Chapter 17
COSTI
I t was cold in here now that I wasn’t burning angry, but I wasn’t about to let anyone know it bothered me. I’d seen this holding cell in the barracks—a brightly lit white room with nothing but a metal toilet—but I never figured I’d be sitting on the floor of it for hours.
Plenty of time to start second-guessing every weird feeling I ever had, trying to figure out if I was a demon. What kind of magic could stick to someone’s face for seventeen years? What kind of self-delusion made me not realize what species I was? How the fuck could I be bonded to Layla as a familiar and not even know? I’d felt different from other witches growing up, but wasn’t it just the kind of different that came from being adopted? From being Troubled?
Not human…
Resting my elbows on my knees, I pushed both hands into my hair. This was a fucking mess. There was no way they’d let me stay a guardian.
I should just bail. Go pretend to be human somewhere else. I bet I could get a job outside kicking troublemakers out of bars or something.
I’d take Layla with me. I didn’t care what these assholes thought. I’d get her out of here. Nothing mattered more than her.
I ignored the booted footsteps echoing in the hall, the opening of the locked door, and the shadow that fell over me.
“Well, well,” an obnoxious voice said.
I raised my head and tried to project the eye-rolling annoyance I was feeling. Cedar Grey, the shit who thought he was a ruler and not an elected official. His dogs flanked him—Ewan and a spell caster. He was amassing quite the little collection.
“Hello, demon,” said Grey Senior. Fate, I hated this whole fucking family.
“Gonna be like that, huh?” My voice sounded gravelly from disuse. I didn’t bother standing up.
“I’ll admit, I was surprised by this. You Northern Sea witches are typically such pushovers.” He sneered down at me. “But then, you’re not a Northern Sea witch at all, are you?”
“You believe all the weird shit Calamus tells you?”
“I could replicate his… experiment easily,” Grey said, unbothered. “But it’s plain to see there’s something wrong about you, and it’s not just that you’re Troubled. Now tell me why you were sent here.”
“Can’t help you with that,” I said. Yeah, it was insolent. But it wasn’t like he was going to listen to a word I said anyway. Witches like him were all the same. Once they made up their minds about someone, they never changed.
Grey nodded at his spell caster flunky, and he invoked his familiar. The small pale demon narrowed its black eyes at me and hissed viciously, showing its little fangs.
Am I seriously related to these things?
“Do you care to answer me now?” Grey smirked as if I couldn’t take him and his little entourage out in thirty seconds.
“Why bother?”
“Convince him,” Grey said to his pets.
The caster flicked a finger at my torso. A bloom of fiery light slammed into my chest, and the breath was knocked from my lungs as pain seared through me. The blow forced me to the floor.
My training kicked in automatically. I rolled onto my back and leaped to my feet, leveling a devastating head punch to the asshole who’d dared cast at me. He collapsed in a heap and his familiar disappeared with a tiny, satisfying pop.
My ruined shirt smoked, and I slapped out the smoldering fiber. I pulled my lip back in a snarl and whirled to face Grey. “I’ll show you a fucking demon ,” I growled, swallowing up the space between us. I was a full head taller and a lot broader than him and pissed that he didn’t look intimidated.
“Try it,” he said, holding up a hand, “and I’ll make sure your little spell caster never sees daylight again.”
That stopped me cold. Ewan twisted my arm behind me to control me, and I let him.
Trembling with rage, I stilled. “What do you want ?” I bit out. My burned skin pulsed with agony in time with my heartbeat.
“Tell me why you were sent here ,” he seethed.
“Why do you think?” I spit back through clenched teeth. There was no reasoning with this witch.
Grey jabbed a finger into my burned chest and twisted. I forced back a grimace. I wasn’t giving him anything. “Tell your prince to back off. He may be in charge of things in Hell, but I’m in charge here. He thinks he can sneak around behind my back and send his spies? Remind him that it’s only by my goodwill that his demons are allowed out of the pit. Tell him I can make things very unpleasant for our little familiars.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed—a dark, horrible sound. “Next time I see him, I’ll be sure to let him know.”
Grey glared up at me. “You can stay in this prison or go back to that one,” he said before sweeping out of the cell.
Ewan shoved me back and hesitated, glancing at the unconscious caster on the floor. I took a menacing step toward him and he backed up, feeling for the door.
“You know what this is, right? Grey telling you to do stuff, and you doing it? There’s a name for it. Starts with I .”
He held his hands up. “Hey, man, I’m not looking for trouble.”
“You just landed yourself in a whole heap of it if you’re gonna help the angels.”
The guardian grinned weakly. “Come on, Blackthorn. It’s not like that .”
“What’s it like, then? ’Cause from where I’m standing, you look like a traitor.”
“Shut up, asshole. I’m doing my job. You’re the one selling secrets and fucking around with that spell caster.”
I was fast, but he was already slamming the barred door in my face.
“Damnit, take your guy with you!” I yelled after him, kicking the metal and regretting it as pain shot through my body. With a grimace, I carefully lowered myself back to the hard floor next to my new friend, wishing I had been knocked out too.
A demon prince, huh? Every time I thought we’d gotten all of Grey’s dirt, he shoveled up more. What else was he hiding?
I hissed in pain as I brought a hand to my sternum. The caster had hit the opposite side from my heart, thank fate. My owl tattoo was ruined, a three-inch circle seared into my chest where the intricate wing stretched out. Insult to injury.
Injury to injury, if I was being honest. This wasn’t good. My leg and arm were still messed up from the last two times I’d been mauled. This demon thing was a shit deal—all the hate but no handy benefits like instant magical healing.
At least the wound had self-cauterized. It wasn’t bleeding.
Time passed in burning agony, and I was nowhere close to figuring any of this out. My memories before Northern Sea were fuzzy. Blue water. Sun. Love. Nothing that made me think Hell prison full of demons . I tried to remember my mother’s face—any details from my previous life—but it was lost to time.
The caster I’d punched unconscious groaned pathetically. I kicked him viciously awake as he grabbed his head dramatically, curling into a pile of red fabric.
“Took me a minute, but I know who you are.” Ash’s assigned Mountain Circle caster—the one who’d been giving them so much trouble. I hadn’t bothered to learn his name.
“You hit me,” he rasped.
“You cast at me, you bastard. You could’ve killed me.”
He pushed himself gingerly to a seated position, leaning next to me against the white wall. “You’re fine. My control is excellent.”
“Yeah? Well, mine isn’t.”
“Is that a threat ?” The caster’s eyes screwed up momentarily and he let out a wail of dismay, scrambling away from me. “What did you do to my familiar? Is this some sort of demon trick? Let me invoke!”
I chuckled. “Having a problem? It probably hates you. I know I do. Does Ash know you take orders from Grey, angel-lover?”
“How dare you! Stay away from me! The Councilor will have you punished for hurting me.” The caster huddled miserably in the corner.
I rolled my eyes. I was too tired for this shit. “He doesn’t care about you, little suck-up. He left you in here, with me.”
Footsteps in the hall turned out to be Ewan and some other guardian. How many of us has Grey roped into this?
He frowned at the witch trying to hide from me. “All right, Blackthorn. The Arcaenum is meeting, so come along like a good boy.”
“Or else what? Your buddy here is tapped out.”
“I don’t know, Constantine , but The Councilor’s got your spell caster. It’s not too hard to imagine what kind of security threat she poses, and what he might have to do to stop her from letting you go free.”
My rage was doused with cold terror.
I suddenly found myself feeling very cooperative.