Page 46 of All the Devils are Here

“Right. I already know Prospero is a class-A dick. He proved that when he had Ariel hold me down while he forced this magic into me.”

“Hewhat?” Laurent spun on Ariel, whose mouth was pushed into a grim line. “I knew about the magic—”

“He fucking tortured her,” Ariel ground out. “The bond hadn’t snapped in, and I couldn’t stop it.”

“The magic revealed the bond,” Trin said. “Because of what we are. It’s why none of us felt it.”

Laurent was now looking at me, devouring every part of my body with his gaze and looking for where Prospero harmed me. “He said it was to keep me here,” I whispered. “So you’d come for me.”

He pulled me in, enveloping me in the embrace and leaving his lips at my ear. “I will always come for you, mate.”

The word reminded me that he’d come for me even when he thought I wasn’t.

“Why does he want me?” Laurent looked over my shoulder at the others. “I know why, but it seems different. Why go this far after so much time?”

My body convulsed once, pain spreading through me from my chest. It burned like the magic we’d just been talking about.

“Meg?”

I went limp like I was a puppet with all my strings cut, and I landed on Ban’s feline form as he tossed himself underneath me. Pain pulsed through me in waves. Nothing was real but pain. I couldn’t breathe, muscles spasming outside of my control.

“Meg.” Laurent was holding onto me, feeling my pulse, and I felt myself slipping away. Almost fragmenting into pieces. Lighter and lighter

In a spin of dizzy light, my gaze shifted and I was by the door of the cave, looking at all of them from where we’d entered, a hand that wasn’t mine around my throat. Magic rooted me to the spot.

All four of my mates turned with rage on their faces. Prospero’s hand held tighter, and I pulled on his arm. It didn’t fucking move. He didn’t feel quite human, now that I knew the truth.

“Hello, Khalas.”

“Let her go,” Laurent said. His voice wasn’t human anymore, and neither was he. Stone wings exploded from his back, graceful as they were deadly. The wings of a bird of prey. He grew taller, shirt shredding, and I saw the cracks on his chest.

Cracks. Not scars.

He said he’d had heart surgery. And he had, in a way. The monster who had me by the throat carved his heart out of him. If he didn’t have me immobile, I’d cuthisheart out myself.

Hadn’t they said he was drugged? That he wasn’t allowed to leave the mountain? How the fuck was he here?

Laurent was taller now. Every part of him broader and thicker, legs transforming into the paws of some kind of large cat. He was a beast, and I still recognized him. He was mine.

“Did you really think that what you slipped into the wine would stop me? If you did, you’re more foolish than I thought, Ariel.”

In the corner of my eye, I saw Trin’s tentacles creep over the edge of the stone like he was ready to launch himself at me. Ban, too, was circling. They were all ready for battle.

“Take your hands off her, or I’ll rip your head off your body,” Laurent said.

“You won’t, actually,” Prospero said, shoving me forward toward them. “I’m not really here.”

“What?” The word gasped out of me as I landed in Ariel’s arms.

Ban and Laurent instantly placed themselves between me and the magician, but I didn’t think it would do much. He’d transported me right to him, but he wasn’t really here?

I saw it now. What I’d felt when he touched me. The faint shimmer of magic around his form. He was projecting himself. “How long has it been, Khalas? Nearly eight hundred years? You never gave me a chance. Never gave me a weakness I could use until her.”

No one said anything, and I turned deeper into Ariel’s arms. Prospero’s gaze was too deep, lit with both magic and madness. It was terrifying.

“And then I saw you with her and began to plan.”

“What do you want?” The words even sounded like stone coming out of him in this form.

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