Read Online Ties That Bind: A Muse Urban Fantasy (The Veil Series Book 5) by Pippa DaCosta - Free Book Online Page B

the demons and their elements. The gathering inside the fortress battlements was apparently in my honor, but thankfully, I was largely ignored. I skirted the fringes of the courtyard, hiking my wing out of the way to avoid any unwanted contact. I watched them—the demons—slid my gaze over each and every one. Either they hadn’t heard I could disintegrate them with a flick of my fingers, or they didn’t believe it. I’d much rather be ignored than groped by the demon rabble.
    When my mind wandered to the thought of Stefan chained deep below my feet, I wrenched it back into the moment and caged those thoughts behind cold resolve. Not now. I can’t think about him now . I needed to be detached, to keep it all inside. I twisted sobs into growls and hid my quivering flesh behind flame. The image of how I’d damaged him haunted me. I’d burned away his brilliance. If I let it, the guilt would floor me. For once, I was grateful for the demon in me. Be demon. Don’t feel. Be merciless, unrepentant fire.
    I wanted to ask my father about Stefan, almost had done, but I couldn’t let him think I cared. So I stewed in silence and fretted over how to get the key. Asmodeus had various chambers, but I’d not been able to get inside. Without that key, I couldn’t break Stefan out.
    Even if I did manage to free him, what would he think of me? It had only been a day since I’d poured raw lust into him. It felt much longer. I swatted that thought aside and watched two demons claw into each other over a roasted thigh joint. The demons here were meant to be higher elementals, but they behaved like lesser beasts. I hated them all. No wonder Akil had tired of them. There was nothing here to aspire to. They cared only for status, and that usually came by the slash of tooth and claw. Demons didn’t strive to better themselves. They didn’t reach for the stars. They didn’t dream. They didn’t hope. They certainly didn’t care. Akil really hadn’t been like them at all. I’d thought him more demon than most, and while I may not have really known him as Mammon, I didn’t believe even Mammon would look upon this rabble with anything but disdain.
    Akil. I had to find a way to restore him. Demons didn’t have books. The important things, they remembered. Everything else, they forgot. I had to find a demon who would know the answers and who would help me. Jerry. The princes weren’t likely to tell me how to bring Mammon, the Prince of Greed back. They’d hated him. But Jerry would.
    A glint of light was all the warning I received. I twisted away as a demon lunged in from my left. His dagger kissed my hip, but in the next swift movement, I had my hand around his throat and slammed him against the wall. He was a skinny thing, all branch-like protrusions. No wings. Gaunt, haughty face with beseeching brown eyes.
    I smiled, deliberately revealing fangs. “Hello, Samien.” I’d met Samien some seventeen years earlier when I’d been a pitiful half-blood girl, and he’d been Mammon’s hired help in this very fortress. Samien had been an ass then too, but he’d been following Mammon’s orders. I’d known then it hadn’t all been about orders, though. He’d taken too much joy in stabbing me in the back. “If I didn’t know any better, I might think you’re coming on to me.”
    He hawked and spat. His spittle fizzled dry on my chest with a sweet hiss. I plucked the dagger from his hand and pressed the edge of the blade under his chin, easing his head back. “Who put you up to this?”
    “I do not—”
    “Don’t bullshit me. You wouldn’t attempt this yourself. You’re too wily for that.”
    “Wrath.” He growled.
    “You mean the ex Prince of Wrath?” As far as I knew, Stefan still held the title. Samien had to mean the huge wolf demon Stefan had knocked off his pedestal.
    Samien’s brown eyes widened. “He wants you dead so Asmodeus will have no further use for the Winter-King and will kill him.”
    And ex-Wrath gets