SIXTY
Abyssian!” Lila rushed to his side, trying to steady him, but he fell backward onto his ravaged wings. “Damn it, I told you to fight back.” She cradled his head in her lap.
“They are your subjects. I can’t hurt my queen’s subjects.” He weakly reached for her face, brushing the backs of his claws over her cheekbone. “You were amazing tonight, love. I am so proud of you.”
Her chest twisted. All her big talk about wanting nothing to do with him faded. He’d come for her, believing he would save her. He’d fought off an army—without harming a single soldier. For me. “You look awful.” She started yanking arrows from him. He must have twenty broken shafts jutting from him, and at least a hundred more arrowheads embedded inside him. “We’ve got to get you back to hell.” Yank.
He grimaced at her less-than-gentle ministrations. “Can’t trace there. You barred me.” And she couldn’t unbar him until she returned to that realm. “How did you do that anyway?”
“I found the hellfire. Or it found me. I got some powers and figured out how to use a couple.”
A gust of breath left his lungs. “My beautiful, brilliant wife.”
Yank. “Am I still your wife?” Her temper simmered.
“Always. Even when I’m acting like an idiot.”
“I thought you had forsaken me.” Yank.
Shaking his head, he tried to help her with the arrows. “Don’t touch the poison. You can sicken.”
She slapped his hand away. “Uthyr left the portal open for me until twelve.” Could she get Abyssian out of the castle and across the grounds to reach it? “But I ought to let you bleed out for that bullshit you pulled today.”
He nodded. “I broke my pledge. Did just what you feared I would. I should not have taken out my pain and resentment on you.”
“Well, I did agree to spy on you.” Yank. “I lied repeatedly.”
“Your deception was born from desperation and longing for a better future. Mine grew from bitterness.”
“I was desperate. I would’ve done anything to be free from the Møriør’s threat.”
“It guts me that you were terrified of us all. I want to make up for every second you lived in fear.”
“That doesn’t change my blood.” Yank. “I belong to the line Rune wants to wipe out, the one you said deserves its annihilation. The tainted one.”
He flinched.
“Still want to have kids with me?”
“It would be my honor to.” He reached for her, but she slapped his hand down again.
“Would Rune put them in his sights?”
“Never. He’s known who you were, but he didn’t tell me because he wanted me to discover happiness with you.” That surprised her. “He was hoping you would confide your secrets to me.”
“I wanted to make sure of your feelings for me before I risked everything on you.” Yank. “After last night, I’d planned to confess. You never gave me the chance because you invaded my privacy!” Of course, she’d never revealed that she could read his thoughts in hell.
“I fucked up again and again. Tell me I’m not too late. Tell me I haven’t ruined everything. Can I play that . . . get-out-of-jail-free card?”
Her anger began to cool, but she didn’t want it to. “I can’t keep paying for crimes I don’t remember. I’m done with that.” Yank. “What happens the next time you fly off the handle? Will you lure me down to your creepy dungeon again? The days of me trustingly closing my eyes for you are over.”
He winced. “I am so sorry for that. It’s no excuse, but I relived a memory today, one that has always made me crazed. I’d tried not to think of it. . . .”
“What memory?”
“Our last day together.” His words were starting to slur, and his wounds weren’t closing. “I couldn’t handle the rage. Couldn’t think. But now I see it’s all connected.”
“What is?”
“In Tenebrous, I decided that I was going to do something I’d thought impossible: believe in you—despite the past. I finally let go of my bitterness. Once I did, I found the fire, Calliope. I found it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You changed me.” Ash wisped in the air. His horns started burning away. His wings! “My gods, Lila, I can do it at will.”
“What’s happening to you???” His skin was losing all its color, the glyphs disappearing. “The poison is burning you up!” Yank. Yank. Yank.
He grunted in pain. “Little wife, you are the hellfire for me. My beacon in the dark.”
Was he going to die? Maybe the fey archers had found something equivalent to the Lôtān venom for their arrows! Tears blurred her vision. Yank. Yank. Yank.
“Lila, no. I’m fine.”
“Clearly you aren’t! We need to get to hell—”
The clock tower began to toll midnight.
Her heart stopped. “Up, demon!” She wrapped an arm around him, helping to haul him to his feet. “NOW, Abyssian.”
They careened out of the castle’s entrance as the third tolling sounded. . . .
Sian dazedly stumbled with his female out into the rain and wind.
“We’ve got to beat the clock!” she cried. “Keep going.”
If they ran into more soldiers before they reached the portal, he might need what was left of his wings and horns. As he lurched beside his mate, he imagined his transformation stopping.
His body ceased its transition. He pictured himself with his hell-change fully in place. The edges of his wings and horns reformed.
Just as he’d once dreamed, he could change back and forth between his guises—like a shifter.
Though he was in his hell-change form, the thrumming along his spine had disappeared. Which meant the deterioration had stopped, that engine dead.
Find the fire, and your appearance will be pleasing. In Old Demonish, that could also be translated as Find the fire, and your appearance will please you.
Sian had control over his own form.
“I can see it!” Calliope increased their pace. The fiery white outline of Uthyr’s portal hissed in the rain. “We’re almost there, demon.” She murmured to herself, “Nine clangs.”
They blundered around shrubs. He’d forgotten how many bloody plants were in this realm.
“Ten clangs,” she cried. “Hurry!”
He and Calliope barreled through the portal just before the fire dwindled to nothing. . . .
As soon as Sian crossed into hell, he began to strengthen. He drew on magic to protect his mate against any poison transference, then turned to his own injuries.
“The arrows, Abyssian.”
With a nod, he willed them to disappear. One by one, his wounds sealed. As she checked him over, he healed completely, stretching his regenerated wings for good measure.
Her face was pale, her skin damp from the rain. Confusion filled her eyes.
“Need to get you warm.” He grasped her elbow, then traced them into their room before the hearth fire. He raised his brows at the Lôtān’s single remaining fang, then gazed down at his mate. Her worry had heartened him. “I haven’t lost you. You can’t deny that you still care for me.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Okay, so maybe I didn’t want you to die from that poison.”
“I wasn’t dying. I was changing. Or reverting.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When a demon inherits the crown of hell, he transforms into his most monstrous self. I didn’t always look like this. . . .” He explained to her about his own hell-change, that ever-present feeling of deterioration, his fears that she could never want him.
Or that she wouldn’t for much longer.
“As soon as I let go of the past, I reverted to my former guise. But when I was trying to reach you, I lamented the lack of my demonic features. Suddenly they started to grow.”
She appeared skeptical.
“I can show you what I used to look like.” He willed himself to shift forms.
Her eyes went wide when his horns and wings burned once more.
With a cocky grin, he said, “I think you’re going to like the old me very, very much.” His claws disappeared, his facial structure changing. He popped a crick in his neck when he’d completed his transformation.
Her lips parted as her gaze roamed over him. “More trickery?”
“I had no control over this. I should have told you, should have warned you that my appearance would keep getting worse. But I was selfish; I didn’t want to scare you off.”
In a measured tone, she said, “This is what you looked like for almost all of your life?”
“Not bad, huh?” His cocky grin faded when she shrugged noncommittally.
“You don’t have horns in this form? What happened to them?”
He raised his eyes to her crown. “You’re wearing them.”