“There’s something here. Like a fetch.…” Belle moved to stand at his side. “I feel it. Do you?”
“Iheardit.”
Cameron’s eyes widened at the mention of a type of demon known to taunt others so that it could feed on fear and discord. She glanced around the room. “I haven’t changed forms. Perhaps it’s not a fetch or its ilk. Mayhap something benevolent for once?”
Kalder laughed. “When are we everthatlucky, lass?”
She popped him playfully on his stomach. “Can I not pretend? Will you not let me have a single moment of delusion, please?”
Devyl’s eyes began to glow red—something as reliable as the shifting of her hair turning white when it came to denouncing the presence of evil. “I smell the stench of a daeve.”
Paden shook his head in denial. “If one were near I’d be changing already to combat it.” He pulled his sword out. “Show me the beast and I’ll finish it off.”
Belle scoffed. “Don’t count on that, Lord Arrogance. They’re not the same as other demons. They are a particular breed of demonic super-assassin nastiness. Highly trained to fight your kind and to sneak up on you to cut your throats long before you ever know they’ve left their astral plane and ventured to this one.”
Devyl concurred. “Miss Morte’s right about that. I’ve seen a single one of their kind take down an entire army of Hell-HuntersandHellchasers, then afterwards pick his teeth clean with the bones of their horses before going after a dragon Were-Hunter for no other reason than he was in a particularly shitty mood and thought its hide would make a pretty pair of boots. But hey, mate, if you’re feeling particularly suicidal, door’s in the wall. Make sure you give me regards to the sharks you pass on your way to the surface, and remember to hold your breath in the water no matter how much it burns.”
Quelled by those words, Paden swallowed hard and slid his sword back into his sheath.
Amused by her brother’s uncommon and sudden reserve, Cameron turned toward Captain Bane. “Could one of those beasts have found us here?”
“Our luck? Anything’s highly probable.”
William snorted. “For that matter, the more preposterous, the more likely.”
Bart nodded in agreement. “Aye to that.”
Perrin growled in outrage as he faced Varice. “I told you to kill him, brother. You see the danger you’ve exposed all of us to by allowing him to bring strangers into our city?” He started forward to attack Kalder.
Cameron’s eyes widened as Kalder summoned a ball of fire to his fist. She hadn’t known he possessed those kinds of powers. Yet as shocking as that was, it paled in comparison to the next words out of the captain’s mouth.
“Bron? Care to tell your sons who Kalder’s real mother is and why the lot of them should be shitting their britches right about now, and running for the door? Better still, ’tis long past time me boy here stops torturing himself with the thoughts that his own mother hated him so much that she killed him.”
She arched a regal brow. “What? You think knowing the bitch hated him so much that she couldn’t bear the sight of him so she abandoned him at birth is better? Fine.” She pinned a cold stare on Kalder. “I’m not your mother, Kalderan. You’re a bastard piece of shit. Unwanted and abandoned on our doorstep the moment you were whelped by the real whore who brought you into this world.”
Cameron gasped at the cruelty of those words as the fire went out on Kalder’s hand.
He took the news without flinching or showing any emotion whatsoever. She had no idea how he managed it. But he did. Indeed, it was as if something inside him died with those words and left him as cold and lifeless as a statue.
Yet she knew that it had to be shredding him inside and bleeding out every part of him. How could it not? That was such a low, cruel thing to do.
And for it to be so public, no less…
Damn Bron for this! Did she have no soul whatsoever? She was worse than even the demons they were after.
The only clue Kalder gave of the pain he must be feeling wasthe subtle tensing at the corners of his lips. “I suppose one whore’s as good as another, then. Makes no difference which one birthed me and which one killed me, in the grand scheme of things.”
Her nostrils flared at his insult.
The captain let out an evil laugh at that. “There, me boyo, you’d be most wrong.”
“How so?”
He jerked his chin toward the coat of arms on the wall above the queen’s head. “I defy you to ask Bron for the name of your real and proper mother. Go on, I dare you.”
Kalder hesitated as he caught the sudden look of fear on Bron’s face. More than that, he saw the panic in Varice’s eyes.
A fissure of foreboding went through him as he considered what about his birth would scare them so. Shite… who would his father have shagged to scare them like that? Knowing his father, it could have been anyone.
