Page 20 of Princess of Bael

Swallowing, I checked my cuff to confirm that Ezra had brought us to the right place, then I pushed myself forward.

Hours seemed to pass along my very short journey, and when I finally made it to the door, Ezra was already leaving.

His expression told me everything I needed to know.We’re too late.

My heart skipped a beat, the world shifting around me once more. Perhaps my dizziness had nothing to do with this realm and everything to do with the imbalance of power dissolving around us.

Hellfire,I whispered to myself.This… can’t be good.

Ezra stepped back as I pushed through the threshold, some part of me needing to see the damage for myself. Because I’d caused this. I’d allowed this to happen. I needed to face the consequences of those actions.

It hadn’t been deliberate, and I could lay equal blame at Ashmedai’s feet. But that didn’t change the fact that this had happened because of my intention to call the Divinity.

I could shoulder that blame. I could handle the aftermath of that decision. Just as I could recognize that I wasn’t the one who’d actually carried out the crime.

Except it wasn’t Kristina’s dead body I found upon entering, but those of the Tracker and the Portal Dweller. I frowned. “My knife didn’t do that. It was steel, not silver.”

“I know,” Ezra replied, leaning against the door with his arms crossed over his chest. “Someone with substantial power killed them. Someone frommyrealm.”

Substantial power, I repeated to myself, snorting. Except the latter half of his sentence registered, the truth of the energy signature unmistakable.

There were very few ways to kill a demon.

The easiest of which being to use silver.

And yet… “I don’t detect any silver,” I admitted, telling Ezra without words that I agreed with his assessment. Minus thesubstantial powerjibe.

Although, he might not have meant it the way it’d sounded. However, everything he’d said in the last half hour had been insulting by nature, thus making it hard not to read into such a statement.

“No, whoever killed them did it by force alone.” He sounded distracted, like he was evaluating something I couldn’t see. Perhaps the energy he’d mentioned had destroyed the two demons.

He spun on his heel to search the house. I followed him through the living area to the kitchen, where he searched the cabinets and refrigerator—all empty. He went to the two bedrooms at the back next, noted the pristinely made beds with a frown, and then went to search the bathroom between them for any evidence of use.

There was none, suggesting this home hadn’t been lived in for quite a while. The cleanliness was probably just a heavenly effect.

I left him there and headed toward the office I’d seen near the entry. There was nothing in the desk, just a pen and a piece of blank paper. The cabinets were empty. The bookshelves were clear. And the closet had a solitary jacket.

Ezra stood in the doorway watching me as I finished, his expression unreadable.

He returned to the corpses in the living room, his head tilting as the bodies began to dissolve into ash. Demons usually disintegrated quickly upon death, but time moved differently in this realm. Or maybe the lack of hellish energy slowed the process.

Regardless, that’s going to be a bitch to clean, I thought, watching the dust particles dance in the air. Bending, I retrieved my knife from the deteriorating demon and said, “I’ll be outside,” since there wasn’t much I could do inside anyway. I also really didn’t want ash in my nose or hair.

Demon corpse wasn’t a good look.

Ezra didn’t say anything as I left, his attention on the essence he seemed to be tracing all over the house.

Hopefully, he wouldn’t take too long, because this realm was giving me a headache. And unfortunately, he was my only ticket back down to Earth.

The irony of that wasn’t lost on me. It seemed our relationship would forever be founded on his ability to teleport us at will.

With a grunt, I found a place under a tree to relax.

My legs moved better now, my body seeming to have acclimated to this world a bit faster than anticipated. Maybe my Archdemon genetics were helping me more than I realized.

Or it’s related to the growing power shift, I thought, wincing.And we’ve come full circle.

Because that was why I’d wanted to reach the Divinity.