Page 99 of Ballad of Nightmares

“I want her unleashed,” Sam admitted. “Imagine the things we could take with her. Crowns. Kingdoms. This entire world. The whole dominion…ours.”

Rolfe settled back against the counter. “I do miss the freedom of it.”

“Remember the boiling seas?”

They shared a quiet, admired glance, and Sam sighed. “I shadowed this realm in waiting for the day it would all be ours again. With her… It’s time.”

Rolfe didn’t speak a moment, and Sam could see his mind spinning. “You said the Firemoor soldier cornered her last night… do you think she’ll come for you now that she knows they’re here?”

Sam considered it. “I know she feels something for me. I think things have changed. You saw her.”

“That was two days ago,” Rolfe argued. “She was nearly assassinated last night. What if she decides she’s done playing around and pretending she can have a regular life? What if she decides her desire is worth more than her want of life? What if she never loved you and this was all a lie because she saw you with Millie that day.”

Sam’s stomach knotted, his fingers curling on the banister, a mild rage suddenly latching itself onto his veins. “She can be my Queen… or she can be my bait. She doesn’t have to love me for me to get what I want.”

Rolfe laughed. “You would lock her up and torture her for information on the other kingdoms, try to bribe her or perhaps simply dangle her in front of the other kingdoms in the hopes that they’ll give you an excuse to kill them?”

Their eyes met. “She belongs to me,” Sam declared darkly. “I’ll do with her whatever the fuck I please.”

“Please for the love of all that is dark,” came Millie’s voice down the hall. “Tell me you two have seen the disaster happening on the news right now.”

Sam and Rolfe frowned at each other. “Just came upstairs,” Sam said. “What is it?”

Millie paused on the other side of the table, tired eyes staring at her phone as she thumbed through to a video. The noise of gunshots and screams filled the quiet room, and then she held out the phone for the pair to see.

There were three people hanging from nooses on a grand platform. Demons…Sam’sdemons… He recognized them immediately. Two were hound shifters—their paws and noses growing and turning back to normal. The other seemed to be teetering between her simple clawed form and her human-like one.

Demons that he’d left in other realms to spy for him.

“Prei found out they were working for you,” Millie said softly. “He’s sending a message to any demons left in his employ that think they can deviate. Publicly, now. I imagine he might start bringing people up from the prison.”

Sam’s hands creased the wood of the chair he leaned against. “They are my demons,” he hissed. “He is sadly mistaken if he thinks that any of them are actually in his employ.”

“Would you like him to do this to all of them?” Millie asked.

Sam’s jaw tightened. “This is exactly why I told you to tell them to come home when the Spine was taken,” he said, glaring at her. “I want them home,” he said. “Allof them.”

There was a bright green sludge inside the wounds on their chests, and Sam squinted at the screen.

“What’s that in their wounds?” Rolfe asked.

“There’s a reason we haven’t heard anything from Icemyer in a long time,” Millie said as she turned off the video. “Apparently Firemoor soldiers swept one of the caves. A few witches had been working on an enchantment and substance to kill us. According to Cordelia, the others fled further north into the glaciers.” She looked up at him, unyielding anger in her eyes. “No matter what lingering feelings you have about them, one fact remains the same,” Millie snapped. “They are being cleansed as we were.”

“And they’re helping the enemy,” Sam snapped.

“What choice do they have? They don’t know there’s another option.”

“What do you want me to do, Mills?!”

Millie straightened and hugged her arms around her chest. “How are things going with your girlfriend?”

“Soon,” Sam answered. “A Fire assassin tried to kill her on the street last night. He chased her onto the grounds to keep it quiet, but she killed him.”

Millie’s brows raised. “She killed him?”

Sam nodded and began explaining to her what happened with the soldier, but he had to let Rolfe take over midway through. The video was changing. Someone stepped up to the three demons, and one by one, the attacker cut the bottoms of their feet with a knife whose blade was tipped bright green.

“I want them taken down,” Sam said as he watched his demons flinch and cry out, his voice nearly shaking. “I want them brought home.”