“What are you doing here?”
I turn from the living room window to see Dari leaning against the doorframe. My eyes skate down her long legs, which stretch on for miles. Her bare feet sport red-painted toenails that match her fingernails—a splash of color in this dark world.
“Daemon has her tied up on the bed.” Frowning, she pushes off the doorframe and walks deeper into the room. “Are you sure you don’t want to play?”
My gaze skates past her to the open door and back. Dmitriy’s words have played on my mind ever since we flew back.
“Just be careful, is all. Sleep with your eyes open.”
“Does she seem different to you?”
Dari draws to a halt. “Different? If by different you mean kicking and screaming like a feral animal, then no. Ronan found it highly amusing to secure her wrists to the bed frame while she snarled at him with her teeth on show and glowing, red eyes.
Hands in my pockets, I study her. “Dmitriy said something.”
“Of course he did.” She rolls her eyes and, with a dismissive flick of her wrist, says, “He just wants to get under your skin.”
I’m not so sure about that. Something about the look in his eyes when he said those words picks at my brain like a miner with a chisel. “She’s tied up? Can’t hurt anyone?”
Dari snorts like the thought is absurd. “What is she gonna do? There’s one of her and four of us. Besides, Daemon is so pent up; one wrong move, and he’ll be balls deep in her throat just to shut her up.”
“Nice visual.” I chuckle, rubbing at my neck.
“You want to help us piss her off or not?”
It’s not like I have anything better to do. I’m relieved to have her back and though I’m wary after Dmitriy’s warning, I’m also intrigued by it. Intrigued by the danger she poses with that untamed darkness inside her.
Following Dari upstairs to Daemon’s bedroom, we enter through the door. Aurelia sits near the headboard with her right wrist chained to it and a murderous look on her face.
When she spots me, she narrows her eyes, and the growl in her throat intensifies.
Daemon is seated on the desk chair, looking extremely pleased with himself, while Ronan leans against the back wall with his feet crossed and eyes glued to the phone screen in his hand.
“What did we miss?” Dari asks, walking deeper into the room.
“Not much,” Ronan says, typing away. “Just Daemon near salivating at the sight of her chained to his bed. You’d think it’s his birthday.”
“I have to say,” she replies, skirting the bed with slow, measured steps and a predatory look in her eyes. “I like her at our mercy like this.”
Aurelia snaps her teeth at Dari, and I can’t help but laugh at her foolish bravery. Dari isn’t someone you challenge. None of us are.
Stopping by the edge of the bed, Dari reaches out and twirls a strand of Aurelia’s dark hair around her finger. “Snarling and growling won’t get you anywhere but spanked raw.” She looks at Daemon as I lean back against his desk and cross my ankles. “What are we doing with her?”
A dangerous chuckle shakes his shoulders. “What we always do. Fuck the defiance out of her. Break her down, little by little, until she submits. Edge her until she can’t fucking take it anymore.”
“I like the sound of that.” Dari hums under her breath, mindlessly twirling and tugging on the strand of hair wrapped around her finger. “Especially the edging part.” In a quick move, she releases the hair, grabs Aurelia by the throat, and brings her face level with the snarling angel. “I want to fucking drown in your pussy juices while you beg me to let you come.”
A creak at the door steals our attention away from the angel. Daemon shoots to his feet when Dmitriy appears in the doorway with a sheepish look on his face.
“Sorry. I knocked, but no one answered.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Daemon crosses the room in a flurry of movement, too fast to catch. “How fucking dare you enter my house?”
Dmitriy’s eyes skate past him to Aurelia on the bed and back. He swallows thickly. “Believe me when I say that I’m not here to start a fight, for once.”
Unconvinced, Daemon steps into him, forcing him back a step. “Then why are you here, looking at my angel?”
Ronan clears his throat, and Daemon stiffens, then concedes, “Our angel.”
With a chuckle, Ronan pockets his phone. “That’s better.”
Dmitriy stifles a chuckle at their exchange, and I study him closely before sliding my gaze to the angel on the bed. I do a double take. There’s something in that gaze of hers that feels… wrong.
The way she tracks their exchange and smirks when she thinks no one is looking.
She notices me staring, and I narrow my eyes to let her know I don’t buy her act. Something is up. And while I don’t want to let Dmitriy drive a wedge through this fragile bond, I can’t help but study her. Something is off. I can sense it with every nerve ending in my body.
“Daemon,” I speak up, not taking my eyes off the shackled angel on the bed. “I think you should hear him out.”
In my periphery, Daemon burns a hole through the side of my face before turning that lethal gaze on his cousin. The cogs in his brain turn over while he considers my words. With a final exhale, he steps back.
Dari and Ronan almost choke on their own spit when Daemon concedes. I have to admit, I didn’t think he’d listen.
Not that he does it willingly, and the scathing look he levels at Dmitriy as he enters the room would see a lesser man run for the door. “You have two seconds to make your fucking point, or I’ll make you regret ever setting foot in my house.”
Dmitriy looks at the angel on the bed, his gaze flicking from her face to the bedpost, taking in the handcuff that keeps her restrained. “I might need more than two minutes.”
Daemon opens his mouth to retort and spew some unhelpful bullshit, no doubt, so I raise my hand to silence him. “We’re listening.”
In my periphery, Ronan shoots me an amused glance, while Dari throws her hands out as if she’s fed up with this song and dance and just wants to feast on the angel’s cunt.
“I spoke to my father—”
Interrupting him, Daemon lets out a loud, frustrated groan.
“Like I said,” Dmitriy says, injecting his voice with enough dominance to make Daemon stiffen and narrow his eyes, as if sensing the challenge in the air, “I spoke to my father.”
Intrigued, I straighten from the desk. “Go on.”
“When Lucifer and Amenadiel escaped Eden, a sacrifice was required. Lucifer murdered a female angel, called Genesis.” He looks between us pointedly and crosses his arms. “That’s how they got the gates to open.”
“So?” Daemon asks impatiently.
Waving a hand at the girl on the bed, Dmitriy says, “She’s Genesis.”
Daemon stares at him incomprehensibly for a moment, the cogs turning in his brain. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
On the bed, Aurelia laughs, and the sound sends chills down my spine.
“You’ve seen the darkness claim her firsthand.” Dmitriy steps closer to Daemon with a look of determination burning brightly in his dark eyes. “I know you have. And I know you’ve seen the depth of the evil that lurks behind those shadows. We seduce our meals and place them under a spell to make them pliant. We don’t torture them for hours and prolong death. We don’t feed on their fear and pain.” With a finger aimed in her direction, he says, “Yet that’s what she does. She doesn’t need blood. That’s an assumption on our part. What she needs is something far more evil than what we can begin to comprehend.”
“So what are you saying?” I ask when Daemon continues staring at Dmitriy.
“I don’t fucking know,” he concedes, throwing his hands out defeatedly. “But I do know that Genesis is not Aurelia.”
“Genesis is not Aurelia?” Dari sounds confused as she walks closer to us with a deep frown between her brows. “I don’t understand.”
“When Genesis died that day, true evil was born by Lucifer’s actions. Heaven and Hell. Light and Dark. Genesis and Aurelia are born of the same flame. Genesis is the darkness to Aurelia’s light—the part of her that was called home by the forest outside the gates.”
“Are they two separate entities?” Ronan asks, straightening from the wall.
Dmitriy never takes his eyes off Daemon. “Think of it like this. Take a candle and use its flame to light another candle. Are they still the same candle? Then take the two candles and combine their flames. What have you got?”
Daemon blows out a frustrated breath. “I don’t get it.”
Beside us, Aurelia, Genesis, continues laughing on the bed.
“You don’t have to get it, Daemon.” He points at the angel again. “Don’t fall under her spell. Aurelia is gone.”
“What do you mean, ‘gone’?” I ask.
His gaze skates to me, thick with regret. “The darkness in her has taken over. Aurelia is lost in the shadows.”
“That’s not possible,” Dari whispers with an edge of desperation in her voice. “She can’t just get lost in the shadows.”
“Can she not?” His eyes burn with determination. “Remember those first few angels who walked out of Heaven. We all know some of them lost themselves to the shadows.”
“But there has to be a way out.”
“It’s all in her mind, right?” I interject. “The shadows? The doorways?”
“Of course it’s in her mind.” Daemon sounds frustrated enough to start trashing the place. “Everything is in our fucking minds. Fire magic, for fucking starters.”
“She mentioned the tear in the veil, and how Amenadiel helped her.” Dari’s eyes widen. “Maybe he can enter her mind through the veil and bring her back?”
Daemon snorts, chuckling under his breath.
“None of us are powerful enough to do it,” she points out. “The only angels with that kind of power are…”
“Amenadiel and Lucifer,” Ronan finishes for her.
Releasing an angry growl, Daemon makes a beeline for the bed. He grabs the angel by the throat and snarls in her face. “If this is a game and you’re not this Genesis,” he spits out, sounding disgusted, “now is the time to come clean before I tear you to pieces, limb by limb.”
Her sickening laughter goes on and on, until, overcome with frustration, he jostles her.
“It’s no use,” Dmitriy speaks up, causing Daemon to growl threateningly. “This was Genesis’s plan all along. Hide in the shadows and let us all fall for Aurelia.”
A beat passes.
A beat in which his words sink in with the heavy weight of an anchor colliding with the seabed.
“Don’t you get it? We can’t hurt her. None of us can.”
I look at him, a frown marring my forehead as I take in the thin line of his lips and the crease between his brows. “You’re in love with her.”
Sucking on his teeth, he doesn’t deny or affirm it, and that’s all the answer we need.
Daemon lets go of Aurelia and turns so fucking slowly, it feels like an eternity has passed by the time he sets his stormy eyes on Dmitriy’s stoic face. In a few short steps, he closes the distance between them and grabs Dmitriy’s T-shirt. “If you ever put a single finger on her, I will cut you up and feed you to the dogs in the underworld. I don’t give a shit about your feelings, cousin. You will never touch her. Understood?”
A muscle works in Dmitriy’s cheek. “Yes, I hear you loud and clear. Cousin.”
Daemon drops him and steps back. With a look over his shoulder at the angel on the bed, he runs a hand through his hair. “We need to speak to my uncle.”
Curious as always, Dari approaches the bed, swaying her hips with every soft, seductive step. “I don’t like bitches who play games,” she says when she nears before placing her hands on the mattress. She brings her face close to Aurelia’s. “Listen to me very carefully, Genesis. Aurelia once said to me that no one came for her when she found herself trapped in Eden.” Tongue tracing over her bottom lip, she chuckles darkly. “If you think you can keep her from me, you have another thing coming.”
She reaches out and strokes Genesis’s hair behind her ear. “I will find my angel, and I will bring her back to me. That’s a fucking promise. Then, when she’s back, and her cum coats my lips, I’ll find a way to kill you so painfully that Hell’s own hellfire resembles a spa trip in comparison. I don’t know how or when, but I’ll catch your little flame alone, and I’ll snuff it out.” Leaning in close to the angel’s ear, she breathes out loud enough for us all to hear, “Maybe it’s true that your death birthed Hell, but you’ve never spent a day in this playground, sweetheart. The kids here are mean. Don’t go throwing rocks unless you’re willing to take a severe beating.” Straightening up, she adds. “And lose.”
With those words hanging in the air, she walks out of the room.
Releasing a soft chuckle, Ronan shakes his head and sets off toward the door. Daemon watches him go before turning to me and Dmitriy. “I’ll get every guard in the building to keep an eye on her.”
I clap his shoulder on my way past. “Dari is right. Let’s get our angel back.”
