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I try to form words past the stars still spinning behind my eyelids. “I—I thought you were angry with me.”
He straightens abruptly, his pale eyes locked onto mine. “No, Luciana. Not angry. Not at all.” He kisses my lips again, slowly this time. “If anything, I was worried you’d be angry with me. That you’d hate me for what happened with my brother.”
I blink. “It’s not your fault, Sebastian.”
“But it is…” He shakes his head, his jaw flexing. “I should have dealt with him years ago. Centuries ago. Instead, I was blinded by some false sense of family loyalty. Not willing to admit that Caspian would sell me out, send me to my death, without even the slightest hesitation. I knew it, but I just didn’t want to accept it.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, pulling his face against my chest and running a hand through his hair. “Family can be really hard.”
“You seem to have a lovely one,” he whispers.
“After our parents died suddenly, Tamsin moved away and we barely spoke for twenty years,” I say softly. “We’ve only just rekindled our relationship. It’s not as simple as it may look from the outside.”
“I didn’t realize,” Sebastian says, straightening and holding my gaze. “I’m glad you two are repairing the relationship. What I need to figure out now is what I want to do with my life now that my brother is no longer in it.”
“Well, I guess tonight can help with that.” I offer a small smile. “If you’re interested in continuing to help us dismantle the Night Guild, that is.”
“I think I am uniquely suited to do just that,” he says. “I know more than enough about all of it to make sure we take down every last Guild business. Plus,” he adds, his eyes stormy. “I have a lot to atone for.”
We fall silent for several moments, and then I say, “How did you know where Caspian had taken me? How did you find me?”
Sebastian’s eyes hold an echo of that haunted expression he’d had before. “Because that stone room is where Caspian murdered our parents and several of our siblings.” He drops his gaze and draws in a deep, shuddering breath. “And he took you there because he wanted to punish me to the fullest. To make me relive the past, at the same time that he stole my future from me.”
My heart goes still, and Sebastian slowly raises his gaze back to mine. “I don’t know exactly what my future holds, but I do know that I’m not ready to let go of you yet, Luciana.” He pauses. “That is, of course, if you’ll have me.”
“I told you before,” I whisper, the ghost of a smile on my lips, “You’re my prisoner. You belong to me.”
Sebastian runs a finger through my curls and cups my cheek in his palm. “I suppose I do need someone to make sure I behave myself. So I don’t fall back into a life of crime. But about this belonging thing you keep going back and forth about…”
“You’ll belong to me,” I say. “And I’ll belong to you.”
“We belong to each other,” Sebastian says, and his voice is so low and sexy, chocolate and dark wine and night skies, that a shiver runs through me.
“Deal,” I respond.
He kisses me until my head spins and when he pulls back, he says, “We are being terrible hosts. Pick a bottle of champagne before they send a search party after us.”
I walk over to the wine fridge and pull out two bottles of Le Rêve Blanc de Blancs. When I lift them, Sebastian grins devilishly.
“The wine that brought us together,” he says. “You had better get upstairs very quickly, Luciana, or I’m going strip all of your clothes off and fuck you until you scream my name and mortify all of the guests upstairs.”
I bite my lip, then turn and spin before we can both change our minds.
When we return to the dinner table and take our seats again, no one seems overly put out by the fact that we’d been gone for a quarter hour. They’re laughing and enjoying the food and wine. Ven kicks me under the table and snickers. “I see your lipstick is gone,” she whispers under her breath.
My cheeks blush and I turn to Sebastian, who is giving me a look that tells me he’s definitely fantasizing about what would be happening right now if we hadn’t come up from the cellar. Dinner continues, course after course, for two hours. Sebastian outlines his suggestions for the order of dismantling all the Night Guild operations, and I discuss the next steps for helping the people we’d rescued from the blood labs. Many of them are still in comas, and Tamsin’s help will be vital in bringing them all out of it. We talk about a training program so she can pass along the spell for that, and then how we can reacclimate them to normal life again.
“Of course, depending on what kind of hybrid each person was turned into, there will need to be a different recovery plan,” I say as we reach the end of the main course.
Tamsin, who is sitting across from me, shoots me a concerned look. “Don’t forget that you’ll need time to work on controlling your new magic, too. You can’t help the rest of them without helping yourself.”
“I can certainly help Luciana get in better control of her demon side,” Sebastian says. “And Ryder will no doubt be a good resource as well.” He nods down the table at the other demon in the room.
“Of course,” Ryder responds.
The staff clear the dinner plates and bring out the final course, a chocolate mousse concoction with chocolate drizzle and little dots of whipped cream around the plate. After everyone has tasted it, Rowan speaks up.
“It’s so wonderful to see all the good we’ve done in less than a year since the Raven Society began to expand beyond the witches, to helping all types of supernaturals.”
