Chapter 61
Chapter sixty-one
Seraphina
Cursed. You are cursed to be barred from my lands, from my home.
Sera was dreaming; she had to have been, because she didn’t understand what she was seeing. A silhouette of a woman stood before a giant ball of red flame.
You may curse me, but you will never rid yourself of me. I am eternal. I am the dark.
Sera jolted awake. Night and dew coated the grass inside the tent. They’d ridden late into the night, barely a word shared between them. Vasso had been deep in his own mind, brooding and miserable.
But he’d set up an impressive camp, and instead of a fire and hard ground, Vasso had erected an entire tent out of nothing, even constructing soft cots to sleep in—not that it helped her sleep.
“I will not let you do to her what you’ve done to me,” Vasso called into the dark.
“Vasso?”
Sera rose from her cot and crossed the tent, reknotting the scarf he'd gifted her around her hair. The moonslight streaked through the tent’s flap, giving her just enough light to see him.
His eyes were squeezed tight, and his hands balled into fists.
Every muscle was taut, as if he were fighting something.
“I don’t care that I’ve defied you. Deal with it,” he gritted through a clenched jaw.
Slowly, she approached him. Sera hated being startled awake, especially if she was in the throes of a nightmare. Leaning beside his cot, she caressed his temple with her finger.
He started talking in his sleep again. “She will not be—”
“Shhh, Vasso, it’s okay.”
His eyes flew open. Bloodred irises pierced her, and then his hand clamped around her throat.
“It’s me!” she choked. “Vasso, it’s me.”
He didn’t see her. No recognition, only rage. His lip curled, snarling, and he stood, pulling her up with him. Her toes no longer touched the grass. Where his fingers gripped, her neck burned like hot iron.
“Vasso,” she choked. The edges of her vision pulsed. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t breathe!
He snarled. Steam radiated from his body, those bloodred eyes bore into hers, and his hand gripped tighter.
You know what to do, her magic said.
Sera let go of his arm and cast out her vatra, weaving eels of darkness from her hand, twisting and writhing around his body. The bands burned into the flesh of his shoulders and across his naked torso, wrapping him, squeezing the air from him.
In an instant, she was on the wet grass within the tent. “Vasso,” she said between coughs, but he didn’t hear her. A rabid animal was all she could think of as he strained against her bonds.
Snik cried out and ran to her side.
“It’s okay,” she said, touching her throat. The goblin pulled on the hem of her clothes, attempting to drag her out of the tent.
“Puti la restca jadna.” Vasso bared his teeth at her. His dark mother language sounded like a curse. He was enthralled, under a spell—something. He wouldn’t do this, not to her.
Sera pulled on that tether deep in her chest, pulled it so tight she wondered if it would snap. As she clenched her hand into a fist, her bonds around Vasso became tighter. Vasso hissed.
“Come back to me.” She didn’t sound herself.
The demon lord snarled. “Te sie moj.”
He had said that before. Outside of Crowpass, right before he said…
Sera took a deep breath, the cool air burning her throat. It had to work.
“Subdina,” she whispered.
Vasso’s head snapped back. He inhaled a deep, gasping breath, then went limp.
“Vasso?” she called to him. He’d stopped fighting at least.
“Forgive me,” he whispered. The demon lord dropped to his knees, his moons-gray eyes searing into her. “Please, Seraphina, forgive me.” He lifted his hands to touch her, but then pulled them back.
She didn’t touch him. She wanted to desperately. To run her fingers through his hair, tell him everything was going to be okay. “First, you need to tell me what happened. Who were you talking to?”
His chin quivered. “It’s hard to explain.”
“You’d better figure it out real fast, Vasso. Was someone dreamwalking?”
He crumpled into himself. “I am summoned in my dreams.”
“By who?”
“The one I am bound to.”
On her first day as a keeper, Seraphina had looked into the archives for the oldest tome someone of her rank could pull.
It was riddled with the old language and vague interpretations.
Descriptions of torture, examples of demons’ preferred killing methods all lined the page, but she remembered one about being bound.
Only the most powerful could bind another to themselves.
The texts stated that the practice was barbaric and had been outlawed by the demon king tens of thousands of years ago. But here in front of her, this beautiful broken man… Sera lifted his chin, hoping she’d read a lie in the lines of his face.
There was only anguish.
“Who?” She’d kill them. With her own two hands, she would break their bones and set them alight. He should be bound to no one.
He is fated to you.
“I cannot say.” A single tear slid down his cheek. “Please, Seraphina, forgive me.” He kissed the back of her hand.
“Are you a danger to me?” she asked. She knew the answer: They’d be each other’s greatest love or their downfall. It was carved into her heart, into the tether that bound them together. He was as much a danger to her as she was to him. Sera swiped her thumb along the scar she had given him.
He didn’t answer.
“I forgive you,” she said.
He stood, took her hand in his, and pulled her outside into the moonslight. Ever so gently, he lifted her chin to see the damage he’d done. Vasso cursed. “Can I heal you?”
“That’d be wonderful,” she said. Her throat was swelling, and each word felt like a blade.
Vasso lowered his lips and kissed every fingerprint he’d left. Sera’s skin broke out in goose bumps. Soothing warmth spread through her, easing the bruised muscle. His lips trailed to her jaw, to her temple, then to her forehead.
“You didn’t use your mouth when you healed Al,” she said.
He smiled against her brow. “The Mesar is nowhere near as beautiful as you.”
“Such a charmer.”
He snorted. “You should go back to bed.”
Snik whined in agreement from the flap of the tent.
“What about you?”
“I’m going to walk. Check on Ponic and Navine, I’ll see you in the morning.”
She understood the need to get away, to work off whatever internal fight he was having with either himself or his bonded. Moons, this was so much worse than she’d thought. She’d made not one bargain but two with him, and what did that mean if she broke it? Were there proxy bonds?
What she wouldn’t give for Galene and the library right about now.
“Okay,” she said.
Snuggled back in her cot, she watched Vasso through the gap between the panels of the tent. He must have thought she couldn’t see him, for he fisted his hands and flexed every muscle in his back, neck, and arms. Steam rose from his skin, but before she could see any more, he walked away.
They rode hard that morning. Vasso stayed silent about what happened last night. He was being summoned and bound, but by whom? The ceasefire had ended. It was surprising that a seemingly very powerful demon lord was gallivanting on the surface instead of being below with generals.
Sera had a sneaking suspicion it had to do with her.
Off the bank of a wide river with harsh terrain on the opposite side, Vasso stopped Ponic. “We’ll camp here for the evening.”
Sera’s thighs ached. Navine was a good horse, attentive and calm. It didn’t matter, though. Sera wasn’t used to hours on horseback.
“Go on, Snik,” she said, letting the goblin drop to the ground and scamper into the woods.
“You’re next,” Vasso said, holding out his hands.
She let him take her, grateful she didn’t need to rely on her own legs to dismount. His hands gripping her waist sent a rush through her, which radiated from where his thumb met a sliver of skin. Vasso’s nostrils flared.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“It seems that despite my healing last night, you still bruised.”
She touched her neck. “Well, it feels fine.” Vasso began to walk away, and Sera reached out, wrapping her hand around the brand she had given him. “Don’t blame yourself for this. I know what it’s like being stuck in a nightmare. I shouldn’t have tried to wake you.”
“You shouldn’t be having nightmares.”
Sera shrugged. “It’s been a stressful few months.
” A warm breeze came from the south. The smell of brine was in the air, and it made her heart clench.
Home, it was the scent of home. Gone was the dense forest that surrounded the Lanac Mountains.
Across the wide river, east of the mountains, was a barren landscape of sand and black rock.
“Does it talk to you?” he asked.
“My magic? Sometimes.”
Vasso rubbed his hand over his mouth.
“I just figured that was part of it. Is that the Deadlands?” she asked.
“The edge of them, yes.” In a few flicks of his wrist, the tent was erected. “We need to talk.”
“About?”
“I don’t want to bring you to Gehenna.”
Thump.
Her heart pounded.
Thump.
A rush of blood ran through her, and she lifted the lid off her well of power. “What do you mean you don’t want to bring me to Gehenna?” She pointed to her brand peeking out from underneath his rolled sleeve. “We made a bargain.”
“And I’ll happily be indebted to you.” There was a softness to him in the sinking sun, more than she’d ever seen while in the manor. It enraged her.
She didn’t need to be coddled. She had power, and if last night was any indication, she was getting damn good at controlling it.
So much had already gotten in the way, and she was so close.
The Deadlands were right across the river.
“You don’t get to decide when this bargain is called in… I do. You’re taking me.”
“Subdina.” He stepped toward her.
“Stop calling me that!” Sera shot her magic out, lassoing his foot and yanking him high above her head.
He hung upside down in her volatile darkness, face level with hers.
“I have a job to do. I have to get Nora out of the underworld.” Her darkness snapped inside her, and this unrelenting hate bubbled, all aimed at him.
“She could be hurt! Rotting in some cage!”
“She’s not,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“Put me down and I’ll tell you.”
She dropped him. She didn’t care that the wind had been knocked out of him or that he needed to lie there for a second to catch his breath. “Speak,” she said.
Vasso coughed. “I made… inquires.”
“You had information about Nora this entire time and didn’t tell me?” Flames surged to her palms. Her mist rolled off her in a fury. She was so dangerously close to setting him on fire.
Try.
“Who would you have believed? Me, or Ophelia pulling threads?”
Sera screamed and pounced on him. Vasso grunted, tumbling backward. She aimed for his cheek with her fist, but before she could make contact, he blocked, curled forward, and twisted.
Her breath came in desperate pants. How dare he? After everything they shared, he must have known how worried she’d been about Nora.
Vasso pinned her wrists to the ground, sinking his hips into hers.
She burned.
“Will you calm down?” His voice was low, and he was fucking smiling.
Sera fought to pull her wrists from his grip.
“You need to calm down. Your eyes—”
“I don’t care about how beautiful my eyes are. I want to fucking throttle you.” She bucked her hips underneath him, and he smirked. Rotating her fingers, she flung out two claws, aiming for his sides to push him off her.
“No—” He cast his magic over both of them, blocking hers from hitting its mark. Sera’s rage turned to something primal and hot as their magic touched. “Now, if you’d calm down, I would tell you that your eyes right now are wholly black.”
She stopped moving, and he pressed his hips harder into hers. “What do you mean they’re black?”
“They’re black, even the veins surrounding them.”
One more thing she had to figure out. Wonderful. “Get off me.”
“Not until you calm down and your eyes go back to normal.”
Every pant had her chest rubbing against his. His darkness shrouded them from the outside world. “I’m fine,” she said, taking in a deep breath.
“Are you sure you won’t attack me again?” Vasso’s question hinted at humor. She could feel his heart pounding in his chest, but his lips… She couldn’t look away. Nor quench the urge to pull the lower one into her mouth and bite.
Sera nodded. He inspected her eyes, and when he seemed satisfied, he lifted himself off her.
It wasn’t wise, what she did next. And maybe she was a bit impulsive, but as soon as he was off her, she threw an onslaught of magic at him, launching him ten feet into the air.
Before she could get on both feet, he threw his darkness out and ripped her to him.
“Let me go,” she gritted.
Vasso threw her over his shoulder as if she were a sack of grain.
Sera punched and kicked, but he didn’t flinch once. The grass beneath his boots changed to dirt, then rock, then pebbles. “Where are you taking me?”
“To cool you off.”
She was falling, then the river engulfed her.