Page 130 of The Crown of Nyx

If he really knew where it was, like Pandora suspected, then we were all doomed.

53

Adrian

Now, more than ever, I needed to find a way to stop my brother.

My hand strayed to my belt, where the charmed artefact lived in a small pouch. I didn’t dare pull it out. The charms were still being woven, still needed more time.

But based on the look on Ivy’s face as she stared in horror at the demon, we were running out of it—fast.

“Do you know where it is?” I asked. “Where the skull is?”

The old demon glanced at me before shaking his head. “Pandora took that secret to the grave. She didn’t even tell Kamari about it.”

Kamari had been the second Queen of Nyx. The Queen who had seen at least five hundred years of peace before thefall of this world.

I scrubbed a hand down my face. Ivy’s disappointment was strong, her fear potent.

“Is there any way Dante might have found out about it? Are you sure you destroyed all the records?” Ivy asked. I checked in with our bond, carefully bypassing her blocks. She wasn’t paying attention to me, too focused on the supposedly dead demon to notice my presence.

I needed to make sure she wasn’t on the brink of a panic attack. So far, since taking what was left of my mother’s power, she’d been stable not only with her magic, but also her emotions. And she had every right to lose her mind over everything that’d happened so far.

But when I checked, her emotions were mostly calm. Her fear bubbled close to the surface, but I couldn’t find any sign of an oncoming panic attack.

I remembered the first one she’d had after we’d bonded. The way it not only affected her—but me. I knew she had them; it was one of the first things she told me. They were, in part, caused by the nightmares triggered by coming into the power of Nyx. But she’d been struggling with them a whole lot longer than that. Because of her mom, because of life.

Deep within her, I found a hint of it. The tightening of her chest, the pressure that would build in her throat so she couldn’t breathe.

Only, it didn’t break the surface. It remained simmering in the back of her mind.

She was holding it back, but she didn’t need to.

I knew there was a way to siphon certain things through the mate bond. My father had told me about it. Pain, mostly. When my youngest sister, Lyra was born, Magnus had taken away Mom’s pain of childbirth.

I had a feeling I could do the same for Ivy, if I just tried hard enough.

When I pulled back from her mind, my eyes met Elias’s briefly. He had his arms crossed, jaw clenched as he leaned against the wall, but I wondered if he’d noticed the same thing I had.

He gave me a shallow nod before turning his attention back to her.

Releasing a shaky breath, I did the same, removing my hand from the pouch at my side. Later, I would work more on the spell. For now, though, we needed to get whatever information we could out of the dead demon.

Asael rubbed his chin. The locket in his hand glinted in the light of the fire as his hold on it loosened. I was a little intrigued about what it might be. There was a charm imbedded in the metal, one I didn’t recognise.

“I did most of the hunting myself,” he said. “The demons gave up information easily. Thanks to…” His eyes flickered to the Elysian King.

Rhadamanthus shook his head. “That was mostly Merikh.” He waved a dismissive hand. “They were a terrifying force.”

“That, they were,” Asael murmured.

I had no idea who the demon was, and I hated to admit my studies of demon figures was…vague, at best.

I’ll do better, I thought.When we go home.

There was a beat of awkward silence no one knew how to break.

“Well, that’s great and all,” Rowan said. At least he knew how to get the conversation moving again. “But that doesn’t answer the question of how Dante knows about the skull.Wedidn’t even know anything about it until Ivy was told by Pandora’sghostin a dream. Which seems a little too…helpful.”

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