Though he doesn’t stay calm for longer than a few seconds.
His gaze flashes across my broken body, racing from my busted face to the feather in my shoulder, to my broken arm and hand, down to my mangled leg, and then up across all the burns and bruises that must be visible across my torso, neck, and face.
Murder fills his eyes.
His countenance changes in a heartbeat.
His hair is instantly inky black and his eyes become the deepest, darkest blue, like a stormy sea. His body becomes leaner, although it remains muscular, and his clothing changes, becoming all black.
Thisis the face that stops my heart and fills me with both fear and anticipation.
“Veda.” He speaks in a low, broken snarl as his arms close around me, his hands cradling my back and supporting me. His voice tears at my soul. “My dark Veda.”
“You’re here.” I can’t keep the sob from my voice as I close my good eye and let him hold my suddenly trembling body.
I’m not sure how he found me, but right now, I don’t care.
His hands are so gentle that his touch doesn’t hurt me.
But his voice is tight with fury. “Tell me who I need to kill.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Iinhale the mist in the air, tasting Diavolo’s magic on my tongue.
I want nothing more in this moment than to ask him to kill the dark angel who gave me life.
After all, that was what Diavolo promised me. In return for giving him the power in my heart, he vowed to help me kill the man who’d murdered my father, imprisoned my mother, and stole the empire that should have been mine.
Of course, if I think about it, that promise is now fragile. My father is alive, and I have no right to claim his empire while he lives. So the first and third parts of the promise are void.
My father did imprison my mother. Or at least, he ordered it to happen. But what if Diavolo chooses to interpret that part of the promise more literally?
It wasn’t my father who held my mother in a prison, but the angel who took her into the veil and kept her there. That angel is already dead, so Diavolo might consider that part of the promise already fulfilled.
What if Diavolo is no longer bound to me?
Dark saints, what then?
All of these thoughts rage through my mind within a heartbeat and I can’t stop my increasing trembles.
In response to my shiver, Diavolo’s hands slide across my back in soothing strokes.
“Don’t be afraid,” he murmurs. “I’m holding my translocation power in place. It can whisk us away within a heartbeat. I’ve created an illusion on this side of the room so the mist isn’t visible. It will look as if you’re still alone…” His voice hardens and his snarl returns. “And hurt.”
The corners of his mouth turn down. “You may not be able to see past the power I’ve placed around you, but I can see clearly the two dark angels on the other side of this room. So help me, my Veda. I’m fighting the impulse to set them alight and watch them burn.”
His beautiful lips are twisted with fury.
His rage on my behalf calms some of my fear, but a new anxiety is replacing it.
Diavolo may want to lay waste to this place, but my father controls light magic of a strength I never expected to encounter.
If that light magic burned me this badly, it could hurt Diavolo, too.
My throat is tight with emotion, and speaking is painful—but not impossible.
It would be so easy for me, as a dark creature, to lie to him, but I choose not to.
