“Maybe you should have thought of that before your bickering allowed demons to massacre them,” Astrid snarled.
Walter sucked in a breath as though Astrid had struck him. Every Nephilim within earshot tensed. “How dare you?” Chanelle rasped.
“Save it,” Astrid bit back.
The older Nephilim man approached Chanelle. He reached up and tilted her chin to inspect the damage to her face. “Are you alright, my lady?” he asked. I half expected him to bow and kiss her feet.
“As fun as this is,” I said, “I have an appointment to watch some grass growing. So hand over the necklace pronto.”
When I advanced, I was greeted with five broadswords in my face. After the ordeal I’d been through with Gaia, I was getting a tad sick of supernaturals attempting to intimidate me.
“Oh, you want to play mine’s bigger than yours?” My eyelids fluttered. The circle shimmered into life around me, bathing the bridge in a luminescent blue-and-black glow. Miles away, my demon blade hummed under my bed. I was just about to utter the command to retrieve it when a pulse of green light appeared to my left.
“Blue,” Kai said. His hand closed around my wrist. Heat gathered where my demon blade should have appeared. I glanced down to find the green strands of his angelfire intertwined with my magic, disrupting my command. I yanked out of his hold and stepped closer to Astrid.
“Oh good,” I said. “The idiot cavalry is here.” I tugged Astrid’s sleeve. “Let’s go home.”
“Wait,” Kai said. “Let me explain.”
If I had the demon blade with me, I would have lobbed it at his head. “No need. I think I get the gist of it.”
Of course that made him more insistent. Astrid slapped his hand away when he tried to grab me again. “She said she wants to go home.”
He stopped short and peered at her as though seeing her for the first time. His gaze flicked between us and then narrowed. The green turned from a jewelled lushness into the dark forest shade that was synonymous with his anger. That makes two of us, buddy.
His nostrils flared, but when he spoke, his tone was measured. “I’m not fourteen anymore, Astrid,” he said. “Things are different.” A fraught look passed between them like the opening of an old wound.
“It wouldn’t matter if you were forty.” Her head jerked in Chanelle’s direction. “I hit her. And I’d think nothing of doing it again.”
Astrid’s lips tugged into a menacing grimace. Silver light shimmered around her. She feigned a lunge towards Chanelle. Kai moved instinctively to intercept her. Physically, they barely budged. If I hadn’t been watching them so intently, I would have completely missed their subtle movements. As it was, I catalogued the flare of wariness in Kai’s eyes and the way his muscles contracted, ready to protect Chanelle.
Something sharp clawed at my throat.
“I guess old habits are very hard to break. Even for Malachi Pendragon,” Astrid said. The brightness around her died, taking with it all the warmth in my body.
He seemed to sense my withdrawal. “It’s not what you think, Blue.”
“Shut up.” I turned my back to him.
“It’s exactly what you think,” Chanelle countered.
“Nelle,” Kai said. “Don’t push it.”
“Why not?” Chanelle said. She weaved her way through the wall of Nephilim to stand a few feet in front of him. I didn’t think Kai even noticed how he turned his shoulder so that there would be an obstruction between her and Astrid.
“You made a promise to me long before you even met her,” Chanelle said. She clutched at her elbows in a self-soothing gesture that made acid drip from my corroding heart into my gut.
“I was a grieving child,” Kai said. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“Be that as it may,” Salt-and-Pepper Nephilim said, “a blood vow was made.”
“I don’t care if I made a death pact with a demon.”
Chanelle’s face crumpled. The urge to reach out and slap her was strong. But not as strong as the urge to put my fist in Kai’s face. He braced his palms on Chanelle’s shoulders.
“You know why this would never work,” he told her. “I thought we settled this already.”
She made a weak effort to throw him off. After a moment, she lifted her face to look into his. I almost dry-retched. “You never even gave us a chance. All you cared about was fighting. I only ever saw the worst parts of you. That’s why I had to leave. It wasn’t because I stopped loving you. Why would you choose this devil-born human over –”
“Stop.”
He dropped his arms and turned to me. I stepped away until I collided with Astrid. The look on my face must have said it all because Kai’s expression became stricken. A mere fortnight ago he’d told me he didn’t care that I had Lucifer’s blood running through me. The whole time he knew he was meant to be bonded to Chanelle.
I blinked slowly. In my mind I saw the ghosts of foster families past. Broken people in broken relationships who had taken me on for the government paycheck. Usually there were third parties involved. And now Kai had made me the other woman.
“Blue –”
“My name is Alessia.” Icicles frosted my voice. His eyes widened. “Yes or no, you’re meant to bond with her?” I couldn’t even say her name.
He ran his hand roughly through his hair. “It’s not that simp –”
“Yes or no!”
The world flickered around me. The Ley dimension that had become a second reality shimmered across my vision. A pulse of bone magic rippled across the bridge. The ground shifted under our feet. I curled my hands. My teeth were gritted so hard I would feel the strain for another week. I inhaled agonisingly slowly and dragged the power back. Right on cue, a fleet of guards appeared in a circle around us.
When everything solidified once more, my limbs felt heavy. As did the sound of my voice. “Yes or no.”
He imitated stone. A
