The last barrier between her and her son was a heavy oak door that was worn with age and bound by iron strap hinges that reached from edge to edge. The hinges were inscribed with layers upon layers of letters. Victoria couldn’t make out the jumble until they were within a couple of feet. She peered closer and noted several Latin words and phrases, but most of the inscriptions were indecipherable.
“Prayers to bind,” Adam said. “Scratched deeply into the iron for decades by the unholiest of men.”
He touched the door, but drew back his hand quickly when the Brimstone in his blood protested contact with the inscriptions. Victoria reached her own hand out to touch the iron, but it was cool to her touch.
“They interfere in a conflict they don’t understand. They invoke these prayers without having a right to do so. But the conflict between daemon and heaven is there. The powers that be weren’t happy with Lucifer when he chose to fall and rule a kingdom of his own. These inscriptions will have been painful to Michael if he’s on the other side of this door, Victoria,” Adam warned.
“I’m ready to face whatever we find,” Victoria said.
She stepped back with Adam and bolstered her nerve, but she wasn’t prepared for the sudden burst of violence that erupted from him. His body leaped forward, his leg lashed up and out, and the door burst inward with a splintering render of wood from iron. The door was left hanging loose to the side. The seal the corrupt prayers had created was broken.
And Victoria fell to her knees. Because as intense as Michael’s Brimstone cry of distress had become, the binding of the Latin phrases had shielded her from the magnitude of his Burn.
She struggled back to her feet and rushed forward. Her son was alone in the room. He stood crying in an iron crib fashioned fully enclosed like a cage. The bars he held glowed with heat. The crib was also inscribed with layer upon layer of words, but they hadn’t stopped Michael’s Burn from coming upon him.
Ezekiel had warned her that the Burn would come no matter the circumstances. He’d also warned her that without help, a half daemon child might not be able to stop himself from immolation.
“Michael... Michael, I’m here. I’m here,” she said. His eyes were scrunched to swollen slits. His face flamed red. Though he cried and cried, his tears evaporated before they could roll down his chubby cheeks.
“One of those guards might have the key,” Adam said.
She vaguely registered his words. She’d placed her hands over Michael’s, even though touching his hands was like touching a hot iron. She felt her skin burn. She didn’t let go.
“I’m here. I’m here,” she repeated again and again.
Adam disappeared and returned seconds later with a key. The pain in his face as he touched the sanctified object to free her son mirrored her own as her hands continued to burn. He inserted the key into the crib cage lock and opened the hinged side so she could reach for Michael. Adam grimaced as he released the inscribed iron, dropping the key on the bedding and backing away.
Victoria ignored the heat. She moved to pick up her baby. At first he resisted when she tried to lift him from the crib, but she continued to murmur his name and reassurances. Finally, he let go of the glowing iron and allowed her to bring him up into her arms.
She cried out in pain from his heat and his condition. Her rough robes smoked from the contact with Michael’s skin. He was dressed only in a rough gown made of the same material as her robes. Curls of smoke rose from the material as it scorched against his skin. He was dirty, but she couldn’t see any blood or bruises.
“Hurry. We have to get you two out of here before Malachi tries to stop us,” Adam said.
Victoria held Michael close even though he was still stiff and crying. He seemed completely unaware that his mother held him. He was lost to fear and the pain of his Burn.
“He has to be stopped,” Victoria spoke over Michael’s crying. “The Order has to be destroyed from the inside out. You can’t get us out until you’ve dealt with Malachi.”
Adam stepped toward her. She could see his intention on his face. His jaw was set in stone. His blue eyes blazed with a Brimstone glow. She could think of only one thing to do. She jumped into the cage with Michael and reached to jerk the hinged side closed. The sanctified lock clanked fast against Adam before he realized what she intended to do.
The key was beneath her on the bedding. Adam was locked outside. She was in a cage and as Michael screamed she thought of all the birdcages at Nightingale Vineyards that were open. Always open. Because the ghost of Elena Turov dreamed of a day when her son, her firebird captured in the service of a dark prince, would be free.
“No. Damn it. No,” Adam shouted. He reached for the inscribed iron bars of the cage and gripped them with white-knuckled hands, even though she could hear the sizzle above Michael’s screams as his Brimstone reacted to the prayers.
“I won’t let you sacrifice your soul for me. Or for Michael. You have a daemon bargain to fulfill. You’ve avoided this compound for a hundred years, but it’s only a place. Your loathing of it is remembered pain, but it’s the men that dwell here who are evil. They will continue to create tortured souls like Esther and Gideon. Like you. It isn’t just the daemon king their destruction will slake and serve. You’ve saved as many as you could for as long as you could, but now you have the chance to save them all,” Victoria said.
Adam looked from her to the toddler in her arms who just might burn her alive if she couldn’t calm him.
“But it won’t save you. The Burn is claiming him, Victoria. He’s going to combust and take you with him,” Adam said.
“I wouldn’t survive if he went to ash without me, Adam.” Victoria leaned down to kiss her crying child’s round cheek. Her lips parched instantly against his flaming skin. “I came for him. I’m here to hold him. There’s salvation in that even if we both burn.”
“I won’t leave you,” Adam insisted.
“Of course you won’t. You’ll go for Malachi. Your blade has been tempered with a hundred years of blood for this moment. We’ll be here when you come back for us. I promise. We’ve been through the fire before. My little one and me. We can do it again.” Victoria was grateful that her tears evaporated before they had a chance to fall. The heat was unbearable. She was in terrible pain. But she bit back the whimpers that rose against it.
Adam came to her. She braced herself to argue if he continued to try to free them, but he only leaned to kiss her. He felt cool. She marveled at the coolness of his lips. He moved from her mouth to the top of Michael’s head. She allowed the move through the bars of the cage. She didn’t scoot away. He kissed the dirty blond curls. Then he backed away. He backed all the way to the door, as if he would memorize the way they looked, mother holding child, smoke rising from their robes to fill the room.
“My soul is worth nothing without you,” he said. “I do this for them. For all of them. And for you and your family too. The Order has haunted too many lives for too long.”
“Save your soul for me, Adam Turov. And I will survive to claim it and you for the next fifty years or so,” Victoria said. Her voice was hoarser than ever. Michael’s cries continued.
She was no daemon. She had no power to make a deal bound by universal laws. But the moment still seemed to pause for them. Smoke seemed to slow its swirl. Michael hiccuped and his cries stopped for a split second. When they resumed, Adam turned and ran out the door. His blue diamond eyes hidden from her sight.
She was in a cage. Her son was burning on the inside. He had no resources at his toddler disposal to deal with the gift his father had given him. Victoria had only one gift. It had been stolen from her in the first fire she’d walked through, shielding Michael with her body from the flame.
But Adam had helped her find it again.
Her hum began scratchy and low. But she didn’t let that silence her. Not this time. She grew louder instead. Claiming the new sound that came from her, older and wiser. Gone was the ingénue soprano she’d been. A new woman lifted her chin and opened her throat. Her diaphragm tightened and her lungs expanded. The smoke didn’t bother her. This voice had risen from smoke and ashes.
Victoria sang.
And the entire castle keep beneath her shuddered.
Michael took a deep breath as if he prepared to fuel another cry, but he released the air in a great sigh instead. His stiff little body collapsed against her. She gathered him closer while continuing to sing. She sang a lullaby she’d always crooned to him under her breath. This time she gave it full volume and expression. She looked down at the quieted toddler in her lap. His face was still swollen, but his eyes glinted up at her from within his reddened lids.
The cage was shaking now. Its legs jittered on the stone floor.
Victoria continued to sing.
“Mom,” Michael croaked. His voice had been made as raw as hers by his crying.
His temperature had cooled. Smoke no longer rose from their scorched robes.
She wasn’t sure the danger had passed, so she continued to sing as she fished under her for the key. She held Michael close with one arm while she unlocked the cage. She carefully kept his chubby bare legs from the inscribed iron as she climbed out and stepped down onto the floor. Her song was a purer prayer. Please. Please. Let me save him. Beneath her feet, the stone trembled. She wasn’t sure what was happening, but she knew that the structural integrity of the keep she’d seen through tunnels and passageways and crumbling rooms wasn’t as strong as it needed to be to withstand an inexplicable earthquake on top of a Carpathian peak.
Michael wrapped his arms around her neck and his legs around her middle. He hummed now along with her. He remembered the lullaby although she’d always whispered it before. He was the son of a daemon. But he was also the son of a former opera singer with an affinity that was only beginning to be tapped and understood.
Victoria walked across the room toward the open door. It was hard to keep her balance against the shimmying stone. When she reached the passageway, it wasn’t only the movement that frightened her. There was a rumbling growl rising from far down below where the keep met the mountain. She couldn’t possibly take Michael back down to the narrow tunnel lined with moldering bones. The keep continued to jerk and lurch beneath her feet as she made her way to the stairs. Even if she thought he would recover from the gruesome experience of crawling through the tunnel, she now feared that they would be crushed beneath tons of stone.
And still she sang as Michael hummed along with her.
She stumbled many times as they went down stairway after stairway. Her jeans were torn. Her knees bloody. Her back screamed against the weight of her child. Her out-of-practice throat hurt and her voice became even scratchier. She continued on. She didn’t know where Adam had gone. She didn’t know why the earthquake went on and on. She only knew she couldn’t stop until she and Michael had made it outside.
Several stories down, she began to run into monks who were fleeing the crumbling structure. They didn’t accost her and Michael. The walls had begun to fall. At first in sprinkles of stone dust, then in trickles of disintegrated pieces and finally in crashing blocks that threatened to crush and maim. She pressed Michael’s face into her neck and hoped his humming would distract him from the cries of monks who didn’t successfully avoid the crashing stones.
A young child’s snuffling cries stopped her. She looked back the way she’d come. A chorus of childish voices had joined the crying. Before she saw the children, a familiar dog-shaped shadow came into sight. His eyes blazed more distinct than the rest of him. His fur billowed like smoke around his massive body. Grim. He’d found his way to the castle. He’d come to help. But the prayers inscribed on Michael’s door must have kept him away from his master. The children he had found shuffled behind the hellhound as if he was a ferocious Pied Piper come to lead them. Victoria gasped when she saw them—from the tall to the small—the boys and the girls were grimy, bruised and malnourished. The bigger children carried those that were too weak or tiny to keep up with the necessary speed of the evacuation.
None of the adult monks even paused to help. She shouldn’t be surprised. They had treated the children horribly. Their deplorable condition gave testimony to how little they were valued and cared for.
Grim saw Michael in her arms and he leaped to her, blinking out of existence as he left the ground and reappearing back at her side. The group of children came to a stop, confused by the abandonment. She felt the familiar press of the hellhound’s heat against her legs. Michael was too drained from his Burn to notice his faithful companion’s return.
“I’ve got him, Grim. Lead the children out of the keep. We’ll follow,” Victoria said.
Grim touched a fully materialized muzzle full of large white teeth gently against Michael’s hip. Then he returned to the children. The oldest boy carried a girl who snuffled and cried. He gestured for the others to follow as Grim continued his role of guide down the stairs.
Victoria followed Grim and the children toward the front of the keep where a safer exit might be found. The steady stream of evacuees made her feel like she was headed in the right direction.
But then she smelled the smoke.
She stopped on a landing just above a large courtyard at the center of the compound. They had exited the castle keep. High walls surrounded the courtyard in a large semicircle. Grim continued to lead the children down the stairs, away from the courtyard toward the gates where other evacuees fled.
It wasn’t until she looked down on a battle that she saw the smoke coming from a large fissure that had opened in the earth. The courtyard dirt was smooth and polished from years of training, but the sides of the fissure were jagged gray stone. Men climbed up the stone as if it was an unnatural staircase the earthquake had provided. They leaped through the rolling smoke to engage the monks in combat.
Victoria had continued to sing, unsure if Michael’s danger was past. When she stepped out onto the landing and stopped, all the men from the fissure looked toward her. They stood as if in salute for a long moment before turning back to the monks they fought.
They were daemons. Lucifer’s Army had risen up beneath the catacombs of the Order of Samuel.
Grim and the children had disappeared out of sight. They would be clear of the compound soon.
Michael stopped humming. He wiggled to turn his head beneath her hand. She hoped the smoke disguised the blood and destruction.
“Go?” he asked.
“As quick as we can,” Victoria answered.
And that’s when she saw Adam at the edge of the fissure. Smoke swirled around his tall form as if it framed his strength and purpose. He had also turned to look at her and, even though she’d paused in her singing, he of all the men in the courtyard had still not looked away.
But their connection had never been safe or easy.
As their gazes locked across the battlefield of the courtyard, Malachi ran toward Adam from behind. She gestured. Too far away to do anything more. It was enough. Adam turned with the sudden burst of speed she’d seen him use before. He raised his own sword to stop the blade that Malachi had raised against him.
The two were locked in a standoff of blade against blade. Adam was taller. Malachi was broader. Both had been trained to kill. The balance shifted. Malachi pushed Adam to the edge of the fissure. After all, Malachi enjoyed killing. The crack in the earth had been widening with every rumbling shudder. Adam’s feet slid on loosened earth and rocks. Victoria cried out. Michael squeezed her tighter and buried his face back in her neck. Did she detect a slight rise in his temperature? She closed her lips against her distress. She began to hum again, patting her son’s back to soothe him.
But she also moved toward the stairs.
She wasn’t a warrior, but she did have the daemon king’s blade in her bag. She also had to make her way down before the stairs deteriorated to the point that they weren’t passable, pushing into the flow of monks as they fled from the upper stories. She tried to shelter Michael against her body. Lucifer’s Army was coming for the Order in spite of the crumbling castle. Fights occurred all around. Several times daemons interceded with monks who threatened her passage. Halfway down the stairs she realized that the flow of monks had been parted by Lucifer’s Army like the Red Sea to allow her to pass. She continued to sing even though her throat was raw. Michael hummed again. Quietly. His body was limp. His skin was cool. She thought his hum was slow and a little off-key. At the bottom of the stairs, she looked down to see his eyes closed and his breathing deep and regular.
Her half daemon prince had fallen asleep as the walls came down, as the Order of Samuel fell, as Adam...
Through the clash of violent bodies and the smoke, she could see Adam and Malachi fighting at the edge of the fissure. Adam wasn’t giving his full concentration to the evil monk. He searched for her even as he fought. She stepped into the courtyard, hoping the swirling smoke would allow him to see she was okay so he could shift his attention back to defeating Malachi and regaining his soul.
But Adam froze when he saw her.
And Malachi slammed into him.
It took a thousand years for the monk and the damned man to fall over the edge of the fissure. Victoria received flash burns from Michael as she screamed and he woke with his Brimstone flaring in an instinctive response to a threat he couldn’t understand.
She ran onto the battlefield. She dodged dead bodies on the ground and daemons and monks alike as they continued to fight each other. The daemons were winning. She could see that. There were more monks on the ground than there were daemons. Ezekiel would be triumphant. But that hardly mattered as her heart continued to scream. Outside, she had calmed herself for Michael. He was awake now, but he was so young. Surely he wouldn’t be able to process all he saw around them. Thankfully, the smoke was thick. Much of the battlefield was cloaked.
When she came to the edge of the fissure, the ground was shaking hard enough to cause her to carefully place her feet. Finally, she was close enough to peer into the earth. She’d expected an empty black hole. Instead, she saw Adam stretched out on his stomach across one of the craggy boulders that protruded from the earth, several yards down from the fissure’s edge. He held Malachi’s arm. The monk’s body dangled over a black abyss that stretched down, down, down as far as she could see. Deeper than the tunnel she’d crawled through in the catacombs. If hell had been a place at the center of the molten earth, that’s where it seemed the crater reached.
Of course, she knew that wasn’t where Lucifer’s Army had come from. Hell was a different dimension. The fissure had opened a portal that allowed them to invade the monastery. At the height of his Burn, Michael must have shrieked an invitation to his grandfather, or an order to Grim.
“Gim!” Michael shouted in her ear.
Victoria looked in the direction that her son strained and saw the great guardian hellhound springing from rock to rock to reach their position. He was solid as he landed. When he leaped, he turned to amorphous shadow in the air. Wisps of smoke curled around him, darker than the smoke that rose from the fissure.
The hellhound landed near them and pressed against her legs, as if to keep her from falling into the crater at her feet.
“Grim, did you do this? Did you show Lucifer’s Army the way so that they would save your master?” Victoria asked.
The hellhound’s eyes glowed and he pressed even harder against her, as if to say, it will all be for nothing if you don’t leave. Now.
“You have to take Michael to safety. Do you understand? You have to get him out of here,” Victoria told the hell-spawned hound.
Michael eagerly held on to his ferocious best friend when Victoria placed him on Grim’s back. The daemon dog immediately moved to distance his rider from the quaking fissure. If Malachi hadn’t kidnapped Michael, Victoria was suddenly sure that his bond with the ugly hellhound would have helped him through the Burn. He was completely cool to the touch when she felt his forehead and placed a kiss on his temple.
“The way is blocked. I can’t get him out on my own. You have to do it, Grim. Take him home through the paths only you can find,” Victoria said. Her throat closed as she said it. Her eyes burned. Without Michael’s Brimstone burn evaporating them, her tears threatened to fall.
Grim whined. He stepped toward her as if to urge her to come along too. But she stepped back toward the fissure.
“Go. Now. Before it’s too late,” she said.
The hellhound turned away. His stiff-legged walk turned into a lope that turned into a run before he and his rider faded into the smoke and shadows. Michael’s laugh floated back to her as he disappeared.
The separation tore something inside her. Michael and Grim were traveling in between this world and countless others. He was gone. She pressed her hands against her stomach and closed her eyes. Her body swayed, but then she firmed her spine.
Adam.
He was forfeiting his soul.
Ezekiel wouldn’t accept that the Order had fallen if Malachi survived. It wasn’t the compound that was evil. It was the man in charge of corrupting everything he touched. Reynard’s man. His protégé risen to power now that his master was gone.
Victoria stepped to the edge again and looked down to see Adam still holding Malachi in his viselike grip. He wouldn’t let the monk fall into the abyss. The tumble down to the rock ledge that now supported him had shredded Adam’s tactical fatigues. She could see a glimpse of the scars on his back. The horrible deep ridges had somehow become beautiful wings on him. Fitting wings for a damned man. Adam was trying to save Malachi even though the monk had kidnapped him and tortured him.
Ezekiel might hold his soul ransom, but Adam Turov was already redeemed. With every Esther and Gideon he saved, he had built a new soul with his own actions. He was no angel. He would never be. He would carry the darkness he’d survived in his heart forever.
But that’s why he made her sing. No Brimstone necessary at all. Because he still believed in saving others.
With superhuman effort, Adam lifted the big-boned monk with one arm. His muscles bulged and his own body slid toward the edge of the ledge he lay across, but he didn’t let go. He pulled. He strained. Inch by inch, he brought the evil monk up to the ledge.
Victoria felt the presence of Brimstone around her even though her affinity was fried from Michael’s Burn. She looked away from Adam long enough to see that the edge of the fissure was ringed on either side of her with daemons. Lucifer’s Army had come to watch their greatest enemy fall. They stood motionless as Adam saved him.
But as Adam dragged Malachi onto the ledge, a movement from deep in the crater caught her eye. The constant movement of the earthquake crumbling the castle stilled as the daemons around her came to life with mutters and murmurings she couldn’t translate. Then, as one, they all fell to their left knees and hundreds of heads bowed. The noise of the movement was audible. Adam looked up. Malachi rolled to his back and placed his arm over his eyes.
Ezekiel rose from the pit. Lucifer’s bronzed wings were stiff on his back. They could no longer be used for flight in any discernible way and yet the daemon king rose from the fissure as if he flew. He also glowed brighter with Brimstone anger than she’d ever seen. His eyes. His ears. His nose. His mouth. All allowed the glow to beam out from his body. Malachi protected his eyes from the glare. She didn’t have to. Even in anger, Ezekiel thought of her and shifted his body to shield her.
Adam wasn’t so lucky. He rose to his feet and turned his face away to avoid the glare as Ezekiel floated to the ledge. Victoria started to protest. She feared that her stepfather would punish Adam for not killing Malachi. But she discovered that the daemon king knew better how to manipulate bargains than that.
“Thank you for delivering my enemy to my feet, Adam Turov. You have served me well,” Ezekiel said.
In a blur of movement, the daemon king’s arm shot out and he grasped Malachi by the neck, but as he sprang up, Ezekiel’s speed decreased. He moved as if in slow motion. The Loyalists around her raised their heads to watch Malachi lifted up and over their ranks, but they continued to kneel in the presence of their king.
Victoria didn’t kneel. She watched as Adam made his way across the rocky ledge to the fissure’s wall. The muscles in his arms bunched and strained as he climbed up to her. When he’d leveraged himself up on the edge to stand beside her, she turned to face Ezekiel.
“This man has been a faithful servant of the enemy we have fought for millennia, though only a short time has passed for him on Earth,” the daemon king said. “The Order of Samuel has fed the Rogue daemon army with blood and the corruption of countless innocent human souls.”
The Loyalist daemons still knelt on one knee, ringing the abyss. Smoke still rolled. The mountain had begun to shake again and loosened stone continued to fall. Ezekiel spoke over it all as if it was inconsequential. Behind him and the evil monk he seemed to hold easily with one ancient hand, the polished dirt field of the courtyard ran with bright rivers of crimson blood and black streams of charcoal-tainted corruption. Hundreds of monks lay dead or dying. Only the young had been allowed to flee.
“Rise and witness as judgment opens its gaping maw to swallow this tainted human whole,” Ezekiel said. His voice wasn’t a bellow, but it rang out all the same. It carried over the sound of grumbling earth and crumbling castle keep.
Lucifer’s Army rose to their feet around her and Adam. As one, they turned to stand at stiff attention at the bidding of their king. Ezekiel lowered Malachi to the ground near Victoria, but instead of crumpling in a heap, the evil monk also stood straight and tall. He endured the righteous gazes, but it was as if he walked across glowing coals. Sweat trickled down his brow and he looked no one directly in the eye.
“Victoria D’Arcy. It is your right to cleanse the earth of this stain. He took your son without bargain and without permission. He almost allowed the Burn to immolate the grandson of Anne D’Arcy, who would have been my queen. Her blood runs in your veins. It is fitting that you plunge the daemon blade I’ve given you into his black heart,” Ezekiel said. His hand was still gripped on the nape of Malachi’s neck. With this hold, he presented the evil monk to his stepdaughter.
Adam stiffened beside her.
“No. She shouldn’t carry the burden of his death on her shoulders the rest of her life,” Adam protested. He stepped forward toward the daemon king and his prisoner. His fists were clenched. Blood from scrapes and cuts ran freely down his face and hands. His shredded clothes stuck to his body where more serious wounds bled. But he stood between her and the daemon king as if he would shield her from the pain she’d carried with her since she’d been born.
She’d been born different. Her affinity had seemed a curse for most of her life. But it had turned out to be a blessing. She might never have braved the connection she shared with Adam if her gift hadn’t brought them together, even while they tried to remain apart. Her affinity had helped her to save Michael and reclaim a new voice after she’d suffered tragedy and loss.
Malachi would never stop. He had been raised and trained by a monster. He would never rest until Michael—a boy with affinity and Brimstone blood—was under his control. She couldn’t allow that. Ezekiel was right. Not that it was a privilege to send Malachi to the same place Reynard had been sent, to face whatever punishment waited on the other side of death, but he was right that it was her responsibility.
Adam’s focus was on the daemon king he stood against. He didn’t notice as she reached under her robes, shifting her backpack to the side so she could retrieve the daemon king’s blade. Only when she stepped past him did he realize she intended to do what Ezekiel had ordered.
“No,” Adam said. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Someone does. This compound is only a place. What does it matter if this castle falls? He will only rise to build another and another. Michael will never know peace. He’ll never be free,” Victoria said. “And neither will you.”
“You don’t have to give me peace with your blade, Vic. You have given me peace with your song,” Adam said.
But the temporary stay of Malachi’s execution that their words had given him also gave the evil monk an opportunity to break free of the daemon king’s grasp. His robe tore as he jerked away and Ezekiel was left with drab material in his hand as Malachi leaped toward Victoria. His body slammed into her with such force that they both fell to the ground. The air was knocked from her lungs by the landing and the weight of the big-boned monk on top of her. The blade she’d clenched in one hand flew from her stunned fingers as she coughed and choked and tried to suck in air.
Malachi’s hands closed around her throat, making the urgency for oxygen even greater. She bucked. She punched and kicked. But her vision blurred and her muscles weakened. Malachi squeezed tighter and tighter. The reddened face above her was contorted with madness. The rest of the world was hazy and indistinct.
But as haze began to turn to black around the edges, Malachi’s hands jerked and relaxed. His whole body stiffened, and he cried out as blood bubbled from his lips to trickle down his chin. Victoria gasped for air and reached for her crushed throat while Malachi tumbled to the side. He landed facedown. The daemon king’s blade protruded from his back. It was buried to the hilt. Only seconds had passed, but it seemed an eternity.
“I give you peace, Victoria D’Arcy. I hope you’ll give me your heart in return,” Adam Turov said. He had retrieved the daemon king’s blade from the ground and he’d plunged it with such force into Malachi’s back that he’d instantly stopped the monk’s heart.
But as her vision cleared, Victoria could see that something was wrong. Adam swayed on his feet. Blood burgeoned across his chest, soaking his shredded shirt in a sudden deep red flow. There was no sizzle. There was no smoke. She struggled to her feet and scrambled to reach him, but when she reached to take his arms he fell to his knees, taking her to the ground with him. They faced each other knee to knee and he reached for her face as she tried to keep him from slumping to the side.
“What is it? What happened?” Victoria asked. Her voice was a hoarse scream.
“One of my men loosed an arrow when Adam jumped to help you. He thought to protect me. He didn’t realize Turov was trying to save you—my precious daughter.” The daemon king had come to stand beside them. He towered over them, an ancient, dangerous creature who loved her and her son.
But his love often brought death.
“The Brimstone. It can save him. It’s saved him so many times before,” Victoria said. She wouldn’t cry for Adam because there was no need. The burn behind her eyes was unnecessary. She blinked against it. And blinked and blinked. Because Adam’s hands had slipped from her face to hang limply by his sides, and he finally slumped to the ground. She wasn’t strong enough to keep him upright. She looked up at the daemon king. He was diamond-faceted and her face was wet with tears. No. No. No. There was no reason to cry.
“Victoria, he has no Brimstone in his blood. The requirements of our bargain were met when he delivered Malachi into my hands. I gave him back his soul. He is no longer bound to me,” Ezekiel said.
“He’s dying,” Victoria said.
Her gut clenched in worse pain than her throat, as if merciless hands she couldn’t see squeezed the life from her with Adam’s every wheezing breath. She could see the arrow now. Daemon arrows had iron shafts and gleaming black feathers that looked like they came from raven’s wings.
“Allow Michael to come to me once a year until he reaches the age of majority. At that time, he will be free to choose to inherit my throne or follow another path. It will be left to him. Allow this and I will save Adam Turov,” Ezekiel proclaimed.
The earth stilled. Smoke slowed to a stop above them, hanging in the air like suspended sooty clouds.
“Adam is redeemed. He isn’t damned anymore. I don’t want the Brimstone back in his blood. Even if it means I have to say goodbye,” Victoria protested. She had lowered herself to the ground beside Adam. His eyes were closed and his face was completely relaxed. For the first time, he looked softer than stone.
“I can save him without claiming his soul. Even for a daemon king, there are bargains that can be made, No one is too powerful for compromise or sacrifice,” Ezekiel said.
As Victoria lay beside Adam she thought about her son. She thought about the Burn that had almost consumed him because she couldn’t prepare for a process she didn’t understand. If Malachi hadn’t kidnapped him, Sybil could have helped her through it, but Victoria knew the daemon nanny needed to get back to her own life at l’Opera Severne. As Adam faded further and further away, she thought about Grim and how Michael joyfully rode the hellhound as if he was a pretty pony. She thought of her son’s laughter as they disappeared into the nothingness of traveling in between worlds.
He was a half daemon who could grow up to be a prince. Was she protecting him by turning her back on his stepgrandfather, or was she keeping him from a throne he had a right to choose or refuse? She’d lived such a dark life that she’d wanted to protect him from every shadow, but Grim was living shadows and Michael loved him with all his toddler heart.
Maybe she should embrace the shadows too. Just enough to survive.
“I accept,” Victoria said. “I accept.”
The pause was complete now, but it lasted longer than she expected. Her head grew light because her lungs didn’t function as the universe stilled to record the daemon deal in its darkest recesses.
She looked up at the daemon king when she heard him murmuring words that sounded Latin. He spoke too softly for her to understand what he said. He’d said even daemon kings still had bargains they could make. To whom did he speak? With whom did he bargain? Who had the power over Adam’s life and death that they would temporarily give to the daemon king in return for something else?
When the world spun again, the earth trembled beneath them and choking clouds of smoke rolled, but Ezekiel ignored it all. He dropped to one knee and pulled the deadly arrow from Adam’s back. A warrior’s cry erupted from Adam’s lips, full of fury and pain. Victoria reached for him as Ezekiel rolled Adam toward her so that he could access the wound left from the arrow’s removal. She placed her hand on Adam’s cheeks and looked into his pain-dimmed eyes.
“Your blood is cleansed of the Brimstone. Elena doesn’t have to worry about your soul anymore,” Victoria said.
She could tell it was an effort for Adam to speak, but she didn’t try to stop him. If Ezekiel couldn’t save him, she needed to hear his beautiful Russian accent one more time.
“It was my isolation that worried her,” Adam said. He coughed, but when he had swallowed he began again. “She accused me of living in the cage the prince had put me into even after the door had been opened.”
“She knew about your work to save the children?” Victoria guessed.
“Yes,” Adam said.
“She didn’t linger to save your soul. She lingered to keep you company,” Victoria said.
Adam nodded. No longer able to speak. His eyes had closed. She could feel him fading away. Victoria began to hum the same bayou lullaby that had saved her son. Soft and low. He no longer had Brimstone blood, but he was the Russian firebird and she was his nightingale. His eyes fluttered and opened. Their eyes met as the daemon king sliced across his own wrists to allow his blood to trickle in a steady stream onto Adam’s wound.
She held him as he jerked and cried out against the burn. She cried out with him because in cutting his flesh the daemon king had released his hold on his scorching power and her pain matched Adam’s. The scent of scorched flesh and ashes rose into the air.
And Adam passed out in her arms.
His collapse caused her heart to stop. She pressed through the paralysis of the scorch to touch his lips. Her heart began to pound again when she detected the slightest inhale and exhale from his mouth.
“We will help you carry him to safety before the mountain devours the monastery,” the daemon king said. “What Michael has set into motion I cannot stop.”
One of his men was binding his wrist to halt the flow of blood. Others rushed forward to lift her and Adam. One of the Loyalists wasn’t capable of rushing anymore. As she was carried toward the gate, she saw him lying on the ground. His bow beside his limp hand. The daemon king’s punishment for mistakes was swift and without mercy. An ominous shiver trailed its icy fingers down her spine.