Page 140 of Devoted

Luca’s smile crept across his face. “There’s no escaping now, fire demon.”

Emberline had lost consciousness. But my wife was still suffering, pupils moving frantically behind her lids, lips twisting against the pain. I advanced on Luca, backing him into the nearest wall.

“Let her the fuck go, or I swear to the gods, I will twist your head off your shoulders, and the consequences be damned. I don’t give a fuck whose body you are hiding inside, and I don’t give a fuck the price I’ll pay later. Let. Her. Go.”

Whatever he saw in my face had Luca—Blackwood—sucking in a quick breath, then my wife sagged in my arms, limp and sweaty but no longer suffering. I pressed two fingers to her pulse, thrumming weakly beneath my fingertips but there. Blood tracked from her ears down the line of her jaw.

“You’re going to pay for this,” I promised.

Blackwood watched me coldly through my brother-in-law’s eyes.

“I highly doubt you’ll have the chance. They’re finally here,” he taunted, in that cruel, ancient voice that had no business coming out of Luca’s mouth. “Took them long enough, but I suppose it does take time to materialize a full battalion of guards across the Adriatic.”

I let out a long, ragged breath as the truth hit me. We weren’t the ones launching an assault on our enemies and finishing this war… they were.

We were fucked. Blackwood had won.

We didn’t have the ability to dematerialize. If Blackwood and Giovanni brought Drax and Ashbound with them, we would be slaughtered where we stood. Somehow, I had to get Emberline off this island. Away from Venice.

And I had no idea how.

Where was Gabriel? I’d heard my brother shouting and then… nothing.

“What the fuck did you do?” Nico bore down on Luca. “I told you I’d go back to Rome with you. Now let them all go.”

“My fool of a son, thinking he could bargain with me. I sent the call out hours ago,” Blackwood mocked, “while your healers still believed they could save the boy, and you were talking about locking him away. I couldn’t have that, you see. My vessel being trapped in an impenetrable fortress would be an… inconvenience.”

The fucker looked so godsdamned pleased with himself, I wanted to rip his face off. Or rather, the demon inside me did. The ifrit was coming unhinged, and the possessive bastard didn’t give a shit that this was my wife’s brother. Didn’t care about anything except that he’d hurt Emberline.

Calm the fuck down.

He’s still Luca, somewhere inside all that vile evilness.

We can’t dematerialize. Focus on some other way to get us off this godsdamned island.

“As for trading your life for that of your friends… well, why settle for one slave when I can have you all? Though I expect Giovanni will want his pound of flesh.”

The fucker’s attention landed on me, glowing with interest. “I might be able to convince him to leave me the fire demon as my new pet. As for the rest of your little ragtag group… fear is a powerful tool, and public executions have a way of controlling the masses. We don’t need the girl. Or the heir.”

I could burn the fucker to a crisp right the fuck now.

Nico could strangle him with his shadows.

And we would but for the female in my arms, and the fact that, like my wife, I knew that somewhere beneath the oozing cesspool of Blackwood’s vile personality, Luca still existed. According to the fucker, the kid was still fighting for his life.

And I wouldn’t be the one to take that away from him.

“Your wife is already dead, so is your brother; they just don’t know it yet.” A brief, dismissive gesture at the ash on the infirmary floor. “As for my pets, there are more where those came from. Many, many more.”

Nico’s shadows spilled out of his hands before I finished processing the words. The skittering of hundreds of legs rang down the hallway, growing closer and closer and then, impossibly… Gabriel was there.

Bleeding, black ichor streaked across his face, but he was alive.

“There’re too many, and they’re right behind me. We need to…” He assessed the room in a heartbeat, eyes bouncing between me and a grinning Luca, arriving at the same, irrefutable conclusion—we were totally fucked. His lips pulled back from his fangs.

“Get her out,” he roared. “Dematerialize while you still…”

“I’ve been trying,” I ground out. “I can’t.”