers with Valentine’s, but he pulled his hand away, placing it on the small of my back.
Before letting him steer me out of the room, I turned to Hades. “Is there a chance Theodore might tell Kresnik to save himself from torture?”
“With enough pressure, anyone will talk,” Hades said in a voice heavy with the certainty of doom. “A demon at Theodore’s level might have survived another two days before he believed his allies shot him in the chest.”
“Right,” I whispered.
“One thing to consider before you leave, King Valentine,” said Hades.
Valentine turned to meet the Demon King’s gaze.
“With the help of an alchemist in my employ, I might devise a way to kill Kresnik remotely.” Hades paused to give me a pointed look. “The method of which I speak involves the exsanguination of a delectable young woman who will suffer increasingly brutal experiments before she dies in agony.”
My heart clenched, and my knees knocked together at the thought of Coral enduring the attention of that sinister alchemist.
Valentine’s furious growl was loud enough to make every molecule in my body vibrate. I wrapped my arms around his larger body, trying to stop him from rushing at Hades with a snarl.
To anyone listening, it sounded like Hades was talking about me, but my magical connection to Kresnik was no deeper than any of his other offspring. Valentine wasn’t protecting me out of love—I was just his possession, and he hadn’t yet gotten me to give him what he wanted.
My gaze slid to Hades, who winked, and an idea slotted into place. Since Valentine thought any attempt to bring back his memories was a ploy to get him under Kresnik’s control, perhaps he might trust me if I implied the soul star
was an object of immense power.
“Return to the palace with me,” I whispered into his ear. “It’s time to show you an artifact that will defeat your enemies.”
Valentine and I walked to the other end of the enforcers’ room. After he placed his hand on the mirror’s frame to set its location, we stepped through its rippling surface.
The moment we landed in Valentine’s mirror room, a quartet of guards in black pointed their automatic rifles at us.
“Your Majesty?” one of them asked.
Valentine raised a hand and shot out a pulse of magic. “Stand down, it’s really me.”
As the guards lowered their weapons, I glanced over my shoulder toward the mirror to see if the mercenaries would follow, but its surface barely rippled. I turned back to Valentine to meet his frown.
“Where is this artifact?” he asked.
Smoothing out my features into a mask of innocence, I said, “I left it in the cottage under my pillow?”
His eyes narrowed. “What is it?”
“It’s something you have to see for yourself.”
His gaze darted back toward the mirror, looking like he was considering returning to Hades and the others.
My heart jumped, and I grabbed his arm, pressing my entire body against his side. “If you come with me, I’ll give you anything.”
“Indeed?”
I nodded, meaning every single word. All I needed to do was get Valentine to hold the soul star. Once he felt that familiar magic, I was sure his soul would stream back into its rightful place.
Valentine wrapped an arm around my back and walked me out of the receiving room and down the palace’s hallway. His hand slid down to my ass, making my nipples tighten, and when he gazed down at me through hooded eyes, I offered him what I hoped was a seductive smile.
“Why have you changed your mind about me?” His deep voice echoed across the stone walls.
I placed a hand on his chest. “Seeing you punch the Demon King across the room was exciting.”
“I could have torn that coward apart if he didn’t keep teleporting away.”
My stomach tightened. Was this behavior the degeneration Healer Hadriel had talked about? When I’d first met this version of Valentine, he was cold, restrained, and uptight.
The real Valentine would never have resorted to violence against Hades so quickly, no matter how badly the Demon King had provoked him. The vampire leading me toward the glowing door had the makings of a tyrant.
As we rounded the corner, fairy magic drifted over us from the doorway, letting us step into the field of wildflowers, their blooms glowing in the sky’s bright light. In the distance stood the cottage with a plume of white smoke billowing from one of the chimneys on its thatched roof.
Valentine scooped me into his arms and bolted across the meadow. I clung to his neck, squeezing my eyes shut until he stopped inside the cottage’s interior.
I cracked an eye open and glanced from the kitchen area to the other side of the space, where the pale armchairs and sofas stood empty by the wall of windows. All the tea things had been cleared away, with no sign of Beatrice or Kain or even Macavity.
As Valentine continued up the stairs and to my bedroom, I glanced over his shoulder at the dining table to find that Mrs. Meg had left a tray containing enough quiche, salad, Scotch eggs, and peach upside-down cake for two.
My stomach rumbled. Perhaps after I’d convinced Valentine to reabsorb his nucleus, we might get something to eat before joining Hades for the battle.
We reached the bedroom and Valentine set me on my feet. I thought he would walk to the headboard, but he remained by the doorway with a palm raised. Smoky magic swirled around the room, pushing aside the pillow and raising the soul star several feet in the air.
“This is the artifact?” he asked.
I crossed the room and wrapped my fingers around the stone. Valentine’s magic radiated through my palm, filling my chest with warmth. This was a huge risk—taking advantage of Valentine’s rivalry with Hades and his sense of ownership over me. Now that he had calmed, he could crush the stone star into dust, destroying the nucleus.
“Would you like to examine it?” I turned to meet cold indigo eyes that darkened at the sight of the stone.
Valentine stepped forward but didn’t reach out a hand. “Tell me how it works.”
“The power this contains was enough to let me fight off Nonaginta-Novem when he attacked me in Koffiek.”
Eyes widening, he sucked in a breath through flared nostrils. “Give it to me.”
I pulled the soul star to my chest. “What will you do with it?”
In the blink of an eye, Valentine closed the distance between us, and his fingers wrapped around the stone. He could have used his superior strength to snatch it from my hand, but held it in a gentle grip.
“You said you would give me this power.” He leaned into me, his lips grazing my ear. “And once I had it, you would give me everything.”
My adrenaline spiked, and my skin tingled at his closeness, at his touch, the force of his words. Valentine was a moment away from reabsorbing his soul nucleus, but I needed to be sure of one thing before I released my grip.
I pulled back, meeting eyes that burned with a hunger that made my breath catch. “Will you use this power for yourself, or—”
Valentine’s lips crashed onto mine in a kiss that was as demanding as it was possessive. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to coax the stone from my grip or if my refusal of his earlier advances had made him even more determined to have sex. Either way, I kissed back.
His strong arm wrapped around my waist, pulling me into his hard chest and to a heart that pounded hard enough for us both. A hot thick erection pushed against my belly, and heat flooded my core, making its muscles pulse in anticipation.
“Valentine,” I said through ragged breaths. “You didn’t answer—”
“That power belongs to me, as do you.” His fingers tightened around the stone and he traced kisses across my jawline, heading toward my neck.
Cold alarm spiked through my heart. If I let his fangs pierce my vein, he’d probably flood my system with enough thrall to keep me imprisoned in this cottage until Kresnik had died of old age.
Cupping the side of his cheek, I pulled back and placed a kiss on his lips. Valentine groaned, his tongue meeting mine with licks and swirls and caresses that made my knees buckle. The arm around my back held me in place as he plundered my mouth.
Valentine took over the kiss, turning my insides into a furnace of molten need. A little voice in the back of my head screamed at me to pay attention to the magic swirling within the stone. Transferring the soul nucleus would be just like the time Coral and I connected magic, and just like the time Istabelle moved my power from the firestone heart and back into my body.
When Valentine broke the kiss again, red eyes stared back at me with a ravenous preternatural hunger that embodied bloodlust. Sharp fangs protruded from his full lips, lengthening, thickening, drifting toward my neck. The hand holding the soul star tightened around mine, making it impossible to escape his bite.
I inhaled a deep breath, bringing every ounce of oxygen I could muster into my lungs to push down my panic.
There was no time to waste.
With a long exhale, I pushed my power into the stone, forcing the nucleus occupying it to move out.
Valentine reared back, his eyes widening. “What is this?”
“Your power.” I pushed even harder. “How does it feel?”
The fingers curled around it straightened, and he jerked his arm back as though trying to release the stone, but it was stuck.
“What are you doing to me?” he snarled.
“While I was in the Flame, I discovered something important about what happens to souls after a body turns to ash from phoenix fire.” I inhaled another deep breath and channelled even more of my magic into the stone.
Valentine pulled back his lips in a warning growl. “Miss Griffin, stop th
is at once.”
“Did you know that phoenix souls stand by their ashes, waiting for their body to regenerate before stepping back in?”
“What are you talking about?” he snapped.
“That’s what I think happened to your soul.”
His gaze met mine. “What?”
“I tried telling you before, but you wouldn’t listen,” I replied. “All the time you were a preternatural, your soul resided in the fifth chamber of your heart. When Prince Draconius’s lackey decapitated you, I burned your remains, including that heart, and waited for you to rise from your ashes.”
Valentine turned back to the hand holding the soul star. Streams of dark magic formed lines up his fingers, over the back of his hand, and beneath the cuff of his jacket.
“I will punish you for this,” he said in a snarl that made my breath quicken.
Pushing through my trepidation, I blurted, “You must have been entering your body when Nonaginta-Novem attacked me, and your soul nucleus tore itself free to help me fight.”
“And this is how you repay me?” He yelled in a burst of fury that shattered the windows.
Guilt clawed at my chest, making it tighten until I struggled to breathe, and I squeezed my eyes shut. This wasn’t a betrayal—no matter how many excuses his body made, Valentine’s soul wanted to be whole.
“Kresnik is on the verge of finding his immortal body.” I tried to keep the tremble out of my voice and continued shoving Valentine’s magic out of the stone. “It could be anywhere in Great Britain and beyond. If we can find Kresnik before he breaks Theodore’s spirit, we can stop him before he becomes invincible.”
Snarls filled my ears, and the air lashed with a furious wind that howled for vengeance. Valentine’s anger shifted the furniture and smashed the windows, but I didn’t stop pushing his power back where it belonged.
One of his hands closed around my neck, and every ounce of moisture in my throat evaporated in the heat of his anger. I trembled in his grip, waiting for him to hurl me across the room, to tighten his fingers and kill me for my treachery, but he didn’t lash out.
“Stop this nonsense or you will never see freedom for the rest of your days,” he roared.
