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“She played on your past hurts.” I want to rip out the dark elf’s throat for that, but I wouldn’t deny my mate her satisfaction in inflicting retribution. Not when she deserves vengeance for the hurt I didn’t know she’d endured. “She played us all.” A realization hits me. “How did you understand what Belaya said?”
“You didn’t?” My mate’s gaze goes wide.
“No,” I say. “No one can.”
“The sigils on her bracelet,” Theo explains, cuffing Belaya’s other wrist. “The communication device that I give matches? It translates all languages that dealing demons have ever encountered. Including dead languages, apparently. And these cuffs?” He tugs Belaya’s arms above her head. “They bind all magic. Say whatever you want, dark elf. Your words will hold no power, and you can’t get out of those. I designed them myself. You planning to kill her right here?” he asks me.
“No.” The woman Meg had been shielding joins us, putting herself between my mate and the dark elf. I tense, ready to intervene if necessary. Except the woman’s eyes, the set of her jaw, her fierceness? She looks like my mate. She must be Meg’s mother, the woman my mate holds in the highest regard, a woman who has overcome struggles to care for my beloved. “First, I’ll work the necessary spells to reverse the magic to restore your realm,” she says to my mate.
Meg ducks her head. “Leander’s realm.” Her correction comes so quietly that I almost miss it.
I won’t have it. “Your realm, my queen.”
My mate straightens her sweater, hiding her cleavage, and I want to tug it back where it was when she stood victorious over a villain. “I’m a barely out of college, with no clue what I want to be when I grow up. Not sure that qualifies me to be a queen.”
Her belittling herself makes me want to pull her over my knee and spank some sense into her. Later. “You saved my people, saved me. We belong to you.” I don’t stop when she sniffles. Yanking her close, I breathe in her sweet scent, the intoxicating pull that I’d feared I would never experience again. “As for your qualifications? You create worlds when you design your strategy games. I’ll need your skills to recreate the labyrinth. No one dishonors my queen. Not even you, little warrior.”
She holds onto me as though she won’t let go, and I savor having my mate once more. No matter how I had tried to convince myself that not seeing her again would be for the best, that I had to force her away out of love, I had only been able to do so because her love had healed me. She doesn’t need to say it. Not now, not ever. I can feel it in the mating bond between us.
Theo drags Belaya to her feet. “Let’s get the magic restored. I have a buyer who would pay a nice price for a dark elf.”
Belaya moves so fast that I almost miss it, coming for my mate’s throat with outstretched nails. I punch out to stop her, using my bad arm to shield my love. I’ll give up whatever it takes. Except Meg has pulled the dagger from the sheath at my waist and shoves the tip far enough into Belaya’s chest that the elf bleeds.
“I’m new to this whole magic thing,” my mate says with a coldness in her voice I’ve never heard before, “but something tells me that shoving this through any heart you might have would be bad for you.”
I thump the elf’s head, knocking her out.
“Why’d you do that?” Meg asks. “I had this.”
“No one threatens my mate,” I say. “How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“No killing my prize, please.” Theo yanks Belaya so high that her feet dangle off the ground and looks to Meg’s mother. “Meg’s definitely your daughter, Brigid.”
The woman gives him an eyeroll that reminds me of my mate. “Only fools assume the so-called monster to be the scarier mate.” Brigid rummages through the bag that Meg dropped in the struggle, pulling out a knife, an amulet, and a fat candle that radiates magic.
I nudge Meg behind me, shielding her with my body. “Is that what I think it is?” While I haven’t seen one in eons, a god’s candle can’t be forgotten. Not with how quickly it could destroy my realm and a hundred others in a single strike.
Meg’s mother grins. “It is.” She slices Belaya’s skin, using the dark elf’s blood to anoint the amulet.
Belaya groans. “I thought you witches believed in harm none.”
“I’m not that kind of witch.” Brigid digs harder with the blade, bleeding the elf until the amulet’s slick and shiny. “I could make this less painful, but you keep trying to kill my baby girl.” She drapes the amulet over the god’s candle. “So this will hurt. A lot.”
The diabolical joy in the woman’s voice? I’ll try never to piss off my mother-in-law.
When the candle flickers to life, I tense, ready to protect my mate if any of its immense, world-altering magic goes astray. Brigid can wield a fucking god’s candle. That means she’s either a god, a demigod, or mated to one. My chest goes tight. Which would make my Meg the daughter of the same.
How could my mate ever be less than a queen of any realm she chose? I glance at her over my shoulder, where she clings to my uninjured arm. “I will worship you for the rest of our days,” I whisper.
“Only in the sex temple,” she taunts.
Her mother shakes her head.
“Shit.” Theo takes a giant step toward the portal. Smart demon. “Don’t zap me for matching her to him, Brigid.”
“You’re not going anywhere, Theo.” Meg’s mom sounds as though she scolds us all. “Once the magic reverses, you can run away, but you’ll also owe me a trip to the god’s realm as part of the trade for the profit you’ll make off bartering the elf.”
“Sure,” Theo says. “Just point that thing away from me.”
