The seer sighed and rose. “You have five minutes to agree upon your request. After that, the overpayment will suffice for this colossal waste of time.” She returned the cauldron to the fire.
Cinder leaned toward me, lowering her voice. “I’m the only reason you aren’t still wasting away in your dark prison. I get to decide, and I want to see my parents.”
“What good is finding your parents when I’m the only one who can break your family’s curse?”
She sucked in a sharp breath, her mouth opening and closing twice before she spoke, “Look, I know you want to find your brothers and the stupid amulet, but my parents are suffering. Let me rescue them, and then I promise I will help you free your brothers.”
“Are you forgetting about the price on our heads? The moment we leave this cave, we’ll be hunted. I have no doubt the archer who shot you was Seraphine, and she toyed with us like a hellcat plays with a rat before devouring it. Next time she aims, her arrow will pierce your heart.”
“She won’t get the chance again.” She angled toward me, her knee resting against mine. The contact made my abdomen tense, but if it affected her in any way, she hid it well.
“You argue as if you’ve been bound for centuries. Here.” The seer dropped a leather sack onto the table in front of Cinder. “Scrying supplies and a cloaking potion that lasts five full minutes. It’s already activated, so either of you can use it. Take it and be gone. My appointment has arrived.”
“Fabulous.” Cinder glared at me and snatched the pouch before retrieving her backpack and shoving it inside.
“Come in, child.” The seer waved her hand in front of the curtain, allowing the pregnant succubus entrance. The bones rattled, and the seer gasped.
I grabbed Cinder’s arm, shoving her behind me as Bedlam entered the room. He gripped the back of the succubus’s neck with one hand and pressed the tip of a jagged, twelve-inch blade against her distended belly. Tears stained the woman’s cheeks, and her lower lip trembled as he positioned her halfway through the curtained opening.
“The seer’s property is neutral territory,” I said, widening my stance and straightening my spine.
He laughed dryly. “It’s only her property if she’s alive.”
“No!” Cinder darted from behind me as a poison-tipped arrow whizzed through the curtain. She grabbed the seer around the waist, tackling her to the floor, but she was too late. The arrow had pierced the seer’s heart.
17
CINDER
I slammed into the seer with enough force to send us sliding across a slick patch of obsidian. We ended up behind a counter, which shielded us from our hunters’ view. Of course, Bedlam or Seraphine could’ve easily stepped around it and severed both our heads in a heartbeat, but Discord kept them occupied.
“The seer was a neutral party,” he said. “You had no right to kill her.”
I pulled her into my lap, cradling her head as she rasped in a breath. Ice and black lattice spread from the arrow in her chest, across her shoulders, and up her neck. Her pained expression wrenched my heart. She might’ve bound my soul to a demon I just met, but I wouldn’t wish this death on anyone.
“Tell me what to do,” I whispered. “Do you have any of the antidote left?”
“Take what you need,” she wheezed. “Find Hecate. Set things right.” She coughed, and the ice consumed her, freezing her entire body before she crumbled to dust.
“She aided an outlaw. She had no right to live.” Bedlam shoved the succubus to her knees, and I scooted toward the end of the counter to get a better view.
Discord growled. “There are laws. Even Lucifer?—”
“There are no rules in this game,” Bedlam said. “Lucifer wants your heads by any means necessary.”
I rose onto my knees and gently tugged a cabinet door open. Jars and vials of herbs and potions filled the space, and I unzipped my backpack to shove an armful of them inside. What they were I had no clue, but surely, they’d come in handy somehow. My grimoire sat atop a high shelf, sadly out of my reach. If I went for it now, I had no doubt I’d take an arrow to my chest, and that would be the end of me.
“Where’s the witch?” Seraphine’s voice cut through the room, making my skin crawl.
I slipped my backpack onto my shoulders and buckled it at my waist before gripping a dagger and rising to my feet. Bedlam held the succubus by the hair as she trembled, tears rolling down her cheeks. He’d changed out of his dinner suit and now sported black cargo pants, combat boots, and a gray tank stretched so tightly across his pecs that it would probably rip open if he flexed.
Seraphine wore dark purple from head to toe, and her silver hair glinted in the firelight. She leaned her crossbow against the wall by the entrance and held her empty hands in front of her, a swirl of wind and energy forming between them.
Fabulous. She was an elemental witch too.
But she was just a witch. My fire might have zero effect on demons, but it sure as shit could burn her.
“Let the succubus go,” Discord said. “She has no skin in this game, and Lucifer will have your head if you obliterate an unborn spawn.”
