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Chapter Twenty-Nine
Luciana
I blink my eyes open. At first all I see is a hazy orange glow, which I realize a moment later is candlelight. I’m lying on a cold stone floor, and my whole body hurts.
Where the fuck am I?
Violet must have knocked me unconscious. She’d had the element of surprise, and her magic overwhelmed me before I had a chance to fight back.
But the place I’m in now… it looks like some sort of ancient fortress. I pivot my gaze around the room as far as it can go without moving my body. The walls are rough stone, too. Dozens of lit red candles in metal holders surround me. There are no windows, no doors. Or at least none that I can see from here. It smells like dirt and like bones.
“Ah, you’re finally awake.”
Violet’s red spiked heels stride into view from behind me. I sit up in the hurry, which is regrettable. My head spins and my vision goes dark.
“Careful, there,” she says with a chuckle. “You probably have a concussion. I dropped you pretty hard on the floor.”
“Why the hell did you bring me here?” I growl. “And where is this place?”
She stands over me, legs spread wide, arms crossed over her chest. “That first question is loaded. Why did I bring you here? I’ll tell you.”
Without warning, she kicks me in the stomach. I gasp, the air in my lungs whooshing out of me, pain ripping through my torso.
“First, because you betrayed Sebastian.”
I want to tell her that she’s wrong, but I can’t speak. And also, I need to keep the raid a secret. I can’t let that slip before all those fuckers are locked up.
She kicks me again, and this time I choke and double over, falling back to the stone floor.
“Second, because I want a promotion and I’m tired of waiting for it to be bestowed upon me.”
“And third.” Violet falls into a crouch and grabs my neck, crushing my windpipe. She adds a flare of magic, and for a moment I think she’s going to snap my head clean off. “Third,” she snarls, “Because you waltzed in and took Sebastian from me. After decades of trying to get his attention, you win it without even trying.”
She flings my head back against the stone and stands, releasing me right before I pass out. With a poison smile she looks down at me. “Never kick someone when they’re down. Choking is so much more effective.”
I roll away from her, coughing and sputtering, trying to regain my breath. When I can finally summon words, I look up at her. “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
“Demons don’t fall in love, you stupid bitch.” But her voice has gone quiet, and her eyes waver. “I’d tell you to keep that in mind, but you aren’t going to be alive long enough to worry if Sebastian is capable of loving you.”
“Which one of them are you working for?” I ask.
“Well, that aligns with your second question.” Violet smiles and lifts her arms to gesture to the stone chamber around us. “Where we are is the ancient ancestral home of Sebastian and Caspian. The place they lived when their parents first arrived from Hell.”
A shiver of dread moves through me. I would have wished that Violet be working for any of the other demons over Caspian.
“Yes,” she says, her smile growing positively malicious. “Caspian has great plans for you. You seem to have all the boys lining up to get a piece of your flesh.”
Footsteps echo and I pivot, seeing there is a doorway after all, behind me and across the circular room, beyond the bright glow of the candles. Stairs, too, which curve down to the door. Caspian descends from the shadows above and enters the room.
“Violet is quite right,” he says in his voice of oil and venom mixed. “I’ve been waiting for this. And I’m going to enjoy every inch of your flesh before we’re through.”
He walks slowly toward me, his dark eyes lit with flames from the candles.
“I’m going to be both your most delicious dream and your very worst nightmare, until you can’t tell the difference between agony and pleasure.”
Caspian stops before me and looks down.
“Shall we begin?”
