Epilogue
Meanwhile…The Night of the Warehouse
Dimitri is going to go on record saying he had enough of the Hargrove Manor the first time he was here, and he had never intended on setting foot inside it again.
Although one could point out he’s in the basement, the vault, they call it, and not really in the manor proper, but it’s really all the same to him.
Same stone. Same stench of old blood and older magic.
Same self-important family of witches who thought they could leash things that were never meant to be leashed.
The distinction between “manor” and “subterranean crypt full of cursed artifacts” is, in Dimitri’s professional opinion, a matter of branding and not of substance.
He wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for the bleeding heart angel walking by his side, all blond ponytail and holy mace and a distinct bite mark on his clavicle that Dimitri put there himself that morning.
Knox walks the way he always does, measured, deliberate, every step placed with the trained precision of a man who grew up learning to move through hostile ground without disturbing it.
His coat is buttoned to the throat, which Dimitri knows is specifically to cover the aforementioned bite mark and not because Knox is cold.
Knox doesn’t really get cold. Something about the holy fire burning perpetually in his veins, nephilim nonsense, whatever.
The point is the coat is buttoned and Dimitri can still see the faintest edge of the bruise creeping above the collar, and it makes something hot and possessive curl behind his sternum every time he catches a glimpse.
Dimitri’s impression of the Hargrove family is not especially favorable, with the very minor exception of the redheaded disaster that Knox has adopted, but here he is. Helping them. Or helping one of them, rather.
Annabeth is a severe woman with her hair in a bun so tight it looks painful and her jaw clenched so hard her teeth probably need realignment.
She had taken one look at them when they’d arrived, her gaze sliding from Knox’s polished Templar insignia to Dimitri’s everything with a contempt so thorough it was almost impressive, and told him explicitly not to touch anything.
Which is to-the-point enough for Dimitri to appreciate.
He also takes it as a personal challenge to touch fucking everything.
He starts small. A fingertip dragged along the edge of a display case as they pass.
A casual brush against a tapestry depicting what appears to be a summoning circle for something with too many teeth.
He picks up a small obsidian figurine, turns it over in his hands, sets it back down facing the wrong direction.
Knox notices. Knox always notices. He gives Dimitri a look that is somehow both fond and exasperated, the specific flavor of I love you but you are exhausting that Dimitri has become intimately familiar with over the course of their entanglement.
Dimitri grins at him. Knox shakes his head and keeps walking.
The crypt below the manor is practically teeming with questionable artifacts and forbidden objects.
They line the walls in a museum exhibition curated by someone with no moral compass and an unlimited acquisitions budget.
Sealed urns that hum with trapped spirits.
Blades that weep a dark substance too thick to be water.
Books bound in materials that Dimitri is not going to speculate on in polite company, though he’s rarely in polite company and calling present company polite would be generous.
He can see Knox making a mental catalog as he goes, holding his fingers out discreetly in a way that extends his holy magic to seek out the things they pass, but keeps Annabeth from noticing.
The faintest shimmer of gold dances at Knox’s fingertips, barely visible, easily mistaken for a trick of the torchlight if you didn’t know what you were looking at.
But Dimitri knows. He can feel it through the bond, the gentle pulse of Knox’s power reaching out and cataloging, reaching out and remembering.
He realizes this means Knox will probably drag him back here on Order business to take care of this at a later point.
The Order would probably shit a crucifix if they knew their star soldier was tag-teaming his missions with a demon he was soulbound to, but that’s apparently one of the secrets his little choir boy of a Templar is planning on keeping from them.
Good boy, Dimitri thinks, and lets the thought bleed through the bond just enough for Knox to feel it.
He’s rewarded by the faintest flush climbing the back of Knox’s neck, just above the coat collar, just below the ponytail.
Knox doesn’t look back at him, but his stride hitches for half a second, and that’s enough.
Annabeth keeps sending sharp glances back at him every couple of minutes.
She doesn’t trust him, which is fair. She shouldn’t trust Dimitri.
It still makes him want to push the nearest cursed chalice off the shelves they pass.
His fingers itch toward a ly gaudy ceremonial goblet that’s practically vibrating with trapped malice, not because he wants it, but because the look on Annabeth’s face would be spectacular.
Knox, without looking at him, reaches back and catches Dimitri’s wrist. His grip is firm and warm and the contact sends a jolt of something electric through the bond. He holds on for exactly two seconds, just long enough to communicate don’t, and then releases him.
Dimitri lets the goblet be. Not because he was told to. Because Knox asked.
There’s a difference.
“When we reach the phylactery room I will point out Angelica’s.
I will have to remove the binding on it and then you will need to destroy it,” Annabeth explains as they head deeper into the crypt.
Her voice echoes off the damp stone walls, carrying with it the practiced detachment of someone who has been thinking about this for a very long time and has only just recently decided to act.
“The phylactery is warded against physical and magical destruction by anyone within the bloodline. That is why I need outside assistance.”
“How convenient for you,” Dimitri murmurs, “that you found a Templar willing to do your dirty work.”
Annabeth doesn’t dignify that with a response. Knox, however, hums and says, “Absolutely,” in that earnest, cooperative tone he uses when he’s being perfectly agreeable while planning something the other party hasn’t accounted for.
But he glances at Dimitri out of the side of his eye, in a way that tells him they’re definitely going to be destroying every phylactery in the room, Angelica’s or otherwise, and Dimitri loves him so much he has to physically restrain himself from touching him.
It’s a strange thing, loving someone. Dimitri had gone his entire existence without it and had been under the impression he was better off.
Love, in his experience, was a weapon, something mortals and angels and even other demons wielded against each other, a vulnerability dressed up as a virtue.
He’d watched it destroy people from the inside out.
He’d helped it destroy people from the inside out, on occasion, back when he’d been less discriminating about his entertainment.
And then there was Knox, who had looked at him with those kind eyes and that stupid, stubborn, gentle face, and said I want you as you are, and meant it in a way that no one had ever meant it before.
The soulbind sits between them, warm and constant and utterly, infuriatingly permanent.
It means Dimitri can feel the steady thrum of Knox’s focus as they walk, can feel the way his awareness is split between cataloging the artifacts and monitoring the tunnel ahead and keeping a gentle, unconscious thread of attention on Dimitri himself, always.
It means Knox can feel the slow, simmering impatience building behind Dimitri’s ribs.
They’re an obscenely long way down the never-ending tunnel, past the third set of warded doors and the second collapsed side passage and what Dimitri is fairly certain was a sacrificial alcove that Annabeth walked past without comment, when they hear commotion from behind them.
Footsteps, too many of them, echoing and overlapping in the narrow corridor. Then voices, sharp, urgent, the cadence of people coordinating something hostile. Then the unmistakable crackle of offensive magic being charged, that coppery smell that blood spells carry.
A group of ten loyalists comes around the bend in the tunnel.
They’re wielding spells, whips, and a general disregard for self-preservation.
Two of them are proper blood mages, the iron-tang of power drawn from opened veins hanging around them.
Three more carry spelled whips that hiss and spark with captured lightning, the leather wound with sigils that glow an angry red.
The remaining five are a mix of warlocks, witches, and one swordsman who clearly got lost on his way to a Renaissance faire.
For Dimitri, who has been slowly dying of boredom from the moment Annabeth opened the vault door for them, it feels a little bit like Christmas.
“Oh,” he breathes, and the sound is almost reverent. “Finally.”
“Traitor!” one of the blood mages screams at Annabeth, which, fair assessment, honestly. Annabeth’s face goes white, then hard, and she raises her hands with a snarl that makes Dimitri think maybe she does have a spine after all.
Knox moves first. He always moves first. It’s one of the things about him that drives Dimitri up the wall, the way he puts himself between danger and everyone else without a second’s hesitation, not as a choice but as reflex.
The mace comes off his belt in one fluid motion, the head of it already glowing with that warm, terrible gold, and Knox is running.