Meet Your Maker, Part One (The House of Marchese Saga #4)

Prologue

Loose Ends

— Silas —

Well, that was a shitshow. I let Roxana drop to the cavern floor—with perhaps a little more force than necessary—and start plucking bright red feathers from my lapels while I mull over the events of the last ten minutes.

Sunday survived my dragon’s fire, and that’s unfortunate. I hate leaving loose ends behind, especially ones as unpredictable as her.

In my line of work, unpredictable means dangerous. She’s everything I swore to avoid. Everything I’ve fought against. Fated mates are nothing more than a cage disguised as destiny. I saw what it did to my parents. I watched my mother waste away in a loveless bond, and now she thinks she can trap me with a fantasy of moon-blessed mates? I saw it for the sham it is before my voice dropped, before my scales came in… but my dragon doesn’t give a damn—and that’s the real problem.

After weeks of hearing about her from Roxana and listening to her brother prattle on about her in Dae, I wasn’t surprised when my dragon noticed her. And by “noticed”, I mean he mentally whipped out his diary and sparkly gel pens and began penning Mrs. Sunday Carbonis in loopy cursive over and over again—annoying, but entirely expected given her track record.

I’m not so conceited to think I’d be the one creature her twisted bond magic wouldn’t corrupt. She likes them powerful and a little broken—and let’s be honest, those are my best qualities.

Roxana warned me about her, but a small part of me thought she was exaggerating. Perhaps more than anyone, I should understand that magic is chaotic and endlessly inventive. But it seems like a breach of natural order to give one person power like that. Where’s the balance? What’s to stop her from placing her pretty little thumb on the scale and tipping it in her favor every single time?

I have no particular fondness for the Empress, but I understand why she had to protect her mate from everyone’s favorite Southern psychopath. After all, she poisoned him rather than let him stay with the vampire he’s shared his life with for over two thousand years. She must be a narcissist of the highest order and her behavior is completely indefensible.

She collects mates the way a demon collects favors—careless of the cost and indifferent to the damage. She kidnapped a jaguar from the Texas court who wasn’t even interested in women. It didn’t matter. She wanted his magic, so she callously took him—unrepentant and unfeeling. She has no shame and perhaps she should.

And this isn’t some puritanical judgment about her promiscuity. Everyone should fuck more. No, this is about her parasitic hijacking of bonds engineered by fate. Even that prick, Volga, was all over her. My dragon rumbles, like the sap he is—he has no idea what he’s in for with her.

Even her brother admitted, after a few bottles of Shadowfire , that her power had always caused them problems. He shares the same gift, but at least he has some integrity. He said the stakes are different for her, that the world judges her more harshly than him. And while I admire his loyalty, all I heard was an excuse—a wrong-headed justification for her pathological behavior. He might wield the same magic, but somehow he manages not to ruin everything he touches.

I like Colton, and truly, I wouldn’t have enjoyed telling him that I incinerated his sister. I’m also relieved she pushed the kid out of the way—even if he had no business hanging out in front of a natural portal to Dae—I am glad we didn’t kill him.

Because we almost did. I run a hand over my face, trying to clear the heat building in my chest as the thought of it sits heavy on my soul. Just where the fuck were his parents? Did she decide she wanted a shifter baby and just take one? It certainly sounds like something she’d do.

I raise my hands and call on my sulky as fuck dragon to snap out of it. Together we flood the portal with fire until I feel the magic grow thin and see the wall appear on the other side of it. A ten-thousand-year-old portal, one of the few stable ones left, and I have to destroy it because of her. I wish she’d burned, even if it would have been somewhat inconvenient, the realms would be a safer place without her in them.

There, it’s done.

Now I need to get the Empress to a healer. I’m mentally adding, ‘made me give blood to a vampire’ to Sunday’s already lengthy list of crimes. At least, I’ll sleep in my own bed tonight and do it with the knowledge that I will never allow us to become one of her victims.