Page 91 of Viper

He held out his hand, relieved when she took it without hesitation. “You swear not to repeat what Dice and I tell you?”

“I swear,” she replied, her pulse beating fast in her neck.

Viper let a burst of his power blast into her system in a cold, electric wave that made her suck in a breath. The power writhed and glowed beneath the skin of her hand as it bound her to the vow she’d just made. And then it settled, the glow fading.

He released Ella’s hand, watching her carefully. She idly rubbed at her palm, staring at him in a sort of awed caution. Not fear, though, thankfully—he couldn’t have hacked that.

He arched a questioning brow at Mia, who dipped her chin and stuck out her own hand. He pressed his palm to hers and demanded the same promise of her. Mia gave it easily, and he then used his power to hold her to her word, much as he’d done with Ella.

As he dropped her hand, Mia flinched back with a blink. “Your power is, like,wow.”

Viper leaned back against his desk. “Try not to judge me and my brothers too harshly for choosing to fall even knowing what the cost to us would be.”

Ella’s brow creased. “Cost?”

Slanting his head, he said, “Your entity is a sort of inner darkness, isn’t it? Mine was once an inner light. But that changed.”

“Changed how?” Ella asked.

“What lives in me, in Dice, in my brothers … those entities feel no joy. No contentment. No peace. Their emotional spectrum ranges from dark to darker. The nearest thing they feel to happiness is a shallow sense of satisfaction, which they usually only experience at the expense of someone else’s pain or discomfort or humiliation.”

Damn, thought Ella. Her demon was an utter psychopath. It felt no remorse, empathy, or love. But it could experience some positive emotions, and not all were shallow.

“One feeling overrules all others for us and our inner entities.” He fixed his gaze with hers, demanding her focus. “Thirst.”

Ella’s scalp tingled as wariness danced in her veins. “Thirst for what?”

He waited a few beats. “Blood.”

She stared at him numbly, aware of her sister drawing in a shocked breath.

“The Fallen are cursed—quite literally—to subsist on blood as well as food and water,” said Viper, his expression carefully blank. “We go from virtuous beings to decadent creatures. It’s why they call it a fall from grace. This is our punishment.”

Well, shit.Nothing could have prepared her for this revelation. There’d been no clues, no hints, no rumors. And who would ever think that freakingangelswould be doomed in such a way, fallen or not?

Her chest panged with sympathy. Maybe she should have recoiled in horror—it would certainly be understandable—but it was impossible when he looked so damn tense, clearly braced for revulsion and rejection.

To have to survive on the life-force of others … Ella couldn’t imagine what kind of existence that would be. She only knew she’d hate it.

Mia narrowed her eyes. “Do you generally kill those you feed from?”

It was Dice who answered, “Not unless it’s during battle.”

“I never heard any rumors about how the Fallen might drink blood,” Mia said. “Not even a few whispers about it. How are you forcing people to keep it quiet if you’re not killing those whose blood you take?”

“They don’t remember us taking it,” Dice explained. “We can rid them of the memory, and we heal the puncture wounds.”

“None of us like our new reality,” said Viper. “We were prepared for it. For the cravings, the bloodlust, the unquenchable hunger. But we quickly came to see that there is no real way to prepare yourself for this life. You’re a parasite, plain and simple.”

Ella’s heart ached for him. To consider yourself a parasite, to feel that you’d been reduced to such a creature … It would be a mindfuck for sure. He must have had one hell of a good reason to choose to fall.

“We make the best of it,” Viper continued. “It’s all we can do.”

“We also have ironclad rules,” Dice added. “We never make the feeding painful. We never drink from the young, the ill, or the weak. And we never take more blood than we need.”

“Unless, of course, there’s a battle—then all bets are off,” Viper tacked on.

As the puzzle pieces knitted together, Ella said, “The brunettes at the bar are people you feed from routinely, aren’t they? That’s why Prophet called them your regulars.”

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