My fingers lift, and her smooth skin brushes over my fingertips as I catch her wrist in my hand. She only glares back at me, gifting me with the same look she used to reserve for Krave.
My hand drops just like my stomach does.
Her features soften as she stares at me with the brightest silver eyes I’ve ever seen. I’ve never met someone so beautiful and so beaten down by the world they live in.
People think life is easier when you’re pretty. As a once-perfectly-created seraph, I do understand that thought, but absolutely nothing in Aries’s life is easy.
“I’m not going to kill my father,” she whispers on an empty, defeated breath. The constant tormenting smile on Krave’s face slowly fades, and I know he wants to wrap her up and never let the world hurt her ever again. “I do need to speak with the Shadow Guard, though.” She squares her shoulders, and the second she takes a single step forward, Krave gets the hell out of her way.
Then the two of us are trailing after her in the dark.
Every nerve in my body is on edge as I follow her down the sleek staircase. A man is posted at the front door. He’s stoic, and the princess doesn’t give him an ounce of her royal attention as she glides past him and strides to the kitchen.
Moonlight shines in through the big windows. It gleams across the clean white counters. She walks through the empty, silent room. I arch a brow when she stops next to the towering oak cabinets and lifts her hands to the flat stone wall.
Her delicate fingers press gently on a stone.
And that stone shifts beneath her touch. They all do. The many bricks twist this way and that and scatter across the wall to make space.
It makes just enough of an opening for a small doorway to fit into the total enveloping blackness.
I swallow hard at the sight of the mysterious hidden door. When she walks forward, so does Krave. And so do I.
I have no idea where we’re going.
I don’t ask. It’s not my job to ask. Right now, my job is to follow her.
And I’ll follow after this beautiful, reckless woman right to the bowels of hell.
11
Endurance
Aries
The guard are as busy as they always are at one in the morning. Sev and the woman I met earlier are both hovering over an untitled map with zero words written on it that might indicate where they’re headed. Just landmarks.
The guard are cautious. Another thing they are is untrusting.
And Sev, he doesn’t fucking trust me anymore.
“I think you’re lost, Pretty Princess,” he says, rolling up the map the moment he spots me standing among the rushed work flow of the other Shadow Guards. “Best get back to rest. Wouldn’t want to disappoint Daddy by being late to another ball where a demon’s slaughtered just for entertainment.” His gray wings ruffle behind him as he folds his arms across his black shirt.
Isabella slowly passes him an annoyed look.
It’s just what I’m counting on.
Everyone here wants me to fuck off because they think I’ll get them all killed. But Isabella has faith in me.
For some bizarre reason.
“Isabella, do you have a minute?”
I note a man to her right stops flipping through his file folder to glance our way, passing me a look that tells me Sev isn’t the only one who wants me to fuck off.
My heart beat drums in my chest as I wait for the small woman to speak. She’s quiet, but she’s really making this painful for me to stand here and be stared at by the people I once called my friends.
Shining red hair shifts along her soft features as Isabella nods. She doesn’t say anything when she slips by me. She’s headed to the office, and I pretend like I’m not completely unsure as I follow her back there.
