Page 83 of The Blood Crown

Her eyes lifted to Karro’s, recognizing something there.

He wore arrogance, covered himself with bravado and used his rugged good looks and blinding smile to disarm others—but he guarded himself just the same as she had.

He just chose different weapons.

Chapter 40

“You’re certain he recognized you?”

Nira’s hands were splayed across the etched moonstone table before them, her ruby eyes sweeping over the map in the council room.

Aurelia had known this conversation was necessary—imminent, but nothing quite prepared her as the façade of peace was finally ripped away.

Ven gave a decisive nod from where he stood beside her, one arm crossed over his broad chest, forefinger running along his bottom lip as he studied the map. It was an effort to drag her eyes away from those lips, a better distraction than the threat looming before them.

“Maloch knew us—he watched Aurelia kill Asmodeous. He knows the kind of power she wields, and we should assume that he knows we’ve brought her here."

A voice—dark and cold, leaked into her memory.

Karro paced at the side of the room while Seth stood at the opposite end of the table from his twin. Lean arms braced against the table, his usually bound hair was a darkcascade down his shoulders, the silken sheen as glossy as Cog’s midnight-colored feathers. She’d never realized how long it was until this moment because he always kept it in a neat knot at the top of his head.

“Tell me—again—how you killed Asmodeous,” Seth said, trying to make sense of it like the rest of them.

“At first it seemed like he was—”she gave an uncertain shake of her head, searching for the word, “siphoning my power.”

Wearing the ring had honed her magick. Sharpened it. But she knew the price it took as well—the lingering feeling that someone had been rummaging through her thoughts. But when she’d told Nira and Seth for the first time, both of them were struck silent as their matching eyes shared some unspoken understanding.

“The princes of the Void cannot create their own magick—they must consume it from others,” Nira contemplated, hooking her dark sheet of hair behind an ear with a slender finger.

Ven had told her as much—but it was another thing entirely to witness it. The feeling of her power being ripped away from her, stolen, as the white prince had leached it from her.

“And you kept your wits the entire time you wore the ring?” Nira prodded, “Your thoughts remained your own?”

She nodded.

The look on Asmodeous’ face was still fresh in her mind. His eyes widening when he realized she’d pushed him from her thoughts as her magick burned through him.

“Someone weaker would have succumbed and become one of their creatures,” Ven murmured from beside her, placing a hand on top of hers.

She stifled a shudder at the memory of Tanis—or what hadbeenTanis before the demon prince had claimed her as his own creature.

Nira threw a glance toward her twin. “No one has ever successfullywieldedany of the relics.”

Seth’s gaze was distant as he murmured darkly, “To use one is to become another vessel—forhim.”

“I watched her wield one and kill a prince of the Void with it,” Ven uttered, knuckles blanching as he gripped the table, readying for a fight.

Nira’s eyes met Aurelia’s, apologetic. “We do not doubt your memory—”

“But never before has anyone used a relic of their own volition—much lessdestroyedone in the process,” Seth finished.

Asmodeous’ voice rang through her memory.

Don’t you wish to know what you truly are?

Even now, she couldn’t bring herself to tell Ven the words the demon prince had spoken.

Aurelia swallowed, thinking of the slithering, oily feeling that had come over her the two times she’d worn the ring, only fully leaving once it had been burned from her finger.

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