Page 22 of White Little Lies (Four Ways to Fate #3)

22

The next time Lucas tossed me to the ground, it was a relief to land on grass damp with evening dew. I skidded across it, toppling against a tree that still wasn’t as hard as the building’s roof had been.

“Eva!” Aaliyah hurried toward me and started helping me to my feet as Lucas touched down gracefully beside me. She gave him an appropriately frightened look, then muttered, “Where have you been?”

I didn’t have time to explain it to her as Fiorus spotted me and marched in my direction, his white toga floating around him in a way so perilous that I hoped he was wearing underwear.

“You! You were supposed to prevent this from happening.” He gestured back toward a small copse of trees surrounding a massive iron cauldron glowing with blue light.

I winced. “I’m guessing that’s your well? ”

He reached me, his anger so intense that I started to step back, but then Lucas was there, his hand around Fiorus’ throat, lifting him up enough that his sandaled feet barely touched the grass. “Where is the devil?” Lucas said evenly.

Fiorus sputtered, unable to speak. Aaliyah gripped my arm, trembling. I didn’t see Seraphina anywhere.

Lucas tossed Fiorus onto the grass like he weighed nothing.

The other man slowly sat up, rubbing his throat and looking up at Lucas with a mixture of malice and undisguised awe. “I don’t know where he is,” he rasped. “He was supposed to stop this from happening. We had a contract!”

Lucas loomed over him. “Not that devil. The female.”

Fiorus’ brow creased, his eyes shifting to Aaliyah still clutching my arm. We hadn’t been allowed to see her—to tell her what really happened.

“Never mind,” Lucas growled. He looked at the well, and I had a feeling he was speaking more to himself than to any of us when he said, “She’ll come for it. All we have to do is wait.”

Fiorus got to his feet, giving Lucas a wide berth as he edged toward me. At least he didn’t seem angry at me anymore. “I must return the well to our realm. It’s not safe here.”

I observed the giant cauldron skeptically. “How did anyone move it to begin with? It has to weigh a thousand pounds.”

“It was shifted from our realm to this one, just like walking through a portal,” Fiorus explained.

More nymphs had gathered around, muttering amongst themselves and watching us, but especially watching Lucas glaring at the well like it had personally affronted him. I had a feeling those who had shifted the well were yet to reveal themselves. They were all just acting confused.

“Can’t you just shift it back?” I asked.

Fiorus swiped a palm across his face, shaking his head as he did so. “I don’t know how it was moved to begin with. It should have taken a great gathering…” He waved a hand in the air. “Ritual!” He whirled on me. “And you were supposed to stop this from happening!”

I took a step away, bumping into Aaliyah. “Hey, your contract was with Sebastian. I was just going to bring him back to your realm, but now I can’t find him anywhere.”

Fiorus’ eyes darkened. “Then he betrayed us.”

I wasn’t sure which us he was talking about. Surely not him and me. “I think this has something to do with the female devil you originally had the contract with.”

He didn’t seem to know what to do with my calm response. “I gave him the name, but I never saw her after she finished her task.”

I was dying to know what he had given her in exchange, but he had already sworn up and down that the contract would not allow him to divulge that information. So I asked another question instead. “Did she ever see the well?”

His spine straightened abruptly. “Of course not.”

Lucas had gotten closer to the magical cauldron. A few brave nymphs stood in his way, but it was clear they were already wavering. Fiorus turned and marched toward them, though what he would do when he reached them was anyone’s guess.

I turned toward Aaliyah. “Where is your sister? I came because she called.”

Aaliyah’s eyes shone with unshed tears. She hardly looked any better than the last time I’d seen her. “Father threw her out of the park. It was terrible. She gave me this and told me to call you again if you didn’t show up.” She held up Seraphina’s phone.

“Can you tell me what happened with a little more detail than your father was willing to provide?”

She lowered the phone and hunched her bony shoulders, huddled in her long white dress. “I don’t even know. I was in bed, and the next thing I knew I was here. When the well got shifted out of our realm, it was like it pulled us all with it.”

I didn’t want to break it to her that their realm might not even exist any longer without the well to sustain it. I had a feeling Fiorus knew it too, and that was why he hadn’t already set to fixing things.

The cauldron suddenly pulsed with a bright flare of light, drawing all of our attention. Fiorus took a step toward it as the light flared again brighter than ever, then abruptly went out.

Several of the nymphs screamed. Aaliyah clutched my arm again. “What just happened?”

I shut my gaping jaw. The cauldron was now just inert metal. “I have absolutely no idea.”

“Penelope,” Lucas fumed. He stalked around the cauldron like he might kick it.

I dared a step toward him. “Who?”

“The devil.” Before I could react, he had grabbed me again, tearing me away from Aaliyah. “Take me to Sebastian, now. If he is missing, she probably has him.” He gripped my arms hard enough to bruise.

“I can’t.” I tried to pull away from him. “I’m only half celestial, what do you want from me?”

Magic surged through me, and I realized it was coming from him… intentionally . “Take me to him,” he said through gritted teeth.

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” I fought to speak beyond the overwhelming magic. “We could just as easily end up inside some dormant star. Or at the very least in a dumpster somewhere.”

He pressed more magic into me. All the nymphs were watching us now instead of their ruined cauldron. Gray edged at the corners of my vision. If all of this magic didn’t go somewhere else soon, I was going to pass out.

“Do you want to save him, or not? ”

That was a loaded question if I had ever heard one. I could barely focus on Lucas’ face as he asked it.

“Damn it all, fine.” I shut my eyes, thinking of Sebastian’s mocking expression. Then I thought of him kissing me, his hands roving across my body.

The entire world seemed to turn upside down, and all I could feel were Lucas’ hands still gripping my arms. Then I felt heat. Who the hell had trapped us in a sauna?

Normally I wasn’t great at sticking my landings, but Lucas kept me upright. He still gripped my arms as I opened my eyes.

We stood in a room made of deep red stone. The nearest window was stained glass depicting a strange celestial scene composed of planets I couldn’t name. Through the colored glass I could vaguely see a vast rocky landscape.

Lucas released me, hissing like I had burned him. He looked around wildly, until his eyes focused on the other side of the room, on what I had already noticed.

Sebastian stood stiffly beside a beautiful woman with raven hair and his same uptilted eyes. She wore tight black pants, a white frilly shirt, and an honest-to-goodness frock coat with a black and white brocade pattern.

“ You ,” Lucas growled.

The female devil curled one corner of her wide lips. “Yes, me.” She held an old-fashioned lantern in one hand, glowing with the same blue light that had been in the cauldron.

To Sebastian’s credit, he took a step away from her as he addressed me. “Eva, allow me to introduce my sister, Penelope.”