“Deth, now!”
Deth whirled around, his armor clanking. “The boy,” he said. “The child Rariel brought to me. He is related to you, no?”
The blood in Lore’s veins congealed even as his heartbeat kicked into overdrive. It sounded as if Rade was still alive.
Stay cool. Stay calm. “No.”
Deth’s eyes narrowed. He snapped his fingers, and the nearest Ramreel disappeared through a side exit and returned with Rade, his body lying limp and motionless in the demon’s arms.
“What have you done to him?” So much for calm.
Deth smiled. “I don’t know how to care for an infant. There has been no reason to keep him alive. He was meant to be a meal, not a pet, after all.”
Sin moved toward Rade, whose sunken chest rose almost imperceptibly.
“As you can see, he hasn’t perished yet. But if you want him, you will agree to my new terms.”
Sin sucked air between clenched teeth. “You fuck,” she ground out.
Lore forced his own jaws to unclench. “What do you want?”
“I want one of you to remain with me. Forever.”
Outrage nearly knocked Lore off his feet. “Never.”
“Then the child will be sent to the kitchens.” Deth gestured to the Ramreel.
“No! Just… wait.” By now, Lore’s Incredible Hulk should have been knocking at the door, and though he was so furious his voice shook, he didn’t get the jacked-up sense that he was going to explode out of his skin and into a monster. Idess’s touch seemed to have soothed the savage beast. Idess, who had lured him out of his life of loneliness and death, and replaced it with warmth and light.
And Deth had just yanked all of that out from under him. Lore couldn’t bond with her now. Hell, he didn’t think they could be together at all. How was he supposed to come home to her at night and tell her about his day?
Hey, angel, I got to strangle someone today. Took him a while to die, because he had a fat neck and I couldn’t use my death gift because you drained me. And tomorrow, Deth wants me to break some female’s legs because she cheated on her mate. I think I’ll turn that job down and take the two days of torture instead.
Oh, yeah. Good times ahead.
Lore took his sister’s hand and guided her to a quiet corner, where Deth couldn’t eavesdrop.
“That sick bastard,” she snapped. “I’ll kill him, Lore. I’ll give him herpes and syphilis and Khileshi cockfire, and he’ll die slowly and in pain—”
“Listen to me,” Lore interrupted. “I want you to have that chance, but you have to be freed in order to do it.” Not that killing Deth would be easy, if possible at all. “I’ll submit to him for service. You go free. I just need you to take Rade to UG once it’s done.”
“What? No!” She gripped his jacket with both hands, went up on her toes, and got in his face. “You are handling the kid and your brothers. If one of us has to stay, it’ll be me.”
Gently, he peeled her hands off his coat and held them against her chest. “Sin, you have to do this. I owe you. I owe you a lot. I want you to have your freedom.”
She shifted awkwardly, from one foot to another. Her eyes glistened, for the second time, since they were children. Even then, she hadn’t been one to cry. “You don’t owe me anything. It’s because of me that you’re here in the first place. You need to set yourself free.”
Frustration drilled into his skull. She was making this more difficult than it needed to be. “You’re here because of me, too. If I hadn’t left you all those years ago, if I’d done what I could to protect you, you wouldn’t have been forced to sell your services to survive.”
“We’re not talking about that,” she said sharply. “It’s the past, and it’s over.”
It would never be over for her, and he knew it. “My point is, you’ve never been free. You need it. You need to have a normal life. You can have that now.”
She snorted bitterly. “Normal? You think I can be normal in any way? Hello, Lore, I’m a fucking freak of nature.” She waved her right hand in front of him, as if he didn’t know how much pain their dermoires had caused.
“Yeah…” He hesitated, not wanting to walk down a path that ended at Sin’s door. Then Tavin yelped—struck hard in the face by Detharu, reminding Lore that some shit situations couldn’t be avoided. “What do you know about diseased werewolves?”
The color siphoned from her face, confirming his suspicion. “You need to see Eidolon. He’s facing some sort of warg plague.”
She exhaled a curse. “Yeah. Okay. Later. We need to settle this first.” She shot Deth a dark look. “Look, I know you want to do this, but I can’t accept.”
“You don’t have a choice.” Lore wheeled around. “Deth, free her. I’ll stay.”
“No!” She shoved him aside and strode toward the demon. “I don’t want to be free.”