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“Please, baby girl.”
“I’ll try.”
It wasn’t good enough, not even close. But I couldn’t afford to keep stalling.
I lowered my hands to my boots, palming my knives and letting heavenly fire wash over the blades.
Outside, there wasn’t a whole army of demons. There were only a handful of lower-ranking ones. All that demonic energy was coming from the three human-looking men standing in the middle. I recognized all three of them. Two lords and one duke. And suddenly so many things made sense. Because the duke in front of me was short one son, and I had a feeling Valac’s absence had something to do with the night that had gotten Sierra into this mess in the first place.
“It’s been a long time.” Duke Dantalion took a single step forward. He had deeply tanned skin and sun-bleached hair that brushed his shoulders. He always looked like he spent the majority of his time lying on a beach, but he dressed like he was going to a nice restaurant or a casual business meeting.
My hands tightened around the handles of my knives. I couldn’t look at him without seeing black-and-gray skies pouring rain down on an equally gray landscape. It was as if he could leach all the color and life from the world, even here, in a world where he should have been nothing.
“Let’s make this easy, little angel. I’m not here for you. Lower the wards and this doesn’t have to get messy.”
I grinned at him, but it felt all wrong. It was a bitter smile that lacked the usual high of preparing for a fight. “Oh, it’s going to be messy.”
I wanted to drive my blade into his perfectly calm face. Every fiber of my being demanded it, but I couldn’t attack until he did. This was one demon I knew I wasn’t to touch until he made the first move. And a verbal threat didn’t count.
He knew it too. And he was going to sit back and run his mouth, either to try to get me to break that rule or just to be a distracting, evil dick.
He flicked his hand in some sign, and the lesser demons moved. The next several minutes were a blur of hate and anger, fire and demon blood. There was nothing therapeutic about this fight. I was taking years of buried pain and fury out on the demons who came at me, and all it was doing was feeding that rage.
Eventually I stood in a cloud of red smoke—all that was left of the demons—panting as I glared at the royals.
The lords looked a little pale, as if I’d given them something to be nervous about. But Dantalion still wore that same calm, slightly smug expression. “I see you haven’t changed at all.”
I flashed back to the last time I sat in Micah’s office and asked him why he was makingmeSierra’s guardian. He’d told me it wasn’t personal, that I was the best logical option. And for the first time in all the years I’d been a part of the secret order, I believed Micah was a fool. I was the worst option he could have chosen, and this fight was very much personal.
Dantalion took a leisurely step forward. “Still so angry. You do realize guarding the girl who killed Valac won’t bring Alana back, right?”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of reacting. He was trying to piss me off, to get me to attack first. It wasn’t going to happen. If it were just me and him, maybe he could have succeeded, but I had Sierra to think about. I had to be stronger for her.
“Or maybe you have changed.” His lips curved up in a cold smile, and his gaze moved to look behind me. “She is a beauty if you can look past her sheer humanity. But angels never did have a problem corrupting themselves with humans.”
I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder. I didn’t know if Sierra was visible or if he was just looking toward the apartment. Either way, I couldn’t afford the distraction.
“You’re not touching her,” I said with as much cold calm as I could muster.
“Oh, I will, and I’ll enjoy it.”
On either side of him, dark swords materialized in the hands of the two demon lords. They launched forward without warning, their fears pushed away by their father’s confidence.
Two on one was hardly a fair fight, especially since I had to keep an eye out for an attack from the duke. It felt like an eternity passed as I parried and thrust. I was ready for this fight to be over.
One of my knives sliced across flesh. There was a cry of pain and one of the lords fell back. The cut wouldn’t kill him if he took care of it fast enough, but heavenly fire was no joke to demons, even Hell’s royals.
“Just to be clear, I won’t kill her.” Dantalion’s voice was steady, as if he wasn’t affected at all by the way the fight was going. “Too quick and easy. I think I’ll keep your little human around for a while. Introduce her to some friends of mine. It really is a shame she doesn’t have any wings I can add to my wall. I suppose I’ll just have to be more creative.”
Everything around me was drowned out by the roaring in my ears. He was trying to get in my head. I knew that. But it didn’t matter that I could understand the game he was playing. He’d succeeded. I struck out blindly at the remaining lord, my limbs fueled by fresh fury and hatred.
He dodged, and my momentum carried me forward a step before I caught my balance. A claw raked over my side, but I barely felt it. I was solely focused on getting to the duke… even if I couldn’t touch him until he attacked me.
I let one of my knives fly, getting rid of the pesky annoyance that was standing between me and my real target. The cloud of black smoke told me my throw had struck true, but I didn’t care. I only cared about getting to Dantalion…
Who was gone.
Vanished into thin air.
