Page 138 of Devoted

Dante burned anyway.

He went incandescent, and I ducked my face beneath an arm as an inferno turned the room into an oven. Drax skittered backward, legs jerking erratically, but never breaking the circle holding us captive. There were too many. Fire might hold them at bay, but we’d die from lack of oxygen before they would die.

And if even one of them touched us…

“I’ll clear a path to the door. You will run,” Dante ordered, reaching back and squeezing my hand. “You will get out of this room and dematerialize. Go anywhere.”

“No, that’s not a plan, that’s a…”

Blackwood laughed. “I could kill her right now,” he crooned from Luca’s mouth. “I could take her soul, and you couldn’t stop me. For all your fire and all your rage, you’re helpless. Worthless.” That tilt of Luca’s head was so, so wrong.

“I see your every thought, every fear, everything. And yes, you did fail your brother. You’ve been failing him your entire life. When he needed you, you were not there. You left him alone. And look what happened, Emberliiiine.” He drew my name out through his teeth with a hiss, warping my brother’s handsome features into something sinister.

He narrowed his eyes and then… he pushed.

An invisible force hit me like a wall—not pain, just presence, a vast coldness spiking into the space behind my temples, expanding until the pressure turned agonizing, until I thought my skull would burst.

The scream tore up my throat before I could stop it, and I collapsed, knees hitting the floor with an impact that sent pain rippling up through my hips.

My spine.

“Get the fuck out of her.” Dante’s voice boomed with the ifrit’s otherworldly cadence. The temperature in the room spiked until the air choked, until ash and spark swirled amongst the darkness and flame.

“You’d have to kill the boy to get me out,” Blackwood said pleasantly. “Could you really burn your wife’s brother to save her? We both know she’d hate you for it.” He paused, and I managed to lift my head through the pain.

“Dante.” My voice came out thin. Breathless. “Please. Don’t.”

“He’s hurting you. I have to stop him.”

Swirling flames ate through Dante’s clothes, his scars glowing like veins of lava. His face was expressionless, focused wholly on Luca, and there… panic flashed across Luca’s face.

No, that was Blackwood’s panic as he realized that while my husband would obey my wishes, the demon was a whole other story.

Yes, that bastard would burn my brother to a crisp and not lose a second’s sleep.

“Don’t.” I pressed my hand against the cold marble floor and tried to lift my head. “Don’t you dare hurt Luca, or I will kick your demon ass both here and in the afterlife. I swear to all the gods I will.”

But Lord Blackwood must have realized the truth of his situation because the pressure in my head eased off. The room stopped spinning. I dragged in an ash-filled breath tasting of smoke.

“Dante, I need you to listen to me. If you kill Luca, there’s nothing controlling the Drax. They will take our souls before we escape this room. So, tell your demon to stand the fuck down.”

“There. See? The voice of reason.” Blackwood sounded so fucking pleased.

I spat out a mouthful of blood, slowly forcing my body upright, my knees shaking beneath my weight as I swayed back and forth.

“And you can go fuck yourself, asshole. I’m going to pry your vile presence out of my brother’s body if it’s the last godsdamned thing I do on this earth.”

Behind me, Dante let out a low grunt of warning. I glanced down, a single tendril of black shadow winding around my ankles like a cat’s tail.

Nico.

The next wave of shadow flooded the room like an untamed sea, a roiling black mass that swept over us in a single furious pass that engulfed every Drax near the door and the window and the walls and simply ended them. Bodies clattered to the floor all around us, and when the darkness receded, there was nothing left but the curled husks of twenty… thirty Drax left behind.

Then Nico stepped through the doorway.

Not wholly transformed, but enough that I shivered, my instincts screaming.

Obsidian eyes swept over the room, skimmed over me slowly, as if reassuring himself I was still mostly intact, fanged mouth thinning out at the blood splattered in front of me. Shadows uncurled from his hands in slow, undulating waves—reminding me of the Veil of the Underworld—and even Luca recoiled from that silent threat.