Amma squeezed the book even tighter between her knees and her chest, wrapping arms around her legs as her vision blurred with tears. Damien had told her, and she had refused to listen. It was easy to ignore the bloodcraft and his ominous if vague words when the plan wasn’t laid out in front of her, but his father wasn’t just an idea now, harmlessly living in some unreachable plane. He was a demon, the vilest being in existence save for the dark gods, and he had been trapped by King Archibald in a vault beneath Eirengaard to protect the realm for what had to have been a good reason—every crusade the king’s holy men went on was to drive evil from the land—but Damien’s goal, the prophecy given by the Denonfy Oracle, was to release him.
And he had to kill her to do it.
CHAPTER 2
A DISSERTATION ON UNFINISHED THOUGHTS
Damien Maleficus Bloodthorne tore off the once-pristine dress coat now stained with his blood, throwing it to the ground as he paced through the bed chamber after booting out Kaz. He whipped about when he got to the far end of the room, and then his vision blurred. Hand to his head, he staggered into the wall.
“All right, enough,” he said to himself, stumbling to the bed and falling face-first onto it with a groan.
She knew. Damn it, now she knew all of his plans to release his father and scorn the realm that was her home, and he had seen it in her eyes—Amma was terrified.
“Fuck you, Shadowhart,” he growled into the incredibly soft linens, and he was sure he was imagining it, but there was a faint,Fuck you too, Bloodthorne, that echoed somewhere in the back of his mind.
With eyes closed, he saw Amma’s face again—no, Lady Ammalie Avington, Baroness of Faebarrow—the fear in it at knowing Damien’s intentions, the shiver of realization at what she had gotten herself into, and he rolled himself onto his back. There was a mural painted above him, massive across the whole ceiling, of Xander depicted as a god surrounded by maniacally laughing shadow imps, fire, and destruction. Xander wasn’t just a prick, but he was a prick with terrible taste.
Damien ran his hand down his face. He had expended so much arcana he was surprised he hadn’t already fallen deeply asleep, but he supposed his burning hatred for the blood mage could spur him on to do anything.
And there was also theexcitementat what he had just done. Xander might think skeletons were mundane, but he hadn’t seen their glinting-white bones climb from the ground, he hadn’t watched them cut down the living with graceful ease, and he hadn’t felt the immense power of wielding an unbreakable, compelled army with words alone. And he hadn’t seen the look of adoration on Amma’s face when he had done it.
It had been too long keeping a low profile, holding in every intense, dark desire he had—including those for Amma herself—playing at whoever he needed to be to slink from place to place on his quest to Eirengaard. But he hadn’t made it, he’d not even gotten close, and, truthfully, had he even been trying?
If Xander was good for anything, it was reminding Damien of who he was: a creature filled with that seething hatred for him, that powerful anger that reminded him of his demonic blood, that desire to slice that stupid, smarmy grin right off of Xander’s stupid, smarmy face. And especially now, even after all this time, he had trapped him there—and Damien hated to be trapped—but more, he had revealed things to Amma so ungracefully and then dared make a pass at her on top of everything.
The light in the room wavered then, and Damien sat up with a start. His head spun, a shadow swirling about, but it didn’t feel sinister or oppressive. This felt…cathartic. It was not Xander’s magic or some imp infiltrating the room, but his own infernal arcana, the noxscura, seeping out again without permission.
“Dark gods,” he mumbled, falling back flat again and willing the darkness to disperse. “I’ve got to get a handle on that.”
He supposed there was really no reason not to trust Xander in the moment. Well, of course, there were infinite reasons, chiefly among them that he was a total twat, but at the crux of things was the semblance of aplanthat Xander had discovered and what he wanted from Damien: an in to get his own mother out of Archibald’s vault. If Xander intended to use him, and that was certainly the case, he wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize his life, and if he were smart enough, not Amma’s either.
Of course the translocation stone was charmed with an additional seeing spell—of courseit was. That was Xander’s way, sneaky, spying, deceptive. But he didn’t know of Bloodthorne’s Talisman of Enthrallment, and he didn’t know enough about Amma to risk doing something stupid to her—not tonight anyway. Not only did she have the Lux Codex, but she was the only one who could touch it. Without her, they’d end up as dead as Malcolm.
But now Damien had to grapple with getting Birzuma out as well as Zagadoth, something he’d been actively putting off since it would take Amma’s death to do it. And being here with Xander wasn’t helping to get the talisman out of her, now was it? But where both he and Anomalous had failed, the Lux Codex stood as a possible solution, the whole point in fetching it in the first place. And even if the book held nothing, he still had other options, an answer to his raven he had yet to act upon.
But his father still waited…
Damien pulled himself up to sit, blinking. There was food on a tray beside the bed. He didn’t bother to check it wasn’t drugged or enchanted, he simply grabbed the indiscernible meat and took a messy, starved bite. In a moment it was gone, washed down with wine that was too sweet and boozier than he expected. The goblet refilled itself arcanely—of course Xander wanted to get him drunk, especially so late at night—but Damien pushed it away. With a deep breath, he dug into his pocket for the sliver of occlusion crystal and held it up.
He had just enough magic to call on the arcana in the crystal to finish the work of summoning his father. He sliced a finger on the crystal’s sharpest edge, smearing blood over it, and whispered in Chthonic. Zagadoth the Tempestuous’s eye blinked into life from between Damien’s weak fingertips.
“Kiddo!” the demon lord’s voice boomed, and Damien winced at the sound, skull ringing. “Oh, sorry there, Champ, I’m just jazzed to see ya. It’s been a while, thought you forgot about me!” He laughed in a wary sort of way.
“No, never, father,” Damien half-lied, rubbing a temple. “It’s just been a long day.”
“You’re looking a little haggard. Where are you?” Zagadoth’s slice of a pupil darted to the edges of the crystal.
“Uh, well?” Damien took a look around himself, only half believing it. “I’m actually in the Chthonic Tower.”
“The Chthonic Tower? What in the deepest Abyss happened? Who took you? What souls must I crush to retrieve you from—”
“Dad.” Damien shook his head, dropping his chin down, but he half grinned. His father often threatened things he couldn’t do from inside the crystal, but it was comforting nonetheless. “I actually came here. It was my doing.”
“Isn’t Birzuma’s boy there? Oh, unless you’ve killed him?” There was an excited jolt to Zagadoth’s voice.
“Not exactly.” Damien lay back again, holding the crystal up over his head, grip weak. He ran his other hand through his hair and tugged at it. “I’ve sort of come here due to a…complication. I may have accidentally pissed off an entire barony, unleashed the Army of the Undead, and besmirched my name in the realm a few moons too early. It might throw things off course.”
“You what now?” Zagadoth chuckled. “I can’t really blame you for having a little fun on the way. But this wasn’t actual fun, was it?”
