by Olivia Ash
Copyrighted Material
Copyright © 2018 by Olivia Ash.
Cover and art copyright © 2018 by Amalia Chitulescu
Book design and layout copyright © 2018 by Olivia Ash.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from S. M. Boyce, L. L. C.
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Books by Olivia Ash
Nighthelm Academy
City of the Sleeping Gods
City of Fractured Souls
City of the Enchanted Queen
Demon Queen Saga
Princes of the Underworld
Wars of the Underworld
Mistress of the Underworld
Sentinel Saga
By Dahlia Leigh and Olivia Ash
The Shadow Shifter
The Demon Prince
The Rogue Alchemist
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Princes of the Underworld
Demon Queen Saga
Olivia Ash
Wispvine Publishing
Book Description
Four immortal demon princes. One strong-willed human. A bewitched amulet that makes her queen of the Underworld—and binds the five of them together.
Sadie’s world is crumbling beneath her, and she’s starting to wish for a way out of her lonely life in Seattle. But when her sister Blair arrives unannounced in the middle of the night, covered in blood and carrying a glowing medallion, Sadie has no idea her wish is about to come true in the most violent of ways.
All of hell is after the amulet’s vast power. And when Blair puts it around Sadie’s neck, all of hell is suddenly after her as well.
Separated from Blair and with hardly any information to go on, Sadie finds herself surrounded by four stunning men—the warring demon brothers of the Underworld. The princes hate each other with a passion, and yet they’re bound to her side, captivated and ensnared by her magic.
In an instant, the amulet gives Sadie everything she ever wanted—wealth, power, even a fortress with a mind of its own. But she also inherits the amulet’s enemies, and they’re about to kick down her door.
Sadie has no idea who she can trust—except for her men. As she spends time with each of the supernatural princes who won’t leave her the hell alone, she falls for them. Hard. Though they can’t stand each other, she can’t imagine ruling her new kingdom without them all.
But this is the Underworld, the land of monsters and warlocks, of angels and deadly treachery.
The shadows of the Underworld hold secrets, and as her enemies close in on her new life, Sadie has to make a choice—surrender her newfound power, or stand as Queen and fight for the last remaining ounce of integrity and justice left in the Underworld.
There are armies at the gate. Traitors in the fortress. Blood on the walls. Good thing Sadie is too damn stubborn to quit.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
You’re Missing Out..
About the Author
Chapter One
Sadie
“Jesus,” Sadie muttered, rubbing her eyes as she got into the passenger seat of the ambulance. “What a night, Joe.”
Her assigned partner didn’t say anything as he shut the driver-side door. Keys jangled in the darkness. The ambulance rumbled to life, and the veteran paramedic just sighed. “This job wears on you, kid. It really does.”
Sadie stared out the window as they drove away from the hit-and-run. Their tires crunched over the glass as a police officer Sadie hadn’t met before waved them through the backed-up traffic, clearing the way for them. She gave him a grateful nod, which he returned, but it was all she could muster at the moment. As they left the chaos behind, she groaned and sank into her seat.
Three years into this job still wasn’t enough to completely numb her from the gore. Judging from old-timers like Joe, it would never really get better.
Multiple units had been called, and even though this was what Sadie had been trained to do—what she had known since she was a kid she was meant to do with her life—she was still kind of grateful another crew had taken away the woman who barely clung to life.
As they turned onto the main road, Sadie saw a beige stiletto on the side of the street a good three yards from the impact site. Cheeks flushing with nausea, she squeezed her eyes shut. She tried her best to shove down the chilling dread that came with the thought of what was happening to the person that shoe belonged to.
At least tonight, she wouldn’t have to watch another person die. It had been happening so often, lately. Every shift for the last three weeks, someone had died on her.
Every shift, a heart stopped.
Every shift, someone sobbed as they bled out.
Every shift, someone asked her what it was like to die, if she’d seen it before.
Every shift, she lied to them and told them they’d be fine.
Well, tonight, come hell or high water, no one would die on her.
Thankfully, Sadie was almost in the clear. One hour left of her twelve-hour shift, then three glorious days off. She’d had one close
call, a girl who had been mugged and beaten on the way home from her waitressing job, but thankfully they’d gotten there in time to stop the girl from bleeding out.
Sadie tensed at the memory of the gashes on the girl’s arm, and she instinctively tapped her fingers on the knife she kept strapped to her calf for her own protection. The cops didn’t always make it to the ambulance calls, and sometimes a paramedic needed to protect herself. Between the knife and her Tuesday night MMA lessons, it was enough to make her feel a little more secure on calls to dangerous areas or situations.
A little. She wasn’t about to go pro or anything, but Sadie could still hold her own in a fight.
Joe sped along the road, slipping away from the densely populated areas to their assigned stakeout spot somewhere in the Highline district of Seattle. This was half the job—sit and wait. And tonight, so close to the end of her shift, Sadie was just fine with boring.
From this vantage point, she could see down the Seattle hills to the interstate below, and the flashing blue and red lights of their fellow paramedics caught her eye as they raced toward the hospital. Joe turned down the chatter on the radio as he watched them fly down the highway, probably for his own peace of mind more than anything, and it made Sadie grateful. For the moment, she wanted to just watch, to hope that they got to the emergency room in time, that the woman would make it.
“I need a beer,” Joe grumbled. “But since I can’t have one on the job, let’s get a soda.”
“Fine by me.” Sadie yawned. “I could use the caffeine.”
He turned left, veering away from the freeway and heading toward a string of fast food chains a little down the road. The tree-lined road curved, the yellow line snaking through the darkness, illuminated only by the headlights and the occasional dim yellow streetlight passing overhead.
They sat in silence, Sadie lost in thought, eyes slipping out of focus, when a blaring horn sounded behind them.
“What the—” Joe swerved just as a pickup truck flew around them, racing over the double yellow line into the other lane at twice the speed limit. Tires screeched. Sadie’s blood ran cold. The truck veered and fishtailed, plowing into an oncoming minivan.
The minivan never stood a chance.
One second, peaceful quiet. The next, bloody chaos.
But this was her job. This was what Sadie excelled at—chaos. Panic. Blood. She could stuff the emotions away, deal with them later, hurt later, so that she could help the wounded now.
And it seemed like someone always needed help.
Joe flipped on the lights and blocked traffic as best he could, but Sadie tuned him out. They were both operating on autopilot now, running through their training to get the job done and save whatever lives they could.
She grabbed her kit and threw open her door before the ambulance even pulled to a stop, hopping to the asphalt with the effortless ease of years of practice. Joe could handle the admin stuff—calling it in, getting the gurney, setting up the most basic of perimeters so that she could just get to work. Sure, she hated calls where they didn’t have police backup, but she wasn’t about to let someone die just because there were no cops to cover her.
First things first—triage. Assess the damage. See who needs the most help.
She peered into the truck’s window and the driver slowly turned his head back at her. He slurred something through the shattered window about fish sticks, and though her instinct was to tear him a new asshole for driving under the influence, it wasn’t her job to assume. Not yet, anyway, not until he had been properly treated. Yeah, he was probably drunk—but he could’ve had a stroke. She scanned the rest of the truck, but he was the only one in it.
Still, he was breathing, he was moving, and his car wasn’t about to explode. He could wait.
“Joe, one in the truck!” she shouted.
“On it!” he answered.
Sadie ran to the minivan, and as she took in the sight of the crushed engine and shattered front windshield, she briefly froze in place. It was almost flat, and in the dark she could barely see inside. She clenched her jaw and pressed onward, peering inside to find a man, unconscious and buckled into his seat, the airbag covering most of his torso. She checked the other seats, but thankfully, they were empty.
A thin trail of blood leaked from the driver’s mouth, and he wheezed with every strangled breath. It hurt to even listen to him breathe. Sadie swallowed hard. Not good. That meant he might have punctured a lung.
“Stay with me, sir,” she said firmly, pulling on her gloves as she leaned in to check his pulse. “We’re going to get you out of here. Everything is going to be okay.”
To be fair, she wouldn’t know until later if it was a lie. All she cared about right now was keeping her people alive. And in this moment, for however long this stranger was in her care, he was one of her people.
“Sir, can you hear me?” she asked the man as she looked over the gathering crowd. Some were already filming her on their phones, too busy with the spectacle to ask if she wanted help.
She didn’t, but still. She hated when these assholes filmed her.
Within seconds, she had her kit sitting open on the ground beside her, everything neatly arranged and ready. Her hands ran through the motions, assessing the damage, looking for anything she could mend on the way to the hospital to try to stave off death.
Anything.
SADIE
In the end, Sadie failed.
It had been an impossible situation. With his internal bleeding and the logistics of a head-on collision, there was no way Sadie could have helped him, but she had done everything she could think of regardless, everything she had been trained to do.
But she couldn’t save him. His pulse had stopped, and she never even learned his name.
For situations like this, for times when someone died on her at work, Sadie had one very important rule—no sobs, no emotion, no sadness. Nothing, not one tear, until she got home.
But today, she felt numb. It was so hard to think. After twelve hours on her shift and three years of this job, she didn’t know how much longer she could do it.
How much longer she could lose people.
She moved on autopilot, barely paying attention, not really noticing anything until she was standing at her front door, in the hallway, staring at her apartment number. A door slammed shut somewhere down the hall, but she didn’t flinch. Normally she would be more aware of her environment, more interested in who was around her, more cautious as a single girl in a big city, but today she just couldn’t.
With a deep sigh, Sadie blinked away the tears that welled up in her eyes. As a paramedic, she was familiar to these situations, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t affected by the loss of another life.
In her numbed haze, it took a moment for her to register the blood-smeared doorknob of her apartment. She looked at her hands—they were clean, thanks to the gloves she was mandated to wear. A sinking sense of dread broke through the sadness. Tenderly, just to test it, she twisted the knob, finding it locked. Whoever opened the door had stumbled inside and closed it after them, locking it once more.
A chill crept up her spine as she realized the intruder could still be inside.
With a renewed sense of self-preservation sweeping away her sadness, she grabbed the knife from her boot and slowly, quietly, opened the door, her ears alert for the slightest sound.
Oh, please, give me an ass to kick tonight, she thought to herself, body humming with adrenaline. With her shitty evening, with all the grief and anger and loss, it would be one hell of an outlet.
As she entered her apartment, everything was bathed in darkness. Silver streams of moonlight cut through the open windows.
The problem? Sadie always left the living room light on.
Uneasiness thrummed through her as she searched the shadows for an immediate threat. She didn’t see anyone. Keeping to the shadows, she crept into the room, leaving her front door open in case she needed a quick exit.
Her
heartbeat quickened as she followed a trail of blood on the floor that led into the living room. She took a deep breath and raised her knife chest-high, body positioned in a fighting stance. She swiftly turned the corner, ready to attack, but stopped when she saw a familiar figure slouching in her favorite armchair, swathed in dim moonlight.
The figure held a gun at her. The hand gripping the pistol shook.
Sadie squinted in the darkness, warily glancing between the familiar figure and the shaking gun. “Blair?”
Sadie flicked on the light switch to her right and stared at her sister.
With a sigh of relief, Blair lowered the gun, resting it on her lap and leaning her head back against the chair. She looked worse for wear. Bruises and scrapes covered her thin, muscular body. Her clothes were tattered and covered in grime. Sadie paled as she took in the bleeding gash on Blair’s right shoulder. Her sister’s dirty fingers clutched the wound, trying to stop the bleeding.