Page 12

Chapter 12

M ari was tucked into an armchair in the library, trying her best to concentrate on a book that Willow had found about Hellish contracts. Saints, she was so fucking tired. She’d already nearly fallen asleep twice, thanks to how exhausted she was and, she had to admit, a not particularly enthralling subject matter. It seemed like contracts were boring no matter who signed them.

When Ashdei strolled into the room as if he belonged there, she thought it was a dream, and she hoped it was a naughty one, because he looked good enough to eat. He was in his human guise, six-and-a-half feet of muscle and raw menace that she took in with a slow sweep of her eyes.

“A man could get used to you looking at him like that,” he said, his voice deep and dark as a chasm. Unless she very much missed her guess, he was actually preening under her attention.

“You’re no man,” Willow said from their position across the room. They hadn’t moved or sounded any sort of alarm, as Mari had explained as much as she knew about the situation when asking for the book. Because of the details of the contract, the sphinx thought Ashdei no threat, at least not at the moment.

He showed them his teeth in a taunting grin. “Figure of speech.”

Mari asked the question on her mind with no preamble. “How are you here?”

“Since I don’t think you’re asking about the metaphysics of cross-realm teleportation, I’ll assume you mean in your home. “

Willow scoffed. “Oh, he’s funny.”

Mari leveled an unamused look their way. “Don’t encourage him.” She returned her attention to the demon who had invaded her house. “How are you inside the wards? We put them back after the party. You shouldn’t be able to get through.”

“I thought we covered this already, but perhaps I need to clarify.” He walked closer, almost lazily. “I’m yours, Mariana, and your magic will always allow me entry.”

“But how can that be? I never met you before the party, and I don’t feel anything toward you.”

His lips quirked. “Tell your magic that.”

With a start, she realized that her magic had already unfurled to welcome him, the way it did any of her men. She tried to pull it back, but her magic wouldn’t cooperate. His smile warmed when she met his eyes again.

“It makes sense,” Willow said. “He kindled you. Your magic will always be connected to him.”

“There’s also the matter of the contracts,” Ashdei added into Mari’s stunned silence.

“Contracts?” Willow asked, voice tight. “Plural?” They looked toward Mari. “You only mentioned one.”

“I also had a contract with her father.”

Mari glared at him. “My father apparently bartered me off to be his bride. For what, I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter, because I’m not doing it.”

“He sought to make himself a Prince of the Earth,” Ashdei said casually. “But he neglected to realize that you can’t make yourself a monarch.” When Mari stared at him, he shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”

“I figured you wouldn’t tell me.”

He looked troubled by her accusation. “I won’t keep anything from you.”

Why did she believe him? None of this made any sense. “Why are you helping me?”

“Two reasons. Denying the Forest Lord his place here benefits me.” He paused and grinned wide. “And I’m trying to seduce you.”

Mari ignored that second part. “How does a conflict with him benefit you?”

“I’m already a monarch.”

She went over what he’d said again. When she put it together, everything he’d done so far made so much more sense. “You can be a Prince of Earth.”

Willow’s gasp of understanding shuddered through the room.

Ashdei nodded. “With your help.”

“Which is why you’re trying to seduce me.”

He winked. “Well, that’s not the only reason.”

“I don’t think for a single second that you actually want me.”

His smile grew sharp. “Then why are you so afraid to touch me with your magic?”

“I’m not afr—” Reaching out to him was as natural as drawing a breath, and the moment she did, his desire filled her, hot and wild. She fought the urge to move closer to him by curling her fingers into the armrests of her chair.

“You were saying?” he teased.

She tried desperately to claw back her magic so she could think more clearly, but it was impossible. It craved him like nothing she’d ever felt. “After all this time, why now?”

One silver eyebrow rose. “I’ll admit I don’t know the answer to that question. I wasn’t particularly interested in pursuing you until recently. And then when I saw you at the party, I knew I couldn’t stay away.”

“I suspect it has to do with you, Mari,” Willow said into the silence that followed his admission. “You’ve only really come into your power the last few weeks.”

He glanced toward the sphinx before returning his attention to Mari. “Six nights ago, something changed. I felt something pulling me here.”

She cast her memory back, trying to think of what might have happened six nights before that altered her magic. As if she’d summoned Dohal with a thought, the shadows in the room darkened and crawled toward her. When they danced over her skin, she shivered, remembering how he’d held her down and wrung every drop of pleasure from her. He’d emptied her only to fill her again, over and over. Her power had changed that day, as if something inside her had been incomplete, waiting for Dohal to give her what she needed.

Ashdei’s blue flame eyes flared. “What. Was. That?”

Dohal’s form coalesced out of the shadows, crouching next to her. An arm that was mostly shadow wrapped around her to settle one hand on the back of her neck. His magic seeped into her, easing her fatigue. “That was her remembering a night with me, demon,” he growled in his deepest register, making the glasses on the table shake.

Willow rose from their chair. “And that’s definitely my cue to give you the room.” They looked Mari’s way with a question in their expression.

Mari shook her head. She didn’t want the other three of her men in here right now—the situation was unstable enough as it was. And there was nothing her magic would allow them to do in any case.

With a nod, the sphinx left, closing the door behind them.

Ashdei’s gaze never left Mari. “What happened that night?”

Dohal chuckled, his grin wicked. “Looking for pointers?”

Mari swallowed. So much had happened that night, including things she wasn’t ready to discuss yet. The heat of a blush rose in her cheeks. “It was the first time we’d been together since I freed him. I made him promise to not hold back.”

“You claimed him as yours.” Ashdei looked thoughtful. “And then you called me to you, because I’m the last piece you need to complete the circle.”

She didn’t understand what was going on in the slightest. She had noticed that something had changed that night—it was when she had started to be able to sense things from all of them—but she’d thought it was just because Dohal had finally given her what she craved, and she’d done the same in return. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Ashdei examined her again, more slowly. The wait was interminable before he spoke again, “I’m not the one that’s going to become a Prince of Earth. You are.”

Next to her, Dohal startled. “Of course,” he said in a thoughtful murmur once he recovered.

“That doesn’t make any sense. I thought you said that you can’t make yourself a monarch. That’s why my father couldn’t take the spot.”

Ashdei smiled, his expression warming. “You’re already a monarch.”

“Because she was,” Dohal added.

The goddess. Before she’d been forced into the body they now grudgingly shared. “Was she banished? The same way the Old One was?”

“No,” Dohal said, “Not exactly. It was more like she was slowly forgotten, and her power waned.”

Ashdei closed his eyes for a moment. “I’m probably going to regret this.” He shook his head, sending his hair flying. “In order to claim your place, you need to close the circle of your magic that was opened with the first ritual.”

Mari narrowed her gaze in his direction. “And what precisely does that mean?”

Dohal grumbled. “That you need to bed him again.”

Ashdei responded with a nod.

Mari straightened her back. “Convenient that what you now say I need is what you said you were here for.”

“It’s not entirely selfless on my account. While I won’t be a Prince because you’ll take the place that’s vacant, I will gain a great deal of power from the exchange.”

“You mean you’ll steal my power.”

Ashdei met her eyes without wavering. “No. Magic like ours isn’t a zero-sum game. We’ll both gain from the act of completion. The two of us will become more powerful than the sum of our parts.”

She looked to Dohal for confirmation, but he only shrugged. “I don’t know enough about the magics involved to say if he’s being honest or not. It’s certainly possible, especially at the levels of power you’re discussing.”

“I will never keep anything from you.” Ashdei repeated the pledge from earlier that Mari still didn’t know if she could afford to believe. “Ask the goddess, if you don’t trust me.”

Mari searched inward, looking for the goddess who had been mysteriously silent throughout the exchange. As a matter of fact, she’d been curiously quiet since the night with Dohal.

The response to her inquiry was as predictable as it was confusing. Everything is as it should be.

Did that include what Ashdei wanted from them? Mari got no answer to her follow-up question.

She sighed. “It used to be much easier to get a straight answer out of her.”

With a wry smile, Dohal leaned to kiss her cheek. “A goddess’s prerogative.”

She wasn’t sure if the contact was meant to calm her or him, but she appreciated it, nonetheless. “Annoying, is what it is.”

Ashdei stood with his arms crossed. “What did she say?”

“That everything was as it should be.”

Ashdei’s face broke into a grin. “That sounds like she agrees with my plan.”

“Getting under my skirt isn’t a plan.”

“Are you trying to avoid having sex with me for a particular reason? Based on what I’ve seen, you don’t seem like a prude, so I’m genuinely curious.”

“I don’t make a habit of sleeping with random strangers.”

“Ahh.” Ashdei waved his hand, and a chair from across the room moved to take up position across from her.

She eyed him with suspicion as he sat. “What are you doing?”

“Letting you get to know me.” He crossed his legs at the knee. “Where would you like to start?”

“That’s it? I just ask, and you answer? You don’t want to know anything about me?”

The corners of his lips lifted again. “I know everything I need to know, duckling. You’re going to be the next Prince of Earth, and I’ll be privileged enough to be your consort, if you’ll have me. I don’t have the hangups you do about sex as a business transaction.”

“See, that’s the problem right there. I don’t think it should be a transaction.”

He tilted his head. “Isn’t it? I please you. You please me. Transaction.”

Dohal snorted, but didn’t interject.

“There should be some emotion involved too.”

Ashdei considered what she said for a long moment. “Is desire not an emotion?”

Mari blinked at him. “Well, yes.”

“Good, then I have all that’s required.” He leaned forward, clearly pleased with himself. “Now, what do you need from me?”

She let out an exasperated breath. “This isn’t how I do things. I’m not just going to make boxes for you to check.”

“At the risk of speaking out of turn,” Dohal said, looking to Mari for permission before proceeding. “I do think you’re being a little unfair to him.”

Of all the things she had expected from this interaction, it wasn’t that Dohal would take his side. “How do you mean?”

“What he’s done to get in your good graces is not unlike what I did. I came to your rescue when you needed me, and then when I wanted you, I pursued you.”

She stared for a few seconds before she could respond, “There’s a world of difference, Dohal.”

“I fail to see how.”

“Because you weren’t being manipulative about it.”

“But I was. I invaded your thoughts, your dreams.”

“You said I invited you.”

“You did.” He shook his head. “But the same is true of him. The goddess called him to you.”

Mari looked Ashdei over again. As much as she hated to admit it, he made a lot of sense. “Why do you need my protection?”

“Like any powerful creature, I have enemies. Were I to claim the Prince of Earth title as I intended, they would come for me. The pact was a preventative measure.”

“More dangerous enemies than the Old One?”

“To me, yes.”

“And will they come for me?” She asked the question as casually as she could manage, but her hand tightened around Dohal’s.

“In all likelihood. Though I think the two of us together—especially once the circle is closed—should be more than a match for them.”

“So, this course of transaction with you will put her in additional danger?” Dohal grumbled, his disapproval obvious.

“I’m not sure if additional is the correct word. They will probably come for her anyway once they find out who she is, regardless of whether she claims her place, because of the threat she poses. To the status quo, she is a very dangerous creature.”

She turned to Dohal. “Could that have been what Vincent was talking about?”

“Perhaps.” Dohal focused on Ashdei. “Tell me something that is a lie, demon.”

Ashdei replied without hesitation, “I’m not at all envious of the way her memory of your night together made her magic light up the entire fucking room.”

Dohal smirked. “Far from infallible for one such as him, but I do not think he has told you any lies thus far.”

Ashdei looked straight at Mari. “While it is certainly in my nature to be less than truthful and withhold information for my benefit at every opportunity, it is not in my best interest to do so with you.”

Saints, she believed him, even without Dohal’s barometer as confirmation. Why did she feel so certain? The implications of it made her uneasy. She turned to regard her dragon. “You think I should entertain his plan.”

“I think the decision is yours. I just want you to have all the information when you make it.”

She stared into his cosmic eyes, wanting to know how he really felt about her considering this course, but unwilling to ask such a vulnerable question directly while Ashdei could hear. It was important that she know because of the secret she kept. “You said once that more protection was better. Do you still feel that way?”

Dohal bared his deadly fangs in a grin. “I am not threatened by him. You will always be mine.” He wrapped his large hand around the back of her neck and pulled her into a blistering kiss.