Jegudiel (Deadly Virtues 2)

But Diel could only think of Sela and Destiny, his best friend’s “one,” whom Auguste had robbed him of forever. They’d taken Cara from Diel too. So he squeezed Noa tighter. If anyone even dared come for her, he wouldn’t rest until he’d torn them apart and bathed in their blood.

The monster inside him agreed.

Chapter 24

“All the beds and bedroom furniture arrive tomorrow,” Gabriel said to his brothers. He took a sip of his red wine, looking relaxed as he sat back in the head seat at the table. “I’ll need all of your help to get the home finished off before the children finally move here.”

Noa was sitting at the dining table with the Fallen and the rest of the Coven sharing an evening meal, as had become their usual routine. Diel nodded at Gabriel. He kept his hand wrapped in Noa’s—her constant anchor.

Dinah leaned forward, putting her arms on the table. “Perfect. That will give us ladies a chance to scout out a few locations we know of.” Noa nodded in agreement, but her stomach churned with betrayal. She didn’t lift her eyes, in an attempt to avoid any of her sisters’ gazes. She couldn’t let them see. “We have a few places we believe the ledgers could be,” Dinah continued. “I want to see how heavily guarded they are. Track the comings and goings.”

Dinah was right. There was a chance that the ledger containing the details of the Shunned could be in any number of places. But Noa believed that ledger was somewhere else, somewhere specific. Somewhere only she and Priscilla had ever been to in person. A place Auguste and his Witch Finders kept for their worst kind of heretics—the unrepentant and unremorseful.

A treasure trove of torture devices.

Noa studied Diel’s large hand in hers. Her chest tightened as she remembered being there as a late teen. She squeezed Diel’s fingers, and he cut a sharp glance from his brothers to her.

Noa gave him a tight smile. But inside? Inside she was crashing rapids of guilt smashing into cliffs. And something else lingered there too. Something she tried her best to block out. But it was too strong to ignore—fear. If she was truthful with herself, Noa was terrified of what she planned to do, what her heart was telling her she must do …

Alone.

But then her eyes drifted to Diel’s face once again as he laughed at something Bara said. Noa found herself smiling too. Not at what Bara had said, but at how Diel had done the impossible and completely captured her heart and soul. How, despite the trials and tribulations they had both been through, they were here, together, breaking bread with their families as though it had always been destined to be.

Noa felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end at that thought, and she could almost hear her grandmother laughing knowingly, telling her that nothing in this life was coincidence, that everything happened for a reason, and that the Triple-Headed Goddess provided for her stewards on earth.

Diel laughed even louder, unburdened and filled with happiness, and Noa took a mental snapshot of that image. Diel, free from the collar, momentarily free of his burdens, of worrying for his sister. Because she had seen him over the past few weeks, in training, pushing his body to the point of breaking. She’d seen his inner rage in meetings, as they planned for where they might find the ledger. And she’d awoken at night to see him pacing the bedroom when he believed her to be asleep, hands in his hair and pain racking his torn soul as he fought for a plan to get Cara back.

Diel was falling. With every second that passed, Diel grew more and more tormented by the fact that he hadn’t saved his sister all those years ago. That he hadn’t remembered her in the years since.

“Don’t you think so, pink witch?” Noa heard Bara say, ripping her from the deep-set sorrow that had consumed her. She blinked, tearing her attention from Diel and focusing on Bara across the table.

“Sorry, what?” Noa asked, eyes already narrowed on the redhead in anticipation of his sarcasm.

Bara smiled, all white teeth and sinister soul. “That on the next full moon, we should see you in full Wiccan mode.” Ice replaced the blood in Noa’s veins as those words fell from his red lips.

“Not happening,” Noa said, though she felt the pull inside her chest, as though a rope had been tied around her heart and it was trying to drag her toward the bright light of her birthright, to the chants and incantations, to the arms in the air and eyes closed. To the circling of the fire, and the celebration of a new moon phase.

“You don’t believe in that anymore? Wicca?” Maria asked her, gently. There was a hint of encouragement to open up in her soft tone.