“Is he always like this?” Oliver asked.
Ronen sighed. “Alexei gets pre-battle jitters. But he’s useful. He brings attention to all the details.”
“Hells, I hate when you guys call it that! Makes me sound like a Bowel recruit seeing war for the first time.”
“When you act like this, you are.”
Grumbling, Alexei sifted through the pile until he found a thick, tarnished chain and placed it around his neck. It clashed with his silk tie. “There. I’m ready to be sacrificed to Lilith now.”
“So when does the fearful griping end?” Oliver asked, bending and picking up a bracelet.
“When he kills something,” Ronen replied, crouching to retrieve two matching bangles. He handed me one and slipped the other on.
“In all seriousness, this portal shouldn’t be here. Neither should this supply of Ember jewelry. The convenience of it all is setting off my alarms—and I don’t mean the trap we’re expecting on the other side. Something else is going on.”
“Like someone—or something—is getting through here,” Ronen said, glancing at Alexei and MJ.
Alexei crouched, surveying the ground. “But how are they getting from this circle to ours?”
They?
“That’s what we’ll have to figure out.”
“The Immolation Lord may know something,” MJ mused.
“I’ve thought of that. But we’d need Lucifer to talk to him. We’re not even supposed to be here.”
Alexei nodded. “So we stay sharp. If we survive, we report our new findings to Lucifer.”
Ronen and MJ agreed. But I had a feeling I already knew what they were really talking about.
Oliver and I divided the rest of our daggers among the group. I gave the black dagger back to Ronen, trusting him with it more than myself.
They accepted the weapons without hesitation, securing them in their belts.
“Prepare yourself,” Ronen said.
Armed, we all circled the portal.
“Why follow us if you think this is a trap? Why risk yourself for Aspen when you hate him?”
Ronen drilled me with a gaze holding more emotion than I’d ever seen in him. “My soul is already at risk, Lucille. But I’m hoping with all of us, it has a better chance of surviving. And if not”—he stepped closer, grabbing my chin—“then the world will see a version of myself I’ve hidden away for a very long time.”
I could taste the wrath behind his words.
“I don’t understand.” He didn’t answer my question; if anything, he left me more confused.
“You will, eventually.”
“On top of all that, this is bigger than a rescue mission, beautiful,” Alexei added.
“You’re talking about the demon infection, aren’t you?”
Ronen nodded and glanced back at the cave entrance—just a pinprick of light in the distance. “This all is very suspicious. We should’ve seen at least a few souls or Hellhounds on the way here. It’s eerie that we didn’t. Even if we weren’t rescuing the prince or stealing back my feather, we’d need to investigate.”
“So if we all die, we can blame you three—since you’d have gone in anyway,” Oliver joked.
No one laughed.
