Page 92 of Prince of Demons
And if the auction began?—
He knew what they were like. The Europeans followed the old ways. A woman subjected to that would not come out the other side with the light in her eyes still intact.
Something broke inside him; dark and violent and powerful.
The ground shuddered beneath his feet, the floorboards splitting with a thunder crack. Jimmy’s scream cut off mid-breath as he disintegrated, body turned to dust in a flare of heat and raw energy.
Then the room exploded.
Not outward. Not upward.
Every atom of the building detonated in every direction at once.
The blast hit every surface; stone liquefied. Metal screamed. Fire rose in a column a quarter mile high.
Hell was gone.
All of it. Reduced to a crater still glowing at the edges, ash spiraling into the air like smoke off a funeral pyre.
At the center, Kesh stood alone.
Breathing.
Barely.
Eyes burning amber with only one thought left in his mind.
Save her.
45
Georgia
The royal palace was quiet.
Not the kind of quiet that comforted. The kind that made it hard to breathe. The velvet runner underfoot swallowing the sound of their steps, as though sound wasn’t allowed in this place.
Georgia walked between her kidnappers. Aragalan on her right. Mallorn on her left.
She kept her eyes on the floor. The hallway stretched ahead, a gallows walk, an endless runway of opulence and excess. The contrast to Kesh’s casino was stark enough to register through her numb horror as she was marched through the palace.
Somewhere over the Atlantic, once the realization finally set in that there was no way out, her mind had slipped from raw terror into the kind of cold, creeping dread that settled in bone. No more bargains to be made, and no rescues to be had. Kesh wasn’t coming to get her.
Her heart gave a dull throb deep behind her ribs. How she was still capable of feeling something as ridiculous as heartbreak amid the despair, she didn’t know. Mallorn had fooled her so easily, because he’d known exactly where to twist the knife: he’d fed her stupid heart hope, and she’d leaped at the chance to believe that Kesh loved her after all, despite all the proof to the contrary.
But now?
Even if he did care, he wasn’t going to save her. Not this time. She was deep in enemy territory, and the cost of retrieving her was not justifiable to a prince with subjects and territory to protect.
She wasn’t worth the price.
“I can still smell it,” Aragalan’s voice was almost soft; a velvet caress laced with poison. He didn’t look at her, but his hand constricted slightly around her upper arm. “The sadness. The fear. I believe I have made myself clear that I do not tolerate pheromone manipulation, Breeder.”
“I can’t control my smell.” In the past, she would have apologized, cowered. That girl would have done everything in her power to diffuse his anger, to make herself as small a target as she could.
That girl, who still thought there might be way to lessen the horrors that lay ahead, was dead.
“In that case, I’ll make sure you stop stinking of fear myself. There are ways, even if I can’t yet twist that pretty little ring Jimmy said you’ve been fitted with,” the prince said, almost lightly. “We’ll make sure you enter your auction with the sweet smell of submission staining your skin instead.”
