With a grin that damn near reaches from ear to ear, I smile at her. “Oh, I know the contract. Until the debt is paid, I must do as you ask. I must come when the bell tolls. When the last favor is done, the bell will crack, freeing me from our blood debt.”
She smirks. The day that fucking bell was created was the worst day of my life.
“I have a task for you,” she says with a grin. “I need you to go to the underworld and kill….”
A laugh bubbles up out of me. She frowns.
“What the fuck is so funny?”
“You. Tell me, Uriah, where is the bell?”
She looks uncomfortable for a moment. Her back stiffens, and her hands lock in her lap. “We don’t need the bell. You know you owe me.”
I wave my hand through the air, opening a gap into the void. Reaching through the rippling air in front of me, I pull out the broken bronze bell. Closing up the void, I place the bell down on the arm of the chair. Uriah gasps as she looks at it.
“Where did you get that?”
I chuckle. “Twenty-seven years ago, a human summoned me for a favor.”
She swallows before looking up at me. “It doesn’t matter. You still owe me the last favor.”
“Actually, I don’t. The contract doesn’t specify who gets the favors, just that I have to fulfill them until the bell breaks.” I pick the bell up and try to ring it, but it makes no sound. “I think we can both agree the bell is broken.”
She leaps to her feet, her wings springing from her back. They stretch from one side of the living room to the other, the white feathers gleaming as bright as her halo light.
“How dare you? You tricked me,” she snarls.
“There was no trick. You lost the bell, and someone else found it. Not my problem.”
She leaps over the coffee table to stand in front of my chair. “You will do as I ask, or I will undo my favor. You remember why the bell was formed in the first place, don’t you?” her smirk pisses me off.
For a second, the image of Abrigia comes into my mind. Her golden skin and deep dimples take my breath away. The vision of her golden blonde hair blowing in the wind nearly sends me to my knees. The forsaken princess was everything I could have dreamed of. However, as quickly as the image came, it fades as the memory of her betrayal pops in my mind.
I lift my shoulders and smile at Uriah. “Hard to reform a mate-bond when there is already one in place.”
Her eyes widen. She waves her hand through the air. Suddenly, a golden cord appears. It’s connected to my heart. It moves out about a foot away from me before it disappears into thin air. If you were to follow that gold cord, it would without a doubt lead you to Nasiah.
Uriah screams. “How dare you?”
This is the reason I made the mate-bond with Nasiah. I knew the moment that bell broke, and it wasn’t Uriah holding it, that she would be pissed. The only card she had to get her way was to reform the bond I had with Abrigia. Only she could do it since she is the one that broke it. My only option to keep that fate from happening was to forge a bond with someone else.
I laugh as she stands in front of me fuming. I can see the wheels in her head turning, trying to figure out how to get her way.
“You owe me,” she finally says.
Standing to my feet, causing her to take a step back, I tug at the sleeves of my button up. “As per our contract, no the fuck I don’t. Now, if you don’t mind, I have somewhere to be.”
Turning my back to her, I cut an opening into the void.
“You place a lot of trust in a fragile human.”
Her comment has me stopping in my tracks.
“It would be a shame if something were to happen to her. Your mate-bond isn’t yet solidified, which means if she dies now you can’t save her.”
I move so quickly, the human eye wouldn’t have been able to catch me. One moment I’m standing with my back to her, and the next I’m in front of her, my hands wrapped around her neck, lifting her off the ground. My wings are out. However, they are nothing like hers. Mine are large and leathery with no feathers.
She smiles at me. “You don’t have the balls, forsaken. If you kill me, not even your precious king can save you.”
