hair. His mother had already used magic to clean her obvious wounds and remove Adam’s blood. “I know. Even though I didn’t appreciate it at the time, you and grandmother picked well for me.”
“We knew our disapproval of the match would make you want it more fiercely.” She smiled and briefly patted his arm. “You must both come and visit us, often.”
“If that is your wish, and if Ella agrees.” He hesitated. “You no longer require my presence here in Otherworld?”
“I think you deserve a better life, don’t you?”
Ella muttered something, and Vadim’s gaze shot back to her. “Mother,
As he watched, her face started to dissolve, the black hair and pale skin receding to reveal her usual fair hair and disgruntled features.
“How the hell did that happen?”
“Adam is dead. Perhaps his powers died with him.”
“I bloody hope so, after all that effort.” Ella mumbled.
“Soul Sucker.” Vadim took her in his arms and sat her in his lap. She leaned against his chest as if she belonged there. “You are alive.”
“Of course I am. I told you that you needed me, didn’t I?”
He drew her even closer against him. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“What, killed that monster?”
“You didn’t even know if he could die.”
“I was pretty sure that if the knife would work on you, it would work on anyone.”
“But it was my responsibility, not yours.”
“You aren’t just Death Bringer anymore, remember?” She put her hand on his cheek. “Don’t you think you’ve suffered enough?”
He swallowed hard as she held his gaze. Had anyone ever done that for him before? Taken on his burden? Killed for him? He didn’t think so.
He slowly exhaled. “I do not have the words to thank you.”
“That’s okay. I have that problem a lot.” She kissed his mouth. “How about we call it even?”
He wrapped his arms around her, buried his face in her neck and breathed in the strangely reassuring scents of Pop-Tarts and bubblegum.
“What’s going to happen now?”
She was already wriggling to get free and move on. With a sigh he released her.
“My mother is still insisting that my father hang for his part in this matter. So far, she hasn’t asked me to administer the final blow, but I’m sure it’s coming.”
“Can we leave?”
“Soon, hopefully. There are a few things I need to take care of here.” He hesitated. “Although obviously, you can leave whenever you want.”
She rubbed her left shoulder and looked away from him. “I’m okay to tag along with you for a while. This is still an open SBLE investigation, you know.”
He let her scramble out of his lap and went to stand himself.
“Hey, what about your arm? You’re bleeding.”
In his concern for her he’d totally forgotten about the wounds he’d suffered during the fight. “I’m fine. I should be able to fix it myself, now all the sect members are dead.”
“I could do it for you.”
“It’s okay, I think I can handle it.”
“You’re just worried I’ll blow your arm off.”
“Having seen the way you use my power, it had crossed my mind.” He let his palm hover over the wound and said the necessary words. Once the head of the arrow came free, the pain quickly eased. He wished it were that easy to control the pain in his heart.
“Your magic is extremely hard to manage. I completely blew up a troll the first time I used it.”
“That was probably quite messy.” He glanced over to where the arena had been and saw that someone had already tidied everything away. The room looked perfect and far removed from the violence that had erupted earlier and taken four lives...
“What’s wrong?”
“I was wondering where they’d put the bodies.”
“Let’s go and find out.”
She headed for the huge doors, and he followed her as meekly as a lamb.
Ella tried not to look up as Vadim walked alongside her, but he was being rather too quiet for her liking. Had she really offended him by stepping up and slaying Adam instead of letting him do it?
“Are you still mad at me for killing Adam?”
“No.”
He kept walking. It bugged her that she had to take the occasional skip to keep up.
“That’s it?”
“You did what was necessary, and for that you have my gratitude.”
“Oh. That’s okay, then.”
Maybe her emotional attachment to him had misled her into thinking he was more vulnerable than he truly was. He might only want to see the bodies to make sure his brother really was dead this time. She paused at the door to the trophy room, which stood open, the guards dismissed. Hopefully there were no black dragons lurking around either.
“Can we go and look in here?”
“Of course.”
He waited for her to walk past him into the vast room.
“I thought most of this stuff would’ve disappeared with the death of the sect.”
Vadim turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. “I suspect there are still other members. We just don’t know about them yet.”
“Good point.” She carried on through the room, heading for the back wall.
“What are you looking for?”
“My face.” She sighed. “I’m going to kind of miss it, and then there’s all that hassle of getting a new driver’s license, passport...”
“Ella—”
“Hey!” She spotted Brad Dailey’s face. “It worked!” She looked over her shoulder at Vadim. “Was Ciaran a blond version of you?”
“Yes.”
“I hoped so.” She whistled. “It was a bit of a risk, but I’m so glad I went for it.”
“For what?”
There was a hint of impatience back in his voice, which made her feel much happier. She moved out of the way so that he could see the three faces on the gold plinths.
“Adam’s replaced you.” Vadim said slowly. “Did you expect that to happen?”
“Well, I thought it might work. The only thing is, what happened to my face? I hope I didn’t end up on your brother. We definitely do need to check out those bodies.”
He caught her hand. “You chose to kill him because you
“Yeah, I guessed there needed to be a group of three to spring the spell, and as the Fae Royal thing wasn’t going to happen and Brad and Ms. Phelps were already dead, I reckoned Adam needed one more victim. I still didn’t get my face back, but it did stop him adding me to his list of trophies.” She shrugged. “I bet he didn’t think he’d be the one doing the dying this time.”
“Why didn’t you share this theory with me?”
He was towering over her now, his beautiful blue eyes narrowed.
“I wasn’t quite sure which configuration was going to work. Originally I thought he wanted you, Nia and your
