“Sorry, but there’s nothing you can say or do that will make me hand that damn key over to you when I get it.”
“And that is where you are yet again wrong.” He walked toward me, his strides long and assured. “Just as Lucian taught me how to cage and kill a dark angel, so, too, did he teach me how to control the mind of someone like you.”
Lucian. It seemed we were never going to be free of that bastard’s shadow. “I blew him to little tiny pieces, you know. I fully intend to do the same to you.”
Mike laughed, but it was a short, sharp sound of anger. “Oh, I know very well what you did to him. It is only the promise to your mother that controls the dark urge to inflict the same on you.”
So he was more than happy to destroy two worlds in his attempt for domination of all, but unwilling to break something as fragile as a promise? How in hell did that make any sense? It didn’t, at least to the sane mind—and that wasn’t what we were dealing with here.
He stopped directly in front of me. Only two feet and the weight of the magic separated us, but it might as well have been a mile. I could barely move, let alone do so with any sort of speed. And even if I could, there was still the circle of candles to contend with. It was undoubtedly some form of barrier—he wouldn’t be standing so confidently close otherwise—and until it was down, I had no choice but to bide my time.
Waiting, Amaya growled. Sucks.
Amusement ran through me, but it quickly died as Mike raised his hands. Power surged across the night and the candles shivered in response. A heartbeat later, a muddy yellow arc of lightning shot from one candle to the next, until all of them were connected by that thin sliver.
This wasn’t blood magic.
This was Aedh.
Doubt crept through me. Amaya might be confident that our joining forces would negate any magic designed to control me, but I still wasn’t so sure. But it wasn’t like I had any other option now. I mentally crossed my fingers and said, “Lucian was running his own game; if you think he’d hand over the means of controlling him as much as me, then you are a fool.”
“Which I’m not, and neither was he.”
His reply was absent. He was still weaving his magic, and the thrust of it was beginning to burn around me. Through me. Its touch was unclean and made me want to scratch—something I couldn’t do because the weight of magic was so fierce I was barely able to remain on my hands and knees. Moving one hand would tip the balance and have me face-planting into the stone.
“Which doesn’t negate the fact that Lucian trusted no one.” I risked a quick glance toward Azriel. Valdis was almost within his reach. “Not after my father’s betrayal of him.”
“He trusted me. He loved me.”
I snorted. “Now I know you’re crazy. Lucian was Aedh. They’re incapable of loving anyone or anything other than their own schemes and plans.”
Anger flared in Mike’s pale eyes and found an echo in the sudden tightening of the magic that pressed down on me. I grunted under the force of it and my arms began to shake. I had to hope that whatever spell he was forming would be done sooner rather than later. I didn’t want to end up getting squashed flat against the stone, and right now that was a very real possibility.
Movement caught my eye; it was short, sharp, and gone in a nanosecond. I glanced in Azriel’s direction. He sat still and calm in the middle of his cage, his face as impassive as ever. But his eyes glowed with a fierceness that was frightening, and the force of his fury was such that even with our connection shut down, I could feel the burn of it. He wanted action. He wanted revenge. He could do neither until the cage around him had been destroyed.
Valdis no longer sat on the stones in front of the cage.
Relief ran through me, but it was tempered by the fact that we were a long way from being safe yet. But at least now that he was armed, Azriel had a fighting chance of survival.
“Which only proves how very little you knew about him.”
Mike’s sudden comment made me jump. I returned my attention and tried to shake my head. Even that was restricted. “I knew Lucian well enough to understand he was a megalomaniac whose desires far outstripped his abilities. He was an apprentice, not a master, Mike. What he taught you was nothing compared to what my father has taught me.”
He snorted and made more grand gestures. The sickly colored lightning grew stronger, and fingers of power shot toward me. I tried to edge away from them, but the weight bearing down on me forbade any sort of movement. The tension within me grew, as did Amaya’s howling. Her need to taste his soul was becoming so fierce it beat through my blood and made me hunger. I was still in control, but I had to wonder for how long.
“Your father only came into your life when he needed the keys found,” Mike said. “Do not try to bluff, dear Risa. You are not very good at it. Now, please, be quiet. I need to concentrate.”
“Oh good. I’ll keep talking, then.”
Again anger flashed, and again the weight pressing down on me increased. I hissed as sweat began to drip off my chin and splashed down onto the stone beneath me.
“Sorry, Mike,” I said, my voice little more than a harsh whisper—and even that was a goddamn effort. “But if you expect me to give up so fucking easily, then you really don’t know me, despite all those years you spent worming your way into both Mom’s life and mine.”
“You really are getting annoying,” Mike growled, then added, the note of command back in his voice, “and you will be quiet.”
I fell silent, though not because his magic forced me to do so. The weight of it might be making it hard to remain on my hands and knees—hell, it was becoming difficult to even think and breathe—but it hadn’t yet gained the power to force me to obey. I hoped that was a sign Amaya was right, that our joining would negate whatever spell he was about to weave around us.
He began to murmur, but the language wasn’t one I was familiar with. I wondered if it was Aedh, wondered what the hell Lucian was thinking, giving a madman access to that sort of power. But then, he’d obviously foreseen his own death, if not the method—his begetting children on both Lauren and Ilianna was evidence enough of that—and maybe this was his last throw of the dice. A means of getting what he wanted through someone else.