Natalya was bound. She was enslaved. She couldn’t escape her indenture on her own. But shewasn’ton her own. She had the Chains. A whole Court of creatures who looked at her with respect. She had Drago, who saw her as a teacher. Aleksander, who was like a brother to her.
She had Evie, who loved her when she didn’t have to.
“We’ll get out of here,” Natalya said then. Vex laughed.
“Hope is a dangerous thing, Lust. It hasn’t helped any of this lot.” Vex gestured at the other fiends. “Dominic is smart, unfortunately. I was the first he summoned, and I’ve helped give him everything he wanted. Everything he craved, and what he craves is trophies and knowledge. I know a lot. That means he does too.”
“There’s something he clearly doesn’t know.”
“Oh yeah?” Vex sounded as annoyed as she always did, but she couldn’t hide the genuine interest in her eyes. “What’s that?”
Natalya smiled. A small expression filled with hope and trust. Hope for the impossible, and trust that the steel bonds she’d spent the past decade-and-a-half cultivating wouldn’t snap if their reach was extended.
“You don’t fuck with the Court of Chains.”
Chapter 45
Evie stared at the spot of soot where Natalya had just been standing. At the tendrils of smoke in the air, curling like grasping fingers. At the black smear on the floor that was the only sign Natalya had ever been there.
She kept staring even as Aleksander started saying something to her. When he tried to touch her, Drago let Evie go to push the King of Chains back a few feet.
They’d taken Natalya. Dominic had sent Vex not to kill Evie but to get Natalya’s marks. She’d torn Natalya’s clothes to pieces, and under the guise of fighting, it had just seemed like a natural consequence of the violence. But it had been planned. It was a trick. And now Natalya was gone, a prisoner at Varro’s.
Evie knewexactlywhat that was like. She knewexactlywhat awaited someone trapped in that dreadful estate. Pain, terror, and enslavement. They’d keep Natalya trapped for decades, using her as Evie had been used. As Natalya had been used before.
Lily pulled on her arms, trying to get her to move, but Evie was frozen in place. The all-encompassing fear that surged through her meant she was stuck staring at the space where the woman she loved had just been forcibly taken out of her life. Taken away to serve and slave for cruel masters who wanted nothing more than to use her as a toy until she broke or they got tired of playing with her.
She couldn’t let that happen. Shewouldn’t. Though fear could make her freeze, fear wasn’t the most filling emotion in her body right then. Fury rushed through her. Fury that they’d dared, anger at their cruelties, anger that Varro wasstilltrying to ruin everything good in her life.
“Varro took her,” she said hatefully, turning to Lily, who frowned. She wasn’t used to hearing that tone from Evie.
When Lily stayed quiet, Evie turned to Drago, who was still staring down an angry Aleksander.
“How does the summoning work?” she snapped, forgetting entirely that Drago could rip her to pieces if he fancied. Drago seemed to forget that too, looking at Evie in surprise.
“A fiend’s name is outlined in an unbroken chalk circle,” Drago said. “The witch or warlock conducting the ritual then sheds their blood on the circle, connecting them to whichever fiend they’re summoning. Natalya is wherever her summoner chose to make her circle.”
Natalya said a warlock who moved locations always made a new circle for their fiend. It was obvious where Natalya had been taken.
“We can’t move on Varro now,” Hasan said. “It was one thing when he knew we were coming. That was bad enough. Now he has not one buttwogreater fiends under his command. Even if we fall on him with every daywalker among the Chains, we wouldn’t have a chance. Two greater fiends and an army of silver-wielding humans would tear them apart.”
“That assumes we can even get to the estate,” Aleksander said. “Varro knows we’re trying to lure out his vampires. He’ll keep them close. The dark will be riddled with fangs, so any success we have in the day hours won’t last beyond the light.”
Aleksander looked enraged, but the sorrow on his face was evident too. It was distressing to see a man as powerful as the King of Chains look so hopeless. He pulled Lily close, and she put her arms around him.
“Natalya knows everything about the Chains,” he continued. “She’ll share it with Varro. Whether she wants to or not. He’ll know all our secrets, all our tactics. Our names and types. With that sort of information and the forces he has at hand, we won’t be able to resist him. The Chains could be broken.”
“You have to save her then,” Evie said. Everyone turned to look at her, surprised that she was talking at all. Aleksander and Hasan both looked frustrated, while Drago just looked stern. His stoic face twisted in anger.
“We can’t. If she’s at Varro’s estate, there’s no way for us to get inside. A direct attack is impossible, and we cannot hope to sneak up on a greater Envy fiend. She’ll steal the breath out of anyone who tries.”
Drago looked back to Aleksander, shaking his head in a way that seemed almost apologetic. “Even if we could get inside, only a human can break a summoning circle. And humans are useless in an estate full of Night vampires.”
Each word was like a dagger. Each of them painful and cold. Each of them hopeless. Natalya was trapped behind rows of monsters, some with fangs and others wielding cruel binding magic. And even if the Chains could somehow tear through them, it would be useless. Natalya would still be a slave.
That was the truth from Drago’s perspective. From Aleksander’s and Hasan’s. They were all beings more than the mortal men whose visage they’d adopted. They could be stoppedby something as simple as invitations and lines of salt. By chalk drawn on the floor.
Evie couldn’t.
