Lucifer.
The most Fallen of the Fallen stood alongside Gall, smiling down at my sister with a gleam in his eyes that turned my stomach. We’d never figured out why Lucifer manifested at some times but not others. Why he seemed to mingle in a veryhumanway sometimes, yet defy any physical law in other moments. All we knew was that he had some kind of grip on Gall. And the reach of his talons was deep enough to have changed Melek’s adopted son.
Gall, the sweet, childlike mind, who’d been terrorized and so ill-suited to the brutal culture of his Nephilim brothers, was disappearing under the veneer of a terrifyingweaponof a man. A man who claimed my sister as his mate.
‘Yilan, be still.’
Melek’s free hand clamped onto my shoulder, stopping the progress of my hand to the blade strapped at my thigh. His warm chest brushed my back as he leaned down to whisper in my ear under the ringing echo of Lucifer’s voice, raised to reach every corner of the chamber as he congratulated himself on bringing Gall and Istral this far.
‘You will only endanger her if you reveal our presence. You know she won’t be hurt here. Jann told us—'
‘Jann was uncertain.’I sent back through the link, not trusting myself with my higher voice to keep my words lowenough to remain undetected.‘And besides, he’s apparently on board with this enslavement of women.’
‘You know that isn’t true!’
‘He has Diadre leashed, Melek!’
‘She plays along—just like you did with me. It’s pageantry.’
‘It’s sick, is what it is.’
‘Yilan—’
Suddenly, the men in the circle began an incantation. Both of us jerked our attention back to the ritual unfolding at the center of the chamber.
There was something eerily familiar, yet utterly alien, about the chanting. My skin crawled as the Nephilim’s deep voices mingled, drowning out the quiet weeping of the women leashed to each of them.
I thought the chanting was an interlude. A spell. Something to raise the power of the Fallen reveling at the center of the star. Eyes gleaming like knife-blades, Lucifer kept his avid attention on my sister.
She shivered as the men started the incantation anew, her eyes flicking back and forth between Gall and Lucifer—pleading with each of them silently, in an expression I knew meant she was so frightened she would struggle to speak.
I wanted to weep myself, but refused to allow my sight to blur. Instead, I sank lower in my stance, weight on the balls of my feet, poised to shadow walkthroughthose black flames, if that’s what it took to get my sister safely out of here.
I didn’t understand the words the men chanted, but even though he didn’t seem to raise his voice at all, Lucifer’s words were unmistakable.
And chilling.
“It. Is. Time.”
‘Time for wh—?’I cut off the sending to Melek, a frantic cry breaking in my throat in chorus with the rest of the women, asone Advisor suddenly whipped the hand holding the leash of one slave in a circle over her head, then yanked it down, pulling the loop of the soft rope tight around her neck.
Melek’s arm looped around my middle as I instinctively leaped forward to intervene. He clapped a hand over my mouth and growled in my ear,“No, Yilan!”
I opened my mouth to argue, but it was too late. The Advisor, who had produced a blade from within that voluminous cloak with his free hand, drew the shining metal against her throat half-an-inch above where the rope strangled the air out of her.
She couldn’t even cry out. Her bloodshot eyes twitched a hair wider, and her body jolted, then she convulsed as a wave of thick red washed over the Advisor’s hand, the rope, her dress…
I sobbed, begging God for a miracle as the light went out of her eyes, and then she slumped over his arm like a ragdoll being carried by a child.
“No… please—”I breathed, but Melek only pulled me aside, gathering me into his chest and hiding the sight with his thick body, stroking my hair, whispering in my ear as the women in the chamber screamed and pleaded. Yet, the Nephilim men only continued their chanting.
Lucifer smiled as the murderer let the woman drop, then reached down to her body, using sausage-thick fingers to untangle the twisted rope from around her bloodied neck. When he straightened, he stepped out into the circle, carrying the now crimson rope to his king.
Not Gall.Lucifer.
The Fallen smiled when the rope bloodied his hand as he took it from his loyal man, who simply returned to his place outside the circle, ignoring the growing puddle at his feet, and the body that had been vital and breathing just moments earlier, but now crumpled on the ground, bleeding out like a butchered animal.
Perhaps most disturbing of all, though Istral hid her face in her hands and began to shriek, Gall only widened his eyes and licked his lips once. He didn’t protest in the slightest. The gentle, childlike man I’d known months earlier, who’d stood in my defense countless times, even when he was hurt for it, had just watched a woman be murdered and barely blinked.
