Page 27 of Pain

I swallowed and moved half a step closer to Zandren.

He sniffed again. “The rest of you aren’t even demon.”

Chair legs scraped across the worn wooden floor, and murmurs echoed through the crowd. The tension and animosity in the small space was getting thick enough to choke on.

Without even discussing it, all three of my mates circled me, closing in so nobody could touch me, let alone sniff me.

“You’re the Shifter Prince, aren’t you?” someone from the back of the crowd near the bar asked. “Ryden’s boy.”

Zandren lifted his chin. “I am.”

“Who’s she?” the same voice asked. We had yet to see him.

“My mate,” Zandren said, puffing up his chest a little. My hand fell to the space on his back between his shoulder blades, which was hard as rock.

“Then who are the other two?” someone else asked. “What’s the Shifter Prince doing hanging out with a vampire, and a … what the hell are you?”

“Fire-mage,” Maxar replied, creating a little pink flame on his fingertip just to show off. “We are also her mates.”

Even more murmurs and louder ones took over the room. Nobody could believe a demon-human hybrid had three mates. Fair enough. Some days I struggled to believe it myself.

“Please,” Maxar said, raising his voice above the din, “if you don’t know who Kenvin Jol is, that’s fine. We’ll be on our way. We don’t mean to cause trouble.”

“What do you want with him?” came another voice.

“We wish for his help,” Maxar replied. “Our mate … her powers are … they are causing her trouble. Her human side is making it difficult for her to control them, and we were toldby King Rydenthat Kenvin Jol would be the man to help her.”

A part of me thought that maybe if we appealed to the crowd and told them who I really was, who my father was, that they’d be more receptive to us. To helping us. But we really had no idea who we could trust. Maybe finding out that their beloved king had an affair with a human would turn them against me and rally them to Lerris’s cause. We had to tread carefully and remain truthful while also keeping my parentage hidden.

“Why would we help a mutt?” sneered the man who’d been sniffing me earlier. “Let alone a vampire, mage, or shifter. You must think we’re stupid.”

And because he really was fucking stupid, he decided to prove a point and took a literal stab at all of our brains. All four of us gripped the sides of our heads in pain as the asshole demon shoved a poker between the lobes.

Maxar quickly blocked him, and I dug down deep to the one lesson I had from that maniac Raewyn, and slammed down a shield, severing the poker and breaking the connection it had with my brain.

Instant relief.

Then I went in for retaliation, channeling all of my anger and pain and gathering it into the red ball in my mind until that ball could no longer be contained, and it formed, pulsating in my hands. “Stop hurting them,” I said slowly. “Now.”

The demon torturing Zandren and Drak—who were now on the floor, writhing in agony—did nothing but smirk, like he was this invincible motherfucker and I was nothing more than a halfling monstrosity who never shouldhave been born.

“Last chance,” I warned.

He simply ramped up his torture, and blood began to pour out of Zandren and Drak’s noses as they screamed.

Heat filled my chest and head. I increased the energy within the ball until it was slightly smaller than a basketball and hurled it at the demon—just as thunder clapped overhead—sending him flying backward into the chairs and people behind him. Steam sizzled from his chest where a hole the size of the energy ball ripped through him all the way to the other side. I could see a pile of fallen, soggy French fries on the groundthroughhis abdomen.

“We. Come. In. Peace,” I enunciated slowly. “All we want is to know where we can find Kenvin Jol. If you don’t know him, just say so, and we’ll be on our way.”

Drak and Zandren slowly stood up, each of them leaning forward to grab napkins from a nearby table to wipe the blood from their faces.

“No demon can do that. What the hell are you?” came a grizzled voice from the depths of the crowd. Soon the people parted and a man not much older looking than Zandren, but probablywayolder, slowly stepped forward. He had more gray in his dark hair than anything else, and the deep creases around his eyes told of stories he’d probably rather forget.

“Kenvin Jol?” I asked, knowing this was him.

“What are you?” he asked again.

“Let’s find somewhere to talk—in private—and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

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