Cahal opened the door and stepped into the stairwell, stairs curving up and down. He set me down on the landing, turned his broad back, and flared his arms backward for me.
“Oh yeah,” I whispered sarcastically. “This’ll be much better. I won’t be near your ears at all this way…”
Most notably—he caught me as I jumped up and left it to me to hang on—you won’t be randomly brushing against my cock.
“Wow. So I was hitting buttons and working at a lever…”
Please stop.
“Too bad Penny is taken. You guys could really explore the weird together.”
I do not know why she puts up with you.
“Yeah, me neither. I don’t push her buttons like I apparently do yours.”
I regret mentioning it.
“You certainly will, yes.”
Changing the subject for obvious reasons, he added, They won’t fight the heir specifically, no. But they’d try to kill me and surround you with the intent to hold you for your father. Any sect leader will know the situation with you.
He was taking the steps two at a time, a big guy with a muscular woman strapped to his back, and yet he barely made a sound. He was great at sneaking.
The light dwindled as we got lower and lower, the fairy lights affixed to the stairwell walls not all lit. They’d have no way to fix the problem, since demons weren’t allowed in the Realm, and fairies weren’t allowed down here. It was an incredibly crazy situation, and I was surprised the guy I’d gotten to know had been willing to put up with it all this time. Sectioning people off like this was crazy.
While I wasn’t sure about Lucifer’s goal to obliterate the elves and take over their castle and their world, I would help him rectify this wrong. Romulus was right—order needed to be reintroduced into the worlds. The coming war was necessary, even if it promised to be a great big hassle.
At the bottom, the light was nothing but a dim glow. I felt Darius’s nearness and his calm expectation, waiting for me. Knowing I would show up.
“Put me down,” I said, heart in my throat, needing to see him so badly it was a complex.
Cahal didn’t waste any time, and as soon as my feet hit the ground, I was running along a stone wall. Three furry guards waited outside of a doorway with no actual door. I lit them on fire and let Cahal stick them with his sword while I ran through the opening. Around a corner, still hugging the stone wall, I made my way down a small hall that dumped me into a torture chamber of some kind, filled with complex contraptions that were apparently meant to cause pain for long periods of time. They looked like they’d kill a human pretty damn quickly.
Penny better still be alive. Emery with her.
At the other end, the smell down here horrifically musty, like the place had been used a few too many times and never aired out, I found another doorless opening with a few glowing fairy lights beyond. Darius waited right in there. Right on the other side of that—
I crashed into a huge form stepping around a corner. Startled, I stuck it full of air swords and knives and added a little splinter on its right pinky, just in case it was one of those people who said a paper cut was so much worse than any big wound. I shoved fire in the middle of those holes, expanding it so the heat would boil its insides, and then ripped it out of my path as it gurgled its way to an awful death.
Don’t fuck with my friends.
All the cells were open save one in the middle. Fingers came through and wrapped around the bars. Lady fingers, belonging to one very bedraggled mage badly in need of a shower.
“What happened to your hair?” I asked her, stunned to see a mostly bald head with a tiny bit of stubble and face cleared of hair.
Tears covered Penny’s luminous blue eyes as she beheld me, her lip quivering. “I was supposed to save you this time,” she said.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Next time, I promise. And it’ll be ah-mazing!”
“We nearly lost a battle to a fire field,” she said.
My gaze zipped to the man uncoiling from the ground, dangerous and deadly, corded with muscle and pent-up aggression. Darius’s beautiful hazel eyes took me in, feasting on my face, then my body, then my lips. His relief and pleasure at seeing me flooded the bond.
I flicked my fingers, and the bars bent away from each other, my air power stronger than their steel. I was in with him in a moment, wrapping my arms around his neck and crushing him with my kiss, so grateful to see him again.
“Hello, mon coeur. This isn’t quite the rescue for you I had in mind.”