flame that marked Bram’s skin. Within the span of a day, they had grown, spreading down his abdomen. She forced her gaze up. “He sensed the power within you, within all of you. He coveted that power, and lured you to him.”
Bram made a soft, scoffing noise. “We had titles. Leo had wealth. But we spent our hours chasing diversions and pleasure. Nothing powerful about any of us.”
“Your power was latent, unused, but it was there. It dwells within you now.” She felt it coursing through her like lightning, and her form glowed brighter. “Such a banquet of strength—the Dark One couldn’t resist.”
“And we were the fools who blundered right into his trap.” Then he stared right at her, and the shadows within the bed couldn’t hide the hard, sharp blue of his eyes. “What’s your excuse?”
“No excuse,” she answered. “What I did, I did with full knowledge. I spent months ferreting out the secret of how to call upon the Dark One. Burned through amphoras of lamp oil as I stayed up late into the night, pouring over ancient texts in the temple libraries. I searched this wild land of Britannia to find the power I’d need to perform the summoning. I found what I was looking for in an Indian slave and a Druid priestess. They became my prisoners, and I understood full well what I intended to do with them. I combined spells of Hecate with the primitive power I uncovered here to steal the women’s magic. There was no blundering.” She shook her head. “Not at all.”
“A calculated strategy. The same way an officer plans his attack.”
“I’d have made a good soldier. Had I been born male.”
He lifted a brow. “If you’d wanted to become a soldier, you would’ve done so. Sex had nothing to do with it.”
She almost smiled. Already he knew her better than any of her kin. They had been statesmen, her family, but without real ambition to better the Empire. Other families dedicated themselves to the shaping of Rome. Not her father, her uncles and brothers. Content with their roles as minor players, they couldn’t understand her ambition.
“Rome’s first female general,” she mused. “Perhaps. Though Roman people worshipped in temples, they did not believe in magic. It was hidden from the eyes of ordinary mortals. I was ever careful to keep my power veiled. Even so, wielded with cunning, magic had always been my weapon of choice, not the sword.”
“That’s why you summoned the Devil. To gain more magic, more power.”
“Would it surprise you to learn that once, my motives had been altruistic?” At his skeptical look, she amended, “Not altruistic, perchance, but not entirely selfish, either. I loved Rome. She was a shambling mess, beset by strife, but I thought somehow I might make it better. For its citizens, for the peace of its empire. Stabilize it, in a fashion.”
“Lofty aspirations.”
“I’ve never been lacking in determination. If there’s something I want, nothing keeps me from pursuing it.”
“So I’ve learned,” he said, dry.
“Everyone learns it, sooner or later.” To her family, she’d been an enigma, a wolf amongst lapdogs. “That’s why I journeyed from Rome all the way to these distant shores. There was only so much I could learn at home— and Britannia was rich with untapped magic. I had gained enough power to find new sources, and track it to this land. Yet this knowledge was mine alone.”
She remembered her first steps off the ship, how power seemed to flow in the very water and course just beneath the surface of earth. The forests of sycamore and chestnut and oak sang with magic, and that song repeated in her blood.
Half to herself, she murmured, “There are people who, when they see a beautiful bird in flight, simply watch its progress across the sky, delighting in the creature for its living energy, its liberty. But there are others who catch the bird. They cage it, clip its wings so it can’t fly away. They must possess it, revel in owning something that was never meant to be owned.”
“You caged it,” he said, “the magic you found here.”
“My intent had been so different. I wanted to claim just a little, just enough to make me stronger so I might do more to make Rome stronger. But . . . I couldn’t stop at just a little. I took as much as I could. With spells I had learned in Rome, I stole magic from every source I could find. Stripped it from each sacred stone, wrung it from the holy lakes and chopped it from the hallowed forests.” Hot shame choked her words, as she recalled with cutting clarity her desecration of shrines and theft of revered objects—a stone crudely carved into the likeness of a goddess, an iron dagger.
She forced herself to continue. “My ambition to help Rome crumbled away. I wanted only to help myself. The more power I gained, the more I desired. My soul blackened and charred. What did I care? Mine was a hunger that couldn’t be sated. Then . . . a revelation. If it was power I wanted, where best to find it? None other than its origin.”
“The Devil.”
“That wasn’t the name I knew him by, but yes. How clever I thought I was, discovering the secret to summoning him, opening the door between his realm and ours.” She forced out a brittle laugh. “Whenever we think ourselves clever, it’s a clear sign that we’re actually being fools.”
The bedclothes rustled as Bram shifted. “But you learned your mistake. I saw it, felt it, in my dream. My dream of your past.”
Sharing memories felt impossibly intimate, another’s presence in the carefully guarded palace of her psyche. She didn’t know if she liked the sensation. But she’d had the same access to his thoughts, his past, lacing tighter the connection between them—whether they wanted it or not.
“Too late,” she said. “I learned it too late. The Dark One gave me just what I wanted—I was drunk with power. Knowing I would serve him well, he directed his ambition to the rest of the mortal realm. So exciting to me, seeing how wild men and women truly were at heart. But it degenerated. Mobs, madness. Death. It spread like a wind-borne fever, to the walls of Londinium and beyond. I was angry, sick.”
She wanted to cover her face, but wouldn’t allow herself the escape. Unblinking, she met Bram’s gaze. “I had brought the Dark One to this realm, and I had to send him away again.”
“At the cost of your own life.”
“The price of wisdom is very dear.” She would go on paying it for eternity.
Bram grunted. “All the lecturing, all the berating and reprimands to turn from the path of wickedness, you dared all this, and yet it was
She did not flinch at the recrimination that hardened his voice. “Which means it’s up to
“Couldn’t you have been content with a few little spells? Straw into gold or men into pigs?”
“Men smell better than pigs. Marginally.”
He only stared at her.
She exhaled. “No. I couldn’t be content. Greedy, just as you said. But that’s how sin works—the more we consume, the hungrier we become, until we devour ourselves.”
“Oh,” he muttered, “I know a lot about sin.”
Images from his past tumbled through her mind, scenes of unbridled dissipation and debauchery. If she still possessed a body, such visions would have heated her, the blood coursing through her becoming thick and hot. Yet she had only her recollection of fevered, shocked arousal to stir her. He had applied himself to licentiousness with the same single-minded purpose he had toward combat. In both, he was an expert.
“We’re of a kind,” she said softly, “you and I. Left to our own devices, we’re wicked creatures indeed. But it wasn’t always so.”
After a long moment, he answered, “Not always.”
She had felt the bond he’d shared with the other Hellraisers. Such friendship and trust was alien to her, but the echoes of his loss reverberated through her own insubstantial body.
“Did it frighten you?” he asked in the darkness. “Knowing that you’d have to sacrifice your life?”
“Most grievously.” She had not gone into battle with the Dark One with this knowledge, but as she had fought, it became clear that in order to put an end to his destruction, those moments would be her last. “The pleasures of life were sweet. There was so much left undone, so much I hadn’t experienced. Sensations I wanted to have again. All of it would be lost. Yet what choice did I have? If I clung to life, the world would become a hell, and then life wouldn’t be worth living anyway.”
