“For you?” Draven says. “Probably.”
She gives him a dry look and lifts her fork anyway. Brave. Foolish. Very Piper. She takes a bite—and her eyes widen.
“Oh my God,” she says, forgetting the rule again. A hundred gazes snap toward her. She claps a hand over her mouth. “I—I mean—your Majesty, sorry, that was—uh—really good—”
Lucifer laughs. Not a polite laugh. A full, delighted, amused sound that ripples like thunder. “Slade,” he says, “your mate isextraordinary.”
I grit my teeth. “I know.”
Piper goes bright crimson. The curse pulses between us—warm, sharp, intimate. My blood heats instantly in response.
Draven watches me like he’s seeing something unfold he’s waited centuries for. “She’s unraveling you,” he murmurs.
I don’t deny it. Because my pulse is loud. My magic is sharper. And Piper—gods, Piper is sitting beside me glowing like she’s the only thing alive in this hall of ancient predators.
And every one of them sees it.
The bond crackles under my skin like a warning—or a promise.
Either way… Tonight will not end peacefully.
***
The Ninth Court’s dinners are never relaxed, but this one feels tight as a drawn bow. Pipersits beside me, trying very hard to pretend the room full of demons isn’t dissecting every shift of her breath. The glow of her curse is behaving like flickering candlelight—subtle, unpredictable, catching the attention of anyone who cares to look.
And too many are looking.
She lifts her fork carefully, eyes on her plate, shoulders squared with a kind of determined grace… until a noble three seats down stands and raises his glass.
“Bellamy,” he says, voice smooth and rehearsed, “your ancestor used to open Ninth Court feasts with a verse. A tradition from her line. Perhaps you would honor it.”
Piper freezes. Her fork clinks softly against her plate. I feel the drop in her stomach through the bond before she even looks at me.
“A verse?” she whispers.
The noble smiles in that serpentine way demons have perfected over millennia—courtesy wrappedaround hunger. “A simple invocation. A greeting. A phrase carried through your bloodline. It’s customary.”
Lucifer doesn’t intervene. He doesn’t need to—his interest is obvious in the stillness of the room.
Piper sits a little straighter, but her pulse kicks under her skin. She tries to find something—anything—appropriate to say, but the curse reacts to the attention long before she does.
I feel the swell of magic rising through her like a tide, ancient and instinctive. She doesn’t even know she’s doing it. Her lips part. A whisper escapes—quiet, tremulous, but saturated with power. “Veda’ren.”
The entire banquet hall goes still over a single invocation. One spoken like a name and a command, answering itself through five centuries.
The floor responds first. Sigils buried beneath obsidian tiles ignite in a gold-patterned spiral beneath Piper’s feet, rising in delicate lines aroundthe base of her chair like vines made of starlight. Nobles recoil from the table’s edge, their instincts older than their manners.
Piper startles and grips the table with both hands. “Slade—”
“I’ve got you,” I murmur, placing a grounding hand at her spine as the air vibrates with pressure. “Just breathe.”
But the invocation is already unfurling, pulling threads older than memory straight through her skin. Draven, two seats down, pushes back from the table and circles behind us. “You didn’t tell me she was carrying a Bellamy Memoriam,” he mutters.
“She isn’t,” I snap.
“She isnow.”
Piper looks between us, terrified. “What’s happening?”
