Chapter 4

Chapter Four

He watched quietly from his shadowed corner as Petra closed the door to her wood-paneled office. It was fascinating, seeing her set aside a mask.

Even after handling the fiasco he’d created, Petra Zaskodna, High Priestess of Glory’s Temple, stood tall and regal… right up until the door clicked into place. Then she became something else. Something a little smaller, a little dimmer, as her shoulders rounded and her forehead dropped against the polished wood.

She reminded him a bit of a dove sitting peacefully on a ledge, unaware that a cat lurked just behind her.

Silas wanted to see her wings flap a little.

“D’you know that your office is bugged?”

He couldn’t help but smile at the way she jumped. Flap-flap. Even the big blue eyes she turned in his direction reminded him of a pretty bird.

To her credit, she didn’t do what most normal people did when they found him lurking in a place he ought not to be. Rather than immediately demand to know what he was doing there — a question no good criminal ever answered, surely — Petra drew herself up and watched him silently for several seconds.

“You must be mistaken,” she answered in a tone that made it obvious she did not, in fact, think he was mistaken.

Silas’s cheek cramped. It did that the previous night, too. It was a result of smiling so much, but it was hard not to grin when one held something so very entertaining in the palm of their hand.

She’d drawn up another mask, slightly different from the one she wore behind the altar. This one wasn’t quite as warm. It was still regal, though, like she was a pretty queen staring down her long, sloping nose at a peasant who’d wandered where he shouldn’t.

That was the kind of look that made him want to see her beg.

“There’s no need to worry,” he lied, “I’ve disabled them.”

That, at least, wasn’t a lie. He had disabled the six audio and visual surveillance devices he’d found hidden in her office.

Obviously, she still needed to worry, though, because now she was alone with him.

“You what?” Petra’s face went very blank and disconcertingly pale. “Why would you do that?”

Silas stepped away from the corner to examine her cluttered desk. It was the kind that folded up, allowing its owner to lock everything away when they weren’t using it. Petra hadn’t, though, perhaps because she felt safe with her surveillance, or because she had nothing to hide.

Or, he amended, peering at her stricken expression from beneath his lashes, she knows she’s being watched by someone else and a lock won’t keep her safe.

The desk’s fold-out writing surface was littered with small bits of paper, a sketch pad covered in sigil variations, and an old tablet. He plucked the sketchpad up and examined her work. “D’you want me to leave them on?”

“Yes,” she answered immediately.

Silas turned the sketchpad. He couldn’t make horns or tails out of what she was trying to accomplish with them. Distracted, he asked, “Why?”

“Because disabling them means that the person who put them there will know I know they exist.” The heavy velvet of her robe rustled. The sound of her engaging a lock came next, a moment before her white, soft-soled slippers whispered across the floor. “You shouldn’t even be here.”

He turned the sketchbook the other way. “I go where I want. I disable surveillance equipment when I want. If you have a problem with that, then you should have said something.”

“If I’d known you would show up here, I would have!” Petra snatched the sketchbook out of his hand. Her cheeks had gone a dark pink and her eyes, cornflower blue rather than the golden brown they’d been the night before, glowed with a ring of fire.

He wondered if she knew that the glamour hadn’t been able to suppress that. If she didn’t, then he certainly wasn’t going to tell her.

“What’re those for?” he asked, unbothered by her anger. People got angry at him all the time. “Those sigils aren’t good for any type of spell or ward work I’ve ever seen.”

And he would know. He was one of the best sigilworkers in the world. Maybe the best, if one didn’t count Ruby Goode and a few crotchety old witches in Hong Kong. The only leg up he had on them, of course, was his lack of ethical boundaries. Otherwise they’d kick his ass six ways from Sunday.

“They’re marriage sigils,” she answered, hissing through her teeth like a fierce animal. He liked it when she did that.

Silas shamelessly poked around her desk some more, picking up papers and testing pens before discarding them as haphazardly as he found them. “Useless, you mean.”

Demons didn’t do frivolous displays like ceremonies and useless, nonsense sigils carved into their foreheads to declare ownership over a mate. They just took one. They wrapped their shadows around them, owned them, worshipped them.

If anyone had anything to say about that, then they also probably had a death wish, because nothing, even in his extensive experience, was more dangerous than a demon protecting their mate.

“They aren’t useless. They’re reminders— You know what, I’m not going to debate this with you. What are you doing here?”

“To make our deal, obviously.” He glanced over his shoulder. “D’you want me to turn the mics back on?”

“It’s too late now,” she answered, a grave note of exhaustion in her voice.

He wasn’t stupid enough to actually take them out, but he wanted to see what she’d do if she thought he had. Silas initially suspected that they belonged to her — paranoia was always smart and Petra Zaskodna was, if nothing else, smart — but her distress felt genuine. There were no lies this time.

Petra hadn’t bugged her own office, but she knew someone had.

Silky red curtains partially obscured a small, diamond-paneled window. Silas fingered the material as he watched her set the sketchpad back on the desk. It was so fine as to be almost imperceptible, but a tremor shook her hand.

The smell of fear, faint but sour, pierced the cloud of sunshine and rich incense that filled the air around her. Silas frowned. I don’t like that.

His brother was always telling him he needed to be more conscious of other people’s feelings, but Silas argued that he was plenty conscious. He just didn’t care. That’s why it was an awfully foreign feeling, that pang of dissatisfaction he experienced when that sour scent singed his nose.

“Who bugged your office?”

Petra sighed. “Tell me what you want, Shade.”

Silas flicked the curtain away. Normally he found it funny when clients tried to negotiate with him or withhold information he wanted, but something about her doing it was… annoying.

No matter how much self-reflection his brother or his clan urged him to do, Silas never cared to examine where his impulses came from. His urges were unerringly straight lines. They didn’t weave or tangle or circle around in uncertainty. He had an urge and he acted. Easy. It hadn’t steered him wrong yet. Why fix a system that wasn’t broken?

Those impulses, alongside a childhood promise, had brought him to San Francisco when he’d gotten wind of a suspicious bounty weeks prior to the announcement of the m-generator. They’d brought him to Petra, who unknowingly held the key to fulfilling that promise. Now they urged him to close his fist around the little goddess and hold fast, no matter how hard she squirmed to be free.

Silas canted his head to one side, fascinated by the way light from the window played across her sunshine hair and golden skin. Maybe that was why he wanted to possess her so viscerally. Demons were creatures of the dark, which meant the thing they craved most was a taste of the light.

Or the thought of having a perfect priestess, all sunshine and bite, stooping to ask for his help just made his cock hard.

Bit of both.

When he’d let the silence hang long enough to make the spark of anger reappear in her eyes, he answered, “It really would be better if you just got me into the Tower, you know.”

Solbourne Tower, where the top-secret research and development of the m-generator prototype was planned to take place, was perhaps the only building in the world he couldn’t break into. He’d tried, of course. Too bad the crazy bastard who built it, Thaddeus II, had been as paranoid as he was cruel. The damn skyscraper had wards pressed into every steel girder and panel of triple-reinforced glass.

He could get through eventually, but Silas wasn’t exactly known for his patience. Using a cunning, desperate witch with good connections was much faster. And pleasurable.

Petra’s expression tensed. “I said no.”

Silas clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “So loyal to your sovereign’s mate. Seems a bit silly to me.”

Most loyalties did. He’d never been able to get a good grasp on why people felt the need to cling to one another, especially when it went against their best interest.

“Margot is a friend,” Petra replied, voice tight. “Now drop it.”

Turning her wooden desk chair to face her, Silas plopped into it and spread his legs. He balanced the heel of his boot on the floor and twisted his ankle one way, then the other, his attention drawn to her tiny reflection in the polished leather stretched over the steel toe box. “It’s cute that you think you can order me around. Does that normally work for you?”

“I’m High Priestess. Of course it does.”

“Ah, but you’re a scared High Priestess, aren’t you? Scared enough to beg a monster for help.” He dropped his foot and leaned forward to brace his elbows on his knees. “You’re at my mercy, little goddess. Might be good to remember that.”

The memory of how she’d fought him about the whiskey and how much that enhanced the urge to make her bend rose unbidden, sending a lick of flame down his spine. The way she’d looked up at him when she finally did as she was told… Yes, that was something he planned to repeat.

Silas liked having her at his mercy. A lot.

He was impressed by the way she approached him then, dressed in her service finery but holding herself like a sheathed switchblade, ready to spring at any moment. Petra stalked across the room to stand just between his knees. She looked down the slope of her proud nose with an expression of stark finality when she said, “Listen to me, demon: I don’t have time to play games with you. I’m not negotiating terms. If you don’t want my money, then you can get the fuck out of my office.”

Silas couldn’t help but marvel at her. Tal is going to love her.

His brother had been against Silas’s back-up plan — which, he argued, wasn’t really a back-up when it would lead to the generator eventually. Tal was all for murder and mayhem, but apparently this was a line even he wouldn’t cross. The poor thing simply didn’t have the stomach for it.

In fact, he didn’t have a stomach at all.

But instinct, the straight line of his urges, told Silas he was on the right path. Petra’s abysmal attitude and general lack of good sense only confirmed it. She was perfect.

“Don’t you want to hear my proposal?” he asked, not even trying to keep the laughter out of his voice.

Petra’s lip curled. “No.”

“Too bad.” Silas reached out to run the tip of one claw over the golden embroidery that decorated her white dress. She went stiff as a board, but she didn’t slap his hand away like he expected her to.

Mulling over whether that pleased him or not, Silas told her, “If you can’t get me the generator, then I want you.”

There was a pause and then, with impressive venom, “Absolutely not.”

Silas plucked at a single thread, tugging it ever-so-slightly out of place. “Calm down, little goddess. I only mean your witchbond.”

Another lie.

“…You’re joking.”

“I find most things very funny,” he replied, “but I rarely joke.”

It was a thing of beauty, seeing the stunned look on her face — a face he’d seen splashed across newsreels and in press releases and in the cardstock pamphlet he’d tucked in his pocket just before the first service he’d attended. Weeks later, it was so creased from being opened too many times that he’d had to cut her picture out to preserve it. Now it lived in the breast pocket of his suit jacket.

Silas wanted to lick the shock from her parted lips and savor the taste. It was a shame when the look melted away. Petra’s expression transformed into one of incredulity. He knew that expression well. It was the first one he remembered seeing on his parents’ faces; the ‘ Silas, baby, what have you done?’ look that preceded horror.

His parents and the rest of the Cuttcombe clan were good folks, which was why they tended to look at him like a bomb put together upside down. They couldn’t make sense of him, and they definitely couldn’t disarm him.

“Why would you want that?” Petra’s fingers flexed at her sides. “Do you even realize what that would mean?”

It was a little insulting, the way she kept thinking he didn’t know things. Silas gave her a reproachful look from under the shade of his brows. “’Course I do.”

“But… but a witchbond isn’t something that can be undone. We’d be tied together for life. Why would you ask that of someone you’ve only just met?”

“Strictly speaking, ma’am, I’ve known you for a bit longer than you seem to think.”

Of course he’d done his recon on high and mighty Petra Zaskodna, even before fate had dropped her in his lap so prettily. He wasn’t ashamed to admit his fascination began long before he managed to find a reason for it. All it took was the sound of her throaty voice playing in a thirty-second news clip and he’d been hooked.

The fact that he’d found a justification for his fascination was not really necessary, but it was convenient.

She seemed like the easiest entry point to getting into the Tower, seeing as elves, who controlled the territory and more specifically the skyscraper, were a pain in the ass to manipulate. Not to mention the fact that people in power always had weaknesses to exploit. Petra was no different. In fact, he’d been watching her work with children in a community garden, attacking a clump of weeds with an incongruously grave expression, when he got the meeting request from Rasmus.

He’d felt a pang of annoyance at being pulled away from his prey, but only until he uncovered who he was actually dealing with.

Before she could recover from the revelation that he’d been watching her, Silas continued, “And a witchbond is only as permanent as life is. Who knows? You could put a bolt in my brain tomorrow. Easy fix.”

“If you think I might kill you to be rid of you, why would you want this?”

Petra paused. He liked watching her mind work behind those cornflower eyes. There was an almost visible spark in them when she finally made the connection. “You wanted the generator… and now you want my witchbond because you want power.”

Silas nodded. “Good girl.”

“There are other ways. Other people.”

His smile fell. The way she said other people struck a discordant note in his mind, a strike against the perfect line of his impulse. He didn’t like it. He really didn’t.

“I need a source of magic,” he told her, voice dropping with displeasure. “M-siphons are a hassle, the generator is off-limits and untested, and I have you in the palm of my hand. Why would I use anyone else?”

Not only was Petra a gloriana, the most powerful designation a witch could be born and the equivalent of a walking magical power plant, but she was also too damn tempting to leave for another.

Even if she never let him slake his lust, Silas knew he’d be viciously content with the knowledge that she belonged to him and him alone.

“You’re asking me to put my magic, my life, in your hands.” Petra looked positively queasy at the prospect. Silas could hardly blame her. He doubted he was any witch’s dream bondmate.

“Aren’t you already doing that?” He had his doubts about how serious her problem really was, but she certainly believed the stakes were life and death. He wasn’t above using that belief to his advantage.

Petra looked away. For several long seconds, her attention drifted around the polished wood paneling of the office, as if she might find her answer there rather than sprawled in front of her, waiting, watching. She breathed deeply, once, before the tension in her features eased.

“You’re right,” she answered. “I guess it doesn’t really matter.”

Silas narrowed his eyes. “What doesn’t?”

“What I do with my life.” Petra shook her head slowly, a rhythmic movement that rippled her golden hair. It reminded him of sunlight glancing off the water of the creek that ran behind his parents’ house. So pretty. So unattainable.

“Fine. You can have it.”

His frown deepened. Where’s the fight?

“You’re gonna tie your soul to mine,” he said, skeptical, “and you’re gonna let me filter your magic for you, something essential to keeping you alive for the next two or more centuries. Really.”

It was an unsettling thing, seeing a new mask slip over her face like that. In between one blink and another, Petra was colder, more serene, as she stepped away from him. When she replied, she was all business, as if she hadn’t just been too shocked to speak a moment ago. “Well, it’s not like I have very many options. It is getting to be that time for me, anyway.”

Smoothing her mass of hair over one shoulder, she offered him a cool, practiced smile. “However, I would request one thing: since this is such a big commitment, I can’t agree to it prior to getting what I want. I’m sure you understand.”

Something primal in him, rarely heard from, snapped its jaws at the thought of waiting. She could run, the animal snarled. She could try to get out of it.

Ridiculous, he reasoned. She’ll never escape me.

People had tried before — granted, no one he’d been so keen on keeping alive — but his reach was long, his resources endless, and his ruthlessness… well, that’s what made him so very good at his job.

“You can’t play with me, little goddess,” he warned. Silas stood up from the chair to tower over her, not necessarily because his height was often intimidating, but because he liked crowding her. Being near her. Feeling the heat that rolled off her body like the waves off blacktop in the summer. “You won’t win. I promise you won’t.”

Petra’s half-smile didn’t wane, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Those were blank. Two circles of perfect, empty blue. “That’s where you’re wrong about me, demon.”

“How is that?”

“I’m not playing to win.”

The primal thing went very still. Around the room, deep in the corners where soft sunlight couldn’t reach, shadows unfurled like the seeking arms of the damned. “Who are you afraid of, little goddess?”

“Is it a deal, then?”

Dissatisfaction again. That’s what he felt when she wouldn’t bend, wouldn’t just answer. He hated the feeling and strove never to endure it, which was why he always did exactly what he wanted, when he wanted to.

But unraveling Petra’s secrets, bleeding into the cracks of her defenses, was a campaign of finesse, not hammer blows. That was why it would be so damn satisfying when he eventually got what he wanted.

I always do.

Maybe not right away. Maybe at great cost. Maybe people would die along the way. But Silas always, always got what he wanted.

His shadows, an extension of him and yet independent of him, wove around her delicate ankles, shackling her as he closed the space between them. Petra held perfectly still as he chucked her under the chin. “We have a deal. Your bond for my help. Now…” He pressed the tip of one claw into the cushion of her lower lip, rumbling, “Give me a name.”

Her lips moved, brushing the pad of his thumb. “The Protector of the Gloriae, Antonin Vanderpoel.”