Dark Champion (Flirting with Monsters #4) - Eva Chase Page 0,24
asked him about their past liaisons.
I shoved the jealousy aside along with the rest and held myself steady. We came to a stop a few feet from the gilded barrier that ran through the room in an attempt to keep tourists away from the most valuable furniture.
Tempest’s gaze slid over Omen to rest on me. “Well,” she said in the same tone, which managed to sound like she was making both a threat and a joke, “what have we here?”
“Just a lowly mortal,” I replied, attempting to match that tone. That seemed safe enough to say before we knew exactly how and how much we might be able to work her into our plans.
“Hmm.” Her cat-like eyes flicked toward the shadows along the edges of the room. “Let’s see your whole troop, Omen. All the indomitable beings who worked so hard to disrupt my plans.”
Of course she’d be able to sense the shadowkind who’d stayed in the darkness. Omen had expected that. He made a casual gesture, and our three companions materialized around us.
Omen had said it’d been a force of wingéd who’d attempted to destroy Tempest on the Highest’s orders. If the sphinx could identify Thorn and Flint as beings of the same kind, considering she had pretty direct experience with their kin, she showed no sign that their presence bothered her at all. She cocked her head, the locks of her hair continuing their sinuous dance around her face. “This isn’t all of them. You had an incubus.”
“He’s attending to other business tonight,” Omen said, which was sort of true. Ruse had offered to stay back and ensure that Antic didn’t follow us to insist on contributing her impish version of “help.” “Not much my talents can offer against a sphinx,” he’d said in a flippant way that had felt a little forced to me.
The hellhound shifter made a point of looking around the room, his stance casual but poised. “You’ve hardly brought all your allies to this parley. Of course, it appears you’ve gotten yourself a whole host of them, more than perhaps could fit in this palace. All of them mortals, oddly enough. What grand scheme have you concocted this time, Tempest?”
“Oh, you know me. To some extent I simply play it by ear.” The sphinx gave a smile that didn’t quite manage to be demure and trailed her fingers across the bed covers. “It’s provided immense amusement having a horde of mortals at my beck and call, hating shadowkind with all their being while in service of one.”
“They’re hurting shadowkind,” Snap spoke up with some of the new boldness he’d shown since I’d returned. He should know more about that hurt than anyone here other than Omen—they’d both spent time in the Company of Light’s cages, tormented by their experiments.
Tempest lifted one shoulder in the most languid of shrugs. “Fewer incompetent beings to irritate me. The Company of Light would hardly be effective if I never let them indulge their basest desires, would they?”
“Effective at what?” Omen demanded, commanding but not angry. Not one tuft of his tawny hair had risen yet, as provocative as his former conspirator was obviously trying to be. I couldn’t suppress a twinge of affection that didn’t have much place in this moment.
He’d used to run wild with this woman, yes, and it wasn’t hard to see how tempting she could have made the prospect. He’d been savage and cruel and selfish. And somehow while she’d stayed exactly the same or perhaps gotten even worse, he’d shaped himself into something so much better than that. A leader who could be compassionate as well as harsh, who saw what people were capable of and gave them a chance even when he was skeptical.
Call him a monster all you wanted, but he was a hell of a lot more than that too. And he’d reached that point through lifetimes of effort and determination.
No wonder he’d gotten pissed off at my many attempts to poke holes in his carefully constructed cool.
I suspected Tempest would have liked to do the same, but she clearly didn’t know him all that well as he was now. She chuckled slyly and gazed at him through her eyelashes. “I expect by now you’ve managed to uncover their ultimate plan?”
“They’re attempting to create some sort of sickness that will spread through the shadowkind and kill us all,” Omen replied. “I expect you aren’t actually out to commit suicide by mass genocide?”