Chapter 17
17
I didn’t sleep well.
The shower was amazing, the bed was comfortable, and yet, every time I closed my eyes, I saw Levi with his bloody hand around my throat ready to kill me just like he did with those demons.
Restless, I woke up and was fortunate enough to find Lily outside the dining room.
“What can I do for you, Miss Ariella?”
“Is there anywhere I can exercise here? Run, more specifically.”
“Of course.” She guided me through a long hallway, down to a more intimate area of the castle, and showed me a large door that opened up to a giant gym with lots of equipment. “I believe you can run in here.”
I looked around. There was no track, but there were four treadmills. Why four, though? Did anyone else besides Tanner and Jasmin use this room?
I shook my head. That didn’t matter to me at all. “Thank you,” I said to the demon as I walked into the gym.
I hopped on one of the treadmills and turned it on. I started slow, with a brisk walk, but it didn’t take long for me to speed it up and run.
While running, I blanked out my mind. I focused only on my breathing, the beating of my heart, and my steps. Every time my mind wandered, I forced it to focus.
It worked. For forty minutes, I ran without really stressing or worrying about anything.
It was a pleasant change.
Shame it didn’t last.
I went back to my bedroom, took a nice, hot shower, put on some jean leggings, a tank top, my now magically cleaned leather jacket, and boots, and headed back to the dining room.
And this time, almost everyone was already there for breakfast—Farrah, Wyatt, Zad, Lacey, and Rage.
“You look better,” I told Rage, as I took a place between Farrah and Lacey.
He nodded. “Thanks to Lacey. She healed me a little more last night.”
She smiled at him. “You’re welcome.”
I glanced from Lacey to Rage, back to Lacey. Was I sensing something here, or was it just me?
“How did you sleep?” Farrah asked me.
I shook my head. “Not very well.”
“Me neither,” she said.
“I don’t think any of us did,” Wyatt said.
“Ain’t that the truth?” Tanner's voice rang through the room as he and Jasmin walked in.
“Calm down, Tanner,” Jasmin muttered. “We talked about this.” She took one of the heads of the long table while Tanner took the other. “Lily, we’re ready.”
Lily appeared from a side door with two lesser demons who brought out heaps of food and deposited it in the middle of the table. There were pancakes, waffles, all kinds of eggs, bacon, toast, muffins, bagels, croissants, fruits, juices, three kinds of coffee, and even hot chocolate. The delicious scent of it all tickled my nose and my mouth watered.
For a few minutes, the only sound on the room was of everyone piling up their plates and eating.
Tanner ate only a little and didn’t waste time.
“With Lord Drake not calling the shots at the moment, we need to come up with a plan ourselves,” he said, his voice unusually serious. This pissed off Tanner was rubbing me the wrong way. “Anyone have any ideas?”
“So, just to recap,” Farrah started. “We need to capture Ylena and Levi, return Levi to his old self, stop Rhodes, and save Elysium?”
“You say that as if it was an easy to-do list,” Rage mused.
“Definitely not easy, but we need to know all the details before we come up with a plan, no?” she said.
Frowning, Rage nodded.
“I think the first thing is to figure out where Ylena and Levi would have gone,” Lacey said. She looked at me for a second. “I think Levi would be going after Ylena.”
“And we heard Rhodes is after Ylena too,” Jasmin said.
I frowned. “How?” And more importantly, “Why?”
“We might not have a handle on the entire underworld yet, but we do have plenty of connections in the human realm,” Tanner said. “As for why … to kill her? To shut her up? To bring her back to their side since she’s strong? Who knows?”
“And who cares?” Rage said. “The important thing is stopping both of them.”
“So what?” Zad asked. “We go after Rhodes and Ylena?”
“And Levi,” Lacey said. “He’ll be where they are.”
“And I think I know where Ylena will be,” I said. “Well, that’s not true. She doesn’t know where , but I do know what she’s after.”
“The Scarlet Hex Dagger,” Zad said.
I nodded.
“So, one more item for that list,” Jasmin said. “To find the dagger before Ylena and put it in a secure place, where no one, not even us, can access it.”
“Do we even know what the dagger does?” Tanner asked. “What if it’s a simple dagger and everyone is going crazy over it?”
“It can’t be a simple dagger,” Lacey said.
I nodded. “Molraz went to great lengths to secure it, and then look at everything Ylena and Rhodes did to get their hands on it. Whatever this dagger does, it can’t be good.”
“I agree that when we find it, we should secure it,” Farrah said. “No matter what it does. Better safe than sorry.”
Jasmin and Tanner exchanged a long, tense look.
The king of the underworld exhaled. “Agreed.”
“So, where’s the dagger?” Wyatt asked me.
Shit.
I opened my mouth but closed it when Lily appeared in the main doorway. “You have a visitor,” she said, looking from Tanner, to Jasmin, to me.
She stepped aside and gestured to Abbie.
I turned on my seat to face her. “Abbie, everything okay?”
She nodded. “I think so.” She glanced at King Tanner. “May I?”
“Of course.” He gestured for her to walk in. “You’re a guest.”
“Thank you.” She walked toward me and held a book up, which I only noticed now.
I stood. “What’s that?”
“My great-grandmother’s diary.” She turned the book. It was small, with a torn leather cover, and yellowed pages. “She wrote about the dagger.”
“What?”
She opened the book and handed it to me. I held the book and stared at the neat handwriting on the pages. On half of one page, there was a drawing of the dagger.
Now everyone was up from their seats and hovering around us.
Abbie pointed to a paragraph on the page. “She says the dagger can change a supernatural being, including their powers.”
“How?” Tanner asked. He was right beside us, his eyes on the book.
“My great-grandmother never tested it, but she knew this. I don’t know how, it doesn’t say. At least not the parts I’ve read.” Abbie glanced at me. “According to her, the one yielding the dagger has to have immense power, otherwise they will be changed too.”
“But how does it work?” Jasmin asked. She was right beside Tanner.
“Again, this is only theory,” Abbie warned, “but she says the dagger bearer should hold the dagger to the supernatural’s chest, push its power inside him, and order it to change him, and apparently, the dagger will know what exactly you want to change.”
I scanned the page. “Does she mention how it changes them?”
Abbie nodded. “You can make them mortal, weak, powerless, or if they are good, you can make them evil.”
I sucked in a sharp.
“What if they are evil and you want to turn them good?” Lacey asked exactly what I was thinking.
Abbie showed her a small smile. “That too.”
Lacey looked at me and I held her gaze, then I turned to Tanner and Jasmin. “I might be jumping to conclusions here, but what if Ylena and Rhodes wanted the dagger to make Adona mortal? She would be killable.”
“And they would become the rulers,” Tanner mused, his voice low.
“That seems plausible,” Jasmin said, a crease between her delicate brows.
“Let’s say that’s not their plan,” Zad said. “This is still a powerful dagger. We can’t let them get it.”
Tanner stared at me. “We need to secure the dagger.”
I had run from that thing for so long, it had brought so much pain to me and to Elysium, I wasn’t eager to get it again.
But I knew he was right.
We had to get the dagger before someone else happened upon it.
I stared at the king of the underworld. “I have one condition.”
His brows furrowed. “And what is that?”
“Before we secure the dagger, we use it … on Levi.”