“Adam is redeemed. He isn’t damned anymore. I don’t want the Brimstone back in his blood. Even if it means I have to say goodbye,” Victoria protested. She had lowered herself to the ground beside Adam. His eyes were closed and his face was completely relaxed. For the first time, he looked softer than stone.
“I can save him without claiming his soul. Even for a daemon king, there are bargains that can be made, No one is too powerful for compromise or sacrifice,” Ezekiel said.
As Victoria lay beside Adam she thought about her son. She thought about the Burn that had almost consumed him because she couldn’t prepare for a process she didn’t understand. If Malachi hadn’t kidnapped him, Sybil could have helped her through it, but Victoria knew the daemon nanny needed to get back to her own life at l’Opera Severne. As Adam faded further and further away, she thought about Grim and how Michael joyfully rode the hellhound as if he was a pretty pony. She thought of her son’s laughter as they disappeared into the nothingness of traveling in between worlds.
He was a half daemon who could grow up to be a prince. Was she protecting him by turning her back on his stepgrandfather, or was she keeping him from a throne he had a right to choose or refuse? She’d lived such a dark life that she’d wanted to protect him from every shadow, but Grim was living shadows and Michael loved him with all his toddler heart.
Maybe she should embrace the shadows too. Just enough to survive.
“I accept,” Victoria said. “I accept.”
The pause was complete now, but it lasted longer than she expected. Her head grew light because her lungs didn’t function as the universe stilled to record the daemon deal in its darkest recesses.
She looked up at the daemon king when she heard him murmuring words that sounded Latin. He spoke too softly for her to understand what he said. He’d said even daemon kings still had bargains they could make. To whom did he speak? With whom did he bargain? Who had the power over Adam’s life and death that they would temporarily give to the daemon king in return for something else?
When the world spun again, the earth trembled beneath them and choking clouds of smoke rolled, but Ezekiel ignored it all. He dropped to one knee and pulled the deadly arrow from Adam’s back. A warrior’s cry erupted from Adam’s lips, full of fury and pain. Victoria reached for him as Ezekiel rolled Adam toward her so that he could access the wound left from the arrow’s removal. She placed her hand on Adam’s cheeks and looked into his pain-dimmed eyes.
“Your blood is cleansed of the Brimstone. Elena doesn’t have to worry about your soul anymore,” Victoria said.
She could tell it was an effort for Adam to speak, but she didn’t try to stop him. If Ezekiel couldn’t save him, she needed to hear his beautiful Russian accent one more time.
“It was my isolation that worried her,” Adam said. He coughed, but when he had swallowed he began again. “She accused me of living in the cage the prince had put me into even after the door had been opened.”
“She knew about your work to save the children?” Victoria guessed.
“Yes,” Adam said.
“She didn’t linger to save your soul. She lingered to keep you company,” Victoria said.
Adam nodded. No longer able to speak. His eyes had closed. She could feel him fading away. Victoria began to hum the same bayou lullaby that had saved her son. Soft and low. He no longer had Brimstone blood, but he was the Russian firebird and she was his nightingale. His eyes fluttered and opened. Their eyes met as the daemon king sliced across his own wrists to allow his blood to trickle in a steady stream onto Adam’s wound.
She held him as he jerked and cried out against the burn. She cried out with him because in cutting his flesh the daemon king had released his hold on his scorching power and her pain matched Adam’s. The scent of scorched flesh and ashes rose into the air.
And Adam passed out in her arms.
His collapse caused her heart to stop. She pressed through the paralysis of the scorch to touch his lips. Her heart began to pound again when she detected the slightest inhale and exhale from his mouth.
“We will help you carry him to safety before the mountain devours the monastery,” the daemon king said. “What Michael has set into motion I cannot stop.”
One of his men was binding his wrist to halt the flow of blood. Others rushed forward to lift her and Adam. One of the Loyalists wasn’t capable of rushing anymore. As she was carried toward the gate, she saw him lying on the ground. His bow beside his limp hand. The daemon king’s punishment for mistakes was swift and without mercy. An ominous shiver trailed its icy fingers down her spine.
Chapter 23
Once they were out of the compound, they hiked to a clearing on the mountainside where dozens of children of various ages sat on rocks and in the grass. Loyalist daemons mingled among them. Daemons were passionate creatures who often hid their deepest emotions beneath stoic facades, but the children seemed to be responding to cool kindness rather well, considering what their lives had recently been. Victoria’s anger rekindled when she saw the children’s injuries. Triage was taking place. Many of the children had been beaten or bound by the Order of Samuel. Her anger eased when she saw hardened daemon warriors become nurses to the weak and injured.
The daemon that had carried her out of the compound set her down near a young girl who was painfully thin. Her rib cage showed at the tattered neck of her rough robe. Her head had been shaved. There were cuts and bruises over older cuts and bruises on her arms and legs. But she flashed Victoria a white smile and held out part of a crust of bread she’d been gnawing.
“Thank you, but no. You have it all. Please,” Victoria said. The hungry child didn’t have to be told twice.
Another daemon arrived with Adam thrown over his shoulder. He took care to bend and lay his burden down beside her on the grass. She expected Adam to be unconscious, but he raised himself to a sitting position.
“We need to question all of them to find out where they’re from so we can return them to their families,” he said after he had taken in his surroundings. “Who got them out of the castle?”
Victoria would never forget the dark, barely materialized form of Grim leading the children to safety. They had followed the hideous hellhound as a savior compared to the devils that had held them prisoner.
“Grim saved them. I think he was probably searching for Michael among them, but whatever his motives they’ll have a monstrous hero to remember,” Victoria said.
“He came out of the shadows,” the little girl said. She had heard them and once she swallowed her last bite she revealed what had happened with Grim in the keep. “At first we were afraid, but then he came to each one of us and he didn’t bite or growl. He only whined. When the keep began to quake, he disappeared, but then he came back. He bit the chains and they snapped like they were made of plastic. Those that could helped to untie the ones who were bound with rope. Some of the little ones had to be carried. But I walked all by myself.”
The ground had continued to tremble the whole time they spoke. No more daemons or children came from the compound. She and Adam hadn’t been the only adults carried from the collapsing structure. There was another clearing separated from the children by a phalanx of Lucifer’s Army that hadn’t softened into nurses. They stood on guard between the two clearings as monks from the Order who had survived the battle were dumped on the ground. There weren’t many. And judging from the expressions on the daemons who guarded them, Victoria surmised that the monks who had died were the lucky ones.
Suddenly, a great rumble shook the mountaintop. She looked toward the keep to see the castle cave in on itself completely. She imagined the fissure had opened to the point that it could swallow the keep above it. Moments later, the wall surrounding the compound also collapsed inward and disappeared. Smoke and roiling dust exploded into the sky like a mushroom cloud and
then was pulled back down into the earth, as if the imploding monastery had created a vacuum as it disappeared into the mountain.
As the dust and smoke cleared, the children raised a cheer much stronger than their collective condition should have allowed. The cry was joyful and triumphant in direct proportion to the suffering they’d endured. Adam reached for her hand as he stood. He was already moving as if he’d never been injured at all. Ezekiel’s miracle has caused Adam to heal. She was sore and exhausted and didn’t reject the help as he pulled her to her feet. After all, she hadn’t been healed by Ezekiel’s Brimstone. The cuts and bruises she’d suffered from falling debris still stung.
But she’d never felt better in her life.
She felt like singing a new song. Her years singing opera had sustained her during a dark time, but she no longer missed the role of Juliet. Tragic romance was overrated. There were happier songs to sing.
“My people can help get these kids back to where they belong,” Adam said. He squeezed her hand and leaned down to press a firm kiss against her lips before he moved away toward the daemons who were trying to help the children.
Victoria watched him walk—tall and strong and every bit the warrior, the vintner, the businessman and the Russian firebird all rolled into one extraordinary man. He’d saved himself by saving others. He’d resisted revenge and focused on justice and salvation. He would always have blood on his hands and scars on his back, but he was the one who had turned those scars into an angel’s wings.
And she had nearly betrayed him.
Now that he no longer had Brimstone in his blood, would their connection remain or would her affinity tear them apart? Wanting to sing a new song and actually being able to successfully do it were two different things. She would always be blessed and cursed by Samuel’s Kiss. If she wasn’t an opera singer or an unwilling bloodhound for the Order of Samuel, what would she be?
Chapter 24
The vineyard was beautiful in the moonlight though not a single rose blossom remained on the bushes and vines throughout the gardens around the main house. They had returned to Nightingale Vineyards to find an explosion of rose petals all over the estate. Every petal from every rose had been scattered on pathways and in the grass and on the trees in a profusion of scarlet, crimson and a deep ruby that was nearly black. Esther told them there had been no storm or wind to account for the phenomenon. She had gone to bed on a still night and had woken to a riot of color all over the grounds.
Victoria strolled down a petal-strewed pathway and breathed deeply of the sweet, rose-scented air. She sang softly under her breath, making up the words as she went along. She’d already filled a notebook with lyrics. She’d made a few phone calls to professionals she’d met over the years. Once Michael arrived in Sonoma, she wanted to be prepared to begin a fresh new chapter in their lives.
She wasn’t yet sure about how Adam Turov fit into her plans.
“Your singing still calls to me,” a familiar voice interrupted from behind her on the path.
She paused and turned to see Adam’s silhouette—so tall, so strong—backlit by moonlight so she couldn’t see his face.
“I wasn’t sure. I walked away from the house so I wouldn’t disturb you just in case,” Victoria said.
Her affinity could still detect the faintest glow of Brimstone in his blood, a remnant she recognized from when John Severne had won back his soul. Once you’ve faced damnation, you’re never innocent again. Adam Turov would always be more than an ordinary man. He would carry a long and complex history with him for the rest of his life and all the experience that came with that, plus he’d always have just a touch of daemon fire in his blood.
But his magnetism went deeper and richer than that for her. She was drawn to him. The man who had saved hundreds of lives. The man who had saved her by helping her to reach her son so she could save him. The man who took her to the edge and caught her when she fell. He burned bright. Not because of Brimstone, but because of the strength of will he’d used to fight damnation and reclaim his soul.
He stepped closer and closer to her, but she couldn’t move. She should continue walking or shift to the side so he could pass. She did neither. Within seconds, they were toe to toe. She looked up at his face, which had now come into the beams of hazy light from a crescent moon in a cloudless sky. He still had the Turov bone structure, with chiseled cheekbones and an angular jaw that would have made a male model envious, but his jaw was no longer clenched against her. His eyes were gray in this light, but they gazed at her directly with no shadowed secrets.
“I was so focused on the burn that I never realized what a weight flowed in my veins. I must have gotten used to it over the years so I didn’t realize what an actual physical burden I carried along with the mental ones. Knowing you’re damned. Trying to do what’s right all the same. Failing miserably to resist a kiss you know you shouldn’t savor,” Adam said.
He lifted a hand to press a strand of her hair back from her face and then his hand lingered. He brushed her cheek with his thumb while his fingers rested lightly in her hair. “My physical burden has been lifted. But my mind is still troubled. I want to do what’s right for you. Your affinity is drawn toward Brimstone blood. I find myself damned even though I’ve regained my soul because I need to let you go, and yet I still crave your taste and your touch. Does your song still draw me? Oh, yes. I feel as if I’ll burn for you always. Brimstone or not.”
He leaned to kiss her and she opened her lips for his tongue. She reached to hold around his neck because her knees seemed iffy about the challenge of keeping her on her feet. He’d seemed hesitant, but her response raised a groan in his throat and his hands came up to her back to crush her against him. She didn’t protest.
A slight breeze blew up around them, stirring the rose petals at their feet. Adam drew back and opened his eyes to look around. Victoria did the same. The breeze continued swirling the petals all around the garden in gentle whirls. And then as soon as it came the breeze died down and faded away.
“I think we have my mother’s blessing,” Adam said.
“We’ve been blessed from the start in spite of affinity and Brimstone, not because of it,” Victoria said. “You need nothing else to seal the deal with me, Adam. The question is whether or not you’re prepared to be with a woman who has a half daemon prince for a son, a daemon king as a stepfather and an ability that will always bring daemons into your life.” She couldn’t help it. She held her breath as she waited for his reaction. She’d always been different. Some would say cursed. She could never be an ordinary vintner’s wife. If he wanted to leave behind the warrior, he might want to leave her behind as well.
“There’s a traditional bargain couples enter into when they want to be together—’til death us do part. I want to make a deal with you, Victoria D’Arcy,” Adam said.
In the moonlight he suddenly looked like a temptingly handsome devil. His lips were curved into a wicked smile. His dark hair gleamed where moon-kissed light gave way to shadows.
“To have and to hold from this day forward,” Victoria replied.
The world kept spinning. The universe didn’t pause, but for one second she could have sworn that the petals that fell from the trees after the breeze were suspended in the air behind them.
“Only if you promise to sing for me.” Adam leaned to tease the words against her lips.
“Only if you promise to burn for me,” Victoria said.
“I can guarantee that won’t be any problem at all,” he replied, and this time when he pressed his mouth to hers, whether or not the world paused didn’t matter at all.
Epilogue
Michael played in the garden near a cellar where vegetables used to be grown. To a casual observer, he played by himself, tossing tennis balls into the shadows. Victoria knew there was only one tennis ball and it seemed to inexplica
bly vanish and appear in different places as if there were more balls because the shadows had teeth.
Adam stood nearby. He’d had his turn. Michael had dutifully played catch with his stepfather, using the two battered vintage gloves and a faded baseball that now lay at Adam’s feet. He’d laughed and enjoyed every minute, but he’d also been eager to play with Grim who had waited patiently for the tennis ball to be thrown his way.
She’d turned back to watch them for a while—it was always a pleasure to watch Michael play in the sun and her husband’s dark hair gleam. She’d also grown very fond of Grim since the day he’d saved the children and her son from the Order of Samuel when the castle fell. His size and teeth and uncanny abilities would always make her nervous. He was a hellhound after all. But she’d learned to love him, shadows and all.
She’d spent the morning writing in her notebook on a bench near the garden where Michael played. Now, Adam turned and waved. He’d known she hadn’t walked away yet even though she hadn’t made a sound to distract him. Their connection was deeper than ever. Charged by love and closeness with only a hint of Brimstone. She smiled in response and turned toward the path that would lead her to the cottage.
Since Michael had come to Nightingale Vineyards, there had been a flurry of changes. Adam Turov was a very wealthy man and he spared no expense for his people. She’d discovered he was even more lavish with his family.
A large room in the main house had been renovated into a perfect little boy’s bedroom, complete with a tree house bunk bed. For now, Michael slept on the bottom and his faithful guardian slept on the top. She imagined that would change as he grew. To match the tree house, the walls had been painted with a sunny outdoor mural featuring more trees and grass and a bright blue sky with white fluffy clouds. Every time she entered the room to tuck Michael—and Grim—in at night, she thought about Gideon telling her that Adam had given him the sun.
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