You idiot!My pulse thundered in my ears as the image of Damien’s hand ripping Rowan’s heart out swam in my vision. The thought of his body crumpling to the floor, the same as Jules’s, like a puppet with its strings cut, impaled me with a spike of fear. I knew Rowan was fearless to a fault, but even he had to recognize that whatever the hell a demonlike Damien was capable of, this was neither a fight he could win nor a person he could intimidate.
Unless. . .
Unless Rowan knew Damien wouldn’t risk the relic that seemed so important to him. Unless he was willing to gamble his life—possiblybothof their lives at this point—on the assumption that Damien needed him alive to find his way to some lighthouse. Whatever that place was.
Damien studied us for a long moment. I felt his amber eyes peeling me apart layer by layer. Then he let loose a full-throated laugh that filled the study with its rich warmth. The sound bounced off leather-bound spines and polished wood, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere.
“Very well,chico.” He picked up his coffee cup and raised it in our direction before taking another slow sip of coffee. “You may both leave the Second Circle. For now.” The implication hung heavy—but you'll be back.
Just like that.
No threats. No bargaining. No attempt to sweeten the deal or point out everything I was throwing away. Just. . . his permission. Like I’d asked to be excused from a dinner party rather than walk away from the only solid lead I’d had on Edward’s location in weeks of searching.
My muscles trembled with exhaustion and spent fear, but I forced them to hold steady. Forced myself to straighten my back and keep my chin up. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me crumble. Wouldn’t let him see how much walking away from this was costing me.
My legs nearly betrayed me as I turned and walked towards the door. The adrenaline crash hit like a truck—hours of terror, revelation, murder, and resurrection all caught up at once. Jules’s death. Rowan’s secret. This entire negotiation with a demon who killed as easily as breathing and smiled while doing it.
Rowan shuffled beside me, and I knew he had to be in agony—the slight hitch in his movement, how he cradled his wrist, the tremble in his limbs. Pain flashed across his face, and I could only imagine how his body must have felt after coming back from being dead.
Being resurrected wasn’t the same as being healed, I suppose. He’d been beaten, slashed, and bitten tonight before being drained nearly entirely of blood. His wrist was barely functional, badly swollen. Hewas running on pure stubborn willpower combined with his obsessive compulsion to protect me.
And I almost traded him to a demon.
The thought made bile rise in my throat, acid-sharp and bitter enough to water my eyes. As we neared the door to the study, I sniffled at the thought of losing him to Damien, which prompted him to check on me.
“Violet, are you okay?” he asked, timbre low and hoarse.
“Honestly? No, I’m not.” I released an exhausted sigh, crossing over the plush rug. “But I don’t think anybodywouldbe after the night we’ve had. I’m still pissed at you, by the way.”
“For dying?”
“No, you idiot,” I said. “That you’ve already lived a life before. . .”
Rowan reached for the handle to the study’s door as he said, “Well, my reincarnation is notexactlythe same as yours, Levi’s, and Charlie’s. It is—”
“Ah, I nearly forgot,” Damien’s voice called out behind us.
Every muscle in my body locked down.Here it comes. The twist. The double-cross. The revelation that we can’t simply walk away from a High Demon after declining his offer.Surely there would be consequences for wasting Damien’s time—for rejecting him.
I turned slowly, Rowan’s hand still gripped in mine like a lifeline.
Damien moved around his desk with that liquid grace that made the mundane act of walking look like a dance, as if his feet barely touched the ground. He approached us with measured steps, each one deliberate and unhurried, stopping close enough that his scent wrapped around us both.
Again that smell of smoke and red wine, but now there was also a hint of coffee, sandalwood, and something distinctlycarnal—the scent of sex and sin and a pleasure so intense it rolled off him in waves and saturated the air like an intoxicating fog. Part of my brain screamed to run, while another part begged for him to come closer.
The heat from his body reached me even from two feet away, fevered and inviting and wrong. He extended his hand towards me, palm up, fingers long and elegant and still faintly stained with Jules’s blood that no amount of silk handkerchiefs could fully cleanse. The stains wererusset-brown now, dried in the creases of his skin, under his perfectly manicured nails.
“May I please have your hand,gatita?” His voice was honey and smoke.
The phrasing was polite. Courteous, even. The tone of someone asking permission rather than demanding compliance.
But I had a feeling that nothing about Damien was truly a question. Just opportunities to consent to things he’d already decided would happen.
I hesitated, every instinct screamingdon’t touch the demon, but the combination of curiosity, exhaustion, and the sheer weight of the past hour won out. “Why?” I heard myself ask.
“I have a gift to bestow upon you. You may consider it my own version of recompense for how this evening’s events have played out. . . regardless ofwhomay or may not have been at fault.”
Rowan squeezed my hand. “Violet? We do not accept gifts from demons. Let us go.”
