“Fuck.” Ronin snatched Mireille’s hand and rushed down the aisle in search of a place to hide.
At the chamber’s entrance were two dark alcoves, each containing a statue of Deathstalker males who bore a striking resemblance to Otto. His ancestors, perhaps.
Ronin shoved Mireille into the alcove on the left. He nestled in behind, tucking her against his chest and placing his palms against the back of the statue. Her hair tickled his chin and her ass pressed against his thighs, tantalizingly close to his cock. He fought an urge to pull her closer.
Better cover her mouth, his wolf added. Unhelpfully.She might scream if she gets frightened.
She’s not that kind of female, Ronin hissed back.
Still, put your hand there anyway. We want to know what her lips feel like.
Ronin’s height afforded him a clear view of the altar around the statue’s head. Two human servants—a taller man with shoulder-length, coffee-colored hair and that same older man with the silver hair who Ronin had seen outside Otto’s office earlier—approached the diva’s body. The tall man cradled the diva’s shoulders while the other grabbed her ankles, and they maneuvered her onto the floor within the snake’s mouth. The tall man plucked an anastasium stone from the barrel and placed it over one of the diva’s eyes, while the older man traced a finger along a triangle etched into the wall beside the fire place.
Thunderous grinding filled the chamber as the snake’s throat opened, two stone slabs parting to reveal a wall of flame. Undulating swirls of red, orange, yellow and blue oozed across the floor to caress and blister the diva’s body.
Ronin’s gorge rose at the unmistakable scent of burning flesh and hair, and Mireille covered her mouth, emitting a small yelp. She flattened herself against Ronin, who wrapped an arm around her waist.
See?his wolf piped up.Screamer.
Ronin shook him off as he watched the fire devour the diva’s body.
The tall man traced the triangle on the wall again, and the flames sucked back into themselves as the stone slabs rumbled closed.
There was no trace of the diva left in the fireplace. Just a pile of ash topped with an anastasium stone, which was now emanating an internal glow.
The silver-haired man hoisted a shovel from a rack next to the fireplace to fish it out.
The other approached with a small, felt-lined box, and his partner placed the stone inside, then flicked the lid shut.
Ronin held his breath, felt Mireille do the same, both afraid to let out a single sound lest the two men discover their hiding place.
He only released it once their footsteps had faded, and he and Mireille crawled out from behind the statue.
“Whathappened?” she asked. “I couldn’t see anything, only smell…”
Ronin explained the triangle symbol, the burning, the glowing anastasium stone. “Does any of it sound familiar to you?”
“No…” She trailed off, but Ronin could practically hear the gears in her head turning. “But if the stone was glowing after, do you think the fire is what activated it? Is fire the source of Stygios’s power?”
Ronin scratched at his cheek. “Seems too obvious. Wouldn’t someone have figured that out by now?”
She shrugged, then yawned against the back of her hand.
“We’ll do some more exploringtomorrow,” he said. Mireille shot him a sharp look, about to protest. “On clear, sleep-fueled heads.”
The corner of her lip twitched, as if she were about to argue, but to Ronin’s surprise, she merely nodded as she let him lead her out of the chamber.
As they reached the hidden door to the parlor, voices echoed from the other end of the stone corridor and Mireille shot him a panicked look.
He pulled her into the empty parlor as the voices grew closer. Too close. They wouldn’t make it out of the room in time.
Ronin crowded Mireille against the wall and cupped his hands beneath the base of her skull, threading his fingers through her hair and tilting her face up.
As he inched his lips dangerously close to hers, his whisper was steady despite the rapid acceleration of his heartbeat.
“Be a good girl and play along.”
Then his lips met hers and the world melted away.
