Even a shard made it powerful.
Oh, this was delicious. This might just be the way I could take Balthazar down and take his place. Lucifer would be furious when he found out his golden boy had botched the job. I’d be on the A team, sipping blood martinis in the VIP section of hell. And Balthazar? He’d be scrubbing toilets on the D team where he belonged.
The thought alone was enough to make me smile.
But... if Angelo got the shard first, I’d end up in the pit.
And that wasn’t happening.
Chapter Five
Selena
The line at The Black Rose Café snaked almost to the door.
I shifted my weight, clutching my bag against my hip, and counted heads. Eight people ahead of me. The espresso machine hissed and screamed behind the counter while the baristas moved in a frantic dance, calling out orders over the noise. Students crammed into every available seat, laptops open, textbooks spread across tables, the air thick with the smell of dark roast and warm pastries.
An hour. I had an hour before I needed to be back for Julianne’s class—my class today, technically. She’d handed it off to me while she and Costin finalized plans for her birthday party. The vampire, witch, Unseelie, and wolf elite were losing their minds over the guest list.
And what a guest list it was.
The Vampire King and Queen. Trystan Hunter, the Wolf King. Keir Rankin, the Unseelie mafia king. Prince Dante and his girlfriend, Katona. Angelo Santi and his queen, Serenity—the vampire mafia sending representatives from New Orleansas a show of the fragile truce. Dignitaries from covens I’d only read about in textbooks. Anybody who was anybody in the supernatural world would be there, draped in silk and jewels, toasting to a century of love.
Everybody except Rocco.
The thought crept in before I could stop it. I stared at the menu board without seeing it.
He wouldn’t be there. Couldn’t be there. Last I’d checked, he was still working at Bernie’s Burgers—a grease-stained hole in the wall on the edge of the French Quarter. Before that, it was a gas station. Before that, a warehouse loading dock.
I knew because I kept tabs on him.
I had a contact in New Orleans. Rose Dragan. She was a vampire and a witch—a rare combination that made her one of the most powerful people I knew. We’d been roommates at Red Rose Academy, gone from friends to enemies and back to friends again. It was complicated. Everything involving Rocco was complicated.
But Rose understood. She didn’t judge me for needing to know he was okay.
Every few weeks, I’d get a text:Still at Bernie’s. Looks like shit. Alive.
That last part was the only one that mattered.
The line shuffled forward. I moved with it, my chest tight.
Pathetic. That’s what I was. The mate he’d rejected, still checking up on him like some lovesick stalker who couldn’t let go. He’d called me a traitor. A disgrace. Told me I wasn’t worthy of being his mate.
And here I was, two years later, making sure he was okay.
I really needed to get a grip.
“Next!” The barista’s voice cut through my thoughts.
I stepped up to the counter and ordered my usual. Vanilla latte, extra shot. The small comforts of routine.
My phone buzzed in my pocket as I moved to the pickup area. I pulled it out, expecting a message from Julienne about the seating chart or the catering or one of a hundred other details she’d been obsessing over.
It wasn’t from Julienne.
New development. He left Bernie’s. Got picked up in a limo. Dimitri was driving.
I stared at the screen, my heart suddenly pounding.
