“And this is just the living area.”
“Obviously, Lucian wasn’t lacking in cash.”
“No.” I picked my way through the building rubbish, heading for the newly constructed doorway into the kitchen area. “But considering he’d had centuries to accumulate it, that’s no real surprise.”
“Centuries?” Jak said, surprise in his voice.
“At least.”
I paused just inside the doorway, quickly scanning the vast kitchen-dining area. It still held the remnants of the old kitchen – an oven, a fridge, and the bare bones of two small counters – but the framework for the new kitchen was in place.
The folding chairs we’d briefly used the time I’d met Lauren here were propped up against an outer wall. I’d asked her – against Azriel’s warnings and my own misgivings – to create a spell that would nullify the device the Raziq had placed in my heart. She’d subsequently presented me with a cube designed to prevent magic escaping its boundaries. The idea, supposedly, was that once the cube had been “tuned” to my aura, it would prevent the device in my heart activating. But the cube hadn’t been created from the magic of this world. It hadn’t even been created from blood magic. That, perhaps, I might have risked, even if only as a last resort.
The source of the cube’s power had come from hell itself. While I might have made some very stupid mistakes lately, and had often placed too much trust in entirely the wrong people, even I knew better than to use a device created by a woman who not only considered it natural to play in hell’s fields, but perfectly normal to draw on its energy to create her magic.
It was certainly one of the few decisions I didn’t regret. Unlike all the time I’d wasted with Lucian…
I shoved the thought aside and continued looking around the room. But aside from the fact there were now doors dividing this room from the bedroom area, little else had changed.
And yet, something felt different.
An odd sense of wrongness crawled across my skin, and that was usually a precursor to me walking into a shitload of trouble.
“I don’t suppose you have any weapons, do you?” I studied the doorway leading into the bedroom. If any clues were going to be here, they would be found in the place where he’d made so many conquests. Like most Aedh, he’d been able to charm the pants off any woman he desired with just a kiss, simply because an Aedh’s kiss was designed to sweep aside objections and fuel lust.
And Lucian had certainly been more than willing to employ the power of it. Maybe it had been his way of passing time – when he wasn’t plotting his revenge, that was.
Jak glanced at me, expression sharp with concern. “Why would I? And why would you be asking something like that?”
“Because I have a very bad feeling we could be walking into trouble.”
And along with it came a very bad desire to reach for Azriel. Not so much for his protection, but simply because I felt stronger – more capable of coping with the weird shit that kept getting thrown at me – with him by my side.
I don’t want to do this alone. And that, right there, was a truth I might not have any wish to face, but one I inevitably would. Because no matter how angry I was, no matter how determined to prove that I could do this alone, the truth of the matter was, I really didn’t want to.
I’d banished him in anger and confusion and grief, and it wasn’t just that he’d made me Mijai and ended any possibility of me being reborn and seeing my mother again. It was that he’d destroyed our one sure way to end this key madness and keep everyone I cared about safe.
The simple fact was, no one but me could find the keys. No me, no key, no threat.
I had every right to be angry. And I was. Very much so. But Ilianna was right. I owed him the chance to explain his reasons. He had tried – in his own stoic, say-as-little-as-possible way – but I’d been too locked in misery to listen. I’d wallowed in that particular pool long enough, though, and I was ready to listen now. Besides, I’d faced up to Jak’s betrayal, and had given him a second chance, even if it extended only as far as friendship. Did Azriel deserve anything less?
“What sort of trouble?” Jak asked.
“The kind that comes from a seriously annoyed dark sorceress.”
“Oh, delightful.”
He gave the bedroom doors a somewhat dubious look. He wouldn’t have seen anything more than I did – an innocuous, unpainted double entrance into another room. But the more I looked at those doors, the more the sensation of danger crawled through me.
“You know,” he added, “common wisdom would suggest walking away from trouble rather than into it.”
I half snorted and glanced up at him. “Seriously? You’re actually suggesting we turn around and walk away?”
“You know me better than that.” His grin flashed. “I was merely pointing out what the wise would do.”
“I don’t suppose suggesting you at least wait here would do any good?”
“No. Besides, you’re armed and I daresay your reaper is near.”