“When I turned eighteen and still hadn’t made significant progress, instead of killing me outright like she’d threatened, my mother decided to give me one last chance to prove my worthiness. She and Viansa made an elaborate game of it, inviting the originals who’d witnessed my conception, turning the whole thing into a festival. I was led into a gladiator arena, forced to fight seven different demons. My mother promised me that if I could defeat them all, she’d set my father free.”
“But not you?”
Jaci shook her head. “Only him. I was sentenced to death either way. I figured I had nothing to lose—I’d either die at the hand of one of the seven demons, or I’d die at the hands of my sister and mother. I just wanted a chance for Dad to have a life. He’d spent those eighteen years in hell as a prisoner, still doing his best to keep me safe from all the monsters, to keep us away from the most dangerous hell realms, to help me avoid the worst of the abuses and comfort me when I couldn’t.”
“And your father allowed this… this deathmatch to proceed?”
“He fought her on it, of course, but he had no power against my mother. In the end, it didn’t matter anyway. Miraculously, I defeated six demons, but the seventh was a high-level fire demon I just didn’t have the skills to outsmart. He would’ve incinerated me, but my mother stepped in at the last second and slaughtered him, lording it over me like she’d done me an epic favor.”
“She saved you,” he said grimly, “just so she could kill you later?”
“More fun for her that way, I suppose. But then my father came through with another deal—the offer of a lifetime.” Jaci sucked in another gulp of her drink, then forced out the words. “His soul for my freedom.”
“But… why would she take the deal? She already owned both of you, and you’d lost against the demon. His soul was already hers.”
“My father was an unwilling captive. He resisted her at every turn—always had, even through the haze of drugs and torture. She and Viansa often wondered if his resistance was the reason I was such a failure. Like, the ritual didn’t work because he was actively channeling his powers to break it. With this deal, though, he was offering himself freely—the worst demon deal a person could sign. She’d have complete dominion over his soul, his will, his magic, all of it. No, he didn’t hold a candle to her hell magic, but he was still an extremely powerful dark mage. In her eyes, it reallywasthe offer of a lifetime. What did she care if I went topside? I was useless to her at that point, and she and Viansa both knew that without him, I’d be dead in a week.
“Dad was allowed to escort me through the portal. We came to New York City—deposited in an empty alley in Little Italy. I still remember the smell of the food—so rich and spicy and like nothing I’d ever smelled before. It was wintertime, like it is now—I’d never felt true cold before. I remember gazing up into the night sky and wondering why the stars were falling. ‘It’s snow, baby,’ he said, tears in his eyes like it was the most miraculous thing ever. The two of us laughed, spinning in circles, holding out our hands and catching snowflakes. For those first few minutes, I think we both believed we’d escaped together. That the nightmare was over.”
Jaci had never told anyone the full story before. For seven long years, it had existed only in her dreams—the best and the worst of them. And though the tears fell unbidden now, the memories slicing through her ribcage and cutting deep gouges in her heart, the thing she felt most of all was… relief.
Relief that it was no longer a secret. Relief that someone—even a vampire prince who might still kill her at the end of it—had listened.
“One minute he was laughing and smiling,” she continued, “and the next, he collapsed in my arms, his breathing turning shallow. I screamed for him not to leave me, tears nearly freezing on my cheeks, but I knew exactly what was happening. He was dying. My mother was cashing in on their deal. I felt the tug of his soul as it escaped his body, and suddenly I just… I knew, Gabriel. I knew my mother was wrong.”
“How do you mean?”
“She always believed the darkest powers of hell had somehow skipped over me. But in that heartbeat of a moment, while my father died in my arms and his soul left his body, I knew with utter certainty thatthatone—themostpowerful one, the darkest and most dangerous—hadnotskipped me.”
He leaned forward in his chair, eyes full of wonder and revulsion both, capturing her in a gaze she couldn’t look away from even if she’d wanted to.
In a whisper so soft she had to read it on his lips to understand, he said, “Which power, Jacinda?”
The admission, she realized, would confirm his worst thoughts about her. All the things he’d accused her of but couldn’t prove. The vile, repulsive things that would drive that final stake into the heart of whatever they’d once meant to each other.
In this city, witch, death is a kindness. That you’d seek to defy it is nothing less than madness…
He’d said it to her on their first meeting at Bloodbath, right after the attack.
Even then, she hadn’t outright admitted it, preferring to let him draw his own conclusions.
This morning, in the wake of Viansa’s dramatic exit from the penthouse, she’d told him that she’d brought her father back.
But she still hadn’t said the real word. Thetrueword. Not like this.
Up until now, Gabriel might’ve thought she’d been speaking in metaphor. Might’ve thought she’d brought her father back the way a paramedic brings back a drowning victim with chest compressions and CPR. Might’ve even missed that part of her story entirely—that’s how angry he was.
But as much as she wished she could keep thisonething unspoken between them, this one last secret all to herself, Jaci knew there was no going back now.
Vita mutatur, non tollitur.
Life is changed, not taken away.
Blood on the roses. Blood on the sheets. Blood on the snow. Blood on the grave.
The dead shall rise. The dead shall return.
“The power,” she said softly, forcing herself to hold his gaze, “of necromancy.”
