Chapter 41

ChapterForty-One

He’d found it.

Since Selene wouldn’t let him stay in their bedroom with her—a thorn in his side that he refused to think too much about—he’d dedicated too much time to his library. And as he was certain he would, he found the counter curse.

Or, in a sense, a way to get them both out of this predicament.

“Affection,” he called out, his voice shaking with excitement. “Come here. I need you to tell me you see the same thing I see.”

The spirit floated over the floor, even larger today than before. It was now almost up to his shoulder, although it had forgone the human visage. Today, it was merely a column of light. No features. No face. Just light that glided over the floor toward him. “What is it?”

“I think...” He ran a hand down his face and then shook his head. “Just read it. Please.”

The spirit hovered over his shoulder and read through the tome. It was in a very ancient language, one that only the spirits knew how to read at this point. Humans had long lost their old languages, and this was from a time when they remembered that spirits existed.

“You can pull the curse out of her?” Affection asked. “I didn’t know we could do that.”

“Spirits can reach into parts of this realm that humans cannot. Apparently sorceresses are known to live in between the realm of mortals and spirits. Their magic is from that realm, stolen from us.” He thudded a hand to his chest, and stood up from his desk with the book splayed open in one hand. “If I can reach into that realm and grasp whatever curse remains in that area, which it should still be, then I can rip it out of her.”

“Wouldn’t that have the chance of hurting her?”

“Perhaps. But it is a survivable wound. At least, that’s the thought.” It didn’t say much about what would happen if he tore a curse out of a mortal. But it had been done.

This journal was from another spirit who had taken mortal form. A spirit who had wandered the kingdoms so that it too could experience the world that only mortals had experienced. Though it had not wanted to become anyone other than a passing figure in their lives, it had seen much and grown stronger with each passing day.

“What kind of spirit was it?” Affection asked, its voice grave with the question. “Perhaps it is a spirit of deception and we should ignore the tome.”

“It was a spirit of delight,” he whispered. “All it wanted was to experience the mortal realm and to give them more of that emotion. It appears that it was in a traveling show. It created magic for the mortals to watch and it had come upon a man dying from a curse that had been laid on him by a simple hedge witch. It pulled the curse out of him and created a blackened spot on the land that would never grow.”

“A black spot?” Affection’s column of light shuddered. “I have seen none of those in this kingdom, Lust. It’s too great a risk.”

And yet, they had waited for too long already.

He hadn’t seen her in two days, and he feared that was because she didn’t want him to see her. The curse could already be wasting her flesh from her bones. She could be weak and in bed, just as Lara claimed she was.

The only person Selene would let in her room was Lara, and that was suspicious enough. The other woman had never been a friend to his sorceress, and he’d grown tired of waiting.

“It’s a risk we have to take,” he muttered. “If we don’t do something, then we’re just waiting for her to die. I have to tell her.”

“Tell her what?” The doors to the library burst open and Greed strode in with one of his personal guards. The other big one was missing. “Are you talking about your little captive in your room?”

“She’s not a captive.” Lust waved the book at Greed. “I’ve found it.”

“Found what?” His brother meandered through the library, seeking out the plate of food that had gone largely untouched all morning. He picked out a fluffy pastry and broke it apart in his hands. The flakes drifted down on top of the thick layer of pages that littered the floor.

“The way to break her curse. We can rip into the realm where that curse exists. If I pull it out of her and force it to exist here, in the mortal realm, then it will only affect whatever I place it on. Earth. Stone. Whatever can be destroyed other than her.”

Greed popped a piece of the pastry in his mouth and loudly chewed. “The curse already exists in the mortal realm. You said she’s dying.”

“But that’s energy that is being sucked out of her, not a malady that can be cured with potions or... bindings...” He growled. “Why am I explaining this to you? This will work. And now I’m wasting time.”

Greed nodded at his remaining guard and she stood in front of the door with her arms crossed over her chest. As if that would stop him. As though she could force a demon king to remain in a room if he didn’t want to remain there.

Lifting a brow, he eyed his brother. “What’s this, then?”

“Are you sure you want to save her?”

“It’s never been a question.”

“I want to know why.” Greed dropped half of the pastry back onto the tray and wiped his hands on his thighs. “She’s a mortal. She’s going to die anyway, maybe not now, but certainly in fifty years. A drop of rainwater in a giant lake of our lives. That’s how long she’s going to last. Why prolong the inevitable?”

The thought had crossed his mind, but he refused to think about it. She would die someday, and he would have to watch her die. But even then, he would fight for a few more days, a few more hours, a few more seconds just to stare into those night sky eyes.

“She’s mine,” he growled. “And I will not give her up.”

“That’s not a good enough answer.”

“It is the only answer you will get from me!” Lust’s voice rang throughout the library. “Now get out of my way, Greed. I don’t want to kill your guard and I don’t want to fight you because you remember as well as I what happened the last time we battled.”

It was long and bloody, but Lust had won. Greed liked to think he had honed his body with centuries of battle, but Lust had one thing that his brother would never have.

Intelligence.

Greed tilted his head back and laughed. “Oh, brother, you think that five hundred years has not taught me a few tricks? No, I’m not going to fight you. But I am going to caution you against madness.”

“It is not madness that compels me to save her, brother.”

Greed’s second guard joined the other. The dark look in his eyes caught on Greed’s, before the man gave a soft nod.

What message was that? What game did his brother play? He would save her. Lust was going to piece her back together, and then she would stay in his arms until the very last moment of her breath. That was how this would end, no matter what Greed tried to do.

But then his brother snapped his fingers in Lust’s face, drawing his attention back to Greed. “Can you not even give a name to what compels you?”

“It needs no name. She is mine, that is enough.”

“That’s not what she told me.” Greed usually had a look of disgust on his face or one of desire for something that he could not have. But right now, that expression had softened into something that looked far too close to envy. “She begged me, you know. I never thought I’d see a woman like that so willing to get on her knees if that was what it took. All because she claims to love you.”

Love? Anger had flared at the thought of her begging anyone but Lust for anything, but then he heard that word and it rocked through his chest.

She loved him?

No one loved him. They lusted for him. They thought he was handsome or beautiful and they wanted to put their mouth on him. Or they wanted him inside them or around them, just to know what it felt like. But no one loved him.

Until her.

Breath caught in his lungs. He reached for the back of a chair and braced himself on it because if he didn’t, he was afraid he’d fall over. “She said what?”

“That she loves you. And that if she didn’t run, then she would never leave. And you would be forced to watch her die rather than knowing she was alive and just not with you.” Greed’s mouth twisted in disappointment. “I’ll admit, we both should have had more faith in you. I should have given you more time, but if you’d seen her, Lust, you would have done the same thing I did.”

He couldn’t quite keep up with his brother’s words. “What are you saying?”

“I let her go.” Greed met his gaze head on, and apology in his own. “She wanted to run, and she deserved to make that decision for herself. I sent my guard with her to make sure she got there safely. She said the High Sorceress would cast pity on her, and even if that meant she would be a slave for the rest of her life, at least you would not carry the guilt of her death on your shoulders. It was my mistake, but I do not regret making it.”

The words barely registered. All he heard was that she was gone. His brother had let her go. She was no longer in his castle, under his protection, with a curse raging through her body that would destroy her from the inside out.

Selene hadn’t trusted him to fix this. She’d gone back to her mother, the woman who had put them both in this mess. She had decided that Minerva was more likely to save her than him.

A blast of power surged out of him, thundering through the castle and sending every person in the room to their knees. It wasn’t just lust that raged out of him. It was so much more than he’d ever had before.

The power he’d been siphoning off Selene felt different, but maybe it wasn’t only the power that was different. It was him.

He felt his body warping and stretching and changing like he hadn’t felt since they’d taken mortal form for the first time.

Memories flickered behind his eyes as another wave of power shoved everyone closer to the floor. Forgotten memories that none of them had remembered considering how embarrassing and heartrending they were.

They hadn’t become kings because any mortal wanted them to be. No human wanted to see a spirit on the throne and even then, the mortals had feared the brothers that came to each kingdom. Their crusade had lost a soldier every time they devoured a floating isle as their own.

He remembered now.

He and his brothers were not mortal, then. They were monsters, and they had the power of the spirit world at their fingertips.

Fingers like his own. He lifted his hand and watched as it grew and curled into dark claws. His hands and forearms turned nearly black, so dark the purple sheen on them looked like an oil slick. It stretched up his arms, reaching for his shoulders, which were much larger than moments before.

A spike of pain raced through his skull as his horns grew larger, more massive, longer and more deadly than they had been in ages.

And suddenly he remembered where the name demon kings had come from.

They were demons in that time. They were villains who devoured all who stood before them and fought. He remembered the blood coating his claws as he plunged his hand into the hearts of the wicked and those who would not bend.

He remembered the screams as they ran from him. His brothers at his side, all of them equally terrifying and monstrous and horrible. They had ravaged these floating isles, stomping them into the dirt beneath their feet as people screamed from inside their graves.

They had destroyed everything.

And then this battle form had receded, and they had fixed all that they had broken. Each of his brothers. All of them lingering in their kingdoms until there was but one left. Wrath. The beast had stood on his own to destroy a kingdom beneath their feet, who was the only one that kept the behemoth in the darkness at bay.

He stretched his hands, feeling those large claws clink as they touched the darkened plates that protected him from any attack. His brother looked so small now.

“You let her go,” he snarled, his voice so deep that he barely recognized it. “Where?”

“The Tower.” Greed bowed his head, showing his brother his neck as though Lust had turned into a wolf that desired prey. “She is safely there, and still alive.”

“She will not be for long if Minerva has her way of it.” His eyes found the guard who had taken her there, and he felt his lips peel away from his teeth in a snarl. “You will give that one to me.”

“No,” Greed replied.

“I will take his heart.”

“You will not.” Greed’s voice was firm, though it shook slightly. “We have not taken battle form in years, brother. What has this woman done to you?”

He opened his mouth to unleash all his rage upon his brother. Selene had done nothing to him, but the world had done so much to her. And now his own brother had sent her to her death. Alone. She would be alone when she died and that—

He felt a tendril in his chest snap. Staggering back, he pressed a clawed hand to his heart because he had no idea what it was.

Until the rush of nothing filled him.

That thread inside him, which had connected Selene and him together, had broken. Like someone had snipped it with scissors, she was gone.

And with that, every part of him that remained aware of who he was or what he was doing disappeared. He threw his head back in a roar that shook the castle’s foundation, and then he was moving. Running. Racing faster than light itself to get to her because he could not feel her.

His heart thudded in his chest, the beat of it a lonely call. She couldn’t be dead. Not yet.

Or he would bring that Tower to the ground, stone by bloody stone.