Before I can answer, the air above her begins to condense—mist, light, shadow,memory—forming the faint outline of a woman wrapped in winter-pale garments and moonlit authority.
Not alive. Not dead. A record with its own heartbeat.
Veda Bellamy’s echo lifts its head. Nobles stiffen. A few rise from their chairs. One whispers a prayer to a deity that hasn’t answered in ages. And the apparition speaks directly to Piper, “Find my grimoire.”
The words ripple through the hall—soft but sharp enough to cut the silence into clean ribbons.
Piper flinches like she’s been struck. I feel the echo hit her through the bond—cold, bright, demanding.
Draven moves too close. “We need to break the line before someone binds it—”
The magic reacts badly to his interference. A blast of energy cracks across the table, toppling goblets, extinguishing the floating candles overhead, sending several nobles reeling backward.Piper cries out and presses her palms to her ears as the chandelier above swings in a violent arc.
Draven curses under his breath and jumps back, shaking his hand. “That’s not an invocation. That’s a call-through. She opened a channel.”
Piper gasps, trembling. “I didn’t mean to.”
“It wasn’t choice,” I murmur, cupping her jaw to turn her face toward mine. “The curse used your voice.”
The silhouette flickers once, twice—then dissolves into a shower of fading gold. She sags forward, panting. Around us, the nobles are already recalculating. The dangerous ones inch closer, sensing opportunity.
Lucifer doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak, or even fucking blink. He simply watches.
Draven leans close and murmurs, “We need an exit.Now.”
He’s right. I rise smoothly from my chair and place a steadying hand at Piper’s back. “We’re leaving,” I say.
She nods, dazed, gripping my sleeve.
Draven gives a sharp grin—half apology, half enjoyment—and raises his hand. Blue fire erupts along the far wall, dramatic and harmless but enough to send half the court gasping and recoiling. It’s all the distraction we need.
I guide Piper out of her chair and toward the side corridor. The chandelier steadies above us, the plates settle, the room stirs and recovers. But Piper doesn’t. She looks up at me, eyes wide, voice barely audible. “Slade… what did I just do?”
“Not…what,” I say quietly as the corridor swallows us in deeper shadow. “Who.”
Her breath shivers.
And I tell her the truth she already fears. “You answered the first Bellamy.”
Chapter 17
Piper
The corridor swallows us whole—quiet, dim, lined with flickering lanterns—and the second the banquet doors close behind us, my legs go watery. I yank my arm free of Slade’s grip and press my back to the wall, dragging in breath after uneven breath. “I didn’t mean to sayanything—” My voice breaks. “I don’t even knowwhatI said.”
Slade steps in close, one hand braced beside my head, the other steady at my waist—keeping me upright, keeping me from spiraling. “You didn’t choose it,” he murmurs. “The curse chose for you.”
“That is NOT comforting!”
Footsteps echo sharply behind us. They sound like a warning. Draven appears, half storm, half smirk, his formal jacket slightly singed from whatever diversion he caused. He looks between me and Slade, eyes bright with disbelief.
“Well,” he exhales, “that was catastrophic.”
I groan. “Great. Love that word. Really calming.”
Draven points at me. “Do you have any idea what you just invoked?”
“I already said NO!”
