by Lee, Nadia
Then something else hit me. Jack was one of the most influential members in the Federation. Did he know about this?
I had always disliked the Federation, but now that flared into a towering rage. No wonder I was always on their shit list—I had been the most successful one at cutting off their source of supply! Bastards. Just wait until I exposed their hypocrisy and double-dealings. If that wasn’t enough to bring them down, I’d unleash my wyrms on them after I claimed Eastvale.
“Well, Ramiel,” Alexandros began. “Are you ever going to introduce me to this charming creature?”
Ramiel closed his eyes and sighed. “Alexandros, meet Ashera del Cid.”
For the first time the incubus king seemed a bit unsure of himself. “Is that a joke?”
“It is not.”
“Isn’t she supposed to be…” He frowned. “What’s the new word…? Fugly?”
“Excuse me, I’m still in the room.” I strode between the two ridiculously attractive men. “I really am Ashera, and no, I’m not fugly.” I put my hands on my hips. “Besides, ‘fugly’?”
“I try to keep current with modern mortal terms.” Alexandros gave me a wolfish grin. “It often heightens the experience.”
I resisted the urge to smack him and turned to Ramiel. “He and I cannot be allies. I can’t stand his kind. I kill incubi for living.” Well, I had until about two hours earlier.
“Oh, that’s not a problem,” Alexandros said. “If they lose to a mortal, they deserve to die.” He made a tch noise. “What a disgrace.”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” I said.
“And yet I gave it.” Alexandros walked over to me, put a friendly hand on my shoulder. It seared but felt oh so good. “Listen, love. You need me. Ramiel can’t—Oh, you don’t want my hand there? Very well, no need for violence. Anyway, Ramiel can’t count on his third triumvir. Too unstable. So he figures I can help him keep you alive until you have all your heartstones.” He looked at Ramiel. “That about right?”
Ramiel looked like he’d just swallowed an entire peeled lemon. “In essence.”
“But you see, here’s the problem—I don’t know if I want to.” The incubus king shrugged. “I like you well enough to fuck, but I’m not sure if I like you well enough to help.”
“Alexandros, choose your words more carefully.” Ramiel’s hand tightened around the sword. “Lest I revoke your invitation.” It really was a pity his control was so good. I’d have loved to see him permanently rearrange Alexandros’s face. Or cut something vital off.
Alexandros made a small wiggling motion with his fingers. “Just give me a different room. Something decent, with mirrors.”
Toshi flew over and bowed. “Immediately, Your Majesty! If you’ll just come with me…”
He led Alexandros to the door, where the incubus king stopped.
“By the way, Ashera…?”
“What?”
“I’d be careful if I were you. Not everything is what it seems. Including your champion.” Alexandros inclined his head Ramiel’s way and gave me a smile that made my insides twist. “You two kids have a nice evening.”
Seventeen
Nice evening, my ass.
I sent Ramiel away after Alexandros left. I didn’t want to hear why I had to ally with him, or why Ramiel had sought him out, or anything else.
And the third triumvir. I’d never imagined I wouldn’t be able to count on someone from my own Triumvirate. Not that I expected us to be best friends forever, but I thought the other member would at least be neutral. How many enemies did I really have?
Not everything is what it seems. Including your champion.
Yeah, well… Ramiel might or might not have been helping me out of altruism, but it infuriated me to hear Alexandros say it. Ramiel might have never taken Sex from me, he might always have been proper—rigidly so—but at the end of the day I still had no idea what his ultimate goal was. Even my overwhelming attraction to him might be contrived, magic-induced, like what I had felt for Alexandros. I’d thought I could resist any demon’s sexual pull, but Alexandros had proven me wrong. Ramiel had some incubus abilities—maybe borrowed from Alexandros?—and a dragonlord’s power. It could very well be that if he couldn’t use magic anymore, I wouldn’t find him attractive at all.
Which brought me to a really aggravating question: how could I be sure?
The answer was, I couldn’t. There was too much going on, too much that was new. I was out of my depth, dealing with beings that were orders of magnitude more powerful than I was, and at some point it was just going to be a leap of faith. And if I was going to battle Nathanael and his buddies, I needed an ally I could trust, and that had to be Ramiel. If I couldn’t bring myself to trust him, I might as well just give up.
End of story.
So with that thought and another conscious decision to trust Ramiel in the forefront of my mind, I looked around. What had Toshi been thinking, putting me in a room that used to belong to the incubus king? I felt like I needed another bath…and that bed! It appeared tainted now. Alexandros had slept on it, and I was sure that wasn’t all he’d done there. The image nearly made me gag. Maybe I should sleep on the floor.
I glanced at the mirrors covering the ceiling, now understanding how Alexandros had been able to land on top of me without any warning. Part of me wanted to get another room. Another part—the petty, stubborn part—didn’t want to give up the one I was in. It’d be like him winning, and he would see it as a sign of weakness.
Alexandros was old and powerful. I was—had been—a damn good hunter, but if I’d faced him in a dream, I doubted I would’ve prevailed. It was rumored he had been born before Christ, but that was unlikely. Most supernaturals are the next best thing to truly immortal—they live for eons unless they are killed. The more powerful they are, the longer they tend to stick around. But incubi aren’t demigods, and their court is full of intrigue and betrayal. Alexandros had to be smarter and stronger than his enemies to have survived for millennia.
Of course, there was evidence for the other side too. He couldn’t be that smart, given the kind of garbage spewing from his mouth. Like me well enough to fuck, indeed.
Nope. Not over three thousand years old. Someone would probably kill him within the decade.
My stomach growled, and I put a hand over it. It was time for dinner. I jerked the closet doors open. Dresses, dresses and more dresses, in hundreds of colors and materials and patterns. Didn’t anyone up here know that it was okay for women to wear pants these days? Annoyed, I pulled out a sleeveless, toga-looking number with good mobility and a modest neckline. I kind of wanted to flaunt my cleavage, but…
Come on. Did it matter what I wore? It wasn’t like I was trying to seduce anyone.
The soft lavender silk whispered over my skin as I put the thing on. The second I had it hanging right, a knock sounded.
“Come in.”
Toshi flew inside. “Milady, dinner will be served soon.”
“Good. I’m ready.” I went past him into the hall, then stopped. “Um, which way’s the dining room?”
“Allow me to escort you.”
He took me through an enormous outer hallway, full of hazy golden sunlight spilling through open arched windows. The breeze came in, playing with my hair and tickling my skin. I smelled soft hints of pine and rich earth in the air and inhaled deeply, gathering courage for the question I had to ask. “How often do you do laundry?”
Toshi immediately swiveled my way. “Is there a problem with your clothes?”
“No. It’s just the, uh, sheets. They felt a little…um…”
“They are new, milady. Are they not soft enough?”
I was being silly. “No, they’re great. Very luxurious. Totally exceeded my expectations. How about…you know, the bed?”
“We sun the mattresses every day, but…is there something wrong with the bed? Would you like another one?”
“Yes.” I shook my head. “No.”
Toshi had stopped and was now hovering in midair, tongue flickering hesitantly.
“No,” I said decisively.
“Are you certain, milady? It won’t trouble me at all.”
“I’m pretty certain.” It burned me to say it, but if Toshi sent a new bed to my room, Alexandros might hear about it, and I didn’t want to let him know. “Forget it. Come on, let’s get some food.”
At the end of the hall were closed double doors. As we drew close I heard a low, melodious and patronizing voice.
“…seriously, Ramiel, I don’t know why you’re bothering with her.”
Alexandros. Toshi flew closer to the entrance, and I grabbed him before he could announce my presence, putting a hand over his snout. “Shhh…”
Toshi stared at me, his eyes wide. I gave him a warning look, then held my breath and listened.
“The girl does resemble Leh, I give you that, and I’m sure she’s decent in bed. But she’s a poor substitute.” A chair creaked. “Leh wanted Nathanael.”
I swallowed hard. Ramiel had never answered my question at the Lunar Garden. So he’d indeed loved Leh…and might love her still. I’d known there was something between them, of course. But to have Alexandros confirm it made it so much worse. It was like what I’d felt back then, when I hadn’t been pretty, and all the boys wanted to use me. It shouldn’t have hurt—I figured out pretty quickly that boys like that weren’t worth getting involved with—but it did. Maybe I was the only one who believed Ramiel liked me for me, regardless of my looks. Certainly nobody else seemed to think that.
Despite my resolve, it was hard not to doubt. Maybe Ramiel had woven a spell over me so that I’d find him irresistible, so he could live out whatever fantasy he’d had about my mother through me.
Ramiel’s voice: “My vow has noth—”
“Ah yes, the vow. What is the purpose? To redeem yourself for killing Kyran? Just like your self-imposed restraint is supposed to redeem you for fucking a girl to death?”
For real? How did anyone have sex until the other partner died? Alexandros must have been speaking figuratively.
“Alexandros.” It was a warning.
“There are worse ways to go.” A short pause. “Where is that damn girl? I’m hungry.”
“Her name is Ashera, and Toshi is fetching her now.”
“She’s probably overextending what little brain she has, trying to pick out a dress.”
“Wondering if she has to dine with you, more likely. I don’t believe she favors you.”
Alexandros went on like he hadn’t heard a word out of Ramiel’s mouth. “You’d think they’re trying to slay all of hordes of netherworld, the way they struggle to make wardrobe decisions. Women look so much better nude. Well, some.”
Ramiel sighed. “For someone who’s fashioned himself as royalty, you would make a wyrm groom sound refined.”
No kidding. Alexandros was the most sexist and least politically correct demon I’d ever had the misfortune of meeting. And that was saying something.
“I’m entitled to voice my opinions. After all, I’ve been around since before that Trojan fracas the Greeks were always going on about.”
Before the Trojan War? Holy shit. How powerful was he?
A glass clinked. “And I’ll give you some advice, as your elder. I know you’re trying to be honorable and all that, but if you try to help that girl, you’re going to lose. It won’t change the fact that you aren’t a pure-bred demigod, and it won’t grant you the sense of liberation you think you’re going to get. Your precious sense of honor will suffocate you, and one of these days, you’ll die from it.”
“You’ve made your position very clear already. No need to repeat yourself.”
Uh-oh. Ramiel’s voice had taken on that silky tone, which meant he was trying to control his temper. Maybe he would kill his guest or something. That would call for a celebratory banquet.
“Oh, very well. Have it your way.” Alexandros sighed. “Contrary to what they say, women don’t want honor or pure blood or any of that nonsense. They only want three things from men. More money than they can possibly spend. More power than they can possibly control. And a fucking so good it leaves them panting like a bitch in heat.”
I ground my teeth. I was starting to want to get my other heartstones just so I’d be able to kill this guy.
“Alexan—”
“You think you can make yourself worthy by doing all this, this nonsense? The girl will want you if you can give her those three things, even if you did kill her uncle in cold blood.” Suddenly Alexandros laughed. “Oh no. You didn’t tell her Kyran was her uncle?”
What?
“Ramiel, Ramiel. She’s going to find out.”
If Kyran was my uncle…then Leh was his sister? My god. That made me the only living descendant of the slayer overlord line. No wonder Nathanael, Semangelaf and Apollyon were determined to kill me. The overlords were supposedly the strongest and the most powerful of the slayer lineages. But why was Ramiel trying to help me then? What was the history behind the vow?
From what I’d gathered so far, he had failed to honor it the way he was meant to. Given this new revelation about my mother’s side of the family, maybe he had been tasked with saving someone from the slayer overlord line, which at this point would basically be me. But the chances of Ramiel—or any dragonlord or lady—swearing to do anything like that were nil. I was the enemy by birth.
And what the hell did Alexandros mean by Ramiel wanting to redeem himself for killing Kyran? Kyran had been the dragonlords’ archenemy, the key figure in the Fall of the Dragons that defeated and humiliated the dragonlords. Ramiel had killed him during the Twilight of Slayers. For Christ’s sake, it’d made Ramiel a hero, not some pariah.
The only possible motivation he could have would have been his love for my mother. A cold wash of despair went through me as I put it together. Love was one thing; it flourishes and, usually, after a while, fades. But demigods live and die on their fidelity to their oaths, and the idea that Ramiel loved Leh so much that he would swear himself into an obligation like that was more proof than I needed about where his affections really lay.
Maybe I was being unreasonable. I couldn’t expect Ramiel to have never cared for anyone until he met me. He was centuries older. I had to be practical about this.
“It isn’t necessary for Ashera to know,” Ramiel said.
I started to get angry. Why wasn’t it necessary for me to know? It was about me, wasn’t it? It was killing me inside, but I continued to stay still and listen.
“Do you think she’ll care?” Alexandros said. “I’m telling you, you don’t know women. Svetlana is still with me, and I ripped out her father’s heart with my bare hands right in front of her. She was rather fond of him too.”
“A bit different, don’t you think? Svetlana won’t kill you.”
“Oh, she’s been trying for years. It does get amusing. But when I tire of it, I’ll rip her heart out too. Like father like daughter. Which will be unfortunate. We look good together.” A chair scraping and clothes rustling. “By all the gods, will that girl ever arrive? I’m so hungry I could eat an entire wyvern stewed in its own piss!”
The conversation turned to food after that, and mostly consisted of Alexandros complaining. I crept back down the hall a few yards and brought Toshi up to eye level to give him a hard look. “The fact that we overheard that conversation is going to be our secret. Right?”
The poor little dragon hesitated, but nodded when I tightened my hold on him.
“Swear it. On your father’s grave.”
It’s a powerful oath—not even Ramiel’s displeasure would be able to loosen Toshi’s tongue. The fairy dragon didn’t want to swear, but finally he nodded and I let him go.
We covered the same few yards of hall for the third time. At the doors Toshi announced, “Lady Ashera!” in a slightly wheezy voice, and they opened.
As I walked inside both men rose to their feet. So Alexandros wasn’t a
complete barbarian, but I wished he’d remained seated, so there would be another reason not to like him.
“I apologize for keeping you waiting.” It was an effort not to toss off some comment about the epic struggle I’d had selecting a suitable dress.
The room was new—at least to me—and the simplicity and coziness of the chamber was surprising. An unadorned cloth covered a round table, and three blue-green candles burned in the center. Both men had half-empty glasses of wine before them.
Once everyone was seated, Toshi’s staff started serving an exquisite French dinner composed of crisp green vegetables, lightly seared veal, foie gras, rich sauces and an excellent wine. None of us talked much. I wasn’t in the mood since I was busy thinking about what I’d overheard, and Ramiel and Alexandros didn’t seem inclined to make small talk. Someone was playing a soothing melody on flutes outside our window—Toshi’s doing, no doubt—but it did nothing to liven up the meal. Ramiel and Alexandros kept their silence, and I didn’t want to talk to either of them. Especially Ramiel. I knew he’d been hiding things, but not to this extent.
Was I wrong to think that I could trust him? I was beginning to hate this. I usually knew what I needed to do, where the pieces lay. But ever since I’d killed Selena, I felt like I had been caught up in a game so large it was impossible to come to grips with it.
“That’s a handsome ring,” Alexandros said suddenly, sipping his wine. “What does the M stand for?”
I continued cutting my veal, consciously keeping my hands relaxed. “Miguel.”
“Someone special?”
I glanced at Alexandros. “My first lover.”
Ramiel seemed to stiffen a bit, and the incubus king’s dark eyebrows rose slightly.
“One of your kind killed him,” I continued. “And I’m going to hunt it down and make it pay.”
“‘It’?”
“Doesn’t deserve to be humanized.” I gave the incubus a smile. “This is one of the reasons why you and I can never be allies, Alexandros.”
He gazed at me languidly. “Is that so? Not even if I tell you who killed your precious lover?”