The secrets he’d kept. The lies. The brothers he’d disappointed, pushed away, failed, pushed away again.
And finally, the child, blood streaking her face, dark eyes full of accusation. Pain. Loss.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. Tears spilled unbidden, sliding into his mouth, hot and salty. “I’m so, so sorry.”
He felt the touch of her tiny hands on his cheeks. Her sour breath on his face. Her tangled hair blowing into his mouth. And he knew it would be the last time he’d ever see her.
“Wake up, vampire prince,” she whispered. “It’s time for you to leave.”
Another shock of lightning, a hot breath sucked into aching lungs, and Jacinda’s magic surged around him, a pull he couldn’t resist.Wouldn’tresist.
“Moonflower,” Gabriel whispered, the name caressing his lips like a promise. A vow.
And in that breathless, beautiful moment, the witch-demon hybrid he was going to marry reached deep inside him, grabbed onto his soul, and snatched him back from the depths of hell.
Chapter Twenty-Five
One Week Later
New Year’s Eve.
For most people, it was a night of reckoning. A time for reflecting on the past and embracing the hope and promise of a fresh start.
Not so for Gabriel Redthorne.
For the last fifty years, while the denizens of Las Vegas donned their finery and waited in lines for hours just to get into one of his club’s infamous parties, Gabriel had spent the passage from one year to the next alone in the desert, as far away from the press of humanity as he could get without leaving the city limits.
And while he lay beneath a moonless sky wondering how much longer his immortal doom would truly last, his patrons danced and gambled, swallowed his designer pills and top-shelf booze, flitted from one fling to the next, all the while promising their gods and devils both that next year would be better—thatanythingwould be better than the year they’d just suffered through.
For that one night each year, they truly believed in magic.
And Gabriel, who’d never believed in magic and had long since run out of hope, hated them for it.
But now, just before midnight on the last day of another year, he was beginning to see the holiday through different eyes.
Through the eyes of a vampire who’d spent far too long living in the shadows of his past, chained by his own guilt.
Though the eyes of a vampire who’d fallen in love with a witch-demon hybrid who’d shown him that second chances didn’t just come on one magical night at the stroke of midnight each year, but oneverynight, ineverymoment—so long as you had the courage and grace to ask for them.
Standing on the balcony overlooking the packed main floor of Obsidian, Gabriel sipped his bourbon, appreciatingthismoment. Appreciating all the second chances he’d finally welcomed into his heart.
Downstairs, it seemed as if the whole of New York’s supernatural elite had turned out, all of them laughing and dancing, drinking, counting down the final hours of the year.
Across the crowd, gathered around their VIP table, his brothers traded toasts and stories, celebrating their liberation from the curse that’d damned their bloodline for centuries. Isabelle and Cole were there too, as well as Sasha, tucked in close to Aiden, who was still recovering from his ordeal in hell.
He hadn’t wanted to talk about what he’d seen there, what the Hall of Broken Mirrors had shown him. And though he’d put on his bravest face, hiding behind his usual snark and humor, every now and then Gabriel would meet Aiden’s gaze, and a darkness would slither into his eyes, and Gabriel’s heart would stutter in his chest, terrified that the ordeal had done something irreparable.
But, like so many things in the complicated history of the Redthorne royal vampires, the story of Aiden’s journey to hell was a thing best left undisturbed.
Just like the story of Malcolm’s journey.
Gabriel lifted the bourbon to his lips again, catching sight of the untouched glass of blood and the white rose his family had set at the end of the table for their fallen brother, as they always did.
In the week since his return from hell, he’d wanted so badly to tell Dorian about finding Malcolm. About the confessions he’d shared. About how much he’d changed. About the fact that he even existed at all—not quite dead, not quite lost, but somewhere in between, trapped in a place where nothing but ashredof hope still lingered.
But hope—even the barest shred of it—felt too much like a promise. And after everything Malcolm had said about not wanting to leave hell, Gabriel wasn’t ready to make that promise to the rest of his brothers just yet.
Not until he figured out a way to keep it.
