Chapter 33
I f it hadn’t been for the very vital services required to keep Rhode’s blood pumping and fire at the ready, his brain would have short-circuited. Just ground everything to a fucking halt because his neural synapses wouldn’t have been able to make sense of two very important things: the words Cyro had just spoken or the stricken expression painting Neela’s face with hues of abject horror and bitter remorse. The same kind of affliction common among anyone for whom lying was a way of life and not just a misinformed oopsie.
White-hot emotion warred with his rage, and for the first time in his immortal life, all courses of action eluded him. Shame replaced sense and flooded in fiery and furious on the heels of Cyro’s bishop moving in for the kill while the bastard still had his hands on Rhode’s queen. Around him, the faint sounds of battle faded into the background. Whatever charmers hadn’t yet been dispatched were either flailing around at a good clip or were giving a few of the sentinels a halfway decent workout.
But far more of his brothers stood idle around him, with a stiff shock freezing their advances. Everyone waited for whoever was going to make a move next. Meanwhile, Neela kicked a heel out, trying to break free, but Cyro was faster, drawing a knife to her throat before her foot could even return to the ground.
Rhode’s bow was in his hands, and a flaming arrow nocked and aimed at Cyro’s skull. “I don’t miss,” he warned.
“Neither do I.” Cyro narrowed his eyes and let the challenge permeate the air between them. “You know, I had every intention of killing you outright. I would have found your intelligence master eventually. One thing I know you have experience in is just how true of a concept eventually can be for immortals like us. Eventually , the pain will stop. Eventually , I’ll find what I’m looking for. Or, as was the case with you, eventually , something will fall into my lap that has the potential to negate the other two. Neela was that eventuality.”
Chrome joined Rhode at his side, with his guns serving as effortless extensions of his arms. “You don’t need to hear this shit.”
Behind Cyro, Titan and Iron flanked the demon ruler’s back, while the rest of the angels finished off whichever charmers hadn’t bothered to die quickly enough.
Iron swung his mace around in a circle, blue flames lighting the snowy arena like a fire dancer’s taunt. “Give her up, asshole.”
They were all waiting for Rhode, for any semblance of a sign that he was done chit-chatting because they all had other places to be. Cyro was one concentrated blast of angel fire away from being nothing more than a bad memory. Then they’d have the relic. Neela had already tugged at her earlobe and given the signal of what they’d all been hoping for. That she’d been right and Cyro had been arrogant enough to keep the artifact on his person.
But for the life of him, Rhode couldn’t release that arrow. Not yet. He told himself it was because of the knife at Neela’s throat and the way her panic made her too much of a liability, even for an expert marksman like him. One outburst or damn muscle twitch and he ran the risk of not being fast enough to kill Cyro before the bastard delivered on his own promise.
Rhode told himself all of those things, but the gnawing pit in his stomach hadn’t started to fester until Cyro dangled a carrot of the truth in front of him.
Because Neela’s face said it all, even as tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and her brows furrowed into pleading slants. But it wasn’t until his gut had started to sour from churned-up bile that he knew.
Whatever Cyro had to say would be the truth, which wasn’t just curiosity catnip for a former spy like him but basic intelligence, and the bastard had banked on it.
Rhode found Neela’s eyes. “I trust you.”
Mages, it was the truth, wasn’t it? He did trust her, with his life, his brothers, but something about the stricken look on her face sent warning bells clamoring around in his skull.
“Rhode,” she said, and the quiver in her voice nearly killed him. “Whatever he says, know that?—”
“It will make things far more interesting than they already are,” Cyro said. “Just like the idea Neela gave me when I had begun to grow tired of our . . . let’s just say, time together.”
The muscles at the back of Rhode’s neck tightened against the memories that threatened to rise up.
Cyro reinforced his grip on the knife at her neck. “This most recent stint aboveground was hardly the first time she’d tried to escape, just her most successful.”
Neela sucked in a sharp breath.
“Oh yes, I knew. That night before the experiments began, one of the mystics responsible for the enchantments on the angel’s cell informed me you’d been spending a lot of time there, far more than necessary to just clean and feed the fool. So, I decided to pay you a visit. Do you remember what we talked about?”
“Please. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I believe I recall the exchange exactly. I asked why you had taken such a keen interest in our prisoner, and you said you were simply curious. But when I told you that I had grown tired of his treatments and was thinking about changing course, that was when your behavior went from quiet and unassuming to quite concerned. I’d never seen you act in such a way before. So imagine my surprise when I had already retreated halfway down the hall and you came running out after me with an idea you just thought of that might help our progress.” Sparks of delight flashed in Cyro’s face as his mouth split into a vile smile. “It was you who then mentioned rhodium experimentation. What it might do to him, how it would meld with my magic and possibly create an ally of an enemy. You were the one to suggest physically altering his makeup, rather than relying on the corrosive metal defenses my mystics had been exhausting. Rhodium had not been a metal on my radar until you rattled off its properties, already well researched, I might add, and why they would change the game for the battle against the angels.”
Every you was a fresh jagged slice across Rhode’s heart, but when he scanned Neela’s face for any sign of dissent, there was none. An answering thunder began to build in his ears, doing its level best to block out the pain trying to choke him.
“I was going to leave you!” she roared at Cyro, heedless of how close the knife got to her. Then she searched out Rhode’s face again. “I had a plan, yes, but my plan was to finally escape with you. I was going to take you with me to the mortal lands. I was going to get us both out and save you! But then he found me in my room the night before I was planning to leave, and I panicked, Rhode. I panicked. What if I got caught with you? What would he do to you in retribution for my crime? So I came up with the most awful thing I could think of to revert Cyro’s attention. I knew that whatever diversion I thought of had to play to the asshole’s own brand of mental and physical warfare. Only then would he forget all about me so I could go back to being the invisible charmer I always was and take you with me when I left. I needed to first get him out of my hair, and that awful idea was the only thing I thought he’d believe.”
She looked away, as if to find solace in the snow. “I got the idea from a video game. But it was never supposed to happen. It was too complex and far too outlandish compared to anything he’d tried before. I-I never expected him to call my bluff.” Something like remorse softened her features, but Rhode was shaking too hard to make sense of it. “The next morning, I ran to your cell, prepared to get us both out of there, but the experiments had already begun, and I couldn’t do anything to stop them or save you.”
Rhode’s bicep twitched as the bowstring slipped a notch and bit into the valley of his knuckles even harder. Beside him, Chrome had been stunned into silence, just like the others. Iron’s mace slowed its rotation until it hung limply by his side.
Without him meaning to, Rhode’s armor melted away, as if her very words were the only things corrosive enough to peel back the shell of the very thing she’d created.
For the first time in his life, the truth evaded him.
His head jerked from side to side in disbelief, and he had to lean on his brain to make his body move in ways his mouth could not. Fuck, his throat hurt, the damn thing tensing beneath the emotion that had surged up.
She’d . . . known?
In the distance, the faint tinkling melody of an ice cream truck rolling up to the crowd broke through the cloud of confusion in his mind. It was indistinct, almost an echo, but it was loud enough to catch the immortal ears of everyone there, including Cyro.
Recognition curled the demon ruler’s lip before Rhode could understand what was happening. “Neela couldn’t save you. Didn’t want to save you. Your fate was inevitable, just like the fate of all mortals.”
Cyro let go of Neela’s hair but kept the knife at her throat. In the span of a blink, the demon ruler conjured an electric orb of green magic in his hand and aimed it at the ice cream truck.
Look at me. Please look at me, Rhode.
But he didn’t. Eyes that had burned white-hot a moment ago had deadened to the point of despair. Even against the bite of Cyro’s knife, Neela tried to cast her soul out to him in some way, to convince him that she was telling the truth. However, instead of her mate absorbing the veracity of her words, they just pinged around the frozen tree trunks until they slammed back into her with the echoes of her mistakes.
She had so much to say, so much to explain, but there was no time. She’d foolishly used up that commodity and instantly regretted every opportunity she’d had to tie him to the bed and force him to hear what her heart needed him to know.
Instead, her fucking sire had known and managed to manipulate her yet again.
Neela refused to look at Cyro and tried to find a way to reach Rhode, but when his armor shimmered away, taking the light with it, only darkened disappointment remained across his cold features. Rage had turned to resignation, and his ferocity seemed to peter out along with their shared spark. Questions replaced concerns as her heart shattered into a thousand pieces.
Then the soft jangling call of an ice cream truck hit her ear, and even though it was a good distance away, a new fear took over. An ice cream truck meant lines of kids and parents. Huddled groups of souls en masse.
Easy pickings.
The pressure holding the knife at her throat lessened ever so slightly, and her stomach sank into her heels. Cyro had just connected the same dots she had.
He finally freed her hair, and the blood rushing back to her scalp nearly caused her to pass out. Green light flared over her shoulder, and an orb of magic sat poised in Cyro’s palm, aimed at his target.
Shit. He’s going to kill those families. He’s going to ?—
Her boot nudged something stuck in the snow. When she looked down, the magic’s green hue illuminated Rhode’s arrow, the one he’d used to sever the rope around her neck from earlier. The one still infused, albeit dimly, with his angel fire.
The plan punched into her before she had time to analyze it or look for confirmation in all the discerning eyes that now pointedly evaded hers.
Cyro wound his arm back, and the sheen from the relic’s smooth surface beneath his sleeve winked its presence under the magic’s green glow. The thing was still cuffed around his wrist and peeked out like a forgotten mass-market paperback in a sea of hardcovers.
The arrow was in her hand an instant later. She gripped that thing, pulled down Cyro’s wrist, yanked the relic free of his arm, and struck—herself.
The arrowhead sliced cleanly across her forearm, but both she and Cyro roared with the power that poured out of her. The bright light of her soul bond’s healing magic forced them to the ground while she gritted her teeth against it, but it was Rhode’s fire that had found its mark. Flames leaped from the arrow and connected with Cyro’s pant leg. Then combustion did what combustion did. The demon ruler cried out as fire found skin, right as the pulsing energy of Neela’s light shot him and his magic into the snowy sky.
Somewhere, someone said her name. Or some version of it. She couldn’t be sure because a vibrating wail mingled with the sounds of Cyro’s screams. Hands were on her, lifting her, checking her arm, her neck, the back of her head, but she didn’t track any of them. She was too focused on the portal above that Cyro had somehow managed to open. A deafening whine and a pop followed, and then the bastard was swallowed up by the night sky.
“Neela!”
That time, her name came through loud and clear, despite the ringing in her ears, but something was off about it.
When she was finally pulled to her feet, she realized why it sounded wrong.
Rhode hadn’t spoken it. Chrome, instead, had been the one to check her over and throw her behind his winged back while he scanned for any more surprises.
One by one, the rest of the angels cleared the scene and joined them.
But not Rhode. He was already gone.