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Her lips twitched, then she sobered and met my gaze full-on. “I’m realizing that now.” Her eyes softened. “I’ll come find you shortly. Rest, mushroom man.” Then she shot me a wink and closed the door behind me, leaving me in the bathroom with broken ribs, a gaping wound in my abdomen, and hope in my heart.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Omaera

I returned to the kitchen to find Vip setting the kettle onto the gas stove and bringing down three stone mugs from one of the cupboards. She flicked her dark-brown gaze at me out of the corner of her eye, but didn’t turn to face me. I took a seat at the counter bar and rested my elbows on the warm tile. Even the countertops were warm here in Hell.

Ugh.

I could not wait to get back to Earth.

“Who are you?” Vip asked, bringing a small tin out from a drawer. Her movements were slow, calm, and precise.

“My name is Omaera Playfair.”

“Yes, butwhoare you?”

My pause was long enough to make her turn to face me. She lifted one dark, sculpted brow, keeping an unwavering focus on my face. She was a beautiful demon. Probably several hundred years old, but she didn’t look a day over forty. With smooth, brown skin, dark eyes, dark hair, and delicate features. Her lips were full, her lashes impossibly long, and her nose was small and slightly pointy. For as tall and behemoth-like as her mate was, Vip was the complete opposite. Petite and delicate.

“My name is Omaera Playfair,” I repeated. “Drak is my mate.”

“Yet, you are not mate-bonded.”

I shook my head. “Correct.”

“I smell others on you though. Why?”

I inhaled deeply through my nose, pausing again. “What kind of emotions does the name ‘LerrisByrche’ evoke?” I asked with hesitation, saying his name in the most neutral way I could.

The only change in her entire body was the rush of pink to her cheeks. “Why?” she asked quickly.

“I need to know what I can tell you. I need to know if I can trust you with the truth.”

She attempted to slice into my brain, but I threw up a thick shield and mentally shoved back hard enough that she was physically thrown into the wall behind her. Her eyes went wide in surprise as she struggled to gather her breath. “Whoare you?” she asked again.

“Answer my question and I’ll answer yours.”

Regaining her composure, she went back to the tin on the counter and carefully measured out loose-leaf tea into three different metal diffuser balls. Steam began to rise from the kettle on the range. “Lerris Byrche is the shame of our race. King Donovar—may he rest in peace—never should have trusted his brother as much as he did. Our world—our race, our realm—is doomed with Lerris as a leader. The peace we’ve had for the last hundred and fifty years will not last. Not with Lerris as the King of the Realm.”

One of the other things that Kenvin was teaching me was the study of pitch and latency when someone was speaking. It was a way to discern, without infiltrating their brain, whether they were lying or not. Because demons could throw up shields, it was important to figure out other ways to learn their true motives.

Luckily for all of us, Vip was telling the truth. She hated Lerris.

But I wasn’t done yet.

“How do you feel about humans?” I asked.

“When do my questions get answered?” She picked up the kettle and pouredit over the tea balls in the mugs.

“After this one.”

The tiniest hint of a smirk tugged at one corner of her lips. Then she shrugged. “Don’t really have a problem with them. Don’t have any human friends, if that’s what you’re asking, but I don’t want to see their whole species perish like some.”

That made me smile. “My name is Omaera Playfair. My mother was Elena Playfair—a human—and my father was Donovar Byrche. My mates are Prince Zandren Thorne of the Shifters; Maxar Rane, a fire-mage; and Lord Drak Ferrin—the vampire you just met—and cousin to King Howar Volmark. Drak is the only one I have not mate-bonded with yet.” I glanced toward the hallway just as Shoy stepped into the kitchen. “It’s … complicated.”

Shoy sidled up next to his mate. I couldn’t get a read on Vip yet.

“When Lerris killed my father, he thought the power of the Realm would pass onto him, but it didn’t. It passed to me.Iam the Queen of the Realm. That also triggered my mates to be alerted to my existence. Until a few weeks ago, I didn’t even know this realm existed, or that I was half demon. My mother died when I was an infant, and I was raised by a spellcaster-mage who cast a cloaking spell over me so nobody in this realm could find me. But when Donovar was killed, his death broke the spell.