When she looked up at Gabriel again, her vampire smiled, the same tears glittering in his eyes that she felt in her own.
Without a word, he took her hand, and together they headed back through the archway. Back to the red door.
She hoped Aiden might be waiting for them on the other side. That somehow, he’d picked up on Gabriel’s thoughts.
But when they opened the door and stepped into the massive corridor once more, the soul awaiting themwasn’tthe sweet, handsome vampire who’d made her laugh in the Ravenswood study, teasing Gabriel and promising to give Jaci the full report about his sunrise coffee date with Sasha.
The soul awaiting them wasn’t a soul at all.
He was a demon, dragged up from the very depths of hell, ancient and horrifying, reeking of brimstone and bloodlust and death.
The monster towered nearly ten feet high, with skin as translucent as rice paper stretched thin over a skeleton of sharp black bones. He wore a crown of claws and teeth on his bald head, fused to the skin in parts, as if it were growing straight into his skull—or out from it.
His eyes, if he’d ever even had them, were gone, nothing but scarred flesh covering the dark pits in his skull. His nose was a rotten hole, his mouth sewn shut with razor wire.
His body was little more than a skeleton frame draped in tattered, milky-white skin, cracked and bleeding, broken bones jutting out from his ribcage.
As Jaci and Gabriel stood before him, paralyzed by his very presence, the demon bowed his head in greeting.
Then, in an explosion of feathers and blood, two massive white wings shot out from between his shoulder blades.
Jaci fell to her knees, blood leaking from her eyes and ears.
And deep inside her skull, the King of Blood and Ravens laughed.
Chapter Nineteen
Ever since Jacinda told him how the Hall of Broken Mirrors worked, Gabriel had been expecting the child.
Though he hadn’t looked upon the black mirrors, he knew—somehow—she was waiting for him.
And now, as they stepped through the red door in search of Aiden, there she was. Gazing up at him, haunted and broken as ever. Lost. As if Gabriel was supposed to do something about it. To have all the answers. To fix all the things he’d broken in his life.
Maybe this time, he could’ve tried.
Maybe this time, hewouldhave tried.
But towering behind her, like a nightmare drudged up from the basement of his own private hell, was the demon Azerius.
Gabriel stopped breathing.
White wings exploded from the demon’s body, and Jacinda fell to her knees, blood running down her cheeks. Spilling in dark rivers from her ears.
“Will you let her die, vampire prince?” the child whispered. “Will you abandon your witch?”
All of Gabriel’s worst fears rushed back to the surface, crashing through his mind in vivid detail, the terrible visions Viansa had ignited.
He’d watched Jacinda die a thousand times.
Kostya and He Who Likes to Watch, the fires of hell, Viansa, the dark mages, the stake driven by Gabriel’s own hand, each death more gruesome than the last.
The demon’s laughter rang out through Gabriel’s skull, razor blades and claws. He clutched his head, trying to stop the echo, the splitting ache that blurred his vision.
“No,” Gabriel gritted out. To the child. To the demon. To Jacinda herself. “I will not… let her… die.”
The child vanished.
He fell to his knees beside Jacinda. Reached for her.
