I’d been to the Louvre before—long ago, on a trip with my parents. And I didn’t remember it quite this way. Aereus had definitely made it his own.
Torches burned in brackets along the stone walls. Statues of a war god—Aereus, presumably—stood over a marble floor.
Without Adonis’s arms around me, a chill had spread through my body, and my teeth chattered. My wet hair felt positively icy on the back of my neck.
From a shadowy hallway, five humans emerged, each with an iron collar around their neck, each dressed in a simple gray tunic.
I bit my lip. Considering they weren’t chained to anything, the iron collar served no practical purpose. Maybe they were chained up when they slept, or maybe Aereus just wanted to give them a harsh reminder of their servitude.
Four cherubs glided around us, their wide eyes peering up at us. “Dark Lord,” they said in unison. “We understand you have arrived to discuss important matters with our master. You must rest now. The human servants will take you and your lover to your room. Please, follow them.”
Eerie little buggers.
The humans stared at Adonis, their eyes wide with terror. Two of them stepped forward—the two largest men, one bearded and over six feet tall, the other a younger man, his body lean. They trembled as they stared at Adonis.
Nervously, they beckoned us down another expansive hallway, lined with stately columns. The other humans beckoned Tanit and Kur in the opposite direction, splitting us up.
My high-heeled boots echoed off the stone walls as we walked, and I summoned more of the charcoal glamour of a succubus to waft off my body in tendrils. Drakon’s claw-tipped feet clicked over the floor behind us.
The path that the cherubs took led us past long, winding marble halls, the walls festooned with paintings of deeply unnerving battle scenes. Swords cutting off heads, blood spattering battlefields—Saturn Devouring His Son, the god’s eyes wide with insane bloodlust. I shivered, maybe from the icy rain, or maybe the decor.
At the end of a long hall, the cherubs paused at a door that swung open, revealing a small room with a simple bed in the center of a stone floor. White sheets, a few pillows—literally no other furniture in the whole room apart from a claw-foot bathtub. The place didn’t have windows, just a few iron sconces protruding from the sandstone walls.
After all that grandeur, I’d been expecting something more luxurious than this. Aereus, clearly, was trying to make a point.
Adonis turned to the cherubs, his eyes darkening, and the candles wavered in their sconces, nearly snuffing out.
“This,” he hissed, “is the room Aereus wants me to stay in?”
The bearded man shrank away from Adonis. “He thought you might be comfortable here. With your friend.”
An eerie, animal stillness had overtaken Adonis’s body, only faint whispers of his magic moving in the air around him. Nothing, I was coming to realize, was more dangerous or terrifying than the quiet stillness of an angel.
Chapter 23
“Aereus has done this on purpose, to prove a point,” said Adonis. His lip curled in a snarl, then with a lightning-fast movement, he had the bearded man pinned up against the wall.
Drakon spread his wings and hissed, a stream of fire pouring from his mouth in the direction of the humans.
Sweet earthly gods, all this over a room?
“Relax, Adonis,” I snapped, before changing my tone to be sweetly seductive. “This will be perfect for us. No distractions, just a bed and a bath to keep us occupied.”
Adonis didn’t appear to be listening to me, his hands wrapped around his victim’s collar. Instead, he leaned in closer to the man. “I want you to go back to Aereus and tell him that this is perfect for me, and that I love it.” Despite the gentleness of his words, icy rage poisoned his tone.
He dropped the man in a heap on the floor. The other servant seemed to have slunk into the shadows, probably hoping Adonis would forget he existed.
Within a moment, both humans had scrambled off, their footsteps scuttling over the floor as they ran. Adonis slammed the door.
When he turned back to me, his expression was one of complete serenity, his body entirely at ease.
I cocked my hip, trying to calm the chattering of my teeth. The flight’s rainstorm still chilled me to the bone. “Did you really just violently assault someone over the furniture?”
Surprise flickered in Adonis’s eyes. “He’s fine, isn’t he? And I don’t care about the furniture, but the other horsemen expect me to act in a certain way. I’m supposed to be the Lord of Death, and all that.” His movements smooth and easy, he prowled closer to me. “Surely you understand playing a role, Ruby.”
I nodded. “I get it.” I sat on the edge of the bed, desperate to pull off my boots and crawl under the covers. “So who gets the bed?”
“Plenty of room for both of us.”
I swallowed hard, then lowered my voice to a whisper. “We’re not really lovers, Adonis. We’re just going to play the part.”
Behind him, his wings shimmered away—the first time in days I saw him without them.
He pulled off his shirt, giving me a view of his chiseled chest. The network of scars over his heart interrupted the sharp lines of his tattoos. Already, he was sliding between the bedsheets. He leaned back on his hands, eyeing me as I stood there hugging myself.
“Can you turn around?” I asked, shivering. “I want to change out of my ice-cold dress.”
“I have seen you naked before. In fact, the image is seared deeply into my fondest memories.”
“Close your eyes,” I barked.
He did as he was told, and I pulled off my drenched dress, my skin frigid and puckered in the cold air. I rifled through the leather bag until I found one of Tanit’s dry dresses, and I slipped it on over my naked body. Then, I snatched the sheathed knife from the bag.
I hugged myself, my teeth still chattering. “So where am I supposed to sleep, now?”
Adonis opened his eyes again, and his gaze roamed over me as if imagining what he’d missed. “If you don’t want to sleep next to a godlike being, that’s your choice. There’s always the floor, or the bathtub.”
I shivered, and the warmth of the bed called to me.
Adonis cocked his head. “But I can see that you’re freezing. You’ll need me to warm you.”
I tightened my fingers into fists until the nails pierced my skin. “Fine. I hope you’re okay with sleeping with the torches lit,” I added. “Because I’m still not into the whole darkness thing.” I shoved the knife under the pillow. “And if you do anything I don’t want you to, I have a poison-tipped blade under my pillow.”
“Of course,” he purred. “I’ll only do things you want me to.”