Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Rocco
“Selena! Selena!” I slammed my fists against the stone. “Answer me!”
Nothing. Just silence on the other side. Silence and the fading echo of my own voice.
Damn it. What was she thinking?
Then a scream—muffled by stone but unmistakable. Selena’s scream.
My heart stopped.
“Help me!” I grabbed the edge of the door. “Lucien, now!”
Lucien and I pulled and pulled and pulled. From somewhere deep inside me, I found strength I didn’t know I had—raw, desperate, fueled by something far more powerful than vampire blood. The stone groaned. Shifted. Gave.
We forced the door open and charged through.
“Selena!”
My voice echoed down the stairwell and came back empty.
She was gone.
Lucien and I tore down the stairs, but that same invisible force shoved back against us with every step. It didn’t matter. Adrenaline was a furnace inside my chest and nothing — no magic, no demon, no force in hell — was going to keep me from reaching her.
What if Vex possessed her? What if he summoned another demon to crawl inside her skin and wear her like a suit?
The thought nearly buckled my knees. I knew what that felt like — the horror of being trapped behind your own eyes while something monstrous used your body.
I wouldn’t let her experience that. I’d tear Vex apart with my bare hands first.
A faint glow pulsed from somewhere below. My heart kicked. Light meant activity. Activity meant Vex. And wherever Vex was, Selena would be.
Something sticky caught me mid-stride — thick, invisible strands stretched across the stairwell like razor-sharp spiderwebs.
They sliced through my clothes and into my skin as I pushed through them, each one biting deeper than the last. Beside me, Lucien snarled, blood streaking down his arms, but he didn’t slow. Neither did I.
Our mates were down there. About to be sacrificed by a demon who fed on suffering. If we stopped now, everything was lost — Selena, Raven, the shard, all of it.
I fought through the pain. Blood seeped down my shirt and soaked into my jeans. I didn’t care. Every cut was one step closer to Selena.
And she was worth every single one.
I stumbled off the last step and fell to my knees, panting.
My clothes were shredded, blood dripping from a dozen cuts.
Ahead — a door. Faint light glowed beneath it, and something else seeped through the cracks.
Chanting. Low, rhythmic, guttural — words I couldn’t make out but could feel in my teeth.
Every syllable dripped with something ancient and wrong.
Lucien collapsed beside me, gasping. He looked as bad as I felt. His eyes met mine and he nodded.
I forced one knee up, then the other. Together we staggered toward the door.
The chanting grew louder. Every hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.
I drove my shoulder into the door and bounced off, paint shooting down my arm. Red hot. The heat seared through my skin instantly, blisters erupting across my knuckles before I could even register the pain.
“Damn it.” I shook my hand, the blisters screaming.
Lucien studied the door. “We ram it. Together.”
“On three.” I braced myself. “One. Two. Three.”
We drove our shoulders into the door. The heat seared through my shirt and into my skin. An evil laugh echoed from the other side — low, delighted, as if our pain was entertainment.
I didn’t care. We hit it again. And again. Harder each time, the impact rattling through my bones, the burn spreading across my shoulder. The door didn’t budge. Not an inch. Our supernatural strength meant nothing against whatever magic held it shut.
But we didn’t stop.
Again. Again. Again.
Then something cracked—not the door, but whatever spell had been holding it. The door flew open and I crashed to the ground, skidding across cold stone.
Vex towered over us. Every nightmare I'd had for two years stood in front of me wearing a tired smile.
“I can’t concentrate with you idiots pounding on my door.” He sounded more amused than angry. That was worse.
I staggered to my feet. We were in a cellar — stone walls painted with black symbols I didn’t recognize. Probably straight from hell.
Torches guttered in iron brackets around the room.
Then I saw the altar. Selena was stretched across it side by side, just like the baby had been.
Her body limp. Her eyes closed. Her chest barely rising.
She looked like a corpse laid out for burial, and something inside me snapped—a sound like a wire pulled too tight, vibrating through my entire body.
I took a step forward. Lucien grabbed my arm.
Raven was stretched out beside her. Black candles burned on either side, their flames flickering violet. And at the far end sat that same gold vase with a lid, etched with writhing symbols.
There had to be something important about that vase.
“You’re too late,” Vex said, strolling behind the altar like a man with all the time in the world. He picked up the black blade—the same one he’d held over the baby—and turned it slowly in his hands.
“In five minutes, the shard will be destroyed and I will not only kill Raven, but I’ll take Noelle too.
” His golden eyes found mine, and the malice in them was absolute—no posturing, no bluffing, just the same cold certainity of a creature that had already decided how this ended.
. “Killing Selena will just be to punish you—Prince.”
The word dripped with contempt. He said it the way you’d spit out something rotten.
Every muscle in my body coiled. My fangs punched through my gums. A rage so absolute it blotted out thought, pain, fear—everything—roared through me like wildfire.
Lucien yanked out the shard out of his pocket. “No, you won’t. You don’t have the shard.”
Victory was at hand. Vex was about to have his ass sent back to hell.
Vex merely cocked his eyebrow. “Do you, Lucien?”
He should be afraid. Even Balthazar said he couldn’t touch it. The shard was the one thing in this room that Vex couldn't control—the one weapon we had that a demon couldn't counter. If we could get it close enough, he'd have no choice but to back off or burn.
I glanced at Lucien.
Lucien stretched his hand, the shard aimed at Vex like a weapon. “I command you to go back to hell.”
Nothing happened.
The torches didn’t flicker. The shadows didn’t move. The air didn’t shift.
Nothing.
Panic pumped through me. Something was wrong. Something we’d forgotten. Something we missed.
Vex smiled, his golden eyes glowing even darker. He flicked his hand and the shard ripped from Lucien’s grip, floating across the room. Vex stretched out his palm and caught it.
Caught it. Bare-handed. No pain. No burning. No reaction at all.
Balthazar’s words hit me like a sledgehammer. Demons can’t touch the shard. “This isn’t the shard. It’s a cursed jewel that has veiled my magic in this castle.” He closed his fist around it. “Thanks for bringing it back to me.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Lucien charged.
I raced to the other side, my fingers inching away from grabbing Selena’s foot. But Vex snapped his fingers and I froze in place. So close but so faraway.
He looked between us. “Now, I’m done with the fun and games with you two idiots.” He smiled at me. “Prince Rocco, someone has been missing you.”
The air left my lungs in one sharp punch. I knew. Before the smoke, before the shadows shifted, before anything crawled out of those symbols—I knew.
My knees nearly buckled. The room tilted. Two years of nightmares, two years of waking up drenched in sweat with my mother’s screams echoing in my skull, two years of hating myself for what my hands had done—all of it crashed into me at once like a wave breaking over my head.
Not again. Please. Not again.
Black smoke flowed out of one of the symbols. Fuck a demon.
“Yes, you’re quite right,” he said, as if reading my mind. “It’s a demon. The same one who possessed you when you nearly beat your mother to death.”
The words hit me like a blade between the ribs. My vision tunneled. My hands—the same hands that had broken my mother’s face — started shaking so violently I couldn’t stop them.
Vex walked over to me, the black smoke following him like a pet dog.
“But this time, you won’t stop.” He ran his fingers down my face.
My skin crawled where he touched me—a revulsion so deep it went beyond physical, down to the blood, down to the bone. I wanted to rip his hand off. But I couldn’t move. Not yet.
“This time, you’ll kill your friends.” Vex tilted his head. “First, Lucien. Then the others.”
I glanced over at Lucien. His eyes were wide.
Vex returned to the altar. “Last,” he said, as he slid the blade across Selena’s throat without breaking the skin. “Then you’re precious mate. It will be brutal, bloody. The demon will leave. And you’ll remember everything.”
Bitterness and hate burned through me, sharp and helpless.
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t lunge. Couldn’t throw myself between Selena and the blade.
I was frozen. Every muscle screaming against invisible chains while the black some curled closer.
Just like before. Trapped inside my own body. Helpless. Watching.
“Don’t.” My voice was the only part of me Vex hadn’t frozen. “Kill me. Send me to hell. I’ll go willingly. But don’t make me hurt her. Please.”
The words tasted bitter. I’d never begged. Not when I lost everything. Not when Balthazar had me in hell. Not once in my miserable life.
I begged now.
Vex studied me the way a cat studies a mouse it’s already caught. “You know what I love about you, Prince?” He leaned close enough that I could smell the sulfur on his breath. “You think begging still matters.”
The smoke wrapped around my ankles. Cold. Patient. Hungry. It was already reaching for my mind—I could feel it pressing at the edges, looking for a way in.
I had seconds. Maybe less.
I did the only thing I could. I screamed her name with everything I had left — every shred of love, every ounce of desperation, every broken piece of my soul poured into one word.
“SELENA!”