Lucien yanked out the shard out of his pocket. “No, you won’t. You don’t have the shard.”
Victory was at hand. Vex was about to have his ass sent back to hell.
Vex merely cocked his eyebrow. “Do you, Lucien?”
He should be afraid. Even Balthazar said he couldn’t touch it. The shard was the one thing in this room that Vex couldn'tcontrol—the one weapon we had that a demon couldn't counter. If we could get it close enough, he'd have no choice but to back off or burn.
I glanced at Lucien.
Lucien stretched his hand, the shard aimed at Vex like a weapon. “I command you to go back to hell.”
Nothing happened.
The torches didn’t flicker. The shadows didn’t move. The air didn’t shift.
Nothing.
Panic pumped through me. Something was wrong. Something we’d forgotten. Something we missed.
Vex smiled, his golden eyes glowing even darker. He flicked his hand and the shard ripped from Lucien’s grip, floating across the room. Vex stretched out his palm and caught it.
Caught it. Bare-handed. No pain. No burning. No reaction at all.
Balthazar’s words hit me like a sledgehammer. Demons can’t touch the shard. “This isn’t the shard. It’s a cursed jewel that has veiled my magic in this castle.” He closed his fist around it. “Thanks for bringing it back to me.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Lucien charged.
I raced to the other side, my fingers inching away from grabbing Selena’s foot. But Vex snapped his fingers and I froze in place. So close but so faraway.
He looked between us. “Now, I’m done with the fun and games with you two idiots.” He smiled at me. “Prince Rocco, someone has been missing you.”
The air left my lungs in one sharp punch. I knew. Before the smoke, before the shadows shifted, before anything crawled out of those symbols—I knew.
My knees nearly buckled. The room tilted. Two years of nightmares, two years of waking up drenched in sweat with my mother’s screams echoing in my skull, two years of hating myself for what my hands had done—all of it crashed into me at once like a wave breaking over my head.
Not again. Please. Not again.
Black smoke flowed out of one of the symbols. Fuck a demon.
“Yes, you’re quite right,” he said, as if reading my mind. “It’s a demon. The same one who possessed you when you nearly beat your mother to death.”
The words hit me like a blade between the ribs. My vision tunneled. My hands—the same hands that had broken my mother’s face — started shaking so violently I couldn’t stop them.
Vex walked over to me, the black smoke following him like a pet dog.
“But this time, you won’t stop.” He ran his fingers down my face.
My skin crawled where he touched me—a revulsion so deep it went beyond physical, down to the blood, down to the bone. I wanted to rip his hand off. But I couldn’t move. Not yet.
“This time, you’ll kill your friends.” Vex tilted his head. “First, Lucien. Then the others.”
I glanced over at Lucien. His eyes were wide.
Vex returned to the altar. “Last,” he said, as he slid the blade across Selena’s throat without breaking the skin. “Then you’re precious mate. It will be brutal, bloody. The demon will leave. And you’ll remember everything.”
Bitterness and hate burned through me, sharp and helpless.
