“I must confess,” Rothmere continues, taking a step toward us, his polished boots clicking on the stone, “I was beginning to worry my investment in you was a waste, Valgrave. I’m so pleased to be proven wrong.”
Chad is on his feet in an instant, positioning himself between me and the Chancellor, his body a charged shield. “Rothmere.”
“Indeed.” Rothmere smiles, a thin, bloodless expression. His coat sleeves are long, but not long enough to hide the fact he’s missing a hand; the white cast that’s in its place. “I’ve been watching this little drama unfold. So much passion. So much potential for chaos. It’s why I waited. Any wrong step, you see…” He gestures around at the carnage with his remaining hand. “It’s a very complex situation. One must allow the pieces to arrange themselves just so.”
His gaze flicks to the glowing door at the far end of the corridor: Merlin’s chamber. “That, however, is a complication I can no longer abide,” he says. “The Ides are a foolish, unpredictable variable. It’s time to take them off the board.”
He starts walking toward the door.
“Don’t,” Chad growls, a warning that promises dismemberment.
Rothmere doesn’t even pause. “Oh, I will. And you won’t stop me.” He keeps walking. “We have other dragons, you know. In much more… controlled environments. Our plans will proceed, with or without you and your little coven. But first, a bit more thinning of the herds seems prudent. Let them kill each other. It saves us the trouble.”
Chad lunges, a streak of shadow and crimson light. His claws, sharp enough to tear through leather, slash at Rothmere’s throat.
And pass right through him.
Rothmere’s form shimmers for a second, like a heat haze, but he is unharmed. He doesn’t even break stride.
“Surely you haven’t forgotten you can’t actually kill me,” he says conversationally. “With or without the ring, my binding spell, to prevent just that, is still on you. And for good measure I’ve added a displacement ward. Tied to my own lifeblood.You’d have to kill me to break it. As you can see, that presents a certain… logistical problem. Clever, no? We adapt.”
I manage to rise to my feet, a mixture of my tonic and adrenaline lending me strength. Nyssa looks between me and the Chancellor uncertainly, as if she’s already calculating the trauma, the unpredictability, of yet another bloodspill. He’s continuing his march down the corridor.
“Stop!” I grate out.
My indignation is enough to give him a second’s pause, to glance back at me, a flicker of contempt in his icy eyes. “You, on the other hand… a Salem?” His eyes narrow as he takes me in, my gray-and-red-flecked eyes. Then, a flick of his wrist, and a bolt of silver energy lashes out. But instead of being aimed at me, it’s aimed at Chad.
It slams into him, and he staggers, a guttural roar of pain tearing from his throat.
“Get ready for it,” Rothmere says, almost fondly. “Therealyou.”
He raises his hand fully, his fingers suddenly tracing a complex, burning sigil in the air. He speaks a single word, a syllable of a language I don’t know but which sounds like pure malice.
The sigil flies from his hand and strikes Chad square in the chest.
Chad screams, and it’s a sound beyond pain. It’s a sound of breaking. His body convulses, arching backward. Bones crack and reset with sickening, wet snaps. His skin shifts darker, turning a shadowed black, and strange, glowing red lines like magma veins spread across his body. Horns—actual horns—black and ridged, tear from his temples. His body swells, muscles twisting and expanding until his clothes strain and split at the seams. His claws lengthen into black talons, and the lethal-yet-controlled predator is gone, replaced by something huge and wrong, breathing too fast, too deep, too hungry.
What I thought was Chad’s demon form just became… something far more demon.
“What the actual hell?” I gasp.
Chad’s supposed to be a half-demon. But this is like?—
“Didn’t know this existed, did you, Chad?” Rothmere calls, clearly enjoying every second, his mouth a spiteful line. “Your mother hid it under a blood sigil. One your father helped cast—the only real contribution he made before he walked out. Perks of being sired by a Malabranche demon. Their genes tend to… overpower the mother’s.”
My brain struggles to begin unpacking what Rothmere’s saying, how he even knows all this. I’m still on the floor, staring at the demon Chad’s become. Raw. Wild. Feral.He absolutely does not look in the “half” category anymore.
The transformation has completed. The beast, towering and terrible, straightens to his full height, his horns nearly scraping the corridor’s ceiling, the last scraps of his clothing barely preserving his modesty.
And I’m the closest thing to him. The red light from his eyes wash over me, and I struggle to see anything of Chad left in that gaze. Just… a void of primal hunger. He takes a step, and the low growl in his chest deepens. As if he sees prey. Smells my blood, my fear. Sees me.
I scramble backward, my mind racing. If the blood sigil his parents used was a cage, a leash around histrueinherited demon side, a monster he never learned to control—then tearing it off all at once, this abruptly, might’ve… destabilized everything. Fried the wiring, so to speak. This demon never got to grow up. Never got to learn restraint. Never?—
The demon lunges.
42
CHAD
