Page 12 of Hell's Secret Omega

Even so, something about that gaze prods deep inside him. It makes his vergis want to roll over and show its belly. He hates what he is, and he hates that the Hunter has seen it. An urge to compensate overcomes him.

“I want your bow. And I want you to teach me how to use it.”

A deep chuckles erupts from the Hunter’s chest. It gets longer and louder until Mezor is guffawing, his teeth flashing in the dark and his head tipped back. The silvery markings that run across the bare triangle of his chest pulsate with an eerie inner light. A chill sweeps over Cyrus, followed by another hot wave of humiliation.

He smothers it. It doesn’t matter—nothing matters except getting entrance to the Hellspring. Not even his pride. He would gladly humiliate himself over and over if it meant he could get rid of his weak vergis self for good.

“Those are my terms,” he repeats. Mezor’s laughter dies down when he realizes Cyrus is serious. Cyrus forces himself notto shrink under that gaze. “And furthermore, if I win, you’ll help me. You must tell the King my reports were crucial, and you would have failed without me.”

Something dark flickers in Mezor’s eyes. Cyrus grits his teeth, bracing to be dismissed.

“I agree to your terms,” Mezor says instead, gaze clearing. He holds out the white arrow. “Take this. Summon me at the waxing quarter moon. We’ll see how far you’ve gotten.”

Cyrus takes it. The arrow trembles in his hand.

“You may try to follow me as soon as the door shuts,” Mezor tells him. His eyes seem to glow in the starlight.

Before he can formulate a reply, Mezor is gone.

The click of the door echoes across the vaulted ceiling. Cyrus scrambles after him and flings the door open, but the hall is dark—the torches have been snuffed. Movement flickers in the corner of his eye, a shadow in shadows. He spins. But his foot catches on a broken tile and he stumbles, and when he looks again there’s nothing but black.

He tricked me!

Incensed, Cyrus feels his way to the wall torch and strikes his flint to light it. The hall is empty. The shadows have carried Mezor away.

Slowly the moonfills from a sliver to a crescent. At night, Cyrus retreads the Court, hunting for clues to Mezor’s secrets instead of sleeping. In between nights of searching and days of Magnus running him ragged, there are mornings he finds himself at the gate to the forge. Inside his coat are the papers he’s marked with all the missing supplies.

Not yet, he tells himself again, watching through the gate as flames burst at the heart of the great forge. The boom and clash of industry chases him up the tunnel. He can’t show his hand too soon. Everything must go in order, to plan—the plan he frantically pieced together after the Hunter’s challenge. First the bow, to protect himself. Then the King’s blessing to enter the Hellspring. Then the Grey Company. He doesn’t dare think about what comes after, or what could go wrong in between.

Heespeciallydoesn’t want to think about the sheer dark power in the Hunter’s gaze. The confident way he reached for Cyrus. As if he would make good on Cyrus’s offer right there, even after turning him down humiliatingly.

It makes him hot again. His core trembles with anger. And something else—a terrible, dangerous feeling.

Desire.

The flame he’s spent so long trying to suppress leaps to life in the Hunter’s presence. It makes his heart pump and his nerves sing. It makes him horribly aware of his own body.

He can’t let it overtake him the way he did today. He must remain in control. After all, it’s not only his future at stake. Deep in the bowels of Mount Hythe, in a place even Cyrus fears to go, is someone he promised to help. An innocent victim of the Court—a creature who deserves freedom much more than him.

For that, he’ll need to beat the Hunter at his own game.

Chapter 9

MEZOR

Mezor is playing with fire.He tells himself if Cyrianus fails the lover’s challenge, he’ll put the little demon out of his mind. He doesn’t expect Cyrianus to succeed.

If he does, it could jeopardize everything.

If Cyrianus did what no other demon had managed—if he found a way to Mezor’s secret grotto—would Mezor truly be capable of turning him away? Just the thought of such a sharp-edged, furious creature in his lair rouses a flicker of hunger in his neglected hind-brain. Stranger still, it stirs the side of him no demon has ever seen—his primus.

It’s been an age since he felt his primus awaken.

Cyrianus doesn’t even truly want him. He just wants a lever to pull. Yet his clumsy proposition ignited Mezor’s instinct.

Bring him here,his primus whispers.

Mezor lies in the dark of his garden room, unsleeping.

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