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Fate is never wrong.
“I…” I swallow, the words like sharp spikes slicing up my throat. “I remember.” My voice comes out so low, a Giftless would never hear it. But there are no Giftless here.
Not even me…
I’m a fucking—
Creed barks out a laugh, the sound of his chair scratching the marble floor as he stands to his full height, making me jolt. I bring my knees to my chest, squeezing tightly.
Everything was a lie. A lie told to conceal what I had done.
I’m going to be sick.
“It’s amusing to me that none of you questioned this infatuation Knight had with a Giftless.” Creed shoots back whatever was in his glass, his eyes resting on me. “Clearly she’s not one. And she’s not London either.”
“What the fuck, Creed!” Knight snaps, his voice low. So low I felt the vibration of his tone over my bones. “I’ve warned you.”
“Creed, what the hell are you talking about?” their mother demands, and the whole room falls silent, waiting for him to say the words.
I know once it’s out that I’m dead. That whoever has put the cloak over my memories, their magic wasn’t strong enough to withhold the mating process. That when they did it, they never expected me to find my way back to Rathe, or more importantly, to him.
How did I?
Creed holds my stare, his fangs descending, glistening under the flicker of the floating candlelight. “Before she became London Crow, she was Villaina Lacroix.” The room falls deathly silent. A swirl of cold air wraps around my body as my heart slows in my chest.
Their mother flies to her feet. “Impossible!”
“Lacroix?” Knight growls, he and his other brothers looking around the table with confusion.
Legend slowly stands. “As in Acheros Lacroix?”
Sinner shouts to his feet, “The fucking Slasher?”
Knight shakes his head. “What the fuck?”
Knight’s chest jerks, his eyes rolling back, and at first I don’t understand why, but then he stills. And I know.
It wasn’t only my memories that were wiped.
His were too.
All of ours must have been.
Mine were the first to return now that the lock on my gift has been broken.
Knight’s are the second, and if the images that flashed through his mind were as vivid and haunting as mine, we might just obliterate Rathe right here and now.
An angry Deveraux is deadly.
But a threatened Lacroix can be just as bad.
There’s a reason my father is the first story in the Book of Nightmares.
I don’t know why, but I call out to my mate, to the man created to love and protect me with all he has, is, and will be. My soul cries in despair.
Knight doesn’t look at me, but deep within my chest, I feel the tear as the past catches up with the present, revealing all the secrets I didn’t know I had. The pull that’s been there for weeks that I didn’t understand, only this time, it isn’t drawing me toward my mate.
It’s my mate pulling away. He’s trying to sever the bond we’ve only just created.
The bond that is still not yet complete.
I gasp, my lungs robbed of air as a portal shoots up in front of Knight.
He spins, falling backward, his hard, dead eyes locked on mine. He disappears through the marble colors as I stumble my way to my feet.
After all this time, I finally feel a connection to Knight, and he’ll hate me now. No longer want me. Does it matter to me? I know who this family is now.
Deveraux, the God of Hell and his mistress of Sin.
The Lords of Darkness.
The royal family of Stygian.
These boys aren’t what I thought—oh no—they are worse. The demonic monsters that hide behind their human form are the opposite of what they are now.
The woman who was once my queen, stares at me with dead eyes, mumbling quietly to herself as she pieces parts of the puzzle I’m still missing together. “The nursery rhyme you used to sing…”
London’s Bridges.
London…
Oh shit, someone—
The queen lifts her chin and my thoughts die with the murderous look that washes over her pale face.
“Please…” I plead. “I didn’t—”
“Kill. Her,” their mother wails, and I watch as fire rolls around their father in a tornado of ash. Panic grips my throat as I look to any of them for help. Legend. He’s always been the kind one, but even he steps backward, disappearing through the dark cloud of smoke.
I squeeze my eyes closed, succumbing to my fate. In Rathe, we Bleed. I whisper the words of death to plead with the gods to give me a direct pass-through when an arm hooks around my waist.
“Focus on your gift!” the female hisses, and briefly, I catch the blue eyes of the maid before I’m being sucked through a fusion of colors.
My stomach rolls as my body floats through the air, but by the time I figure out I’ve been thrown through a portal, my feet land on the carpet and the familiar space hits me.
