“No, Evie.” Natalya didn’t raise her voice. “I need to be alone.”
Evie didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what to say to make this right or even make it better. Hopelessness rose in her, the emotion so strange in her chest. She hadn’t felt it in earnest since she moved into the high-rise.
Dejected, ashamed, and wiping away angry tears, Evie left the Second Circle.
Chapter 21
The Second Circle remained empty for hours, long past nightfall. It wasn’t for lack of access. The red door to Natalya’s domain was unlocked. Anyone could have entered. No one did. No one dared.
Natalya sat on a couch opposite her throne. She didn’t feel like a ruler then, in a domain empty of souls and with shock still reverberating through her body. It was startling when the laws of your existence were revealed to be inaccurate.
In all her time on earth, only two mortal beings had been able to deny Natalya in the way Evie just had, and they were her summoners. She had trusted one, and she had killed the other. Both she had terrified.
Evie hadn’t been terrified. And she had denied Natalya at her strongest.
Natalya would have ended the kiss only a few seconds later, which made it even more baffling that Evie was able to stop her. Natalya had kissed her to make a point. That no mortal, save theone who summoned it, can resist the pleasure-producing touch of a greater Lust fiend.
Then Evie proved it a falsehood.
It wasn’t just the kiss. Evie had resisted her influence before. In Varro’s guest room, it had taken almost all of Natalya’s reserves to force emotion on her. Later, in the car, she successfully resisted Natalya’s attempt to calm her down, so much so that Natalya had to drain her into unconsciousness.
And Natalya could touch her. Kiss her. Embrace and sleep with her. Without hurting her. Somehow.
The thoughts generated a thousand questions, none with satisfying or even existing answers. Was Evie aware she was resisting Natalya? Was this sort of thing common among humans with a bloodline like hers? How was it that Natalya could feel Evie’s emotions as though they were her own? As though their lives were one?
The clinking of steel signaled someone had moved through the chain curtain entry of the Second Circle. Natalya should stand to greet whoever it was, but she honestly didn’t care.
“Your domain doesn’t benefit from the absence of people, Lady.” Drago was standing next to her. Huge, built for violence, and speaking with no emotion. Even he had left the hall while Evie remained.
“I suppose you are unimpressed by your teacher.” Natalya summoned command into her voice purely by habit. “If you have a challenge, make it. I’m in no mood for a lecture.”
“No challenge. Only a comment and a question,” Drago said. “During my tutelage under you, I have never seen you unpoised nor acting without perfect restraint. Though I am not of Envy, I suffer it as much as any creature. You make self-control look easy.”
“It is not easy.”
“I know. I remember your lessons. That control always comes with a price. For us, that price is ease and knowing that we can never be fully satiated, as that means we have lost ourselves to our urges. But I see you have indulged and that your Evie remains standing. Running, even. She left quickly.”
Natalya’s lip twitched as she tried to hold back a sneer. “I don’t remember requesting a speech, Drago. You’ve made your comment. Speak your question and be done with it.”
“We both felt the call for vengeance stronger than the call for home. We were both bound, and we both killed those who held us captive. We chose a millennium of self-control and malnourishment over one of havoc and destruction. But your Evie satiates you without consequence. Like a summoner would.”
Drago’s eyes softened a little, as much as a Wrath demon’s eyes could soften. “A summoner demands your mind, your body, and your agency in exchange for such satiation. My question is, what does she demand?”
It was a simple enough question with an even simpler answer. It was something Evie had already given Natalya. She had even shouted it in her face.
It was something Natalya never gave completely to others, as the consequences of giving it to the wrong person wouldn’t just be dire but catastrophic. It meant putting her freedom in the hands of another. If misplaced, she could be bound again. She had done so before and was turned into a slave because of it. A thing to be used by cruel men.
Natalya knew what that was like. So did Evie.
“She demands trust,” Natalya said finally.
“Is that too high a cost?” Drago asked.
Only another greater fiend could fully understand the significance of that question. Had it come from anyone else, even Aleksander, Natalya would have dismissed it as foolish andnever thought of it again. In a way, it would have been easier. It would mean the choice was made for her instead of her having to do it herself.
But that was freedom. It was what she chose when she killed Roland rather than return home. She was free but only to an extent. She wasn’t free to bond with or even trust another. It came with too much risk.
Some risks were worth it. They had to be.
