Conversation persisted around them, but Evie didn’t hear it. All her attention was on Natalya and her thoughtful features that slowly stopped looking concerned and instead looked terrified.
She’d seen Natalya afraid before, but then it had only been for Evie, and her fear was filled with worry. This wasn’t that. This was a terror Evie knew herself. The panic-inducing feeling that your freedom was about to be taken away.
“Natalya?” Evie sat up, forgetting her own fear seeing Natalya so frightened. She moved in front of her, but Natalya looked right through her. “Natalya, what’s wrong?”
Everyone went quiet. They hadn’t noticed Natalya’s expression until then. Now it made them all silent.
Natalya didn’t speak. Evie grabbed her arms, shaking her. “Natalya, say something!”
Her eyes found Evie’s. They were filled with fearful realization. Then it vanished in favor of sudden resolve.
She rushed to her feet, moving away from the couch towards Drago. Her eyes were shining, hard and unyielding. It made the other fiend’s usually impassive features twist into surprise.
“Evie wasn’t the target. I was,” Natalya said. “She saw them. The fiend saw my marks. Envy remembers everything they’re set to covet.”
For a moment, Drago looked confused. Then he looked as horrified as Natalya.
“Keep Evie safe.” Natalya grabbed the other fiend’s arm, the touch making him flinch. “They might still come for her. They might even makemedo it. If that happens, you must kill me.”
Drago didn’t say anything. He was stunned to silence, unable to look away from Natalya. She squeezed his arm tighter.
“Say you’ll do it, Drago.” Her voice had no fear in it now. It was a commanding timbre that could bring mortals to their knees. It made Drago’s jaw set. His expression turned dour.
“Yes, Lady.”
Natalya’s shoulders slumped in relief. She turned back towards Evie. Her face was wrought with pain, fear, and sorrow.
“Natalya, I don’t know what’s going on. What’s hap—” Evie stopped. She’d been so distracted by the desperate look in Natalya’s eyes she hadn’t looked at the rest of her.
She’d discarded her ruined clothes for a black wrap dress that covered most of her still-healing injuries. It made her look stronger than she probably was. But even with the clothing hugging her body, it didn’t hide her marks that had started glowing brightly through the fabric.
Shocked silence engulfed the apartment. Aleksander and Hasan gaped, and Lily put her hands over her mouth in disbelief. Evie was the only one who moved.
She rushed to Natalya, horrible understanding filling her as she crashed into her and hugged her as tightly as she could.
“No.” Evie shook her head, refusing to understand. “No, theycan’t.”
“They can.” Natalya hugged her back hard enough that it hurt. Evie held her tighter as her arms started to grow hot. The embrace burned. It was like her body was filled with flames.
Lily took a step towards them before she was pulled back by Aleksander. Hasan stared with an expression of shock on his face. Evie clutched Natalya harder until Drago pulled her away. She fought him, trying to get free, never taking her eyes off Natalya’s.
“I love you, Evie,” Natalya said as flames started licking across her body, whirling like a portal around her. Her eyes glinted with tears. “I love you more than anything.”
The blaze swirled around her, moving like a hellish inferno. The heat was searing and consuming. In the roar of the infernal fires, someone screamed.
When the flames vanished, nothing was left behind save scorch marks and stunned silence.
Chapter 44
It had been over a century since Natalya last felt the touch of flames. Then, it claimed the house that had been her prison for over twenty years. Under Roland’s cruel ownership, she wasn’t shackled by something as simple as chains. As long as her binding circle remained intact, as did his control over her.
Her circle had burned. Roland’s son, whose cruelties were only matched by his father, had fallen asleep with a cigarette in his mouth. The glowing ash had fallen and then caught on the sheets. Natalya was next to him. She could have saved him. She chose to let him burn.
She saw a house of torture crumble around her, and when she exited the inferno—her humanity burnt away until only the demon remained—she had found Roland and killed him so slowly it took days for him to succumb.
A century since flames had returned her stolen freedom. A century of hate, pain, and practice that cumulated in her feeling the trusting embrace of another. Now she felt flames again,whipping around her body and singeing her clothes as she was pulled away from the peaceful life she’d been allowed to taste only briefly.
As the flames kissed her painfully, they pulled her into enslavement.
