Chapter Twenty-Seven
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Theo
I shove a stunned Val behind my wings, blocking her from my mother’s soon-to-come wrath. “Any idea what that was?”
“A f-freak supernova?” My mate sounds as shocked as I feel right now.
Understandably as whatever magic burst from her fingertips wasn’t the pretty alchemy or literal flower power she has manifested since we completed the mating bond. No, it rushed forth like the weapon my mother accused her of being.
Spells from the pixie poker table flutter and zip through the air, setting off sparkling hearts and pink champagne bubbles. I ignore the itch of pixie powder flooding my nose, concentrating on the bigger threat.
As if my thoughts summon her, my mother rises to her feet, her lightning magic climbing along with her in currents wrapping around her dress like some lethal version of her beloved bling. “You little…” She throws a slim bolt in an arc toward Val.
Brimstone fire erupts from me, a living wall to block my mother’s magic and shield my mate. From above, Montejanus lets loose fire to strengthen the barrier and add a definite demon-threatening boundary, but I don’t need it.
The mating power bump has brought so much control over my fire magic that I could breathe and extinguish it as easily as the little soul guardian does naturally. It helps my mate has become virtually fireproof, a new ability I wish she wouldn’t test so frequently in her lab. Smoke carrying the possible poison that might harm Val doesn’t even dare rise from my curling violet flames.
Nic rushes into the fight. “No, neither of you wants to hurt the other.” Her peacemaker talent is on full display, vines of thorns rushing to draw a line between my mother and me. “Let’s talk about this.”
Dupree peeks out from behind the magical slot machines. Coward. How did I ever suspect he could’ve been brave enough to negotiate with leaders of other realms to open forbidden portals and overthrow the kingdom? His greed stops at risking his own skin.
My mother snuffs out her power. “You would wield brimstone flames against me?” Rage and something deeper—hurt maybe?—shakes her voice. “I’m your mother.”
“Val’s my mate.” The admission rushes from me. “I don’t want to endanger those I’ve grown up trying to protect. Not you, my sisters, or Father. But she’s my mate . You of all people should understand the bond.”
She lowers her hands, but not before I notice the trembling. “Your father isn’t well. Not since the portals began opening at random. Each draws on the magic that ties him to the kingdom’s strength.”
The fight rushes out of me. “We’ve all seen it.” The slips in his memory. Unexplained flares of his notorious temper.
“No one outside of us can know.” In a quick lift of her chin and straightening of her spine, Mother is suddenly the Queen of Hell again. “It would ruin us all.”
“Agreed.” I dip a wing and look over my shoulder, checking my mate for any injuries. “You okay?”
“I didn’t mean it,” Val rushes to say. “Well, yeah, what I said—I meant that. But the magic. I had no idea I could, and I wouldn’t have hurt your mom.”
The tightness that had locked my chest since my mother’s arrival unwinds. “I know, Vicious.”
“Family’s everything. No matter what they do.” She aims a glare my mother’s way. “Like cursing me in some fucked up contract.”
Nic hurries between us, winding her deadly vines in with the same ease humans would curl up a charger cord. “I’m sure Mom didn’t mean to curse you personally.”
With the dagger-sharp glowers flying between my mother and my mate, I’m not so certain my baby sister is right in her eternal optimism. Before Val might magic an actual dagger from Shadowvale, I seize control of the conversation. “Dupree, you have five seconds to run before I let every woman in this room take a shot at your craven ass.” My cousin scrambles from behind chiming slot machines below a small stage where fist-sized trolls usually perform a victory dance for winners. Those trolls have far more courage than my spineless cousin.
I wait until Dupree runs before focusing my attention on my mother. “Now is when you explain what you did in drafting the demon deal.”
Mother raises her head until her horns might as well be curling toward the cash-in cages lining the back wall. “The Bonettis wanted our demon magic to build a beauty empire.”
“Get to the part of the story we don’t already know,” I tell her, needing her to move along before she manages to hurt Val’s feelings any more than she may have earlier.
Val nudges me not so gently. “ I don’t know that part of the story. Or at least I didn’t believe it.” Her voice trails off to an almost whisper, and I’m torn between needing to hear the rest of this for her sake, taking her to the suite to console her, and chasing after my cranky sister who was foolish enough to leave the safety of Shadowvale.
I wrap a wing around her. “Then share that part, Mother, but be mindful of hurting my mate.”
“I can take care of myself,” Val whispers to me.
Pulling her tighter with my tail, I fight a grin at her sullen arrogance. “Let me this once.”
She heaves a put-upon sigh. “Fine. If it’ll make you happy.”
“It will.”
Nic manages a tiny giggle despite the awfulness of the situation. “You two are so cute. No one could doubt you’re fated for each other.”
My mother’s stance has softened while watching our exchange. “I didn’t foresee the possibility that one of the seventh daughters might mate with you, Theo, or I wouldn’t have risked our family.”
“Mother—”
“Or hers,” she hurries to add. “I would’ve found another way without endangering any humans if I’d had any inkling of the damage it might eventually cause.”
That last bit seems to be enough to have Val leaning into me instead of holding herself as if ready for battle. “No one can predict the future,” my mate says charitably. “My own mother offered to hand me over for a shot at a single flower.” The sadness in her tone tugs at me. “She might not have been so eager to trade me away if she’d known I would be able to create hundreds of Brimstone Bells. Or maybe she would have.”
Shaking her head so quickly her crown clicks against her horns, my mother says, “I don’t understand how anyone could do that to her child. She couldn’t have been thinking clearly.”
“She was.” Val doesn’t leave room for argument. “The business means everything to her. Much as your kingdom does to Theo.” She frowns. “If you believed I was some kind of a world-killer who would destroy your kingdom and your son’s life, why not do more than make some cryptic comments?”
From the guilty gaze flickering in my mother’s eyes as fast as one of her lightning strikes, I know . “You didn’t stop at idle threats, did you? You sent the assassins that tried to break into the suite?—”
My mother talks over me. “I didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to mate with her. I had your father take your crown away.”
My heart hammers a deafening beat in my ears. “You had father declare that unholy competition for the crown? It painted a target on Nic’s back, Gilly’s, mine.”
Mother stiffens. “I figured a Bonetti would be too superficial to want you without a crown. I thought she would leave you. Or I could get rid of her before any mating.”
Red washes over my vision until I can’t see past my rage. “You. Could. Have. Killed. Her.”
Nic’s vines brush against me as they rush past, yet I burn through them. Montejanus lets loose a snarl. Good . Let him defend my woman. Because the gods pity anyone who dares hurt her. Here I’d been hunting a threat out amongst cousins, and my mother had been the villain I wouldn’t have suspected in a thousand lifetimes.
“Theo?” Even Val’s voice can’t cut through my wrath.
My mother argues, “Your father?—”
Flames spark across the casino tables, racing upward. “ You sent assassins after her. You were behind the attacks on Shadowvale because you wanted to murder my mate .” My accusation—the awful truth—comes out on a roar.
The air around me crackles. Velvet engulfs in fire, the stench of charred fabric and smoky sweetness burning my nose. The metallic clang of the roulette wheel buckling under the heat reverberates through the room as molten rivulets cascade down its once-pristine surface, pooling on the floor in a river of liquid metal.
I suck in breath after breath, trying to calm myself, but it’s no use. A torrential blaze unleashes upon the magical slot machines. The roar of Brimstone flames drowns out the clinking of coins and the whirring of reels. So much for being able to extinguish an inferno at will.
A purple haze of fury and betrayal wraps me, and I struggle against the weight of power dragging me down. Smoke rushes through the room, carrying deadly poison.
For decades, I’ve had hard-won control of my fears, my weaknesses, my magic.
Now? That control is all gone.
The searing heat around me fuels the gods-awful adrenaline rush exploding through my body.
I can’t rein in the Brimstone blaze. The unlimited power I’d desired for so long through finding and conquering a mating bond spirals unchecked. My cruel ambition and its violent consequences threaten to burn down everything and everyone I’ve ever cared about.
Shadowvale.
Those who I’ve offered sanctuary.
Nic.
Val.
My magic will destroy it all, and I can do nothing to stop it.