The gruesome sight before her was…

Xan’s jaw was hanging open. She closed her mouth and held the torch up, all while wanting to extinguish it and run away from this place.

Skeletons. Little ones. Piles of them.

Acid clawed at her stomach lining. This was one of those places that would get her killed just for knowing about it.

The picture from Hypna’s cave of the demon holding the little bundle was of a sacrifice. Xan couldn’t read the writing on the wall, but the power and despair roiling through the chamber was clear.

Xan threaded through the piles and around makeshift alters. Claw marks marred the surface. Gouges from blades.

Did Quution know about this place?

He had to. Hypna hadn’t been killed because she’d been trying to stop this practice. That female had been evil to the marrow. Sacrifices like this had probably been her idea of a Sunday fun day.

Did Spaeth know about this?

If he did, would it change her situation? Probably not. This chamber was sealed so securely she could barely squirm through the wards. Getting into Quution’s chambers hadn’t been nearly as hard as getting inside here. These wards had been disrupted at some point, then patched up with even more juice. But her sense of weakness wasn’t only for living beings, but also for their powers. A quirk she’d developed after Mama’s death—perhaps if it had appeared earlier, she might not have gotten kicked out. Though, as she toed a tiny finger bone aside, at least her mother hadn’t done this.

Sacrificing babies. Xan could extrapolate from there about the whys and hows. Her half-breed kind was still enslaved, though not as badly now that Melody had flaunted her way on to the Circle and halflings like Xan had seized vacated seats.

But even so, pure demons continued to enslave their own half-breeds, considering them disposable. Could some of them be turning her kind into baby factories, using the babies to harvest power? She blew out a breath and skimmed her hand over her scalp. Was Spaeth using her sister like this?

The demon who had scrawled the map on Hypna’s wall must’ve found this place and either been discovered by her or turned over to her. Was the map on the wall a last “fuck you” to Hypna? It’d been scratched in a hidden spot. Perhaps a desperate attempt to out the evil practice? Whatever the reason, she was grateful.

There were no clues as to Xera’s whereabouts and Xan didn’t detect her presence, despite scouring this part of the underworld for it. But this hell was never-ending.

She shook her head. If only this place were the worst she’d seen. Had whatever Quution and his brother done to Hypna stopped these heinous acts? Just delayed them, most likely.

Xan wiggled her way out of the chamber. Anyone who happened upon her would think she was a contortionist. It helped to move through the wards where power was the lowest, and sometimes that required acrobatics. The rest was just simple manipulation, which she’d worked hard to master.

Once clear, she didn’t return to her own place. On the way to the hidden altar room, she’d sensed the subtle vibration of wards echoing down the chamber. Traces of her sister weren’t in them, but Xan seemed to have a special receptor for Quution’s powers.

She grabbed her torch and followed the path.

Lingering fear tickled along her skin. Definitely Quution’s touch.

She shivered. A moan almost slipped out. Every time she was around him, he got better looking and she didn’t think those words had ever been used to describe him. But his horns were a resplendent model of a summer sunset, the oranges gradually fading into his dark hair. And his eyes. So much depth holding back those delicious secrets.

The lips behind his garish fangs were lush, and damn if the fullness of his lower lip didn’t give his mouth the shape of a heart.

His even shoulders were hitched, but they were broad. Something a girl could really hang on to.

She shook herself. Her infatuation with the demon was perplexing. He was a job; he couldn’t be more.

He didn’t want to be more.

Doing what she did best, she followed his lingering trail, pieces of himself he’d left behind that evidenced his weakness. They called to her power. The vibrations got stronger as she advanced.

Massive orgies or birthday parties could’ve been held here, but without the stench of fear, this passage would be nothing but empty to her stunted senses. The happy times experienced here would be lost on her. But after a few centuries, Xan had finely honed her skills despite her lack of the full range of empathic abilities.

Xan sensed fear around her as easily as she breathed, and it didn’t matter where she was. If she’d ever interacted with the being the fear belonged to, she already knew their scent and could sift through it to look for causes, motives, and, most importantly, what in the world they would give to be rid of their fear.

She stalled. This space made him vulnerable. The wards were run-of-the-mill and wouldn’t stop her anyway, but what she’d sensed from him earlier, combined with the hints of weakness in the wards—this place hurt him. Scared him. Had made him seal it against prying eyes. And she was so good at prying.

Following the maze, she came up against a rock wall.

“What the hell.” She did not come all this way to hit a dead end.

She spun around, casting light on all the walls. Nothing.

But there was something. A place that was so dark her light couldn’t penetrate. A smug smile curved her lips. At the bottom of the dead end, concealed where the darkness was the thickest, was a small opening.

She anchored her torch, wishing she hadn’t used one, and let her vision grow accustomed to the darkness. But she heard nothing and sensed less.

Wedging into the opening, she wormed her way inside. It angled downward. Skittering in the walls surrounded her, faint but persistent. Ugh, the bugs were everywhere down here.

Which made any place in the underworld inhabitable. Even this dank space had a significant food source.

She slithered until the passage angled downward sharp enough to send her sliding.

Clawing for purchase, she failed and fell at least eight feet down. Her torchlight wouldn’t reach down here.

Blinking, she waited for her night vision to strengthen. Shapes emerged. One large shape.

Bars, but carved from a single stone to make the gate of a prison cell.

Was Xera being held in a place like this?

And Xoda. Xan missed her laugh. So much like her sister, it was like a young Xera wandering around.

She couldn’t sense her family or Spaeth. But Quution’s fear ran rampant in this place. Xan soaked it in.

So much fear. But why?

Well, it was a prison. Had he been the prisoner? Her eyes finally adjusted to the dim space, but it was like looking at a world painted in dark grays. She slipped inside the cell.

The feeling of Quution surrounded her. He’d lived here. He had to have. Not even his current chamber resonated with so much of him.

She stepped back, her heel landing on a brittle bone. A scream stuck in her throat. She refused to let the sound out. She was not a demon who got rattled.

Sucking in a calming breath, she studied the bones. A skeleton. Someone full grown. Had this demon lived here too? At the same time as Quution? A toilet hole was in the corner, but its contents had long been scoured out by scavenger beetles. She feathered her hands along the wall. Symbols. Were they letters? Words? The ceiling and floor were covered with them.

Books were piled in the corner. Haphazard piles succumbing to gravity. This had to be Quution’s doing.

Except he wasn’t a willy-nilly guy. Those stacks would be neat and orderly. She padded toward the pile. She couldn’t picture him having access to this pile and not reading each and every one.

She didn’t know how old he was, but he had to be much younger than her. His appearance in the underworld was fairly recent. Like he’d just popped up out of nowhere, wielding his energy like a boss and disrupting their assumptions of how the underworld worked. When Melody had killed a particularly vicious Circle member and taken her seat, Quution’s defense of her had been a potent demonstration that full-breeds didn’t always hold all the power, a demonstration he’d pounded home by aiding even more half-breeds onto the Circle. A weird stance for a full-blood to take, but all the more effective because of his status.

She was nearly certain she’d solved the question of where he’d been until his first appearance. And since no one else knew, it had to be a helluva secret.

The skeleton—his keeper or another prisoner? A parent?

She might not have all the answers. But she had enough to bribe Quution to keep her nice and close. Or—her gaze flicked to the hole in the ceiling she’d been dumped from—she would once she clawed her way back out of here.

Quution nestled into the feather mattress on his stone slab of a bed. Other demons might see it as a weakness, but they’d never slept on a pillowtop Sealy. He was tempted to shuttle one down, but for now, his current mattress would have to suffice.

He hadn’t seen Xan since he’d returned. That was good.

At leaste he kept telling himself it was. It didn’t stop him from looking around each corner for the vexing female.

Teach me how to read.

He closed his eyes, dreaming of the day he could sleep without the fangs. After all these years, he should be accustomed to them, but they chapped his lips and he always woke up in a puddle of drool. His horns tucked in nice and tight against his hair, but the shoes were a pain. He couldn’t risk taking them off and letting the underworld view the healthy, humanoid feet attached to equal-length legs.

He’d committed to the elaborate ruse. Just a while longer.

His eyes drifted shut, a to-do list streaming through his mind. He needed samples from two more Circle members. Xan would be tricky enough, but Spaeth—could Quution trap some of the male’s radiation in an object? Would that be enough, or did the item have to be organic?

He couldn’t risk it. Only a physical part of the demon would do.

Then he had to…

Sleep claimed him, deeper than it ever had before.

When morning came around, the most delicious scent tickled his nose. Had he just been dreaming about running through a field? The scent hadn’t been wildflowers, it’d been…lavender, but that wasn’t completely correct.

He popped an eye open and jolted. Xan was stretched out on her side next to him with her head propped in one hand.

He flipped backward, rolling off the slab. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Xan peered over the edge. “Good morning.” She rested her chin on her hands. Lying on her belly, she was touching every part of his bedding. There was no laundromat in the underworld. He’d either have to possess a human to get some sleep or slumber while wrapped in her scent.

No. Just no.

Already, his body was awakening to the fact that a lovely female was naked in his bed.

“Get out,” he said through clenched teeth, refraining from scooting backward across his floor like a damn coward.

“Mmm, no. We have a reading lesson to start.”

“I said no.”

“Oh, but see now I have something you want. Or should I say, I know something you want to stay secret.”

Had she seen under his shirt to the unblemished skin underneath? Was the seam where his fake fangs were glued to his teeth visible? Had he talked in his sleep?

“How long have you been here?”

“I would’ve gotten here sooner, but…” Her face filled with annoyance, and swirls of lavender raced up and down her neck. A slow smile spread across the lips he tried hard not to fantasize about. “But you know how treacherous the path is from your childhood home.”

Cold washed over him from horns to toes. His world stilled. She was bluffing. No one knew where he’d grown up, or how. Only Stryke. His brother had been through the same conditions.

“Who’d the bones belong to?”

Brimstone and fiery hell, she might not be bluffing. “What bones?” he hedged.

“See, I’ve been thinking. You and Stryke are buddies. You have the same colored eyes. Similar shades of hair. You’re both energy demons.”

His lungs froze as he waited for her to work out that, like Stryke’s father, he might be hiding that he was a half-breed.

“And if I squint really hard and tilt my head, you two kind of resemble each other—in the face.”

He ignored her dig about his body. He should be proud that his appearance had fooled her. But it wasn’t the real him. The real him might repulse her. She went for fearsome demons. Even those former lovers who were humanoid like him had characteristics that struck fear into the beholder. His real fangs weren’t much longer than hers, and except for his horns, he’d pass for a tall human man. He was basically a vampire with horns that could manipulate energy. That was all he was.

A rat with bones sticking out of his head, his mother had often said. The demon whose bones Xan had asked about.

“Stryke works for me,” Quution said.

“Does he now? You know, I heard this tale once. His mother was a pure-blood demon, an energy one. However, plot twist: his sire was not. His father only pretended to be a full-blooded demon to secure a position on the Circle.” Her feet kicked in the air as she talked, hanging out on his bed.

Like a fucking slumber party.

“Word in the corridors is that Stryke was kept secret. Because how in the world could a full-blood and another full-blood have a half-breed? Stryke’s existence only confirmed his sire’s half-breed status. But you know what I think? You two share a mother.”

Quution’s mind cranked. Xan hadn’t guessed that he and Stryke shared both parents. He could deny it until his fake fangs fell out, but sometimes partial truths worked better.

“Those bones you asked about?” he said. “Our mother.”

“Scandalous. Your sire?”

“An asshole.” He wasn’t lying.

“Mm. So why the prison?”

“Mother had bad taste in males.”

“There’s a good choice down here?”

Too true. “So that’s why you snuck into my room? You’ll tell everyone Stryke and I are half-brothers if I don’t teach you how to read?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

Did she know more? Dare he push and find out? The time it took to teach her how to read would be enough for him to determine the extent of her knowledge while keeping others from learning the real nature of his relationship with Stryke. It wasn’t hard to make the jump that they were full brothers and Quution was a half-breed. And if that happened, he’d lose all credibility and be more hunted than he already was.

But if he played along, would Xan figure it out?

He’d have to keep her close to know. “Fine. Our lessons start this afternoon.”

“Got plans this morning?”

“I can’t teach you with these tomes. They’re too complicated, and carving into stone is too time-consuming. I’ll go topside and gather supplies.”

“Let me go with you.” Xan pushed herself up on her arms, her breasts swaying.

He tore his gaze away. “I can’t wait for you to find a host.”

“I have one.” She rattled off an address. “Pick me up there in an hour.”

He could argue, but seeing the host she chose and the way she acted in the human realm would tell him a lot about her. And they’d both be possessing a human. He’d choose a woman; that way they would be on equal footing.

If there even was such a thing with Xan.