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“Whatever you say,” I said through my teeth.

Mason turned to his son. “Get her upstairs and locked up. I need to go over a couple of things with you.”

“Locked up?” Lucien asked.

His father’s eyebrow arched once more. “You have your instructions.”

“She hasn’t tried to escape, and she’s proven her loyalty to the family. It’s thanks to her magic that we even have the crown—I will not lock her up.”

“If you are unable to perform the appointed task, son, then I’ll get one of our associates to tuck her in tonight, instead?”

I took a step toward Mason, and one of the men at my back grabbed hold of my shoulder and dug his fingers into my skin. I didn’t flinch. “You said I would earn my place if I did this,” I said, “I’ve done it, now give me the respect you promised.”

“I promised no such thing, child. I told you it would start you on the path toward earning your place.” Mason sauntered over to me, malice in his red eyes. “I suggest you go quietly to your room and stay there… otherwise you and I are going to have a private conversation about how to be a good house guest.”

I didn’t want to look at Lucien. I didn’t want to give anything away, but I already had a sinking feeling that too much had been given away. Maybe we hadn’t been careful enough, or maybe Mason Diaboli already knew what me and his son had gotten up to in the dead of night; what had passed between us.

About the connection we had.

If he did, then I knew I would be dead as soon as this whole thing was over. There was going to be no place for me in the Diaboli family, and there would definitely be no place for Max. Lucien’s loyalty was supposed to lie only with his father and his name, not with some random Ethera he met in a club one night.

Mason would not tolerate that.

I nodded. “I understand,” I said.

“Lucien,” said Mason, making his way back into the house. “See her upstairs, then join me in the study, would you?”

We both waited a moment for Mason to disappear, then we headed into the house. We were followed all the way to the base of the stairs, but we were then left alone. Not that it mattered, in here. There were demons everywhere. Already I could feel them crowding me, making the mansion’s already tight hallways feel even more constricting and claustrophobic.

When I reached the bedroom, I realized instantly, the windows had been barred.

“Of course,” I said to myself. “Why would I have more freedom for my troubles?”

The bars were symbolic more than anything else. I knew that. I’d had to phase through way more complicated barriers than this on my way toward getting the crown, but Mason had wanted to hammer home the one indisputable fact about my stay in his house.

I was a prisoner here.

I turned around to Lucien. “Thanks for the escort,” I said.

Lucien nodded. “Don’t mention it.”

There was a look in his eyes like he was burning to speak, to say something, but he couldn’t. So, he did the only other thing he could, and caught me entirely by surprise.

The sudden rush of magic hit me like a wave of anxiety. I felt like someone had just run their nails along my back, the hairs on the nape of my neck went up, my eyes widened. I wanted to resist, but I also knew it was Lucien… he wasn’t going to hurt me.

“Don’t speak,” came an echoed voice seemingly from somewhere in the back of my mind. “We leave tonight.”

Just as soon as he had grabbed me with his magic, he let me go. I felt my entire body deflate, as if I had been holding in a breath. Lucien quickly turned around and left, shutting the bedroom door and locking it.

For a couple of moments, I stood where I was, rooted to the spot, unable to move or even think. Lucien was gone, but his message had been clear. Tonight. As in, tonight, tonight. How in the world was he going to orchestrate that? Maybe he was going to wait until everyone was asleep and then deal with the demons… silence them, or stop them from seeing us, somehow.

I was left alone, with a thousand questions rattling around in my brain, and the strange feeling that jumping out of a building with a parachute wasn’t going to be the wildest thing that happened to me today.

Chapter

Thirty

Ihad been here before, stuck in this room, alone, trying and failing to measure the passage of time. Maybe it had been five minutes, or maybe it had been three hours. I had no way of knowing, and the anxiety wasn’t helping.