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“Why not? It suits you.” The bastard was clearly enjoying this. His wide smile took over his face, in stark contrast to the mean, impassive look he’d been wearing the last week.

Gaia, this man was confusing. One minute, he hated her and treated her like the bird shit on his shoe, and the next, he was cuddling her in his sleep, saving her from a watery fate, and teasing her. Ena did not know what to make of it all, and it annoyed the fuck out of her.

“Because it’s extremely condescending. I’m not ‘little.’ I’m a grown-ass woman.”

Ty made a show of glancing down appreciatively at her rear end. “Okay, fair point,” he replied.

Ena stared at him incredulously, her mouth hanging open. She could not believe he’d just done that.

Seeing her face, Ty burst out laughing.

It was the first time she’d heard him laugh like that since…

well, since the last time they’d been together.

The sound of it transported her right back to when she was seventeen.

Ty had one of those extremely infectious laughs, and the sound of it, coupled with the light it brought to his eyes, and the way his face transformed from attractive to devastatingly handsome when he smiled, tugged at her heart for a second.

She hurriedly looked away, as if blinded by the sun, and had to remind herself where she was. Who he was. She was not seventeen anymore. And maybe she could admit that he was still very good-looking, but she wanted nothing to do with him. Not anymore. Not after everything.

“My apologies,” Ty said, his laughter dying down.

“You set me up so perfectly for that joke I couldn’t help myself.

” After a beat, he added, more seriously now, “And I don’t think calling you ‘little viper’ is condescending.

Vipers are extremely dangerous, even the little ones,” he said, winking at her.

Ena just rolled her eyes at him and kept walking.

***

The mood between them was significantly lighter after that.

By the late afternoon, they began to head due west, and found themselves walking directly into an amazingly beautiful sunset.

The forest was bathed in an otherworldly golden glow.

Ena tried not to notice, but the light did beautiful things to Ty’s face.

The red in his beard shone with a warmth she hadn’t noticed before, and his eyes, as always, seemed to reflect the extra light around him, making them even more piercing.

The altered light played across the side of his shaved head, making his tattoos appear darker against his skin.

They were so intricate; she’d never seen them this well before.

Whirls and dots of ink formed swirling, circular patterns that bled into one another, running across the sides of his skull before wrapping around the back and dipping down onto his neck.

They seemed to progress from one to another, as if telling a story, and she remembered the way they’d continued down his shoulders and arms when she saw him with his shirt off.

Ty turned to her, catching her staring. Ena would’ve been embarrassed, but instead, she realized the turn in his attitude could be a good opportunity to get some more information out of him. Though his beauty was…distracting, she couldn’t forget where they were headed, and why. Not for one second.

“What are your tattoos?” she asked.

He eyed her skeptically. “You really want to know?”

“Yes,” she replied. “They’re…unique.”

Ty looked at her again, as if assessing whether or not she was telling the truth, before he spoke. “We call them onata . They’re given to us each time we complete a mission from Iblis.”

Ena almost stopped in her tracks. For some reason, she hadn’t been expecting that, and she was suddenly appalled that she’d been admiring them so much. She figured they had something to do with daemonic culture, but not this.

His tattoos were a visible reminder that he was a servant of Iblis.

They were a written record of all the chaos, discontent, and discord he had spread, of every time he had disrupted the balance that witches worked so hard to maintain.

Ena began to wonder how many of the horrible events she’d heard of in recent years had been caused by Ty’s own hand—the famines, wildfires, earthquakes, population collapses, violent incidents.

Given his Power of furor , he would’ve been able to provoke mortals or animals into conflicts that could lead to all sorts of terrible outcomes.

She knew, theoretically, that he had done those sorts of things.

But now, seeing the evidence of it, it all seemed so… real.

“Oh,” Ena replied lamely. And then something else horrific occurred to her. “And is that what this is? A mission from Iblis to find the amulet?”

Ty was silent for a second, as if debating whether or not to answer. “No,” he said. “I guess you could say it’s…extracurricular.”

Ena didn’t know what to make of that. She had so many questions. What could they possibly want with the amulet that didn’t have to do with Iblis’s mission? Ena opened her mouth to ask more questions, but Ty shut her down before she could.

“Don’t even try it, viper. That’s all I’m going to tell you. For your sake, and mine.”

Well, that was cryptic as shit.

Forbidden from asking what she wanted to know, Ena turned silent again until the sun had fully set and they stopped to make camp.

That night, as she laid down beside him, sleep took a long time to come to her.

She replayed what he’d said over and over again in her mind.

She’d always thought that they’d been planning to do something nefarious with the amulet, something utterly destructive and chaotic.

And that had always worried her. For Gaia’s sake, the evidence of all they had done was written right there on Ty’s body.

It was highly likely they’d use it to do more of those things.

But she couldn’t shake the feeling after what he’d said that there was so much more going on than she knew.

So tonight, for the first time, she was both deeply afraid and completely unsure of what he intended to do with the amulet.