Chapter 32
Valentina
I felt like I was being consumed by Hell, my essence burned by eternal flames and ice. Yet I was still alive.… If you could call an undead monster alive, sitting in the backseat of a dented car. I wasn’t in love with Darius, but he was still my friend. He was still someone I cared for deeply. Honestly, he was my oldest friend.
Liam had no reason to kill him.
Andrei, Jackson, and Liam sat quietly, all three staring at the road ahead, while the chain around my throat felt suffocating. It was too tight. I almost felt like it would squeeze even tighter every time I tried to pry at it.
As if it was punishing me for wanting my freedom.
While the pain of losing Darius still burned, I had to do what I did best: bury that grief and shove that humanity from my heart so I could figure out a plan on how to escape.
The chain, though, wasn’t the worst of my discomfort; Andrei made me sit next to Liam, and far too often, I caught him looking my way, studying me.
What’s his issue with me?
“What element do you possess?” I asked. Maybe some information about his background might help me fight the bastard. I watched him shift in his seat to look at me, but his eyes were solemn. “I’ve been around a long time, Liam. What you did back at the villa—was new, and even for me … quite unsettling.”
He inhaled slowly and leaned back, his deep hazel eyes catching the faint light filtering through the back seat.
Now that we weren’t fighting, and I was this close, I could get a better look at him. He looked no older than twenty-five, with light, wavy brown hair and a smooth jawline. Handsome, I’d give him that. But there was something ominous and deadly within him that made my head spin and my skin prickle. And it wasn’t just that he had liquefied two vampires before my eyes.
“Spirit,” he said at last.
Well, that surprised me. Spirit witches weren’t exactly known for their dark side. They were the balancing force in the pentagram—the light that grounded our power.
“It was magic I never really understood as a kid,” he continued, his voice low. He hesitated, pressing his lips together in a grimace, like he had tasted something rancid. “My father … he hated it. Thought it was the weaker link. He’d tear into me every chance he got, made me feel like I was nothing but an inconvenience to the family.”
He paused, his jaw tight. The forced calm of his voice barely masked the hatred and frustration in his eyes.
Talking about his family wasn’t the turn I thought this conversation would go, but I would listen. If I were to kill him, I needed to find his weakness.
“One day, shortly after I turned fifteen, my parents had had enough,” he said, his tone flat, but venom laced his tongue. “They threw me out on the streets to figure it all out alone, just like that. No warning, no help. I had these powers I didn’t know how to control, and no one was around to guide me.”
His eyes darted around, looking as if his father was in the car with us, drawing out the pain he’d inflicted all over again.
“Ten years later, I moved to Atlanta from my hometown of San Diego. My sister, Elena, let me crash on her couch and eat whatever was in her fridge while she was at school. She never even told our parents I was staying with her. But she hated magic—refused to use it—and we made this deal: as long as I was under her roof, I couldn’t use mine, either.”
“That sounds miserable,” I said. It truly did. But I also pitied him. He had unmatched power with no one to guide him. “You had power, yet they denied you your true self.”
Empathy, compassion. Make Liam believe you actually care.
Liam leaned back, his expression softening just a little. “Well, eventually, I found something that worked for me—I didn’t need a fucking coven or anyone in my family to feel free. I had no rules or expectations. Just freedom. In time, I learned my powers on my own, but in my way.” He barked out a short, hearty laugh, shaking his head. “I don’t know. But I started missing that family link. I couldn’t ignore how lonely I was. It was as if the heavens themselves parted and shone down their light on a lost little soul. Then I found the Black Onyx. Or, I guess, they found me.”
“In Atlanta?” I asked.
He nodded, and his lips twitched into a faint smirk. “It wasn’t that long ago, actually. They gave me a job, a purpose. Then Andrei and Jackson tasked me with helping them, and I guess the rest is history.”
Talking to him like this felt odd, almost like we were old friends reacquainted—like there wasn’t a blade poised to strike his heart at the perfect moment. Yet I played along, fostering his trust for his inevitable demise.
“But the Black Onyx, Liam?” I pointed out. “Come on. They’re the worst of them all.”
Liam let out a low laugh this time, dimples appearing as his eyes lit up. “Well, I wouldn’t say that. They’re a little weird and unhinged, sure, but they helped me. I guess I’m more like them than I thought. Once you get past the surface, they’re just looking for peace and balance in the world—”
A laugh escaped me now, and I grinned widely. “Oh, yes. Witches with no laws, wielding magic as weapons when someone doesn’t agree with them. They’ve killed indiscriminately for far too long. Witches were never meant to have that kind of power. You misuse it, and karma will eventually come for you.”
His brows shot up. “Right. Just like you, then.”
“Me?”
“You’re a vampire. You’re the last person to judge someone for how they use their powers. Your undead heart had to forfeit magic to become the queen of bloodlust. Instead of trying to get it back, you embraced the darkness.”
“Oh, please. It’s not like I had a choice when my soul was ripped from me.”
“Didn’t you, though?”
I narrowed my eyes at him, unsure where he was going with this. But my insides burned. No one had ever talked to me like that.
“Purgatory,” he said, and my brows shot up.
“What about it?”
He shrugged. “A vampire doesn’t truly lose their soul, right? What wanders in Purgatory isn’t the soul itself, not entirely. It’s more like an echo—our essence, our intelligence, the fragments of what made us human. But your soul? It’s still tethered to you.”
I scowled at him. He didn’t know anything about me.
“For every good deed, every moment of humanity, that tether pulls your soul just a little closer to your dead heart,” he continued. “You tell your progeny they lose all their humanity when they lose their souls, but that’s not entirely true.”
“Excuse me, you—”
“You’re a little liar,” he berated, his tone shifting. “Tatyana created Purgatory for a reason—to keep a vampire’s essence intact, to offer the chance for redemption. The idea was that if there’s ever a cure for vampirism, the soul wouldn’t be completely lost. It would return to the body when it was ready to move on.”
“That’s a pleasant story,” I said dryly, but my eyes looked to the front so as not to give myself away. I knew all this, but how did he?
Though Andrei and Jackson had the music blaring and caught up in their own conversation, they had to be listening to what Liam was saying.
“It doesn’t explain why witches lose their powers when they turn,” I said, looking back at him. “If the soul’s still there, shouldn’t they be able to use their magic?”
That was one question I never understood, and Kylan never told me. If I knew the answer; I would have burned the world to get it back. I was aware we all had a link to our souls when they left the body, but no matter how hard I tried, I could never use my magic unless I was wearing my damn ring.
“They can,” he said simply. “But the tether is weak. Magic is tied to essence, not just the body. Most vampires don’t realize their powers can be accessed if they strengthen that connection.”
I raised an eyebrow. Seriously, how does this witch know about any of this?
Maybe he’d tell me.
“And you know this how?”
“Because I’ve seen it,” he said, his voice dropping. “Witches turned into vampires regained their magic. And not by some fucking ring. Vampires who found their souls drawn back by something stronger than death itself.”
“What’s stronger than death?”
“Love,” he said, his gaze locking with mine. “A soulmate can bring a soul back completely. No longer tethered to some other realm. It’s rare, but it happens. And when it does, it changes everything.”
Yes. The same thing would happen to Jase and my own daughter. The thought made me sick that they were bound together. Jase was going to destroy her. She wasn’t a full vampire, so her powers would always be within reach. Jase, though. By denying his mate, no matter how much I hated that they were fated, I was taking away his chance to be free from the curse I had placed on him, even if he had demanded it back then. But Rachel could be the reason Jase would get his magic back on his own.
“The emotions are there,” he continued, and once again, I acted curious and intrigued. Liam was still my enemy and a stranger—I wouldn’t tell him I knew most of what he was sharing.
“They’re muted, tangled in the void left by the string of power. That’s why it’s unique when a vampire loves. It’s raw. It’s real. And when it’s strong enough, it can call the entire soul back, binding it to their mate.”
I held his gaze for a moment, my mind racing, then forced myself to look away. I took a few deep breaths to settle my growing agitation and turned back to him. Though I had to sell the lie, I was anything but calm. Seriously, how the hell does he know all this?
Kylan had been the only one to ever tell me about the tether, about how the soul wasn’t truly lost but hung in limbo, waiting in a residual loop. He’d spoken of soulmates, their rare ability to call a soul back, binding it so deeply that even death couldn’t sever the connection. I’d never told anyone about that conversation … well, except for Jase. When it happened that night in the church, when his soul under the Hades Blood Moon connected to my unborn child, promising a future when she was a woman, I knew then that what Kylan told me was true. I never believed it until that night because I had never witnessed it with my own eyes.
“Nice theory,” I said, a smirk playing on my lips. “Too bad that’s all it is—a theory .”
I kept my tone light and dismissive, as if his words hadn’t added a million other questions about this man and what vampires who held witch magic were still capable of.
Liam’s lips curved into a slight smile, his face calm, yet curiosity beamed in his eyes as they looked over me. It was as though he felt my unease and found it entertaining.
“Enough about all that,” I said, trying to shift the conversation away from the talk of soulmates. “Are you honestly planning on giving me back to the Black Onyx? Collect your little reward?”
A wide smirk stretched across Liam’s face, crinkling the corners of his eyes as he let out a playful laugh. “Well, maybe not now ,” he said. “One conversation and I find you fascinating. If I give you to them, I might not learn more about what’s in your pretty little head.”
Is he flirting with me?
With a slight shake of the magical chain in Liam’s hand, the part around my neck loosened a bit. “Maybe,” he continued, “when all this is over … I just might keep you.”