Lucille
Chapter
Thirty-Eight
Ronen dragged his blood across the dungeon door and unlocked it. The hinges groaned as he pulled it open. Something skittered across my boots. I jumped, and Rune whimpered. Hadrian lunged toward the scurrying, red-streaked mouse, missing.
I shuddered as it escaped into a crevice in the hall.
“I don’t miss those,” Aspen muttered.
Ronen turned and eyed me, Aspen, and Rune, his expression all but saying, Seriously? Hadrian tilted his head as if to agree, except he scooted closer to Rune.
The three of us descended the stone steps, leaving Hadrian and Rune up top. That same warm, putrid stench from last time shoved up my nose the farther we went.
“Did someone die recently? I don’t remember it smelling like this when I was in here,” Aspen commented.
“Two blood-banded, in fact. Even burning their leftovers couldn’t relieve us of their rot.”
Ronen had just given him a straight answer without a grunt, insult, taunt, or calling him pet.
“I hope you didn’t have MJ performing that burn.”
Ronen chuckled. “The fire princess has only been down here twice. To save your ass, and to release your ass.”
Was Ronen joking with him?
Aspen’s lips lifted in a smirk.
I couldn’t stand it any longer.
“What the hell is wrong with you two?”
They both stopped on the bottom step, looking back at me like I’d just interrupted their bonding time.
“Are you two… friends now?”
“I wouldn’t call it that,” Aspen said—which softened Ronen’s adamant, “No.”
“We…” Aspen glanced around the uneven stone walls as if searching for the words.
“Understand each other,” Ronen finished.
My mouth dropped open. “Since when?”
“Now isn’t the time, Hellion,” Ronen replied over Aspen’s, “Since Ronen beat the shit out of me to get my head right.”
I felt like my brain grew legs and abandoned me for a cozy couch and an easy read, leaving me to make sense of a day that had hardly started.
Ronen touched my chin. “We’ll talk about it later, okay?”
Words? What were those? They no longer existed.
I could only nod.
We continued toward Anya, my brain still lounging in its vacation spot while I attempted to drag it back. She had to hear us coming, yet she didn’t grace us with her flirtatious commentary. Couldn’t say I missed her.
Our boots clapped against the damp stone as we marched toward her cell. The sconces whooshed and flickered as we passed, casting a warm yellow glow down the narrow stretch. Pungent orange attempted to cover the sickly, rotten stench of the infection clinging to the oppressive air.
We all stopped in front of her cell.
Had I fallen into some kind of dream-walk or lost my sanity?
Her cot with its plush blanket lay perfectly made. The lock on the cell door appeared intact. The bars between cells were too narrow for anyone to fit through, and the stone floors were untouched. She was just gone.
“Would my father have taken her?”
“He usually left it to me to transport prisoners, but it’s possible.” Ronen’s gaze narrowed on the bed.
I scanned it, finding the line of red at the same time Aspen did.
“Blood.”
Ronen unlocked the cell, and we entered the small, dusty space. He crouched near the bed, following the line of red until he peered beneath it.
“Help me flip this, Aspen.”
“Here.” Aspen handed me a piece of paper. “I found it on the end table. It’s addressed to you.”
Frowning, I opened the letter while Ronen and Aspen tipped the bed against the wall.
Dear Princess,
By now you’re probably peering into my empty cell wondering where I’m at. Unfortunately, to keep my head, I can’t tell you. Seems you needed to figure it out sooner. So let your sexy general know it’s no use searching. Although, just for the fun of it… here’s a hint:
Where do you go when you seek information?
Cold fingers reached down my throat and wrapped around my chest.
“Seven Hells,” Ronen breathed.
I looked up from her writing to a six-pointed star painted in what I could only assume was blood on the underside of Anya’s bed. Each point of the star contained a rune: unbinding, destroying, forsaking, overtaking, sacrificing, and a sixth one I couldn’t name.
“Has she been the one behind the demon infection this entire time?” I asked, my voice soft with horror as I handed Ronen the letter.
His jaw ticked, the tendons in his neck looking ready to snap. Shadows bled into his irises as he shoved the note at Aspen.
“I always wondered why a soul who’d been through all the circles would rather be imprisoned than judged for a second time.
Why she’d rather stay in the dungeons than the city,” Ronen gritted out.
“I thought she feared Hell’s state. That she saw something that scared her with her little divination powers. She played me for a fool.”
I moved toward him, and a stone shifted beneath my feet as I touched his arm. “You didn’t know.”
He shook me off, scanning the other empty cells. “I should’ve. These are my dungeons. It’s my blood that allows us in and out. So how did she get it?”
I stepped back, not sure what to say. The loose stone shifted again, grinding loudly enough that Aspen sank beside it. He motioned me back, then lifted the grimy rock.
He pulled six vials of blood from the small hole—half black and the others red. “Or who gave it to her?” Aspen countered.
They looked like Sam’s vials.
Ronen glared at the blood in Aspen’s hands. Silent. Thinking.
“It’s not Sam,” I protested. “He’s done nothing but help us.”
“He’s the only one we know who has access to my blood,” Ronen said, then glanced at Aspen. “He also knew where we went in the early mornings.”
We?
“You think he told Ridigar where to attack?”
Attack? Ridigar? Early mornings?
I whipped my head toward Aspen. “You were there?” Then toward Ronen, my mouth gaping. “And you lied about it?”
“I never lied. Just withheld all the facts.”
“That makes it better?” I snapped.
Ronen sighed. “I was helping him for you, Hellion.”
My anger fizzled. How could I be mad at that?
“And we didn’t want the guardian bond to interfere with my progress,” Aspen added.
The rest of my fight left me.
“Okay. But there has to be another explanation for how Ridigar found you two. Maybe Anya saw it and told Ridigar somehow.”
“Maybe,” Ronen offered. “But it doesn’t explain how she got my blood.”
“Yes, but Sam would need your key, right?”
He nodded. “Unless he stole the spare from my room or Lucifer’s.”
“What about Cato? Would he have access to Lucifer’s room or his key? He had Tsal-mawet.” Which didn’t seem important until now. The last I remembered, Ronen had the blade after I gave it to him in the Tenebrous Kingdom.
“Lucifer demanded Tsal-mawet back after our unsanctioned mission. He could’ve given it to Cato for safekeeping until he needed it.”
Until my father decided to hand the reins over to Ronen and steal him away from me. Right.
“Does the librarian have motive?” Aspen asked as he reread Anya’s note. “Because the first place I’d go to seek information is the library.”
Ronen considered Aspen and the small paper in his grasp, then turned his calculating stare on me. “You said Cato’s been hiding information. Does any of it hint at or pertain to the infection?”
I thought back on all our interactions, all our conversations, and the instances where he wasn’t forthcoming.
But none of them even remotely revolved around the infection.
He hid information about my parents. Their secrets.
He knew what my mom was hiding. He’d told me.
Just like I had told him my mom wanted me to find Miriam.
But never once had Cato guided me in that direction, and he seemed almost pleased when I’d failed.
He didn’t even have a response to her prophecy, just skated over it like it didn’t matter.
Miriam was my answer.
“No. He’s only hidden the Unmaking Ceremony.” I glanced at Aspen, holding his gaze. “And things about our moms.”
His lips turned down for only a moment before understanding lit his face.
“What things about your mothers?” Ronen inquired slowly, peering between the two of us.
Mouse squeaks and the slow drip of water filled the silence as I gathered the courage to tell Ronen another secret.
“There’s a prophecy Aspen’s mother had about me, and another about the guardian bond.
” I told Ronen everything Aspen now knew.
His face darkened when I explained my mother’s interpretation, his hands flexing and wreathed with shadows as if a threat lurked at my back.
Even the shadows overtaking the corners of the dim cell seemed to quake with his ire.
But when Aspen explained that he believed I’d already fulfilled the sacrifice part of the prophecy, Ronen’s eyes grew distant.
“Your father might know,” Ronen murmured, still staring unwaveringly down the dim stone hall.
“My father?” I looked at Aspen, who stared at Ronen with a frown.
“He told me once that you have a predestined fate,” he uttered, still in a distant place I couldn’t follow—but I could feel.
His anxiety jolted through him like an open circuit of electricity.
“I think he, too, has been hiding things.” His tone rang with an ominous note.
It slithered through the stillness, crawled up my body, and seeped into my thoughts.
Predestined fate? What secrets was my father hiding?
“We can figure out your father’s involvement later,” Aspen said, studying the blood-drawn star. “Right now, our most pressing question is who had access to Sam’s lab and the keys to the dungeon?”
Ronen slowly turned his head back, his expression drawn. “Sam has a power-lock on his lab door and my samples.”
I glared at the vials of blood.
Dammit. It couldn’t be Sam.
“And the keys?” I demanded
Ronen released a heavy breath. “I’ll go account for those. You two—back to the arena.”
I really didn’t want to add to his stress, but… “About that…”
Aspen stiffened, and Ronen closed his eyes, pressing his tongue into his cheek.
“The answer’s no, Lucille.”
I shot a glare at Aspen, my Infernus hissing in my ear. He dragged a hand through his coffee-locks and down his neck. “You told him?”
Ronen stepped into my space, wrapping a large hand around my neck and jaw and slowly turning my glare from Aspen onto him. Tumultuous, coiling black greeted me. His eyes were devoid of light.
“Don’t look at him. You said you were going to deal with me, right?” he taunted.
I gritted my teeth, barely holding back the urge to snap at Aspen and Ronen’s immediate denial.
My muscles tightened in preparation for a fight.
My Infernus oscillated between music that sounded both adoring and angry.
We loved his touch, maybe even found his control sexy, but we wanted to help.
Yet so did he, and if the roles were reversed, I’d probably react the same way.
The thing was… we were both forgetting an important detail about cordistella bonds.
They weren’t created for love. But war.
The fight eased out of me, and I let myself melt into him. His lips pursed at the sudden change, suspicion narrowing his eyes. But he pressed closer as if he couldn’t help himself.
“This is our home, Ronen. This is all we have.” I laid a hand on his chest. “You have the strategies, the knowledge of where the demons could be coming in from, the skills. I have the will and motivation. Use me. Lead them with me,” I pressed, filling myself with the truth of my words—the rightness of them.
If Hell needed to change, then so did I. We needed to fight together as one.
I felt the shift before I saw it. His awe. His anxiety. Then a small dip of his chin. His acceptance.
“With that settled, I think I may have a way to uncover who gave Anya your blood… and how to draw them out.” Aspen’s tone hinted at something I wasn’t going to like.