silvery beams, his skin luminescent and spun from the moon itself, feathers dancing with indigos and deep purples, he didn’t look like the dark lord who had ruled the Netherworld for countless centuries.
No, he looked every bit a Seraphian prince.
“This was her favorite room in the entire castle.” Stolas took a chunk of amethyst crystal the size of a nectarine and held it up to the moonlight. “She drew the plans for the chandelier herself. Picked out every single crystal with her bare hands.”
A deep ache opened inside her as she imagined his Shadow Wolf destroying the magnificent light structure. Wiping her dirty palms on her pants, she said, “You were protecting them, weren’t you? You directed your wolf to the crystals instead of Bell and the others?”
“Don’t,” he growled. “Don’t make me the hero of this story. Please. Not tonight.”
Frustration warmed her cheeks. “Stolas, if you hadn’t chosen to sacrifice something you held dear, they would be dead.”
“You give me too much credit.”
“Do I?”
“It was right here in this very spot that I killed her.” His words were so soft that she almost missed them. His back was still to her. Those glorious wings stretching to fill the space between them. Catching every bit of light as they did. “Still want to paint me as your hero?”
“You didn’t kill her, Stolas,” Haven corrected, inching closer. She pushed past the waves of inky darkness pulsing from him. “Morgryth did.”
“I held the knife. I looked into her eyes as I positioned it over her heart. I might have whispered her name, I don’t recall. But I do remember the sound she made when the blade first pierced her skin. Her magick had left her, she was completely unprotected. Unable to defend herself from her own son.”
“You. Didn’t. Kill. Her.”
“Stop.” He didn’t raise his voice, but the warning was there in the softness of his tone and all the unspoken words in between.
Anyone else and Stolas would have already made them stop. She knew that. Knew she was hovering over a very dangerous line.
And yet . . . to let him continue this dark cycle of self-hatred and blame was cruel, and if she didn’t at least try to break that cycle then she was a coward.
She scooted quietly closer. “Stolas, Morgryth murdered your family, not you.”
“Haven, I need you to leave right now.”
His voice was unrecognizable.
Gravelly. More beast than man.
His stillness was a preternatural thing that warned the most primitive parts of her to run.
Everything in her screamed to obey. To flee from this—this predator. But the idea of him in the hall where he killed his own mother, alone with his anger and shame and grief, hating himself more with every passing second . . .
“I can’t, Stolas.”
“Why?”
“Because—because I care about you.”
The dark chuckle that rumbled from his chest was part laugh, part growl, and one hundred percent terrifying. The hairs along her arms went rigid as he finally . . . finally turned to face her.
And she suddenly knew why he hadn’t fully looked at her before.
Nearly all black eyes fringed blood-red watched her above the longest incisors she’d ever seen on a Noctis. His normally elegant eyebrows were severely arched, his lush lips twisted cruelly.
“You care about me, Beastie?” His voice was unrecognizable. “And what if I told you that right this very second, I can sense your light magick throbbing inside your delicate veins. That it calls to me? That I want to gorge myself on it—on you?”
Hot, sticky fear clumped in her middle. No, this wasn’t Stolas. Jaw gritted so hard she expected a molar to crack, she purged the terror from her body—but not fast enough.
His nostrils flared, picking up the scent she tried to hide. A wicked grin bared the full length of his fangs.
Panic bubbled up inside her—
A whisper of shadow slicing through moonlight—that’s all she caught before he was upon her. She slammed the heel of her palm up on instinct, grazing the hard angle of his jaw.
It felt like ramming her flesh against the edge of a marble counter.
He didn’t seem to feel it as he closed in. His eyes were black pits fringed in fire. Twin pools peering directly into the Netherworld.
“Stolas.”
Nothing.
“Stolas!”
His silence was unnerving. The way he moved seemingly through the planes of this realm like smoke. She spun from his grasp. Her heart dipped and then ratcheted into a wild throbbing rhythm as she sensed him around her. Dancing in and out of the shadows. Moving too fast