She strides past me to the door. “Come, we leave immediately.”

We head to her private pinnacle, and I watch in awe as her inky black wings materialize. Each feather is edged in crimson, the wingspan unmistakably hers. But her cloak will mask her presence and provide some protection. If we are spotted, then it will be me they see, flying alone.

She glances back at me with a wicked smile. “Try to keep up, runt.”

And then she’s airborne. I leap into the air after her, wings bursting into being, span almost rivaling hers but not quite. Her laughter drifts on the wind to my ears, and I can’t help but smile.

It’s been a long time since I heard her laugh.

An image flickers through my mind, her smiling face, her tinkling laugh as she lifts me into the air.

Wait, what is this? This never happened.

“Having trouble keeping up, runt?” she calls out.

“Never!”

I race after her, up high over the walls and into the Underealm proper.

We fly for an hour, never slowing, but I know we must rest soon. There is a tavern a few miles ahead of us.

I turn my head to tell my queen this and spot the shadows hurtling toward us. Darkites, daemons. No…How can this be? Darkites never leave the caves of Alaria. They don’t socialize with any but their own kind, but they’re here, which can mean only one thing.

Mammon has recruited them.

The queen’s cloak won’t stop them from seeing her. Darkites see through the shadows. They will see through the magic that envelops her.

And they are zeroing in on us. Three, no, five of them. “Mistress, watch out!”

I veer in front of her, my wing grazing hers, and pull up to hover in the air, blades at the ready.

“Darkites…” The queen looks from Mammon’s spies back to me. “Only five? What do you say, runt?”

My grin matches hers, but I shake my head. “Go, I’ll slow them down.”

“And leave you to have all the fun?”

The darkites are almost on us, bat-like creatures with sharp ears and humanoid faces. Their bodies are hairy, hands tipped with venomous claws. They’re lethal to other daemons, but only if you let them get too close.

“Fine, but I lead,” I call out.

She doesn’t argue; this is my job, after all. I am her Blade and Blades like to cut. The darkites swarm us, and we attack in unison. Slicing and stabbing, grabbing and twisting wings. Lilith is a formidable fighter, a warrior, and even her time cloistered in the Keep hasn’t softened her to a brawl.

The darkites scream, desperate to get their claws into me, to push their venom into me, but my blades are fast. I move with assurance in the air to avoid the scrape of their talons, delivering the sharp edge of my blade.

They fall one by one until only two remain, battered but fiery-eyed and eager.

“Go!” Lilith orders them. “Go now, and I will spare your lives. I have no quarrel with your kind.”

One darkite hisses; the other throws back its head and screams. Knowledge stirs at the back of my mind. Something to do with the darkite’s scream.

Oh fuck.

I fly forward, ducking to avoid the hissing darkite, and then my blade is in the screaming one’s throat, and he’s finally silent. But it’s too late. I feel the change in the air. Hear the beat of bat wings. More come. Too many more.

I’m an assassin, a creature of stealth and cunning. My advantage lies in taking my victim unawares. Of sidling up behind him and slicing his throat, but I am well versed in the way of the battlefield, and I will fight till my last breath to protect my queen.

“Mistress, you need to go. Now! I’ll hold them back.”

Lilith’s eyes are on the horizon, her huge crimson-tipped wings beating the air to keep her in position. Yes. I see them too—a black cloud headed this way. A real swarm.

“You can’t,” she says. “You can’t fight them all. You’ll die, and I won’t get away, and my son Azazel will die.”

I want to argue, but I’m not a fool. The odds are against us. “We have no choice but to try.”

The swarm is almost upon us; another minute, and we’ll be overwhelmed. “Go, please.”

Instead, she flies closer and cups my face. “Save him, Keon. Save my son.”

Pain slices through my head, and a symbol blazes bright in my mind. The rune. I know what it is. I know it now.

I open my eyes and stare at her.

“GO!” There is compulsion in this command and my stomach twists. She shoves me away from her and turns away. “I order you to go and save my son.” Compulsion sears me. “Save yourself and live to fight another day.”

Her wings propel her toward the swarm even as mine obey her command and carry me away from her. I try and fight, to turn back to her, to save her, but her compulsion cannot be broken. I watch as she is consumed by the swarm, and then I can watch no more because my vision is no longer clear.

Tears spill down my cheeks, and my mind fractures. I fly away into a kaleidoscope of memories. Her laughter as she holds me above her. Her scent as she hugs me close. The soft caress of her palm against my cheek, and then I’m sitting cross-legged on the cold floor, charcoal in hand, as I etch out a picture.

“What will you do?” a male voice asks.

“I don’t know, Cardinal,” Lilith says. “I made a vow, and I broke it. I was weak, and he was so…He was formidable, and for a brief moment, he stole my heart, and now I have the last of his kind in my care. He may be born from a moment of weakness, but he belongs to me.”

“Lord Samael may not see it that way.”

“I know. We agreed to be monogamous, but things have been tenuous, and he left. When he returns and sees…I can’t lose his love. I won’t.”

“And you wish to keep the evidence of your tryst?”

“I can do nothing less.”

“I can help you.”

“How?”

“You will become a benefactor, a Master. You will become a keeper, and this evidence will become your Blade. You will keep him close to you, but you cannot love him as your own. Can you do this?”

“He will live?”

“Yes, he will live. Already he grows faster than Azazel. No one will suspect. I will make it so, but to do so, I must make him forget.”

“Keon? Sweetheart.”

I look up at the woman, so perfect, so beautiful, and my heart swells with joy. “Yes, Mother?”

“I love you, so very much.”

I jolt from the memory, my heart too big in my chest. The rune is a blazing sigil in my mind. The rune that can only be passed down a bloodline.

Lilith passed it to me.

Not just my queen, but my mother.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Cora

“Come back, woman, you can fight this.” Ice grips my neck and shakes me.

My eyes snap open, and Jasper’s face, twisted with rage, fills my vision.

“What the fuck?” My words are a weak croak, and then I’m free of his grip.

What happened? Where am I? The fucking Dread bitch did something to me. My head. I sit up on the bed.

My bed.

I’m back at the Dominus quarters.

Wait? “Where’s Fee? What happened to the others?”

Jasper is standing with his back to me. He turns to face me, eyes blazing with incandescent fury. “The others? I don’t give a fuck about the others. You almost fucking died.”

I rub my temples, urging the fuzzy feeling to ebb.

“If not for me, if not for my connection to you, you’d be gone. That thing would have sucked the light out of you.”

He’d saved me. Yes. He’d stopped Evelyn. “Thank you.”

He snaps his mouth closed and takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Why did you do it, Cora?”

“What?”

“Why did you go after the Dread female? You know what a Dread can do. You’re not unaware.”

“Fee asked me to stop her, and I—"

“Fee. It’s always fucking Fee.”

I bristle and push to my feet. “I don’t like your tone of voice, Jasper. You don’t get to talk about my best friend like that.”

“Your best friend literally put you in the path of danger.”

“She didn’t do it on purpose. We all reacted under pressure.”

“Really? Then why not ask her lover or the blue daemon to stop the Dread female, huh?”

I know what he’s getting at. I know what he’s implying, but he’s wrong. “No one understands the unique dynamic that exists between Fee and I. The connection. The bond. I would literally give my life to save her.”

His brows shoot up as if to say, there you go.

My life… for hers.

“Do you see now, Cora?” Jasper says. “Do you understand now?”

I lift my chin and meet his gaze. “She’d do the same for me.”

“Maybe,” he says. “But what if it was a choice between her mate and you. If it was a choice between her soulmate and you. If it comes to a choice between you and her guys…”

I want to tell him to go fuck himself, but the words don’t come.

“She has other people now,” Jasper said. “And you may have manifested, but you haven’t taken full control of your life.” He bridges the distance between us and grabs the back of my neck, hauling me close. “I will always come for you, Cora. Me. Not her, not anyone else. Me.”

His mouth is too close. He’s too close, and my body reacts to the proximity. “Let go of me.”

His grip tightens a fraction, and then he releases me abruptly. “You’re not a fool, Cora. You know what you have to do. Don’t leave it too late.”

He vanishes, leaving me standing in my room with a million fucked-up thoughts going through my head.

My door bursts open a moment later, and Mal enters. “Oh, thank fuck you’re okay,” he says.

I shake off Jasper’s warning. “Fee?”

“She’s safe at the pack house. She sent me to find you.”