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“Did you just…? Did she just break the curse?” Daemon asks in utter disbelief while turning to Kael.

“I… I don’t know,” Kael says. “What the fuck was that?”

Callum comes back into the closet and kneels down before tilting my chin up. He gently wipes all of the blood from my face before he moves to clean my arms and hands. “You should change your shirt,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m sorry. I usually catch it in time. I don’t know why it came on so strong. Typically, it builds gradually.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Daemon says as he pulls a shirt from the dresser and hands it to me. “May I?” He gestures to my book of magia before picking it up.

Magia is the way our magic is referred to when speaking of it as forbidden. It means the same thing, but keeping the forbidden aspect separate from what we truly do is important to us. Nothing about what we do is inherently evil.

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s just where I keep track of all my spells. Families typically have a Book of Shadows that’s passed down over generations, but I don’t know who my family is, because my parents were discovered and killed shortly after I was born. So, I decided to start my own when I realized I was a witch at sixteen,”

Daemon inquisitively flips through the pages of the book for a few minutes before looking back at me. Showing me the first page of the book, he asks, “What is this?”

“I assume it’s a family crest. I saw it in my dreams the day I turned eighteen, the same day the headaches started. It felt important, so I drew it in the front,” I answer. “Why?”

“That’s my family crest,” he says. I take the book from him and quickly flip to the back, where I have two more similar drawings.

“I had a dream about these two last week,” I say as I turn the book to show him.

“Holy shit,” Callum says.

“Are these all three of your family’s crests?” I ask. “Is that what the dream was trying to show me?”

“Yeah,” Kael says.

“Then I need to know more about where the curse started for each of your families,” I say. “We need to find out how I am connected to that, or if it’s just random. I don’t get to practice my magia often so I don’t know as much as I should, but I want to. I think I could give you a lot of answers if I can figure out how I’m connected.”

“Right now, you need to sleep,” Daemon says.

“Daemon!” I say in protest.

“No, Lilith. We have watched far too many people go through that and die. You almostdied. You need to go to sleep,” Daemon says firmly.

“I’m not even tired now,” I frown. Daemon sighs and shakes his head as he stands up. “What are you doing?”

“Taking you to bed,” he says as he picks me up from the floor into his arms.

“Daemon! This is ridiculous. You’re a beast. Put me down,” I complain.

“You are a brat, you know that?” he says as he carries me back into the room and lays me on a bed. He covers me up and then gets into the bed beside me.

“You’re bossy,” I say as he pulls me closer. I turn to face him so I can snuggle against his chest, as he wraps his arms around me.

“Go to sleep, Lilith,” he says, kissing the top of my head. Callum and Kael come over and kiss my head as well before the light shuts off and they move to their beds.

“Only because I want to,” I say. “Not because you told me to.”

“Of course,” he chuckles. “Only because you want to.”

Chapter Five

Kael

Iamsittingatmy desk, and I keep seeing shadow figures running past the door. It’s been entirely too long since we have had a maiden in our beds. We’ve been trying to put it off as long as we can. It’s a nuisance to have to keep finding a new one. This new girl, Cassie, seems eager to be in bed with us. She’s a cute little thing. Too bad she’ll die, just like the others.

I rub my hands down my face and sigh before getting up. I can’t keep putting this off. The others are being patient with me, but I’m sick and tired of this. When I step out of the office and into the hallway, moans are echoing through the house. I guess they got sick of waiting. I follow the moans to our room. We’ve shared a room for as long as we have shared women and a throne.