Page 43 of Demon Heart: The Complete Series

“ Y ou have failed me, My Shadow.”

In more ways than one. “Your Majesty?” I sat up, checking the time.

Two in the morning.

Shit.

“King Basile has made threats against me, against you.”

“I am?—”

“Save your apologies and come here at once.”

Bubble officially burst. “Yes, My Queen.”

“Where are you?”

“France. But I’m making my way home as we speak.”

“Good. I have something to show you. I will send a plane to Aérodrome du Grand Calais for you now. I’m assuming you are closer to Calais than Paris?”

“Yes. I’ll be there.”

“Be sure of it.”

I sprang into action, dressing, finding our exact location on my phone.

What did she want to show me?

“Roman?” Xavier said.

“I’m heading back to London.”

“Don’t.”

I pulled on the backup clothes and my damp jacket. “I have no choice.”

“Run away with me.”

“I can’t.”

He grabbed my arm. “Please. Let’s just?—”

A yanked myself free. “I’d love to, I really would.

But my duty is stronger.” Man, I hated saying that.

“I would love to climb back into that bed, be back in your arms. These past few hours have been amazing, but this is it. I have to realize I’m never getting out of this alive.

I’m hers until she dies, or I do, no matter how much I try to fight it. ”

Turned out, my doubts were more than grief. They were a shift. But the destruction of everything that made me The Shadow meant nothing. I was still him, still trapped inside his ruined shell.

“Then I’ll kill her.” Cold fury filled the room. “I’m not letting you go, Roman.”

“This has to be over now.”

He shook his head. “I won’t let it.”

“Xavier…”

“I’m coming with you.”

“No. You can’t enter the palace.”

“I know. But I’ll be waiting outside.”

“What if she never lets me leave?”

He growled deep enough to shake the motel. “That won’t happen.”

“Just run, Xavier. Look after yourself.”

He snarled, super pissed off with me. “No.”

“But—”

He shifted into the tiny spider, running up my body, over my neck, and into my hood.

Rather than argue or shake him out, I gathered everything together and called a cab for the airport, swallowing down so many waves of terror.

“What have you been doing with yourself in France?”

I found myself back in the queen’s chambers, sitting on a chair with my hands in my lap while she stood by the window.

“Recuperating, Your Majesty.”

“Is that so? Failure is taxing, I suppose.”

Xavier was out there somewhere, having left me at Stanstead airport while I transferred into a Synth-protected helicopter, the pilot flying me over the riots in The Mall.

The sounds of violence still raging outside these walls chilled me to the bone. Every second it threatened to spill into the palace grounds.

Please be safe, I wished at the spider demon.

Why didn’t he just run and think of himself?

“I really am deeply so?—”

She cut me off with a wave of her hand. “Piper!”

I hadn’t yet been given the chance to explain my version of events.

The princess entered the room, bowing to her mother.

“I think I am ready to show Roman our latest acquisition,” the queen said.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Piper answered, throwing me a quick glance.

The queen approached me, bending to smell my hair. “You’ve been fucking.”

I froze, unable to speak.

“You’ve been fucking when you are supposed to be killing.”

When would she follow fucking with a demon and really drive the nail into my coffin?

She slapped me hard across the bruised side of my face, my head whipping to the side. Before I could turn it back, she grabbed me by the hair, tilting my head back to expose my throat.

“How dare you,” she said. “Her dare you put your needs before mine?”

Oh. Shit.

The queen scratched her nails across my throat. “Do you hate me, Roman? Have you lost respect for me? Is that why you spared King Basile?”

Wait a minute. Xavier. The king would’ve told her about Xavier being there.

Oh, no.

Here it comes…

She released my hair. “I do not enjoy being lied to.”

Goodbye head…

“But I am willing to let this one pass.”

Huh?

“Defeat warrants comfort. The king told me how he threw you from the train, how you used your magic to save your life.” She ran her fingers through my hair. “My clever Shadow. My poor Shadow. How dare Basile lay his hands upon you.”

I stayed still, too scared to blink. What was King Basile playing at? Why lie when he could’ve dropped me firmly in the doo-doo?

I didn’t get it. I took this gift, but where were the barbs?

“Who was he?” she asked. “Who got to touch your body?”

She was too close, too softly spoken. I glanced at Piper, who kept her head down and her mouth shut.

“Well?” the queen pried further. “Tell me.”

I cleared my throat, barely able to summon enough air to speak. “Just… Just some truck driver. It was stupid.”

Could she read the lie?

“A truck driver,” she said.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“You’re shaking.”

Obviously! “I?—”

She slapped me again. “A truck driver!” she barked. “You allowed some sleezy stranger to sully your body because you failed me?”

She’d clearly constructed her own narrative, not interested in hearing mine.

Not that the truth would reach her royal ears.

“How dare you?” she said again. “Were you in his greasy arms when I called you?” Her voice became a whimper. “Did you let him hold you? Did you not think of me?”

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she was jealous. Maybe she was.

A disturbing thought.

A third slap had me seeing stars. She brushed past me, snapping her fingers. “Get up and follow me.”

My face stung, my skull throbbing. She really had some force behind her wallops.

Piper tried helping me up. “What are you playing at?”

“I didn’t mean to,” I replied, standing fine without her.

“You didn’t mean to fall into bed with some stranger?”

“Weren’t you the one who suggested I start dating?” I countered.

“Shagging when you’re on the job isn’t dating.”

The queen kept several paces ahead, leading us into the dungeons beneath the palace—a more recent addition to the historic building, and not where Sally and her lover had been fried. I had no idea where that room was and didn’t want to.

I kept quiet for the rest of the journey through grim depths of steels walls and many stairwells, passing cell after cell, the queen never looking back.

Eventually, the queen stopped outside of a cell on the lowest floor of the dungeon network, a smirk on her face. “Here we are.” She gestured for me to look.

Oh. My. God.

Tanith sat on a metal bench with perfect posture. Her eyes widened when she saw me, her turn to smirk.

I felt myself pale, or something like it.

“Hello again,” the demon said, her sickly expression a sign of the demon tower’s effects.

“I found her,” the queen declared.

Run. Run for your fucking life!

Tanith would blow the lid on Xavier and me.

“Interesting,” the demon said. “Very interesting.”

No. No. No. No.

A rumble from above, an alarm shrieking to life. Red lights flashed above our heads, beams of light spinning in the many bulbs fixed to the ceiling.

Guards filled the corridor, swarming the royals.

“What is this?” the queen demanded.

“The palace is under attack, Your Majesty,” a guard revealed.

“Roman!” the queen roared. “Bring him with us!”

A snake slithered across my boot.

Uh-oh.

A guard grabbed my wrist too late. Tanith shifted from serpent to part-serpent, snakes in her hair like Medusa, her neck sitting on the end of a rippling body, fangs protruding from her mouth. They dripped with venom.

She struck the guard, fangs plunging into his neck. Black fissures spread from the bite wound, spreading to his face, stealing his breath.

He collapsed, thrashing for a few seconds before his skin turned gray.

Dead.

I jumped back, the guards leaving me alone with the demon. The royals were far more important than me.

Tanith’s tongue probed the air, her white demonic eyes on me. “Where is my dear friend?”

The demon tower must be down.

“Get away from me,” I warned, readying a spell.

She laughed, hissing with each breath. “What’s wrong, witch? Do I frighten you?”

“Death by snake poison doesn’t sound fun.”

The vial of Sneaky End still sat in my pocket. It might get her off my back, or at least give her a nasty shock if she took a bite.

I quicky fished it out, popping the cork, gulping it down.

It tasted like beer.

“Is that a coward’s death you’re taking?” she questioned.

“I’m not planning on dying.”

Her triumphant smirk collapsed. “Don’t be so sure.”

I hit her with a beam of Synth to the neck. She hissed, pushed back a few feet. I took the moment to run like hell.