Page 61 of Dating the Dealing Demon

I wait until Dupree runs before focusing my attention on my mother. “Now is when you explain what you did in drafting the demon deal.”

Mother raises her head until her horns might as well be curling toward the cash-in cages lining the back wall. “The Bonettis wanted our demon magic to build a beauty empire.”

“Get to the part of the story we don’t already know,” I tell her, needing her to move along before she manages to hurt Val’s feelings any more than she may have earlier.

Val nudges me not so gently. “Idon’t know that part of the story. Or at least I didn’t believe it.” Her voice trails off to an almost whisper, and I’m torn between needing to hear the rest of this for her sake, taking her to the suite to console her, and chasing after my cranky sister who was foolish enough to leave the safety of Shadowvale.

I wrap a wing around her. “Then share that part, Mother, but be mindful of hurting my mate.”

“I can take care of myself,” Val whispers to me.

Pulling her tighter with my tail, I fight a grin at her sullen arrogance. “Let me this once.”

She heaves a put-upon sigh. “Fine. If it’ll make you happy.”

“It will.”

Nic manages a tiny giggle despite the awfulness of the situation. “You two are so cute. No one could doubt you’re fated for each other.”

My mother’s stance has softened while watching our exchange. “I didn’t foresee the possibility that one of the seventh daughters might mate with you, Theo, or I wouldn’t have risked our family.”

“Mother—”

“Or hers,” she hurries to add. “I would’ve found another way without endangering any humans if I’d had any inkling of the damage it might eventually cause.”

That last bit seems to be enough to have Val leaning into me instead of holding herself as if ready for battle. “No one can predict the future,” my mate says charitably. “My own mother offered to hand me over for a shot at a single flower.” The sadness in her tone tugs at me. “She might not have been soeager to trade me away if she’d known I would be able to create hundreds of Brimstone Bells. Or maybe she would have.”

Shaking her head so quickly her crown clicks against her horns, my mother says, “I don’t understand how anyone could do that to her child. She couldn’t have been thinking clearly.”

“She was.” Val doesn’t leave room for argument. “The business means everything to her. Much as your kingdom does to Theo.” She frowns. “If you believed I was some kind of a world-killer who would destroy your kingdom and your son’s life, why not do more than make some cryptic comments?”

From the guilty gaze flickering in my mother’s eyes as fast as one of her lightning strikes, Iknow. “You didn’t stop at idle threats, did you?Yousent the assassins that tried to break into the suite?—”

My mother talks over me. “I didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to mate with her. I had your father take your crown away.”

My heart hammers a deafening beat in my ears. “Youhad father declare that unholy competition for the crown? It painted a target on Nic’s back, Gilly’s, mine.”

Mother stiffens. “I figured a Bonetti would be too superficial to want you without a crown. I thought she would leave you. Or I could get rid of her before any mating.”

Red washes over my vision until I can’t see past my rage. “You. Could. Have. Killed. Her.”

Nic’s vines brush against me as they rush past, yet I burn through them. Montejanus lets loose a snarl.Good. Let him defend my woman. Because the gods pity anyone who dares hurt her. Here I’d been hunting a threat out amongst cousins, and my mother had been the villain I wouldn’t have suspected in a thousand lifetimes.

“Theo?” Even Val’s voice can’t cut through my wrath.

My mother argues, “Your father?—”

Flames spark across the casino tables, racing upward. “Yousent assassins after her. You were behind the attacks on Shadowvale because you wanted to murder mymate.” My accusation—the awful truth—comes out on a roar.

The air around me crackles. Velvet engulfs in fire, the stench of charred fabric and smoky sweetness burning my nose. The metallic clang of the roulette wheel buckling under the heat reverberates through the room as molten rivulets cascade down its once-pristine surface, pooling on the floor in a river of liquid metal.

I suck in breath after breath, trying to calm myself, but it’s no use. A torrential blaze unleashes upon the magical slot machines. The roar of Brimstone flames drowns out the clinking of coins and the whirring of reels. So much for being able to extinguish an inferno at will.

A purple haze of fury and betrayal wraps me, and I struggle against the weight of power dragging me down. Smoke rushes through the room, carrying deadly poison.

For decades, I’ve had hard-won control of my fears, my weaknesses, my magic.

Now? That control is all gone.

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