you do. Which is why you’re here. I’m assuming you’re ready to see him? You don’t need to freshen up first?”
My eyebrows lifted. Was I going to have to dance to this nice tune the whole time I was here? Just let me see Akil already. “No, I’m fine. The sooner I see him, the quicker we can start getting answers. I don’t think we have the time to get comfortable. Do we?”
“No. You’re right about that. I would like to talk with you some more about what you know. It’s quite evident we’re dealing with an unprecedented number of incursions, and I understand you have certain…connections?”
“Once I’ve seen Akil.” See my nice smile? I can do congenial. Just not for much longer.
Adam loomed to my right. I’d almost forgotten him; such was Sabine’s presence. “Muse, I’ve already warned you… Should anything happen, it will take seconds for my people to reach you. As you know, a Prince of Hell can do a great deal of damage in seconds.”
You have no idea. “Is there anything specific you’d like me to ask him?”
“Not yet. I want to see how he reacts to you first. We’ll go from there.”
I was really going to do this. They turned around, and the assistants opened the door into a narrow, empty chamber. Along the left wall, a waist-high stretch of glass afforded a view of an adjacent room, and with each step, more of the room slowly revealed itself. Steel chains sheathed in clear plastic trailed from the back wall and pooled around the hunched form of a man. He’d turned away from the glass, so all I saw was the refined musculature of his back and shoulders. Sweat glistened on his bronze skin. A flood of bright light washed over him, presenting him in startling clarity. Before I realized I’d moved, I stopped at the glass, hand reaching. “Can he see us?” I whispered.
“We aren’t sure,” Sabine replied. “It’s one-way glass, but he appears to be able to see through it on occasion.”
I gulped audibly, and forgot about maintaining my composure. Distantly, I registered my rapid breath and pounding heartbeat, but all of it faded to nothingness at the sight of Akil. The sense of wrongness I’d experienced since seeing him fall in the alley amplified tenfold. My thoughts drew comparisons with caged animals in a zoo. A panther perhaps, pacing back and forth behind its bars, its eyes dull, claws blunt, mind gone. Akil could not be the man beyond the glass in that bland, sterile room. He was fire. He was chaos, bright, infallible, impervious. How was this possible?
Adam was saying something, but his words drowned beneath the gut-churning horror. I had to get Akil out. He’d saved me. He’d found me in the netherworld and taught me what I needed to know to find my own way in the dark. He’d saved me in so many ways and so many times that I’d lost count. I couldn’t let this happen.
Akil lifted his head. The corded muscles in his back flexed as he shifted position, and then he turned. Amber-fringed eyes locked on me. His lip curled up, baring blunt human teeth. He saw me, all right, and there could be no doubt what thoughts fuelled the rage in his gaze.
He launched himself with lightning reflexes at the glass, but the shackles around his wrists locked taut before he could throw his weight against it. That didn’t stop me from jerking back. He strained on those chains, pulling forward, arms yanked back, body trembling, and his face twisted into a hideous visage of fury.
I hadn’t believed until that moment that Adam’s warnings were true. I didn’t allow myself to think the impossible. I was wrong. The Institute truly had captured Akil. And he would kill me the first chance he got.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I didn’t go in. I wasn’t ready to face him, not like that. Sabine showed me to the cafeteria, and I sat, nursing thick, black coffee while the world continued around me as though nothing had happened. I’d seen Mammon sprawled virtually comatose once, and that was wrong, but this was worse. This was abhorrent.
Sixteen years ago, Akil—or rather his true form Mammon—had plucked me out of obscurity in the netherworld. I’d caught his eye after the Institute failed to purchase me, rousing my brother’s wrath in the process. Intrigued, Mammon wanted me, but he couldn’t challenge my owner, not directly. The laws forbade it, so he’d borrowed me for three