Page 1 of Savage Blood
Chapter
One
My heart pounded,and chills raked over my spine as a ghost stared back, grimy stone and iron bars surrounding us. The steady drip of water, or maybe another prisoner’s blood, interrupted the silence.
Had I lost my mind, or was I really looking at High Lord Ruin Bacchus?
“Don’t be afraid, beautiful.” He reached through the bars, and his fingertips brushed my cheek as the chains rattled around his wrist. “I’m not a frightening specter here to harm you. I want to help you.”
Ruin’s words penetrated the fog clouding my brain, and I jerked away from his touch as my last memories of him tumbled forward.
“Did you want to help me when you bound me on that table and let Nadia perform a spell to remove the Infernal Sol?”
His hand drew back into his cell and wrapped around the bars again. Lanterns hanging from the limestone walls in the corridor painted him with flickering light and shadows. Theangles of his face had sharpened, and dark circles bruised beneath his haunted eyes.
When was the last time Ruin ate more than a few scraps of food?
“You wanted the amulet out, didn’t you?” he asked.
“And who were you helping when you abducted all those shifters, held them captive, and slowly killed them as you stole their souls?”
“My kind, of course.” The high demon shook his head, navy hair falling across his sharp cheekbone. “The responsibility of looking after them fell on me. What would you have me do?”
I rolled onto my feet and stood, glaring at the crouching former high demon lord of Savannah. “Harming innocent shifters is not the route you should’ve taken. And what about all those demons you tested your formula on?”
Ruin shrugged and sat back on his haunches, revealing healing cuts and bruises on his pale, tattooed, bare chest. More signs of torture covered his arms. “They knew the risks.”
“Did Warin?”
He flinched when I mentioned Fane’s brother. “Maybe I should have been more careful with him.”
Waves of fury rushed through my bloodstream like molten lava. “If you had, my friends wouldn’t have died. That sweet, innocent little girl?—”
I choked back the rest of the sentence as my throat convulsed, unshed tears blurring the monochromatic gray surroundings.
Crying wouldn’t get me anywhere. Neither would arguing with Ruin.
He dragged his hand through his navy hair, his gaze a little clearer than it had been when he first emerged from the shadowsof his cell.
“I never meant to hurt him.” His shoulders dropped, and his forehead rested on the bars. “Or you, Tate.”
“But youdidhurt us and a lot of other people.” I studied the high demon while his violent death in the lab played through my mind. “How are you alive? You literally evaporated right in front of me.”
Wrath was right to suspect that his brother hadn’t met his maker. Perhaps being his twin allowed Wrath to sense Ruin’s essence still out there, alive and well.
Maybe not well, exactly. But alive.
“I don’t know why I’m still breathing air.” His nose crinkled. “As foul as it is.”
The stench of damp rot, death, and despair perfumed the atmosphere in the dungeons just like it had when Karn ruled the demon city of Vlehull.
Walking the perimeter of the cell, searching for weak points, I scoffed. “Bullshit. You expect me to believe you didn’t plan that?”
Ruin sat on the floor, his palms pressing into the dirty stone as he leaned back. “One minute I was gripping the Infernal Sol inside of you. The next, blinding agony encased me, and then I woke up in an Underworld forest.”
My boots scuffed the stones as I halted and angled toward him from the opposite side of my cell. “You just magically transported to the Underworld without a portal?”
“I don’t know.” A shaky sigh left him as he stared out into the dim corridor. “My memory is fractured, and I think I lost time. It’s possible I was somewhere else before the forest.”
