of us. Val has three. We can beat back his attack here, or we take the fight to him.”
Just the thought of releasing my demon sent shivers twitching through me: good shivers, bad ones, lust, desire, madness. If I had to go back to the netherworld, I’d be gone the second I stepped through the veil. My demon would win. Would I be like Stefan? Cold? Distant?
I needed a drink. “Seven half- bloods for seven princes,” I mumbled. Surely that wasn’t a coincidence. The universe prefers order. What would chaos do to it should the princes prevail?
“Four princes,” Stefan corrected.
Right. One was here with me. Akil was locked down at the Institute, and the Prince of Envy had been killed by a little half-blood girl, a crime for which I’d volunteered to shoulder the blame. That left Sloth, Lust, and Gluttony. I was long overdue a date with the Prince of Lust—Asmodeus, my father—but had no desire to speed that process up.
The few bites I’d had of breakfast churned in my stomach at the thought of facing him. “What do you need me to do?”
“Find Operation Typhon’s Subjects Gamma and Delta at the Institute.”
“Okay, I can try, but I don’t know where Adam’s base of operations is.”
“Then find out. Appeal to my father’s scientific side. If he thinks he can get some value out of you, he’ll tell you anything. Nothing gets between him and the progress of the Institute. Plus, he’s fascinated by you. You’re the one that got away…” Stefan relaxed back against the wall and rubbed at his forehead. “I can’t go near him. I’ll kill him.”
I figured Adam was on Stefan’s hit list. He was on mine. I puffed out a sigh and raked a hand through my hair. I really wasn’t up to this. “How long do we have?”
“I don’t know… A week maybe. I only get whispers, pieces of their thoughts, bits of conversations. I try not to delve into what I’m hearing. Half of it I don’t even understand. I’m not sure I want to. I do know they’re concerned about Akil’s disappearance. It’s giving them pause.”
“Is he part of their plan?” I asked, careful not to put too much weight into the question. Mentioning Akil within earshot of Stefan was like jumping on thin, cracked ice.
Stefan’s smile was far from kind. To call it a sneer didn’t do it justice. He smiled like a demon, hungry for the kill. “No, they despise him almost as much as they hate me. They’re afraid of him too.” Pausing, he seemed to mull over his last words. “He knows something that has them rattled. Whatever it is, they’re not happy about it. They suspect Akil was behind the Prince of Envy’s demise. They believe you’re Akil’s tool. They’re all too aware they’ve underestimated him.”
Didn’t everyone? They were probably right about all of it. Akil had manipulated the events that brought down the Institute. He could easily have steered the Prince of Envy into my path. If I thought about it for long enough, everything could be traced back to Akil. But confirmation that he was on our side had to be good news. At least, he had been on our team, before Adam locked him up. Now his motives were anyone’s guess. I needed to see him, to find out what he knew, to get the answers he owed me. “Akil told me the King of Hell could stop what’s coming. Have you heard anything like that?”
“No.” By the slight inflection of the word and arch of his brow, I could see I’d clearly piqued Stefan’s curiosity. “Really?”
I didn’t entirely trust Stefan and wasn’t sure whether any of the information I’d gleaned from Akil would help. It was all sporadic bits of dubious stories, nothing solid. But given the circumstances, rumors and speculation were all we had. “Alright… He told me there had once been a queen and king of the netherworld. When both ruled, they’d maintained a balance. But the queen killed the king, and the princes turned on her... That was pretty much when the netherworld went to hell.” I left out the part where I believed Akil was the king. He had told me the true king was hiding, but Akil hid the truth in plain sight. Stefan and Akil were destined to kill each other, like two freight trains on the same track. It was an unavoidable fact. I needed to keep them apart, especially if the so-called king could stop