Page 81 of Legacy of Temptation

Ouch. Big story there. “Do you guys see him a lot?”

There was a moment of pause, as if he was deciding how much to share.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I don’t mean to pry.”

Except she did. She was curious, not just about Logan’s life, but also the private lives of demons. She’d told Logan she hadn’t really thought about whether or not demons could love, and she was ashamed now to realize that she’d never thought about their lives at all. They were theothers, people from a world of pain and evil whose lives were so different from those of humans that it wasn’t worth thinking about. Heck, a good percentage of humans were convinced that demon lifestyles involved nothing but sacrificing virgins and drinking the blood of infants. Surely, demons that ate people didn’t do dishes, vacuum, or take family vacations to the Grand Canyon.

“No, it’s fine. It’s just that a bunch of family shit went down a while back, and Stryke pretty much cut everyone out of his life.” He made an encompassing gesture. “This was his first compound. He gave it to all of us after he moved his company to the Sydney high-rise.”

“Wow.” Now the odd architectural blend of modern house and industrial building made sense. She strolled around the balcony, with its four hallways shooting off in an X pattern. The balcony, she realized, was the center of the building. The heart of it.

Pictures lined the walls, and she paused to look at one taken at a beach. She recognized a slightly younger Logan, hanging out with a couple of people she didn’t know. But she definitely knew who the three Seminus demons nearby were. Blade, Stryke, and Rade. Clearly, they were brothers. All had black hair, although styled differently, chiseled jaws, and good looks that should be illegal. But Rade had one thing the other two didn’t.

Ice-cold eyes.

She moved to another photo in the collage, obviously taken at the same event, and saw a dark-haired boy. “Is that Crux?”

Eva swore the temperature in the room dropped thirty degrees before Logan answered. “That was Chaos. Crux’s twin.”

“Was?” she asked softly.

“He died fifteen years ago. A week after that picture was taken. He was only seven.”

“Oh. I’m sorry for your loss.” It was an automatic response, said a million times during a career that made poking around in dark places mandatory. How many times had she exploited others’ pain to get a good story? Interviewing the survivor of a tragedy was freaking gold.

I’m sorry for your loss.

“Are you?” The doubt in Logan’s voice was like a lash, sudden, stinging, and coming from out of nowhere. “Chaos was a demon. Your people would have killed him without a second thought.”

Ah, so it wasn’t from out of nowhere. He’d just remembered that she worked for the enemy of his people.

“I really am sorry,” she said, hoping it sounded sincere and not rote. “Is that what happened? Did The Aegis kill him?”

“If The Aegis had killed him, all of you would be extinct by now.”

The anger and pain in Logan’s words chilled her to the bone. He wasn’t speaking in hyperbole. He was stating fact. And for maybe the first time in her life, she decided to stop digging and let something go, no matter how much she wanted to know what’d happened to Chaos.

And yet…one thing niggled at her, and the journalist in hercouldn’tlet it go.

“You said he was seven. Fifteen years ago. So, he was born twenty-two years ago?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Because according to our sources, not a single demon has been born for almost three decades. Not since the destruction of Sheoul-gra.”

“So The Aegis knows about the zero birth rate?” He nodded thoughtfully. “Interesting.”

“I find it even more interesting that two demons were born during that time. With Sheoul-gra no longer holding and reincarnating demon souls, how were they born? Are their souls…human?”

“We don’t know. No one has ever been able to sense what’s inside them.”

“Maybe they have no souls,” she offered.

He dismissed that with a shake of the head. “People sensitive to souls can feel the presence of one, but they can’t determine the type.”

“Are you?”

“Am I what? Sensitive to souls?”

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