Page 19

CHAPTER 19

REVELATIONS

SHANNON

T hat’s not Alana.

That’s all I care about. It’s not Alana, and because it isn’t, I couldn’t care less what the identity of the human who took her from her crib is. He’s dead, that’s what he is, whether Yelios killed him or I’m about to. But, to me, he’s just some guy.

But not to Susanna and Amy.

“Daniel? Dan? Is that you?”

“Dad? Oh my god. Dad!”

Target.

He should be dead. However, no one is making a move toward the man except for Amy and Susanna, and they’re not going to kill him. Shit. Sammael might not be able to conjure a shadow portal in here, but what about chains?

No?

That’s okay. Let this human chick handle it.

“Hey, if you’re not about to get on with the stabby-stabby,” I snap, Glaine’s heavy sword suddenly in my grasp, “then I will.”

It was easier than I expected it to be to steal it. The only reason I could was because—like the rest of us—the practiced soldier is stunned to realize that Yelios has been working with a human. Amy’s father… Susanna’s brother-in-law… is the man who took my baby to give to the shadows.

But he’s not a mate, so that means his ass is mine .

“Duke’s first law,” I remind us all. Not like we haven’t heard the endless refrain over the years, but I say it anyway: “Humans can’t know about Sombra unless they’re a mate. Something tells me that, if this prick stole my baby to give to another asshole, they’re not bonded. So he dies, right?”

Fuck the first law. I could give a shit, but I’m so furious right now that I’d happily swing this heavy-ass sword and lop off his head if only to make him pay for ever laying his kidnapping human fingers on Alana.

No one comes between a mama bear and her cub.

No one, except a daughter who has been estranged from her father since she was a little girl, even if she didn’t know why.

A daughter who might finally, finally get a little bit of closure as she holds onto the man who, like Amy, hasn’t aged a day since he got involved with Sombra demons.

Only… Amy is Nox’s mate. He gifted her with his immortality when he gave her his essence and bonded her to him.

Daniel Benoit should be at least mid-sixties, early-seventies based on Amy’s age. Tired, covered in dust, and broken, he still doesn’t look a day over forty himself.

But why?

And does it really matter when he kidnapped Alana ?

I take a step toward him, holding the sword.

“Shannon, please.”

Amy.

Amy, the woman who received a frantic message on an old social media platform and actually answered it. Amy, the woman who has only ever been a phone call or a short drive away when I needed to talk to someone who knew what it was like to be a Sombra demon’s mate.

Amy, my friend for the last two plus years.

Damn it.

“Oh, fine.” Turning, I shove the sword back at Glaine. The scowling demon tightens his grip, as though girding himself from a blonde human 2/3rds his size snatching it from him again. “But he better have a good explanation.”

“I can explain.” Susanna rises, leaving Amy to help pull her father up into a seated position. “When I first was pulled into Sombra, my mate sent me into the shadows to find an ashbalm flower.”

Haures sets his jaw. “I gave you a choice to break your bond. You didn’t want to stay at first.”

“You put me in the dungeon.”

“To keep you safe, my love.”

“To keep me, you mean,” Susanna counters. “And you knew I wouldn’t use the ashbalm, just like Hope didn’t when you gave her the same choice.”

Haures cocks his head, conceding her point.

“Anyway,” Susanna continues, “I went into the shadows. I… I got lost. Instead of finding the ashbalm, I found Dagon. The shadows were killing him.” She pauses a moment. “Yelios was killing him.”

As if I had any illusions that the king can’t hear us or doesn’t know everything that is going on in his shadows, he makes sure to cut in and rasp out, “This part of Sombra is still my domain. I am still king here. If you do not bow, you do not survive.”

Sierra grabs her mate’s arm. “Dagon?”

“I am loyal to Duke Haures,” he explains. “I bow to no other ruler. Now, I get on my knees for none but you, Sierra, but Yelios… Susanna saved my life that day.”

“Because I’m human. Because a seer told Yelios after his Alana died that she would be returned to him, a demon child with a human mother.”

Like my Alana.

Oh, no.

“I’m human. That intrigued him. So when I told him to let Dagon go, he agreed as long as I promised to give him my firstborn child. A child of a human mother and a demon father… the child that Lucian and Damien saw in their visions two thousand years before I was even born.”

But Susanna and Haures never had children. I always thought that was odd. I mean, fifty years worth of gold moons and they never had an oopsie? Unless… unless Haures knew of a prophecy about the first demon-human halfling—and his mate promised away her firstborn child.

Her firstborn, not mine .

“I said what I had to to escape.” Susanna sighs, trembling slightly. “But I didn’t know then that a vow in Sombra… you can’t break it. He gave me Dagon’s life. Since I didn’t have a child yet and possibly never would, he said he would take something I hold dear until I complete our bargain.”

She pauses, waiting to see if Yelios will interject again. When he doesn’t, she glances down at the human man who is now sitting up, leaning against Amy, his eyes drawn to the ash, both dazed and obviously ashamed.

He doesn’t say a word, either.

“I didn’t know it was Dan,” she says, voice gone soft. “I don’t even know how he got involved. I haven’t seen him since 1987… but that’s Dan. Mindy’s husband… that’s Amelia’s father.”

“Dad,” Amy ruffles the back of his dark blond head. “I… you left Mom. You left us. What happened?”

“I, too, want to hear it from the human,” announces Haures.

I’m with both of them.

“I transferred essence from a demon who came to escape his existence in my shadows,” Yelios rumbles. “I tied Daniel to me so that he could do my bidding.”

Technically, that’s possible. Sombra demons usually wait until they’ve found their one true mate to initiate the essence exchange because they can only have one. You have to be absolutely sure that the lover you picked is the one you want to spend forever with before you do the exchange, and if they don’t give you their essence back, you’re screwed.

So if Yelios made another demon give their essence to Daniel Benoit, I would’ve been surprised if it drove him nuts. That, plus it would explain why he’s in Sombra now—though I guess that means his head’s not on the chopping block anymore—and why he looks so young.

But why?—

“The book,” blurts out Amy’s father. His voice is rusty, unused, and there is pure grief in the sound. “He made me send the book where it needed to go. To constantly remind me, year after year, that I wouldn’t be free until he had what he wanted.”

Yelios’s harsh laugh sends shivers down my spine. “The doppelseers see much, but they don’t see everything. I knew that the firstborn halfling would be my Alana returned to me. I made it so that every gods-given mated pair found each other so that I found her again.”

I’m not dumb enough to point out that he could’ve stopped after I hooked up with Mal. If he had, the book never would’ve made it to Hope or Sierra. Since Kennedy took the book from me, and both Billie and Tandy could’ve read it since Sierra kept it after she found Dagon. As for me… maybe that explains how the Grimoire du Sombra found its way to Turn the Page in the first place…

“It’s my fault,” the man says. His voice is thick, tears streaming down his ragged, stubble-covered cheeks. “All I did was look for the book that Su was obsessed with. I thought it might be worth a couple of bucks. I had a wife. A little girl. Su took off, leaving everything behind. How was I supposed to know that it was a demon spellbook? Or that, when he caught me with it, he’d drag me through a portal to Hell?”

Not Hell, but I get the point.

Daniel Benoit gulps. “I told him Su was my sister-in-law. My family. And he told me that day I was his until Su gave him what he wanted. But Su didn’t. And I… oh, Amy … I had to take the baby. You see that, right?” Glassy eyes lock on my friend. “I lost mine. But to get her back… to get my sweet Amy back… he wanted his mate. His eyes… they were green. Do you see them, sweetheart?”

Amy pats his head, eyes wild and confused as she searches for Nox.

Me?

I’ve had enough.

“He’s not her mate!”

“Shannon, my flower?—”

“He’s not, Mal. You know it. I know it?—”

“And so I do,” says Haures. “I am the bondmaster. Whatever Yelios says, his bond died when Queen Alana did. She had all the essence he had to give. He can’t give anymore. I vow it. He is not the spawn’s mate.”

“No,” agrees Lucian. “I see her mate, and?—”

As long as it’s not Yelios, I can deal with that later. Especially since that other prophecy said Alana’s heart might stop once she finds her one true mate. But since that’s a later problem, and this is a now problem…

“His eyes were green,” mumbles Dan. “But they’re white now.”

“He is lost,” adds Loki. “There is no reaching her.”

“And he has my daughter?”

“He believes she is his queen.” That’s Dan again. Now that he’s spoken up, it’s like he thinks if he keeps going, if he helps, I might not reach for Glaine’s sword again. “He will keep her until she is old enough to bond with him. But he was afraid he’d lose Alana again… that’s why he had me take her.”

He did that because he’s insane .

“There is no bond,” Haures repeats.

I really fucking hope the bondmaster is right.

“Of course there is,” comes Yelios’s thunderous reply. Because, yup, he’s still spying on us. “How else could I beckon the red moon?”

Hang on?—

He did that.

“Impossible,” snaps Haures. “You were never a mage. You were a soldier?—”

“It is my gift. To share the love I have for my mate with the rest of her people.”

This is insane. Like… I can’t be the only one thinking that this is insane.

“She’s a baby ,” I howl.

Malphas knows me. Words are never just enough, and I’ve done everything I could to hold back while all of this was being dumped on us. But I can’t anymore. I don’t care that these shadows are Yelios. He has her somewhere, and if he opened up the wall to spit Daniel out, there’s go to be a way for me to get to Alana now.

I played nice.

I’m done playing.

I don’t know what the odds are that Glaine will be caught off-guard enough for me to snatch his sword again. I don’t know if it’s powerful enough to cut through shadows, or kill a king that his people thought died two thousand years ago. Glaine didn’t try to cut them before because, like any rational people, we thought the shadows were just freaking shadows.

But they’re not, and if he exists at all with a corporeal form—and he has to, right, if he could slip into the human world to steal Daniel—then I can stab him.

Right?

Won’t hurt to try. And, before anyone can stop me, I finally make a break for it.

I don’t make it two steps until Malphas is in front of me, one arm cradling my head, the other wrapped around my back, pulling me up against his shadowy chest as he stops me dead in my tracks.

Damn it. Malphas really knows me.

I wiggle. “Let me go, Mal. Our baby needs us.”

“I know, my Shannon. But think about this. The shadows feed on all who enter them. It’s not just the predators we have to fear. They take everything we are until all that’s left is despair. And then we’re gone. Lost. He pulls us into him. He hasn’t let that happen yet, but I have no doubt that he will.” Mal nuzzles the top of my head with his chin, warm breath fanning my hair. “I will not lose you, Shannon.”

“He has her, Mal. He has Alana.”

“I know.” He presses a kiss to my hair. “And if Haures won’t end this, I will.”

What?

“Nox?”

“Yes, Malphas?”

“Guard my Shannon for me.”

The air shifts. “Of course.”

It happens so damn fast. One second, I’m clinging to my mate. The next? He’s carefully, gently, quickly passing me over to Amy’s. The imposing hunter accepts my trembling body with a solemn nod, my back tucked into his side, a giant shadowy hand pinning me next to him.

That’s what that slight breeze was from. He zipped from where he was with Amy over to me as soon as my mate asked him to. He’s strong in his shadows, so strong I can’t break free of his hold, and when he winks back to his solid form, it’s impossible to escape him.

I watch as Malphas stands up, straight-backed and brave, the hunter inside of my gentle artist coming out as he moves toward the wall of shadows. Toward Yelios. He doesn’t run, like I had. He doesn’t glance back or even think to grab Glaine’s sword.

It’s just Malphas, hair swaying down his back, sculpted shadow arms starting to glow with the echoes of the golden runes that first appeared when I summoned him so many years ago.

“Yelios,” he calls, his voice careful, yet strong. “Do you hear me? I am Alana’s father. You think she is your one true mate? Then answer me!”

“Malphas,” is Yelios’s sneer of a response.

Shit. I shouldn’t be surprised that he knows my mate’s name. If he is the shadows, he probably knows everything about us.

The fucker is toying with us!

I hiss, but Mal stares into the wall. “Tell me of your bond. Not the one you have with Queen Alana. But my spawn… does she make your heart skip a beat? Do your claws ache to touch her pretty yellow hair? When she peers up at you, do you know that there isn’t anything in any world that you won’t do to see her smile?”

My mate is asking Yelios about Alana, but the examples he uses… he’s talking about me.

Despite all of the other emotions rushing through me—fear and despair and anger and that sliver of hope—my heart swells. Mal… god, I fucking love him.

He doesn’t want to lose me. Well, I don’t want to lose him, either.

Especially when he lifts his voice and says solemnly, “Does she amaze you every single moment that you’re lucky to be by her side?”

“My Alana did,” Yelios confesses, his answer carrying away on a renewed breeze. “And when I have a bond with the one returned to me, she someday will, too.”

When I have a bond …

Because there is no bond.

“The seer was wrong,” Haures announces. “Alana cannot be returned to you, Yelios. But I can set you free so you can return to her.”

The duke clicks his claws together. “Malphas. The ashbalm flower.”

It takes a moment for Mal to tear his gaze away from the shadows. I’m watching the same thing he is, and in the depths, I see a pair of white eyes—the size and shape and height revealing they could belong to a Sombra demon—staring back at him. But once Haures clicks his claws again, the spell is seemingly broken. Mal jerks his head, giving Yelios his back, before gliding over to Haures.

His right hand is still cupped, holding the ashbalm flower.

My whole body thrums with anticipation.

I’d given up on thinking the ashbalm would do anything as soon as Haures first mentioned that, as a bondmaster, he could tell that there was none between my Alana and the warped king. But Mal… all this time, my demon mate guarded it with everything he had. Even as he grabbed me, held me close, tucked me against him… he never once dropped it or smashed it.

And now he offers it to Haures.

I don’t understand. “If he doesn’t have a bond with Alana, what do you need that for?”

“It’s not for his imagined bond with your spawn. It’s for the bond he had with his queen that he’s let become twisted over the last two thousand years.”

He holds his white hand over the ashbalm flower nestled securely in Malphas’s palm.

Haures’s blue eyes gleam as he addresses the shadows. “I release you. Go, Yelios. Go to where the shadows beckoning you, and your one true mate has spent ages waiting for you to return to her.”

The ashbalm flower bursts into flame. Malphas doesn’t remove his hand until the fire dies and the ashbalm flower is simply ash once more.

I wait with bated breath. Behind me, none of the others make a sound until?—

A gasp, before the ancient voice croaks out one name: “ Alana .”

Please, please, please let this work.

I watch the white eyes in the shadows. To my surprise, I see a flash of green eyes, just like Daniel Benoit said, and then… nothing.

One.

Two.

Three.

It would probably be more accurate to call the rush of wind that explodes from the wall of shadows a tornado. It bursts out powerfully, slamming into all of us. My hair flies around my face, the ash eddying up into my eyes, my nose, my mouth. Mal rushes over, trying to shield me. I cling to him, and only hope that everyone else is clutching their own seven-foot-tall demon.

When the wind dies, I blink as much ash out of my eyes as possible before checking to see if my friends are okay. It’s easy to do that because, suddenly, the shadows disperse. All of them. The wall, the heavy, weighted blackness around us… it’s still dark in here, but closer to what the shadows gathering around the back of Nuit look like rather than the nearly impenetrable ones that serve as a border to the edge of Sombra.

I can see in front of me—and what I notice first, as though a tug inside of me yanked me in the direction to look, is something left behind from when the shadows—- Yelios —disappeared.

Over the stunned silence left in the gale’s wake, another voice calls out that name: “Alana!”

This time, it’s mine.

Because there, sitting on the ash, her golden eyes bright, her chubby cheeks pink, her fangs peeking out from her wide, contented smile, and a single glowing butterfly flapping its wings over her head is our Alana.