Page 141 of The World Undone

We just had to figure out how to do it.

Wade studied me, his jaw clenched tight, expression unreadable. For a second I thought he might push back, fight me on this. Instead, he nodded, almost imperceptibly, before turning back to them.

“Deal,” he lied, voice loud and clear. “You can take her power, if that will save her. I suppose we have no other option.”

I grinned. Translation: we did, we just weren’t letting these fucktwats in on it.

“Tell us where to find the stone and the council members and we’ll bring you Max,” he added, lips pressed into a firm line as he tried to contain his cool for a few more minutes.

A rancid smile carved its way across the creep’s face, one that was mirrored on several of his cronies as well. They were so consumed with greed, with the promise of dipping their toes in pools of stolen power, that they weren’t thinking straight.

He pulled a small piece of paper and a pen from his pocket. Silently, he scratched a few lines onto it, before stepping midway between his group and ours. “These are the coordinates. You’ll find the stone and Jarrod’s hideout there. But we’ll need something in return, collateral to guarantee you won’t betray us.”

Wade stiffened, narrowing his eyes. “What kind of collateral?”

The woman tilted her chin forward, her posture straightening. “We require that three of the girl’s current bonds come with us, and agree to take power dampeners. Just until your end of the bargain is upheld and we have inherited the girl’s burden.”

Yeah, so not fucking happening. On any level.

“Just to clarify,” Eli’s hand flexed around his dagger, “the world’s literal survival is at stake here, and your number one concern is still maintaining the upper hand?”

The woman’s eyes narrowed, just a touch, but her fake-ass smile remained plastered to her face. “We have no reason to trust you, Mr. Bentley, this merely gives you a reason to hold up your end of the bargain. We are doing this for the greater good.”

The greater good of her pockets, maybe.

So, basically, if I understood this right, the TLDR of their ‘greater good’ plan: steal Max’s power, kill off every creature in hell, be the strongest beings in the world, and reap congratulations for saving humanity.

And that was assuming they managed to do all of the above without accidentally killing everyone off in the process. Something I had no faith in.

I fought back the tremendous urge to roll my eyes.

Instead, my focus locked on that small square of paper, gripped in the man’s greasy fingers. He’d given us the coordinates, we just had to trust that they were accurate, that they weren’t fucking with us on this one thing at least.

Which meant that all we needed to do here was remove it from his grasp…or remove his hand from his wrist. I didn’t much care either way, though one certainly sounded more exciting.

A small flutter of noise, both loud and soft at once stole the attention of a few of their minions. They bristled and gasped, fear rippling over them like a wave.

A man had materialized at the edge of the forest, his expression grim.

“Councilmember Xavier,” the woman said, her voice wavering with fear, despite her attempt to contain it. “We weren’t expecting you here.”

“Clearly,” he said, “but I see you’ve done one useful thing and drawn most of the girl’s bonds to one place. How convenient.”

28

MAX

My breath caught in my lungs, shock rolling over me that had nothing to do with the fact that he pressed the edge of my blade to the sensitive flesh of my neck.

“Saif? As in Sayty’s twin?” The blade dented further into my skin when I spoke, but I didn’t fight him off, didn’t back away.

It was easier to study him now that his face was barely even a foot from mine. There was a layer of grime covering the visible patches of his face, and his hair was knotted with matts, like dried blood had fused bits of the wild waves to his scalp. His full lips were chapped, and there appeared to be a small piece of one ear missing—an almost impossible feat for a partial demon.

He smelled of dried sweat and musk and there was something almost wild about him that I couldn’t quite pinpoint, but that fit perfectly in these woods. I wondered when the last time he’d even been indoors had been.

There was an otherworldliness in the dark abyss of his eyes, an intelligence that was almost terrifying to look directly at for more than a moment or two.

But after taking him in, I found myself searching for fragments of myself too. Pulling apart Lucifer’s features that had braided with my own, trying to fill in the missing bits, crafting an image of my mother from the man who stood in front of me, using myself as part of the blueprint.

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