“Let’s go, Cordelia.” Severus glared at her from the front passenger seat of Alaric’s new SUV. His cousin hoisted her middle finger at him on the hand that clutched Moira’s bra, her eyes closed and her words flowing as she performed the location spell over the three-century-old building plans Severus had acquired for Mammon’s abandoned castle.

It hadn’t been easy to dig them up, but he’d managed, touching just about every human in the Farrow’s Hollow city records department until he got what he wanted. They’d been locked away in a vault, along with plans to several other key demon structures—including a very accurate layout of the Inferno. Severus had taken that, too, and planned to hand it over to Verrier once they had recovered Moira.

“Just let her do her thing, Sev,” Alaric muttered, ceaselessly drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as he stared out into the surrounding forest. Off the beaten path, they had put the vehicle—a gift from Alaric’s father after he’d discovered the other one had lost a mirror—to the test, forcing it over rocky, rough woodland terrain to reach their rendezvous point just north of the castle. Out here, they were officially beyond city limits, which had been Cordelia’s suggestion: many local witches were only human, imbibed with magic by a willing demon, and their reach was limited to Farrow’s Hollow proper. No sense in triggering any alarms before they had confirmed Moira’s location in the castle.

From there, Severus planned to just wing it—storm in, fuck up anyone who got in his way, and get her out. Diriel’s whereabouts had already been confirmed: Dartanious had called about fifteen minutes ago to inform Alaric that the demon was trying to bully his way back into the Inferno. Thankfully, Verrier had been willing to settle the issue personally, though everyone knew he’d be in a foul mood after being pulled from his midnight meal at Rose’s Corner for something so petty. Severus almost felt sorry for Diriel—almost.

The rustling of papers caught his attention again, and Severus watched as Cordelia’s blood shot across one floor’s layout and hopped over to the next. It scurried about, searching, searching, searching, until it finally sank into the last page of parchment. Cordelia tossed Moira’s bra aside, along with the rest of the castle’s building plans, then scrutinized the blood mark.

“She’s two levels below,” the witch said, pursing her lips as she tracked her finger across the page. “At the end of a hallway…in a circular room.”

“Alive?”

“Her brassiere burned hot during the spell,” Cordelia told him as she moved on to examine her bleeding hand. “She lives.”

“Then let’s get a move on,” Severus growled before hurrying out, resisting the urge to slam the door behind him. Alaric did the same, and the pair waited for Cordelia to take her sweet fucking time to join them, licking at the new wound on her palm as she sauntered through the underbrush, totally unfazed by the way the branches grabbed at her hair and the thorny bushes clawed at her dress. Severus rolled his eyes and grabbed her when she was close enough, dragging her along by her forearm until she delivered a well-aimed kick to his calf.

“Fuck,” he hissed, releasing her with a glare. “What?!”

“I just thought you’d like to approach under a cloak of invisibility,” his cousin remarked, a twinkle in her bright green eyes, the demon tucked back inside for now. “Or, if you want to ride up, cavalier and obvious as day, then I’m all for watching you get eviscerated from the sidelines—”

Severus closed his eyes in an effort to compose himself. It wouldn’t do Moira any good to have him riled up and heated, his inner demon positively chomping at the bit to do some damage. He might be desperate to spring her from her jail cell, but he still had to be smart about it. “Just do it already. We don’t have time for this.”

“What—your attitude?”

“Cordelia.”

“You should have a sweetheart more often, cousin,” she teased, tucking the rolled-up parchment into her skirt’s pocket before sliding her still-bleeding hand into a silky black glove. “You’re just too much fun like this.”

His lips peeled back into a snarl, but before he could utter another threat, she grabbed his elbow and a sudden rush of cold washed over him. He shuddered, the brisk air burning with every breath.

“Guys?” Alaric’s panicked gaze swept across Severus and Cordelia several times, looking but not seeing. He reached out with both hands. “This is my least favourite version of the plan. Guys?”

Cordelia watched him flounder about with pursed lips, clearly delighted, then snatched his hand as Severus rolled his eyes so hard they nearly popped out.

“Here, sweet boy,” she cooed, threading her gloved fingers around his. Dressed in all black, from his leather coat down to his ridiculously clean lace-up boots, Alaric shivered more visibly than Severus did under the illusion.

“Cold.”

“Very astute, Alaric,” Severus said with a sigh, watching as his friend’s breath fogged in front of him. “Invisibility usually is. Come along.”

“Don’t let go of my hand, darling,” Cordelia instructed. “As soon as we three disengage, the illusion falls. So, hold nice and tight.”

“Er, right.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Severus grumbled, half dragging the two behind him through the forest. They had likely crossed into the city’s limits by now, weaving their way around tree trunks, both fallen and upright, and avoiding animal burrows along the way. A faint spring mist had started, plunging through the overhead canopy and only making the chill of Cordelia’s spell worse. Some ten minutes later, the castle loomed ahead through the forest, its crumbling outline reminiscent of the old-world architecture in Hell’s capital city, Pandemonium.

They had opted to charge in through the front door—there was no other point of entry on the main level, according to the layout. Severus could only hope the building plans for the castle were accurate; he had beguiled more humans today than he’d done in quite some time, and by the end of it he’d had the whole department clamoring to get their hands on him, each one enchanted by his touch.

And Severus had taken every bit of human skin he could. He’d spent the day recharging his strength, and he’d been positively brimming with it when they had set out together a half hour ago. Cordelia might have been their element of surprise, a secret weapon, but Severus still wanted to be physically capable of overpowering his foes.

While the faint glow of light inside the castle suggested it was still in use for one reason or another, it had certainly seen better days. Nearly all the small windows had been shattered, bits of stained glass crunching underfoot as the invisible trio skulked around the perimeter of the building. Severus led the way, taking in the crumbling turrets and the overgrown ivy. Diriel might have claimed this place for his own, but it seemed unlikely he’d actually live in it.

Which only made Severus’s rage thicken.

Because that meant he would be using it now for the express purpose of squirreling Moira away, doing fuck knows what to her in the meantime.

“Slow down,” Cordelia scolded, stumbling into him when he stopped at the edge of the wall. “I’m wearing heels, for Lucifer’s sake.”

“Well, that was your stupid decision, wasn’t it, cousin?” he sneered back, briefly glaring over his shoulder at her before peering around the corner. Sure enough, the front door was just where the layout had put it—and before it sat two chatting demons. Big lugs, sure, but he didn’t detect anything particularly special about them.

The demon genetic lottery was a crapshoot, as Severus knew all too well, but most of the time it produced them: ordinary beasts of Hell who were strong, but hardly as influential as the rest.

He had never understood why they didn’t make up the bottom of the demon hierarchy; there was nothing special about them beyond their physicality and their ability to inflict pain, which was a gift all demons claimed to possess. Still, they were the majority: unspecialized but cruel, they ranked higher than Severus strictly because their strength wasn’t contingent on human life essence. Lucky bastards.

“We can take ’em,” he whispered, then crouched low and shuffled around the corner. Cordelia and Alaric followed, but as soon as they were close enough to the leather-clad pair seated on the cracked front steps, one of them smoking, Alaric moved up beside Severus, which left Cordelia squished between them. Unfortunately, they needed to keep hold of her to maintain the spell, which meant Severus’s right hand and Alaric’s left needed to act as if they belonged to one body.

He waved to Alaric, then counted down with his fingers—three, two, one, go.

As Alaric kneed the smaller of the two brutes in the face, Severus wrapped his arm around the other demon’s head, latched onto his ear, and twisted with all his might. The force snapped the unwitting creature’s neck, his great big body sagging instantly. When he was through, Severus did the same to Alaric’s demon, who was swiping at nothing with his enormous fists, face twisted in rage. Alaric had hidden behind Cordelia in the meantime, the witch suddenly plagued with a serious case of the giggles.

Severus huffed at them both, the demon inside severely displeased by how slow this was all going. “Can we try to be professional here?”

“Oh, lighten up, cousin,” Cordelia teased, leading the pair up the stone steps to the front door. “There’s always time for a bit of fun when you’re committing murder.”

“It’s not murder when they’ll heal.” Severus went for the rusted doorknob, scowling. “So try to maintain just a little decorum, a breath of dignity—”

A piercing, skull-crushing alarm shrieked the second Severus forced the door open. Feeling as though someone was driving a drill into his temple, both in pain and in sound, he clamped his hands over his ears, staggering into the castle with a groan.

“Magic,” Cordelia shouted over the racket, the only indication that it bothered her a slight wrinkle of her brow. “I’ll disable it.”

With the alarm triggered, Alaric came stumbling in after her, fingers shoved in his ears too. However, before either could get a word out, he forcefully wrenched Severus around—just in time for him to spy the onslaught of demons barreling toward them. Down the stairs from the second level. Out a door in the back of the entrance hall, likely charging up from the basement. All in all, about fifteen incoming black-eyed men, each donning the flashy accessories he often associated with Diriel’s hang of partying halfwits.

Perfect.

Not entirely unexpected, but certainly not appreciated.

As he prepared himself for the first wave, a gunshot rang out just over his shoulder, and Severus staggered off to the side.

“Alaric!”

“Come on, it was a great head shot,” his friend shouted over the din, grinning. “And you’re welcome.”

Given the fact that Alaric’s demon refused to make itself known, they had all agreed to load him up with physical weaponry for tonight, whereas Severus would rely on strength alone. Luckily for him, Alaric was an excellent marksman, using the moonlight spilling in through the open door and the flash of each shot to pick off his attackers.

And the sooner he took them out, the better. Not only was this magical alarm system driving Severus up the fucking wall, but all of Diriel’s thugs were roaring like this was the epic showdown of their lifetime. Was there not enough noise already? Must they contribute to it?

“Cordelia, for fuck’s sake, shut it up!”

“I’m working on it,” she bellowed back, her voice demonic and hands raised overhead, each pulsing with a soft red glow. “Just do your part, cousin!”

As a pair of brute demons charged him, Severus unlocked the cage—and let the beast free. Eyes completely black, he fought with every skill in his arsenal, using his speed and his nimble footing to his advantage. Ducking, weaving, dodging—he skirted a flurry of fists before knocking one of his attackers off-balance with a well-timed kick to the knee. As soon as the creature went down, he pounced, snapping his neck just as he’d done the first of Diriel’s men. A broken neck was the surest way to keep a demon down, no matter their rank or ability.

Besides a bullet to the head, of course. The only way to recover from that was for someone to dig the bullet out before decomposition set in.

And since he wasn’t the one with the gun, a broken neck was in store for the next demon who charged him, and the next, and the next, and the one after that. Shots rang out, but Severus was forced to divert back to the hybrid when they stopped—there were only eight rounds in Alaric’s specially designed firearm. Out of ammunition, Alaric used the gun as a blunt instrument, even managing to crack one charging demon across the jaw before another slammed a fist into his face.

Severus tackled the third demon encroaching on Alaric to the ground, then hammered his head, face-first, against the cobblestone floor until blood spurted everywhere. It was only as the liquid soaked his knees that he realized Cordelia had managed to shut off the magical alarm. The high-pitched ringing in his ears hadn’t dissipated any, and he stuck a finger in one, wiggling it about, all the while popping his jaw open and closed.

“Sev,” Alaric grunted, a demon’s thick hand wrapped around his throat, “a little h-help…”

Severus staggered to his feet, a little run-down and more than a little bloody himself, only to be knocked right back down by a whoosh of Cordelia’s power. It swept across the entire space, white and grey shockwaves pulsing out from around her. While the impact left him winded and wheezing, all of Diriel’s cronies vanished the moment it touched them.

“That should buy us some…” She sank to her knees, blood gushing from each nostril. “Some time.”

“Cordelia!”

Much to Severus’s surprise, Alaric charged to her side, catching her before she toppled over. His witchy cousin grinned up at the hybrid, the pair bathed in moonlight spilling in from the open front door, then patted his cheek.

“Don’t fret, pet,” she murmured. “Banishing incantations are always a little more taxing on Earth than they are in Hell. I’ll be on my feet momentarily.”

With both the pile of bodies and any remaining drones gone, Severus quickly took stock of his injuries. All his knuckles were split open, the skin still tender from his run-in with the angelic light a few days prior. Someone’s ring had sliced a shallow gash across his cheek, and his body ached from the few hits that had landed—but he would survive. Just like Cordelia’s spellcasting, hand-to-hand combat and the injuries it wrought always hit him harder outside of the underworld. Unlike Cordelia, Severus wouldn’t feel it tomorrow. He’d be mostly healed, stuck with only the twinges of battle, whereas his cousin was scarred for life.

“Oh, darling, they broke that very regal nose of yours,” Cordelia said, sounding stronger by the moment as she tsked up at Alaric. When Severus slowly glanced up, he found his friend beaming at her.

“Yeah. Injury twins.” The banal comment was followed by nervous laughter, which Cordelia responded to like a wolf spying a stumbling deer amidst the fleeing herd.

“Not to worry. I still fancy you,” she purred, her eyes flicking to full black. Alaric cleared his throat, then helped her to her feet, a hand on her waist to steady her.

“Alaric, did she bake you something while I was gone today?” Severus snapped, unable to find another reasonable explanation for…that. He waved his friend’s stammering response away with a huff before standing once more and stalking across the circular foyer. “Where the fuck is the stairwell down?”

“To the left,” Cordelia told him, and he heard the soft click of her heels on the stone as the pair followed him toward an iron door tucked away in the back left of the room.

When it wouldn’t immediately open for him, Severus really threw his shoulder into it—only to have Alaric interject with a tentative: “I think it’s a pull, not a push.”

Frowning, Severus pulled—and sure enough, the damn thing opened without so much as a squeaky hinge.

While all he wanted was to throw himself down the dark, winding stairwell, Severus had Cordelia lead the way—it was her blood on the map that would take them to Moira.

So he followed, as much as it killed him, gnashing his teeth and scowling when they happened upon the mazelike corridors of the castle’s lower level. Dead ends aplenty, hallways that got narrower and narrower the farther one trod. Only a demon could have designed such a nightmare, and by the time they reached the second sublevel, the one Moira was supposed to be on, they had burned through an entire hour just mastering the maze. Severus’s inner demon was all but intolerable at this point, his esophagus on fire and his head throbbing.

“Find the room,” he growled, shoving Cordelia out of the second supremely claustrophobic stairwell they’d encountered tonight. “Find it!”

“If you push me one more time, cousin, I’ll banish you,” the witch snarled, fixing him with a withering look over her shoulder.

“We’re running out of time!”

“Hey, look—”

“Well, better let me concentrate then,” Cordelia snapped, speaking over Alaric as she planted her hands rather dramatically on her hips.

“Then fucking concentrate!”

“Don’t get your knickers in a—”

“The door!” Alaric shouldered his way past both of them, jogging down the dimly lit dirt corridor ahead. Severus shoved by Cordelia again, ignoring her indignant curses—because Alaric was right. Dead ahead, the only thing on this level was a giant metal door. Torches flickered on either side, and Severus hastily helped Alaric with the half dozen locks, his fingers clumsy and his heart hammering.

When they finally had everything unbolted, Severus nudged Alaric out of the way and yanked the lead door open. The moment he stepped inside, the assault on his senses was instantaneous—and strong.

There was a palpable temperature difference between the outside hall and the interior of the room. While it took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the ceiling’s pod lights, far brighter than the torches illuminating the corridor, when Severus could see, he wished he couldn’t. His breath rapidly fogged in front of him, and he came to an abrupt halt, feeling like his legs just couldn’t move anymore. Shock. It was utter shock at the sight before him.

For there was Moira, strung up, crucified on an invisible cross, her arms stretched wide by chains embedded in the walls. His inner demon fell silent as he drank her in, starting at the layers upon layers of pearl strands wrapped around her ankles, tight enough to keep her bound. Old blood smeared across her legs, having dried as it streaked down from a wound he couldn’t yet see. Her nudity had his hands in tight fists, her ethereal skin aglow in the frigid underground cage.

Up, up, up his gaze traveled—stopping at her breasts. Someone had pierced them, with two sizeable gold rods plunged through her nipples, a delicate strand of braided gold hanging between them, connecting them. Time seemed to stop the longer he studied her.

Demons were accustomed to horror—but that didn’t mean they felt nothing when it was those they cherished most at the end of the torturer’s rod. Severus wanted to turn and run, to look away, blink hard, try the door again as if that might change things. But he couldn’t. He had to see it all. He needed the image of her burned into the forefront of his mind—to fuel his rage, to power his vengeance.

Like Diriel’s, her neck dripped with dozens of silver and gold necklaces, pearl accents throughout, crosses at the ends of some. Her head hung low—until Severus’s gaze swept across the thick braided crown of hair around it. Slowly, Moira looked up, with noticeable difficulty, her lips blue, her eyelashes frozen.

Tears sliced through the frostbite on her cheeks the moment their eyes met.

A weeping angel—she’d turned her cage cold.

The sound of crashing behind forced him into action. Severus glanced back briefly to find Alaric smashing a mounted camera against the wall. Cordelia remained in the doorway, breath fogging in front of her in slow, even clouds.

His feet—feet he no longer felt—carried him to Moira, and he cupped her face with both hands. All he wanted to do was touch her, hold her, shield her from all the evils of his world, but he knew better than that. She winced at the feel of his hands on her icy cheeks—she wouldn’t be able to handle the beast inside, what it yearned to do to her now that he had found her.

“Are you all right?” he whispered, then grimaced. What a stupid fucking question. “I’m so sorry, Moira. I—”

“’S my fault,” she murmured, her voice hoarse—Diriel would have made her scream. It shouldn’t surprise him, but Severus had to fight his natural response, his fingertips threatening to dig into her skin. Moira blinked up at him, then swallowed noticeably. “I… It’s my f-fault.”

He stiffened, then grasped her chin tight to get her attention, forcing their eyes to meet. “You listen to me. None of this is your fault, do you understand? None of it. You did nothing to deserve this.”

“I left,” she said, her words like a sigh, her eyelids heavy. “I—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Severus growled, resisting the urge to shake her, if only to make her understand. “Diriel did this, not you. This is not punishment for leaving the house. This is unwarranted savagery. You are blameless, and that’s the end of it, do you understand?” He wiped the falling tears away, his gaze dropping to her blue, trembling lips, wishing he could kiss them back to life. “I’ll kill him. I’ll fucking kill him.”

A slight rustling along the chain connected to Moira’s wrist startled him out of his rage, and he realized he was just standing there, holding her face and glaring at her lips. Fucking useless. Alaric, meanwhile, was trying to wrench the chain out of the wall—trying and failing.

“Move, move aside,” Severus ordered, wrapping both hands around the chain and pulling with all his might. It didn’t pop out of place as easily as he would have liked, his entire body working and working and working to get enough weight behind him, but eventually it snapped. With one side free, Severus ran to the other, applying the same nearly unyielding pressure until it too broke free. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Moira go down. Thankfully Alaric was there to catch her, with Severus at her side seconds later, gently lowering her abused body to the ground.

“Here we are,” he murmured, scanning her for any signs of fresh injury—and fuming at what he found. Two thick, still-healing lines sliced across her shoulder blades, and, even in his current state, straddling the line between crushing Moira against him and storming back to town to rip Diriel’s spine out, he knew precisely why her demon captor had searched there of all places.

He’d wanted to find her wings.

The thought had crossed Severus’s mind too after he’d put all the pieces together and realized that Moira was an angel-human hybrid. Angels’ wings were the pinnacle of magic—the best of the best, and they didn’t lose their power when you plucked them off the source either. He hadn’t been sure if a hybrid would possess such a powerful attribute—and he hadn’t cared. Moira mattered to Severus. Just her. Not her abilities, and certainly not what he could do with them.

It had always been her, just as she was.

Shaking his head, he brought his attention back to where it belonged.

“Someone get these cuffs off,” he snarled, spying Moira’s arms limp at her sides as though unable to lift them. “Cordelia.”

“Take them out,” Moira whispered roughly.

“I know, darling, I know, we’re working on it—”

“No.” Her watery eyes darted to his. “The piercings. Take them out. Please.”

Something glittery caught his eye, and as he brushed back a few loose wisps of her hair, Severus finally noticed all the new piercings along her ears, too. At least ten on the right side, all along the shell of her ear. Diamonds. Rings, studs—the works. He knew, however, that Moira wasn’t referring to those piercings, not from the way her voice broke.

So, as Cordelia crouched on her left side and grabbed her cuffed hand, and Alaric used the knife hidden in his boot to tear through the strands of pearls around her feet, Severus saw to the nipple piercings. Solid gold. Delicate. They would be rather attractive on her—if she had actually wanted them. The expression on her face, the distress in her eyes, the fucking temperature of this room, literally frozen with angelic sorrow, all screamed otherwise.

Teeth gritted, Severus unscrewed the round end of one of the gold bars, working as gently as he could. He could feel her watching, the weight of her stare making him clumsier than he should have been, tugging the nipple more than he wanted. Moira exhaled sharply when he got the first bar out, the sound followed by one of her heavy cuffs falling to the ground. Without a word, the trio rotated around her, Alaric darting out of the way with the strings of pearls removed from her ankles, and Severus climbing over her to see to the left breast as Cordelia moved on to the right shackle.

And Moira sat in the middle of it all, shaking and crying in the most awful silence Severus had ever experienced. The sound of her next gasp wasn’t much better, but at least he had two of her new piercings out, the ones that seemed to bother her the most. With her unshackled, it was time to get the fuck out of here.

“Cordelia, are we still clear? Any of his thugs back?” Severus asked as he shrugged off his knee-length black trench. He’d chosen one with a thick, wintry material earlier, totally out of season, because he had sensed he might need to wrap it around Moira later.

“I can cast another banishing spell before we go up,” his cousin remarked, her teasing edge gone completely.

“Alaric, watch her back.”

“Yup, on it,” the hybrid said, shooting to his feet and hurrying after Cordelia. As their footfalls faded, Severus placed his thick coat around Moira’s shoulders, and shifted about so he could hoist her up as he stood.

“Wait,” she whispered, rooting through the polaroid pictures scattered around her. He frowned, only noticing them now. Most were facedown, but the few he could see told him he wouldn’t want to see the rest—Moira, in various states of torture. Diriel’s fucking face in a few.

Why would she want to keep any of these?

“Moira—”

“Okay,” she muttered, snatching one polaroid and folding it in half before tucking both arms inside his coat, which practically drowned her it had so much excess fabric. “Please get me out of here.”

She needn’t ask twice. Severus stood and lifted her up in one fluid motion, with an arm under her knees and the other supporting her back. He gave her dungeon a final disgusted sweep—then stormed out.

And neither he nor Moira once looked back.

* * *

When Moira realized she had been standing under the steady spray of Severus’s shower for the better part of an hour—just standing there, arms at her side, staring straight ahead at the expensive tile—she finally shut it off and stepped out. By then, most of the blood had been washed away, swirling down the drain. She hadn’t done much by way of scrubbing, but the scalding-hot water had done the trick.

Once again, Moira found herself just standing there, staring ahead—at nothing, at everything. Slowly, she tilted her head down to study her body. A faint pink stained her legs where the blood had been left to sit and crust for the last three days. The cuff marks around her wrists remained a bright red, tinged with bruising. Her nipples, which had been in agony ever since Diriel stuck the first piercing through, no longer burned. Removing the gold bars had brought instant relief, and as she lifted a heavy hand to examine them in the steam-filled bathroom, she found that the holes were already starting to close over—barely. She checked her ears next, but all the holes on both remained, the skin swollen and painful. And why shouldn’t they still be there? Severus had only just taken the diamonds out before she got in the shower.

Still dripping wet, she marched over to the counter, taking quick, short strides, but when her hips nudged against the marble, she stopped, frowning. How did she get here? A glance over her shoulder. She had just been there. With a deep breath, she closed her eyes.

She’d expected her head to swirl with thoughts—thoughts of anger, revenge, sorrow. But it was blank. Empty. Perhaps just exhausted. She swiped her hand over the mirror, clearing the condensation away, and then turned around to examine the marks on her back. They hurt the most, those long slashes over her shoulder blades. Pink and raw, they had only stopped ripping back open whenever she adjusted her position yesterday. Moira still felt it, the throb of pain, with every move she made. Diriel had wanted her wings. She swallowed hard and reached back, only just able to reach the start of each incision.

Moira still couldn’t process that she would have wings.

Her gaze snagged on something glittery on the counter—all the diamond and gold studs, hoops, and bars that had been viciously poked through her ears. Diriel had wanted to make her beautiful—that had been his reason for all the piercings. Make her beautiful, make her a piece of art. If she’d just said yes, she wouldn’t need to be beautiful. She would be his partner. An equal in this cruel game of black-market angel feathers that he would pluck from her, one by one, until she had reached the end of her usefulness.

Her jaw clenched. Her eyes narrowed. Fuck him.

And fuck the angel who’d handed her to him.

Leaving her shoulder wounds alone for now, she swiped all the diamonds and gold off the counter into one hand, then threw them in the toilet. She flushed three times to make sure they were all gone, gripping the fluffy towel Severus had left for her to her chest.

“Fuck you,” she whispered as she watched the water spiral. “Fuck both of you.”

When nothing glinted up at her, she finally started to dry her skin, taking extra care with her breasts, her back, and the area around her ears.

She was grateful Severus and the others had been able to get her out without her having to see her captor’s face again. Moira wasn’t sure how she would have responded—emotionally, sure, and probably with a lot of screaming. When Severus had all but kicked down the door, it had taken everything she had not to dissolve into a mess of heaving sobs and tears. She had done her best to fight it, to appear strong when her entire being yearned to break, to splinter into a thousand pieces so she could just stop feeling.

As she toweled down her hair, she thought back to that moment when Severus had first appeared, to the crippling sense of relief that had flooded through her. She had always known he would come for her, but it had been hard to keep the faith as the hours dragged on—harder still with every piercing Diriel added to her body.

But he had come for her. The black-eyed hero, there to save the idiot heroine who should have just listened to him in the first place. By his side, trusty Alaric, his face covered in blood and his nose noticeably broken. Hovering by the door, a woman straight out of a Victorian period drama, encompassing all the gothic architecture of Farrow’s Hollow in her outfit and in her eyes. The woman had broken the shackles. The woman had banished the demons who had surged from the shadows of the woods as they raced back to the car.

Cordelia. Severus’s cousin. As Moira wrapped the towel around her, she knew she owed this stranger her life, this magic-wielding demon who’d had no reason to help her beyond her ties to Severus.

She ought to despise them—all of them. Demons. Cruel, twisted, horrible creatures like the one who had tortured her for three days straight. She ought to loathe them.

But she couldn’t.

Because Cordelia had fought for her.

Because, in Moira’s moment of weakness, her body crumpling, Alaric had caught her.

And because Severus had come for her, freed her, held her the whole way home—just like she’d known he would.

Moira could never hate them. But she could hate Diriel. She could hate the demon who’d handled the camera, the ones who had come to watch, seated on the sidelines like Diriel’s torment of her was world-class theatre. And she would—until she drew her very last breath.

Or, preferably, until Diriel drew his.

She would hate him more—her father, the angel who wanted her dead. She would despise him, but she would hunt him. Confront him. Out him and his sins.

Because. Fuck. Him.

With that in mind, she tiptoed across the slick bathroom floor and opened the door. Two shadowy figures stood in the doorway on the other side of Severus’s dimly lit room, murmuring in hushed voices. Severus glanced back, revealing his cousin behind him, and as Moira stepped out, he said something else under his breath before the witch disappeared. Not literally. Or maybe she did—could witches do that? Dematerialize?

“She brewed you a sleeping draught,” Severus told Moira as he shut the door softly. “It’ll give you a dreamless sleep.”

“That was thoughtful of her.” Moira looked around the room, and when she didn’t see her duffel bag, she grabbed a T-shirt hanging over the edge of Severus’s laundry hamper and pulled it on. The cool material clung to her still-damp figure, and it smelled distinctly like him—not just cologne, but him.

“How are you feeling?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted before tossing the towel over the bathroom door, adjusting it so it hung straight. She felt—a lot. “I just… I don’t know.”

“Right. Come on then, into bed.”

He hadn’t once asked her for details. Not on the drive back to his place, not when he carried her upstairs and set her on the bathroom counter, not while he removed all her new earrings, and not after he got the shower water to the right temperature—scorching. He hadn’t asked, and Moira hadn’t wanted to tell, and they appeared to be leaving it at that for the time being.

As she crossed the room and climbed under the covers that he pulled back, she knew she should have been exhausted. Drained. Broken. But watching Severus place a cup of steaming green liquid on the bedside table, Moira couldn’t decide where she fit on the spectrum. Was there even a normal response to what she had been through?

“Moira, why would you want to keep this?” Severus asked, his tone gentle as he lifted the polaroid she’d snatched before he whisked her out of that hellhole. He held it out, but kept the image facing him; Moira didn’t need to see it to know what was on there. The final product. Diriel’s crowning glory—her, bedazzled and bejeweled and bloody.

It was a rational question, but as she reached out toward Severus, Moira didn’t feel all that rational. Because instead of grabbing the polaroid, she grabbed him, her hand fisting around the thin fabric of his button-down. She gripped it hard, twisting it, until finally she yanked him into bed beside her. Her lower lip quivered as he fell into place, seated next to her. Her throat burned and her eyes prickled as she climbed on top of him.

And as she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face against him, Moira sobbed. She stopped holding it in, stopped plugging the leaks. The floodgates opened, and the air around them cooled. Straddling him, Moira felt her tears streak down her face and onto his skin, just as the spring rain had fallen in streams down the window of the SUV on the drive back. Just as the thunder cracked above them now, lightning splitting the darkness, she wept and wept, unleashing the storm within on the only person she dared.

He weathered the storm in its entirety. Severus clasped the back of her head, his faced turned inward so she could feel his soft, even exhales against her skin. He let her shudder against him, all the while cautious in the way he touched her, his hands avoiding her back altogether. He said nothing when her nails sank into him, to the tortured rasp of each ragged breath.

While she had been strung up and exposed, pierced and mocked, Moira had thought she would never want to be touched again. Not by anyone. Ever. But from the moment Severus cupped her face, wretched guilt painted across his features, she knew she couldn’t go on like that. She needed to be touched. She wanted to be held—and he was the one to do it. Diriel’s touch sickened her, but Severus’s saved her. Time and time again, in dire circumstances or not, Severus’s caress breathed life back into her when Moira thought it was all over. The brush of his hands down her sides, the gentle whisper of his flesh over hers—it was her salvation.

When the storm finally quieted, she sat up slowly, her head thick and her eyes swollen. Sniffling, Moira wiped the tears from her cheeks, and then brushed the backs of her knuckles down his neck. A ghost of a smile touched her lips as she dried him off, fighting to make her breath settle, and she caught the way his gaze wandered to her mouth. He had held her, caressed her, but he hadn’t kissed her—and Moira knew he’d wanted to. She could see it in his eyes, blacker by the moment, until one final blink and the humanity was gone.

It should have frightened her. It should have terrified her from the first time she saw it until now. Diriel had been nothing but black eyes and cruel smiles and sharp claws—but Severus was comfort. He was a safe haven within the darkness.

Biting the inside of her cheek, she brought her fingers to his lips, delicately resting them there for a moment. He leaned into her, but he didn’t kiss her. He just stared into her eyes. Even if she couldn’t see his pupils in this light, she could feel it, his gaze never letting hers go. Her ghost of a smile blossomed to something more tangible, something she felt in her cheeks. Fleeting. There and gone again. She trailed her fingers across Severus’s lips, then down his throat, until she planted her hand firmly against his chest, his collarbone like an anchor while she leaned over and grabbed Cordelia’s brew off the nightstand.

Scentless and thick. It was shamrock green and tasted like nothing as it slid down her throat and warmed her belly, the first real meal she’d had in days. Diriel had permitted her to drink water with energy mix-ins—plus two bathroom breaks a day, which were to be taken still chained up. Yesterday, one of his peons had enjoyed his chicken nugget takeout in her cell—he’d offered her half, but only if she ate it out of his hand like a dog. And Moira had done it without a hint of shame, because that fried crap had quieted her howling stomach.

Cordelia’s brew left her satiated—and instantly heavy. Every limb sagged, the effort to put the empty cup back more than she could manage. Severus did it for her while she sank down at his side, her head on his lap and an arm thrown around his waist.

“Give it to me,” she murmured, reaching up, her fingers grasping until they wrapped around the polaroid. As she examined it, her lip trembling but her tears holding, Severus worked his hand into her wet hair, massaging the base of her scalp. It was quite soothing, and soon she found herself fighting the urge to sleep—to let the darkness take her.

“You want to know why I took it?” she asked, her voice sounding very far away, even to her own ears. “I want to see it. I want to remember it, what he did to me. Because without it, I’ll forget. I’ll forget the pain of the piercings. I’ll forget the way my shoulders ached and burned… I’ll block it out. I’ll grieve and move on. But if I can look at it, I’ll remember.” She dragged in a shuddering breath, knowing with more certainty now that the he she referred to was plural. “I’ll remember, so that when I finally have the chance to kill him, I’ll do it. I won’t back out, I won’t show mercy, because I’ll remember it. All of it. And I’ll give him exactly what he deserves…”

Death. Moira would bless Diriel with death—by the light of her touch, by the burn of her angelic fire. She would figure it out. She would master it. She would teach it to come when called, and then she would show him just how deeply he could be scarred by her, dozens of burns to match the first two she had given him.

And then death. An unremarkable death. No fanfare. No great show of it. Just—the end. Moira would be his end.

She would be the end for Diriel and her father.

Cowards.

But for now, the draught could take her, and she welcomed the peace of a dreamless sleep with open arms. Before she succumbed, her arm tightened around Severus, and she breathed him in. They would face the darkness together, until she had the strength to bathe them in light.

So, let the darkness come—and, for the first time, let it find her unafraid.

* * *

To be continued in STALKER, the third novel in the paranormal romance serial THE HUNT. Look for it May 25, 2018, exclusively on Amazon.