Page 88 of Realm of the Wicked

I choked back a laugh. ‘Clarissa and I have never been a thing. She wanted to, once. A long, long time ago. Before she was… this. But even then, I couldn’t stand her. So if that’s why she hates me, it’s because I rejected her. Not because we used to be together.’

‘Oh.’ Stella’s face relaxed, her body softening. ‘Okay.’

‘Were you actually worried?’ I murmured, sliding my hands up her thighs, her skin warm and soft under my touch.

She wrinkled her nose. ‘No. Even if you’d been with her, that was in the past. Ancient history. We have forever.’

Fuck. I hoped she was right. I rested my forehead to hers, wanting to forget for just a moment where we were.

Until a wild roar had us both looking around. Clarissa stood, curtain ripped open before her, Lars and Silas standing behind her. She barely looked human, her skin still that of a human, but her hands were full-on claws, a ripple of scales easily apparent across her body.

She looked ready for murder. ‘What the fuck are you doing here? You know you aren’t allowed here!’

‘It’s our club. And if you hurt a single fucking hair on her body, you will regret it,’ I promised, holding Stella close to me.

She wasn’t theirs. Not one inch of her.

Clarissa’s eyes flashed. ‘We’ll see.’

I pressed my lips to Stella’s ear, wishing I could do more, something, anything, to take her away from this other than my words. ‘She won’t hurt you,’ I whispered. ‘Not now. It’s an empty threat. I will keep you safe.’

Clarissa laughed, a cold shock. ‘An empty threat? Don’t make empty promises. You and I both know you can’t remove her from Hell without killing her, unless I choose to let her go.’

I knew she was right. But there had to be an angle I wasn’t seeing, some solution eluding me. There would be a way I could save her.

Clarissa snatched Stella away from me, leaving my arms empty and cold. ‘You’re rather ungrateful for the freedom I’ve given you.’

For what it was worth, Stella didn’t look scared, which filled me with an odd sense of pride. ‘Seriously? What freedom is it that you speak of? Because I was offered assault, and I’m not sure those are next to each other in the dictionary.’

‘You’ll regret this, Clarissa.’ I couldn’t do anything with the tracking spell in Stella, except offer words. I hated it. For the first time in a long time, I felt useless. Like I told Stella, my power was worthless unless I could protect her.

Clarissa was already pulling Stella away from me, dragging her into the darkened hallway.

‘I’ll get you out of here if it’s the last thing I do,’ I swore, desperate not to lose her touch. I wanted to be her guardian angel. I wanted to save her.

She looked up at me, twisting in Clarissa’s grip to smile at me with such open vulnerability, it made my hands tremble with the raw love there.

‘I never doubted it for a moment.’

33

STELLA

Clarissa dragged me through Wrath, her sharp nails digging into my skin. The demons who’d whispered as Silas brought me through now openly stared, stopping everything they were doing. I didn’t know if they were staring at me, or at Clarissa, who looked nothing like the blonde beauty who’d I’d first met in the Fringe. Her skin smoked, tiny black scales covering most of her body. Waist-length black hair spilled over her shoulders.

She was silent as we walked, fury dripping out of every pore. We turned, headed back toward my cell, but then she paused and started to pull me the other way.

Through the candlelit hallways we walked, the space growing colder and smaller until I had to brush up against Clarissa’s rough skin just to keep up with her. She stopped in front of a large stone door, older than anything I’d ever seen before, and whispered harsh words I couldn’t decipher. The stone scraped along the floor as it opened, and she shoved me inside the dark opening.

I expected another cell. A torture chamber filled with violent-looking instruments designed to make me cower in fear. Instead, we stood on a wide balcony, overlooking a massive chamber. Clarissa shoved me forward, until I clung to the edge of the rock balcony, staring into the pit below. A dark river filled with glowing orbs cut through the bottom, disappearing into nothingness. Tiny cutouts in the rock face surrounding us were filled with people: humans by the looks of it, carving out spaces with shovels, or staring off into space. Some sat by themselves, completely still.

‘Why am I here?’ I asked, clenching my fists into my hands to keep from shaking. ‘Why not just bring me to my cell? Shit, why not just rip my soul from my body in Wrath while everyone watched? You all enjoy entertainment, it seems.’

I looked over my shoulder at Clarissa, who seemed a lot less angry, and a lot more resigned. She sighed, took a breath, and was back as her blonde self once again. ‘We aren’t so different, you and I, Stella.’

I could’ve laughed. ‘Excuse me?’

‘I know what you think of me. I know what Damien’s probably told you about me.’ She frowned, her bright-red eyes boring into mine. ‘But I’ve done what I had to do to survive. No different than you, I’m sure.’