Page 101

SEVEN

Sorsha

I’d prowled around quite a few opulent mansions in my time, mostly to separate shadowkind collectors from their cages of lesser beasties, but none of those sights had prepared me for the Palace of Versailles. “Palace” was definitely the word for it, to the power of one million.

Staring up at the three stories of sprawling, ornately carved and gilded walls, my jaw went slack for a few seconds before I managed to recall it and myself.

“I see what you mean about extravagance,” I said to Omen as we crossed the vast, shadowy courtyard, keeping my voice low. There wouldn’t have been visitors here this late in the evening anyway, and from the signs we’d passed on our way in, the sphinx had contrived some way to shut down the estate to visitors, but I couldn’t quite shake my well-trained thieving instincts. We were guessing that she’d ensured an absence of security guards as well, but we hadn’t confirmed that yet.

Omen matched my subdued tone. “If Tempest is anything, she’s a hedonist. The trouble for most other beings, mortal or otherwise, is the things she tends to take pleasure from do the opposite for everyone else involved.”

“A hedonistic sadist with no concern for consent. I can’t wait to meet her.”

The hellhound shifter gave me a sharp look, as if I hadn’t laid on the sarcasm doubly thick. Or maybe because of the sarcasm. “I know restraint isn’t your strong suit, but if you could manage to let me handle most of the negotiations, it’ll work out better for all of us. She’ll ask you some direct questions, so obviously answer those, but… don’t give away more than you need to.”

“Funnily enough, I do have some experience dealing with dangerous shadowkind.” I poked him in the arm.

He bared his teeth at me, but, shocker of all shockers, it looked more like a grin than a grimace. The closest thing to a good-humored smile I’d gotten from him since he’d dragged me off and chained me up. Maybe I’d earned myself a few more points in the Keep Sorsha Alive column without realizing it.

“Considering that your main approach to ‘dealing’ with me is to provoke my temper in every possible way, I’m going to suggest you take a different tactic here,” he said.

“Where would be the fun in that?”

“We’re not here for fun , Disaster.”

“I know, I know. I figure after you’ve literally had me in chains, I should be allowed to tug on yours a little to even the score.”

As soon as the words fell from my lips—because, I admit it, I really did have a bit of a problem of shooting my mouth off without quite as much forethought as might be wise—a flicker of panic shot through my chest. Had I gone too far, reminding him of the actual if magical chains the Highest had him in? I hadn’t meant to imply anything about the bonds that obviously rankled him more than anything in his existence, but that was the problem with not thinking before you spoke.

Omen merely rolled his eyes skyward with a wordless sound of exasperation, so I guessed I wasn’t ending up back in my own chains over that affront.

Just as we reached the door, it swung open. Thorn peered at us from the other side. He and Flint had joined us for this meeting so we’d have extra muscle along in case talking didn’t pan out so well, and Snap was lurking too, having refused to hang back. With my thieving past, I couldn’t help envying the shadowkind ability to slip right around doors and unlock them from the inside as need be.

The hall we stepped into took my breath away all over again. In the thin light that streaked through the immense arched windows from the security lamps outside, gold glittered all across the molded walls and ceiling. Between the gleaming mouldings, richly colored paintings covered nearly every surface. Dozens of crystal chandeliers as tall as I was dangled at intervals.

If I’d been here on burglar business, right about now I’d have been thinking I should have brought a bigger bag. Possibly an entire trailer.

As Omen and I headed down the hall, Thorn vanished back into the shadows. Our feet whispered across the polished floor.

The looming grandeur made vigilance feel even more necessary. My voice dropped another octave. “Where in this place do you think we’ll find Tempest? Or is she going to find us?”

“Oh, no, she’ll enjoy having us come to her.” Omen tipped his head to the right as we rounded a corner. “Chances are she’ll have claimed the queen’s bedroom as her own.”

Where else? I might have appreciated the shadowkind woman’s aplomb if she hadn’t allied herself with an army of murderous mortals.

Omen couldn’t have been here with her before, but he’d probably been in other bedrooms with her if he could make that statement so confidently. A question prickled up through me that I tried to suppress… but why? It might be useful to know to help me follow the conversation ahead.

“So, you’ve made it very clear that you’re no longer friends with Tempest. Were you ever more than friendly?”

Omen’s mouth flattened. “If you’re asking if we ever fucked, then yes, a handful of times when we couldn’t find more exciting activities to pass the time with. It wasn’t any kind of love affair. It meant nothing more than momentary physical satisfaction to either of us.”

Was that all our passionate tumble into bed had meant to him too? I didn’t know if I wanted it to have meant more. The encounter had certainly been off the scales in the physical satisfaction department. And now I was remembering the sear of his kiss and the literal flames that had flowed between us, which wasn’t exactly helping my focus, so maybe I shouldn’t have brought up the subject after all.

“Well, it’s good that you should know your way around her in a bedroom,” I said in a breezy tone, and Omen shot me a look so scorching it made me want to feel his kiss again for real.

Whoa there, hormones. I had three other monstrous lovers who weren’t watching my every move for signs that I was going to incinerate all life in both realms. No need to be greedy. Or stupid.

We walked through a few more of the ornate rooms that smelled faintly of jasmine. Omen slowed coming up on the next doorway.

A voice rang out from the room beyond in the same sharp, droll tone I’d heard rising up from Omen’s phone at the start of this recent mess, the effect amplified when it only had to travel through air. “Here you are at last, Omen. Come on then. Don’t tell me you’ve gone shy.”

“Only perhaps a little more cautious,” he said, sauntering in.

I followed him into a room so full of splendor it took everything I had in me not to start gaping again.

Two lamps lit the space, catching on the masses of gold that coated the walls and ceiling. There was enough of it around us to buy one of those collectors’ mansions back home, gilded across delicate filigree-etched borders and painted in with the pinks, blues, and greens of intricate floral patterns. Between two more crystal chandeliers, a massive gold canopy rippling with sculpted leaves protruded from the wall, flowery curtains falling from its edges to frame an immense bed. The jasmine smell had thickened, adding to the opulent atmosphere.

If this was how royalty lived, sign me up to start a dynasty of my own.

Somehow, the figure lounging on the silk covers of the bed managed to top her surroundings in extravagance. Tempest would have been a difficult figure to miss even without any special trappings: she had to be at least six feet tall and built like an Amazon, both muscular and buxom. Her bronze-brown hair gleamed as brilliantly as the gold around her, twisted into waving locks that lifted and swayed around her face as if they had minds of their own. Like some kind of Medusa—Omen had said she liked to take on different roles.

True to the lion-ish aspects of her nature, her shining eyes held cat-slit pupils, and there was something feline about her prominent cheekbones and flared nose as well. Definitely not a face you’d easily forget. The fabric draped across her voluptuous figure had the cut of a bathrobe, but hardly the kind you’d pick up at Target—this was a bathrobe fit for a queen, scarlet and violet satin strung through with gold embroidery.

Over that magnificent bathrobe, she’d draped so many golden bangles heavy with emeralds and sapphires that I wasn’t sure she could sit up straight under it all even if she’d wanted to. Good luck walking under all that weight of riches. Although she looked perfectly happy sprawled as she was.

What made the biggest impression, though, and not one I could poke fun at even in passing, was the sense of power that wafted off of her like the wind off a stormy ocean, chilly and razor-edged. Omen might have cultivated his ice-cold bastardom to a T, but the energy that thrummed off him still held his natural heat. Tempest was a bastard down to her bones.

Annoyingly, in the midst of the awe and uneasiness I was already trying my best to tamp down, a jab of jealousy pricked at me too. The hellhound shifter had been so close to this woman, even if he disdained to call her so much as a friend now, even if he said their “fucking” hadn’t mattered at all. She knew him in ways I likely never would, considering he now saw me as only slightly better than a ticking time bomb.

Yeah, I really shouldn’t have ever asked him about their past liaisons.

I shoved the jealousy aside along with the rest and held myself steady. We came to a stop a few feet from the gilded barrier that ran through the room in an attempt to keep tourists away from the most valuable furniture.

Tempest’s gaze slid over Omen to rest on me. “Well,” she said in the same tone, which managed to sound like she was making both a threat and a joke, “what have we here?”

“Just a lowly mortal,” I replied, attempting to match that tone. That seemed safe enough to say before we knew exactly how and how much we might be able to work her into our plans.

“Hmm.” Her cat-like eyes flicked toward the shadows along the edges of the room. “Let’s see your whole troop, Omen. All the indomitable beings who worked so hard to disrupt my plans.”

Of course she’d be able to sense the shadowkind who’d stayed in the darkness. Omen had expected that. He made a casual gesture, and our three companions materialized around us.

Omen had said it’d been a force of wingéd who’d attempted to destroy Tempest on the Highest’s orders. If the sphinx could identify Thorn and Flint as beings of the same kind, considering she had pretty direct experience with their kin, she showed no sign that their presence bothered her at all. She cocked her head, the locks of her hair continuing their sinuous dance around her face. “This isn’t all of them. You had an incubus.”

“He’s attending to other business tonight,” Omen said, which was sort of true. Ruse had offered to stay back and ensure that Antic didn’t follow us to insist on contributing her impish version of “help.” “Not much my talents can offer against a sphinx,” he’d said in a flippant way that had felt a little forced to me.

The hellhound shifter made a point of looking around the room, his stance casual but poised. “You’ve hardly brought all your allies to this parley. Of course, it appears you’ve gotten yourself a whole host of them, more than perhaps could fit in this palace. All of them mortals, oddly enough. What grand scheme have you concocted this time, Tempest?”

“Oh, you know me. To some extent I simply play it by ear.” The sphinx gave a smile that didn’t quite manage to be demure and trailed her fingers across the bed covers. “It’s provided immense amusement having a horde of mortals at my beck and call, hating shadowkind with all their being while in service of one.”

“They’re hurting shadowkind,” Snap spoke up with some of the new boldness he’d shown since I’d returned. He should know more about that hurt than anyone here other than Omen—they’d both spent time in the Company of Light’s cages, tormented by their experiments.

Tempest lifted one shoulder in the most languid of shrugs. “Fewer incompetent beings to irritate me. The Company of Light would hardly be effective if I never let them indulge their basest desires, would they?”

“Effective at what ?” Omen demanded, commanding but not angry. Not one tuft of his tawny hair had risen yet, as provocative as his former conspirator was obviously trying to be. I couldn’t suppress a twinge of affection that didn’t have much place in this moment.

He’d used to run wild with this woman, yes, and it wasn’t hard to see how tempting she could have made the prospect. He’d been savage and cruel and selfish. And somehow while she’d stayed exactly the same or perhaps gotten even worse, he’d shaped himself into something so much better than that. A leader who could be compassionate as well as harsh, who saw what people were capable of and gave them a chance even when he was skeptical.

Call him a monster all you wanted, but he was a hell of a lot more than that too. And he’d reached that point through lifetimes of effort and determination.

No wonder he’d gotten pissed off at my many attempts to poke holes in his carefully constructed cool.

I suspected Tempest would have liked to do the same, but she clearly didn’t know him all that well as he was now. She chuckled slyly and gazed at him through her eyelashes. “I expect by now you’ve managed to uncover their ultimate plan?”

“They’re attempting to create some sort of sickness that will spread through the shadowkind and kill us all,” Omen replied. “I expect you aren’t actually out to commit suicide by mass genocide?”

“Oh, I’ll ensure I remain above the fray. The hardiest amongst us will be just fine. The mortals and the weaklings, not so much.”

If I caught the slight stiffening of Omen’s posture, she must have too. “Then what they’re working to create,” he said, “you really do expect it to infect and kill shadowkind.”

“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Omen. I’m sure you have nothing to worry about. Eliminate most of the feckless beings who venture out here and might cramp my style, wipe out a good chunk of humanity as well and leave the survivors wrenched with guilt over their miscalculation…” She batted her eyelashes. “It should be a smashing time all around.”

My stomach had plummeted to my feet. Omen had assumed the Company’s stated mission was also a front for some other scheme of Tempest’s. Not so much, apparently. This went so far beyond trampling a few lesser creatures on the way to screwing over some mortals that we might as well be in a different solar system.

Chances that she’d be willing to set aside those plans to participate in a ploy where I pretended to defeat her, just to foil the Highest for a brief moment? I’d place them at about a trillion to one.

Thorn shifted on his feet, and I could feel the horror he must be reining in while he let Omen take the lead. Snap couldn’t restrain a shiver. He was the youngest of my shadowkind crew—was his accumulated power enough to protect him from this menace and her constructed disease?

Did it even matter whether they survived when either way, scores of shadowkind—and humans—were going to die because of the path Tempest was leading the Company down?

“They’re almost finished,” she boasted as if she had an audience avid with enthusiasm rather than alarm. “Just another leap of inspiration or two, and we’ll have it ready. You’ve been a thorn in my side for the past little while unintentionally… Are you ready to get in on the most epic strike of both our careers?”

My stomach twisted. I glanced at Omen, wondering if he’d play along to humor her for the time being. But his jaw had clenched even tighter, an orange sheen of hellfire glowing over the pale blue of his eyes.

“When did you move from games to outright warfare?” he asked. “This plot is so far below the Tempest I associated with that I can’t believe you don’t see that.”

She sniffed. “I haven’t sunk at all. Perhaps the problem is that you all have forgotten what you’re meant to be. They call us monsters for a reason, don’t they?” She narrowed her eyes at each of my shadowkind companions. “You must have leashed your hound so long you’ve forgotten what it is to run free, Omen. Where’s the vicious fury at the pathetic arrogance of mortals that used to fuel you? And you wingéd, aren’t you done sulking over your losses yet? What do you use that spectacular physique for now—squashing cockroaches? Or do you offer leniency even to them?”

“I have bashed open plenty of skulls and rib cages in defense of my fellow shadowkind,” Thorn rumbled, unable to hold himself back any longer.

“As if they were worth the effort.” Tempest gave a tinkling laugh like shattering glass that made me want to punch her skull in and turned her attention to Snap. “And a devourer—one of the rarest of all our kind, and yet what are you putting your talents toward other than looking pretty? You ought to be out there rending soul by mortal soul apart to become as great as you’re meant to be. You could contain a multitude if these insipid sympathies didn’t hold you back.”

“Those souls belong to the mortals who contain them,” Snap replied, but he’d shivered again at her words. The color had drained from his face, leaving him wan beneath his golden curls.

That was the moment my tongue got away from me. “You’re one to talk, acting like you’re some pinnacle of shadowkind when you’ve spent how many decades now encouraging a bunch of mortals to annihilate your own people. As far as I can tell, you’re the one who’s forgotten what you are.”

The sphinx’s eyebrows arched. “Brave—and ridiculous—words from the mortal who’s currently standing alongside these shadowkind. Have you convinced yourself you’ll ever be more than a groupie to their evidently deviant tastes?”

The jab rankled me more than it should have. “You have no idea—” I started, and managed to yank my temper back under control before I said something I’d regret. “You know nothing at all. And here I thought a sphinx could at least pretend a little wisdom.”

Unfortunately, while I could harness my words, I wasn’t quite so good with my powers. I’d barely finished speaking when the revulsion and rage churning inside me lurched with a flare of my inner fire.

The flames shot up from my elbows toward my shoulders. Thorn caught them for me with a clap of his broad hands against my arms before they could set my hair alight.

My mouth went scorchingly dry. Tempest was staring at me now with far more interest than she’d shown anything else in this conversation so far. The sweep of her gaze over me left an uncomfortable prickling in its wake.

She sat up straighter as if to look at me even more closely. I resisted the urge to back away, holding my ground and raising my chin, daring her to comment. But when she did, it wasn’t in the mocking tone I’d expected.

“Not so mortal after all.” She laughed again, but this time it was more breathless with awe than disdainful. “And here I thought the devourer was your greatest find, Omen. Where on earth did you acquire a phoenix?”

I should have been gratified that she was impressed, but everything about this woman told me she wasn’t the sort of being I should want to awe. A phoenix? Just because I caught myself on fire along with whatever else I was aiming at?

Watching me, Tempest’s lips curled into a smirk. “You didn’t know, did you? Oh, I am glad I’ll be around to witness this. When you burn, the whole world will burn with you.”

A wave of cold flooded me at that declaration, washing away any lingering fire. My voice came out tart. “Then it’s a good thing I’m not planning on burning.”

“You keep telling yourself that, darling.” The sphinx rose to her feet, her innumerable baubles swaying around her, and peered down at Omen from the bed. “Well? Have you come all this way just to grimace your disapproval at me, or will you remember yourself and join the revelry?”

“It’s been a long time,” Omen replied in a low voice. “I no longer revel in the same things you do.”

“Then we have nothing left to discuss. Stay out of my business, and I’ll leave you to the rest of yours. You know what you can expect if you deny that request.”

“Tempest,” Omen started, but she was already leaping into the shadows. At a jerk of the hellhound’s hand, Thorn and Flint threw themselves after her.

My legs had taken on an uncanny resemblance to spaghetti. When they wobbled despite my best efforts, Snap was at my side in an instant, his hand on my back.

“It doesn’t matter what she called you,” he said. “We know who you are.”

Did they? Did I ?

Omen’s hands had clenched at his sides. At the return of our wingéd warriors with no sphinx in sight, he didn’t look surprised.

“We failed to detain her,” Thorn said with a pained expression. “She traveled so swiftly?—”

“Don’t apologize. None of us quite anticipated what we’d find here.” The hellhound shifter exhaled roughly.

“She’s not going to help with the plan to appease the Highest about Sorsha,” Snap ventured.

Omen gave a bark of a laugh. “No, I’d say not.”

My own fingers curled into fists. I crossed my arms over my chest, burying the sphinx’s needling comments— the whole world will burn with you —under the immensity of everything else she’d admitted to.

“There’s one very obvious answer to that problem,” I said. “We always meant to destroy the Company. Now I’ll just have to add defeating her to that to-do list—for real.”