Page 23

I hold Pyrah a little tighter, praying that she won’t wake and ask me why I’m hurting. I’m not silver-tongued at the best of times, and words would fail me now. It’s a cruel thing to want what remains forever out of reach.

I never asked to be born a cambion. Sometimes I hate myself.

I stare into the darkness until I can numb myself to my feelings. They mean nothing when they are irrelevant to survival. I learned this truth through years and years of hard experience.

At the brink of the cave, Lark whispers my name, “Rook.”

She’s back. Thank hell and heavens. I employ stealth and escape without waking Pyrah, then follow my sister outside.

The moon shines white like a fat slice of cheese.

Lark perches on the edge of the cliff and swings her legs in the air.

Unlike me, she can fly. Our shadow wings aren’t enough, but she was also born with magic.

With more caution, I sit near the edge. Far below, the lake with no name glistens black in the darkness.

“What time is it?” I ask.

“The bells rang once in town.”

“One o’clock. You’re late.”

Lark flashes her fangs in a grin. Her silver skin looks lustrous in the moonlight, the mark of a well-fed succubus.

“Kill any knights?” I ask, without any judgment in my voice.

“Not this time.” She runs her tongue over one of her fangs, as if she can still taste some lingering desire. “Do you miss it?”

“Miss what?”

“Hunting your prey in taverns, bathhouses, and back alleys.”

I snort. “Not in the slightest.”

Her gaze intense, Lark searches my eyes. “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

My eyebrows jump skyward. “How could you tell?”

“You try to hide it beneath that grim face of yours, but you do have a heart.”

I scratch behind one of my horns. “This is how I am.”

She elbows me in the ribs, not hard enough to hurt. "I’ve never seen you act so devoted. You follow Pyrah around like a lost wolf pup.”

“I’m no pup.”

Lark smirks at me. “I’m surprised you haven’t started wagging your tail.”

“Now you’re just fucking with me.”

“I’m not. Mum would agree.”

My stomach drops like a stone. “Mum’s gone.”

“I refuse to believe that.”

Queen Dulcamara loathed our mother, who was the king’s favorite courtesan. Our father never gave Dulcamara a baby, a proper heir to the throne, though he had the audacity to grant our mother bastard twins. And so the court whispered behind Dulcamara’s back, calling her the barren queen.

Lark clings to the misguided hope that our mother fled from the castle at Netherhaven and escaped the queen’s wrath alive. It’s a fool’s dream, though I don’t want to break my sister’s heart into even smaller pieces.

“Look.” Lark gazes at the sky. “The Underworld.”

Far above, it’s nothing more than a blue gemstone in the sky. Stare hard enough, and you can discern its twin moons. I have never set foot upon the Underworld myself, though I have seen paintings of its moonrises. Years ago, the queen ordered the Demongate between the worlds to be sealed.

Lark keeps staring at the sky. “What if she’s waiting for us in the Underworld?”

I don’t need to ask who she means. “Mum died.”

“We don’t know that. We never buried her.” My sister speaks fiercely, as if my disbelief is tantamount to blasphemy.

“I don’t want you to foolishly hope.”

“Hope is one of the few things we have left.”

Her words should inspire me, and yet they bring more despair. I have learned to hold on to nothing but small fistfuls of hope. Anything larger would slow me down too much when I need to run away.

“I need to take care of Pyrah. She’s vulnerable right now.”

“Vulnerable?” Lark frowns. “How?”

“She can’t shift into a dragon.”

Her breath catches in her throat. “Why not? What happened?”

“She started her bleeding.”

“Oh. Oh .” Lark grimaces with a knowing nod. “Dragon women can’t shift during their flow? That sounds awful.”

I square my shoulders. “We may need your help.”

“I can brew a tea that will help Pyrah with any pain."

“Thank you. I’m in your debt.”

Her smile fades, her eyes turning sober. “You saved me. My debt to you can never be repaid.”

“Lark.” I glance at her broken horn. “What happened to you in the Forgotten Tower? I understand if you don’t wish to tell me, though it may help to unburden yourself from these memories.”

She turns her gaze onto the black waters of the nameless lake. “First, I should tell you how I betrayed the queen.”

“I’m listening.”

“When I became Queen Dulcamara’s royal sorceress, I quickly won her favor. She praised me for my magic in front of the whole court. But I never should have trusted her intentions. Her words were nothing but poisoned honey.”

She swallows hard, her throat working, and I wait for her in silence.

“Dulcamara brought me a baby boy, a pitiful little thing from some orphanage, and a finger bone dug from our father’s grave. She commanded me to work dark magic, a wicked alchemy to turn the baby’s blood royal.”

My teeth start aching until I force myself to unclench my jaw. “She wanted an heir.” It’s not a question.

“And I refused to give her one.”

I let out a harsh breath. “What happened to the baby?”

“I couldn’t return him to the orphanage, since I knew he wouldn’t be safe there any longer. I cast a portal to a distant temple where priestesses care for foundlings. They took the baby from me.”

“Dulcamara must have been furious.”

Lark laughs bleakly. “I thought she might try to strangle me herself. Gods, she was so angry. She said I must be the one who cast the spell, and when I refused her demands, she banished me to the Forgotten Tower.”

“Why you? Why couldn’t another royal sorceress do it?”

“She said it had to be me, since I have the king’s blood in me. Robbing his grave wasn’t enough.”

“Fuck.” I shake my head and repeat, with emphasis, “ Fuck .”

“I know.”

My hatred for the queen burns like an unquenchable fire, but I’m unable to deny my twisted sympathy for her. She wanted a baby when she couldn’t have one. I understand what that means.

We’re silent for a moment, until I think to ask, “Who broke your horn?”

“One of the guards,” Lark says, with a nearly imperceptible shudder. “He did it after I tried to escape from the Forgotten Tower. He was a blacksmith before he worked for the queen, and he knew how to wield a hammer. He stopped me from bleeding out by holding a red-hot poker to the wound.”

The horns of a demon have blood vessels within the bone. Breaking one could be fatal without treatment, but breaking one just to maim seems especially cruel. I swallow hard. The queen's men have no souls.

“Do I need to kill him?” Though I speak softly, rage roughens my voice.

“I don’t want to go back to the Forgotten Tower.”

My mind wrestles with a dark question. How did Lark survive in that tower?

Demons like us need to feed on lust to survive. Without it, we waste away until death, our silver skin turning gray as ash.

"Someone helped you." The words tumble from my lips.

Lark's shoulders stiffen as she hunches over. "What do you mean?"

"Whatever happened in that dungeon, whatever you had to do to survive… I won't judge you for it."

She shakes her head. The movement catches moonlight on her broken horn. Her silence tells me she doesn't want to share. But if someone helped keep her alive, I need to know if they are a threat.

When I speak again, I tread carefully. "Was it another prisoner?"

"No." Her voice comes out small.

"A guard, then?"

When she hesitates, my stomach sours. The queen's guards would never show her mercy, not without demanding payment in return. And without her magic, Lark's only currency would be her body.

"Not a guard," she says.

I frown into the darkness. "When you worked as a royal sorceress, was anyone in the queen's court an ally?"

Lark's eyes meet mine, her breath escaping in a cloud of white. She's ready to tell me , I think.

But then she jolts to her feet. “Is that him?" she whispers, her face tilted skyward.

I’m surprised by her reaction until I follow her gaze. Far in the distance, a glint of gold flashes in the moonlight.

The golden dragon is on the hunt.

I lunge to my feet with my hand on my sword, though I’m still bruised from the last battle. That won’t stop me from defending my mate.

“Rook, no.” Lark grabs my arm. “Don’t.”

“Scaldric.” I spit his name like a curse. “Go back to the cave. Hide.”

“And leave you alone? Like hell I will.”

“He hasn’t seen us yet.”

“He will if you keep standing on the edge of the cliff like some moronic hero.”

Fuck . She’s right. “Let’s go.”