Ties That Bind: A Muse Urban Fantasy (The Veil Series Book 5) (4 page)

W
ith my father behind me
, I levered myself up onto my arms, and Stefan did the same. He rose from his sprawled position slowly, methodically, showing no signs of weakness. Chain links chinked and rattled. Taut muscles quivered. Demon skin shimmered. His gaze scored though to my very soul. Fury—brittle, sharp, and ice-white—burned in his eyes. The manacles around his wrists restrained his element, but he didn’t need his element to send a chill through me.

“Stand.” My father’s order barely penetrated the shock wrapped around me.

Stefan’s eyes narrowed. Frigid anger sharpened his glare. His lips thinned as he pulled them back over his teeth.

“Stand.” My father repeated.

I slid my gaze right and caught sight of my father behind me. A clean blue shimmer danced on the walls, thrown there by the elemental blade in Asmodeus’s hand. Only the princes could summon it. I’d seen it a handful of times, usually right before the shit was about to hit the fan. Anti-elemental glyphs licked across the flanks of the sword. It would make quick work of my skin and my element. The threat was clear.

Stefan hissed. His chains groaned as he got to his feet. The order was for him? Every breath hissed through his clamped teeth. He’d curled his hands into fists.

Asmodeus lunged for Stefan. I winced. Stefan stood firm and let my father clasp his left hand around his throat. Asmodeus’s sword arm tensed, his wing shifted—

“Stop!” I couldn’t let this happen. Screw the demon act. Fuck the veil. My father was not laying a hand on Stefan.

Asmodeus held the sword aloft. Ripples of light lapped over them both: my father, his crimson skin aglow and Stefan, glacial, deadly. They glared, challenging. Stefan couldn’t win. He was trapped and weakened. But he outshone my father. Crystal wings bloomed from his back, layer upon layer, until they arched every bit as wide as my father’s. Stefan might have been elementally restrained, but he was still demon and a Prince of Hell.

Asmodeus’s upper lip curled. “Muse will rip your mind asunder. If she fails, you both die here.”

Stefan made no reply. A muscle fluttered in his jaw, and ice dusted his face, but he didn’t attack or move to protect himself. A growl bubbled from the depths of my father’s monstrous body until it peeled from his lips. With one great sweep, he threw Stefan against the rear wall of the stall. Stefan’s wings shattered. He fell but sprang forward, lunging for Asmodeus.

“Stefan, no!” My cry rang out as Asmodeus struck Stefan with a bone-jarring crack of his fist, throwing Stefan to the floor, out cold. Melt water pooled around his motionless body.

Hot and bitter rage burned my throat as it bubbled up from inside. I dug my claws into the stones. Raw, elemental heat throbbed from my flesh.

I climbed to my feet—movements deliberate and precise—lifted my chin, and closed my eyes. The beacon of heat that was my father blazed like a furnace. Sending my element out, I latched onto his source. He swung the blade.
He really would kill me.
I ducked and spun, punching my claws into his torso. Hooking them closed, I tore out a handful of muscle and flesh. He roared and turned on me like the demon prince he was. I saw teeth and claws and fire and felt the terrible flash burn of pain down my entire right side. Unconsciousness washed in, but receded just as quickly. The third or fourth time my father slammed me into the wall rattled some sense back into my head. I hissed and tore his heat from inside him like pulling the rug from under his feet. His sledgehammer fists beat into me. He could have killed me, but that wasn’t his intention. When he pinned me underneath his foot and yanked my wing up, panic instantly banished apathy.
Not my wing. No. No! Not that!

I bucked, writhed, twisted, but like so many years ago, I couldn’t out-muscle a full-blood demon. Sure, when fully charged, I could blast a battlefield, but in a brawl, I was deeply flawed. I surged my element into his, tangled around his heat, and knotted flame with flame. I couldn’t fight fire with fire. I had to wrench it all out of him, to drain him as I had Mammon. I tugged, and it came.

The elemental blade carved into my wing membrane. Blinding pain silenced my thoughts and instantly severed my hold on my father’s element.

He knelt on my back, held my wing under his arm, and bowed low enough that when he spoke, I heard every malicious hiss. “There is no half-blood-chaos-girl here to save you. The only reason I allow you to live is to do my bidding. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

His weight lifted. “You will destroy this one with lust, and prove your worth.” He released my wing. I levered my body up and watched through hooded eyes as my father walked away. The elemental blade dissolved. He didn’t look back. The door swung shut behind him. The lock rattled. And almost immediately, I retched up bloody bits of my insides. But I still had my wing. I ached and throbbed and burned. I wanted to cry and howl and roar. But I was alive.

My agony paled when my gaze settled on Stefan. Half dragging, half crawling, I inched closer. He lay on his side, chains draped over him. His chest rose and fell, and his eyelids flickered. How long had he been chained down there? His demon protected his body, and even now healed his wounds, but that wouldn’t make any of this hurt less.

His eyelids fluttered. His eyes opened, and he jerked back with a growl.

“Easy.” I held out a hand. “It’s me.”

“Muse.” And with the sound of my name on his lips, he sighed. “You’re alive.”

“Against the odds.”

“The battle… I wasn’t sure… And then, when he came—” He winced and probed at his jaw. “He hits like a truck.”

There would be time or explanations later. I crawled closer and reached for the manacles. He flinched. I paused, fingers hovering close to the surface of the metal. “I won’t hurt you.”

“I know, it’s…” His throat moved as he swallowed. Propped up on his elbow, he watched me with wary eyes. “He can twist my thoughts.” Stefan’s smile shifted restlessly on his lips. “Which he did. Regularly. Made me believe things…”

I gritted my teeth and shuffled into a kneeling position, pulling my bruised wing in behind me. Apologies fought to be free, but I didn’t know where to start. I should never have left him on the battlefield. But the look on his face was about more than that. The fine lines around his fractured smile, around tired eyes—how his gaze skirted mine. Exactly what had my father made him believe?

I reached for the manacles once more, feeling my way around the metal. I sent an experimental push of heat into them, but the glyphs deflected it.

Stefan hissed sharply.

“Sorry,” I uttered.

“You can’t get them off without the key.”

I kept my head bowed and focused on the metal. Curling my claws into the hinge, I tugged, picked, and pulled, but they didn’t move. I supposed I hadn’t really expected them to. I just needed to do something. Anything. “I can’t melt them.” The stall didn’t yield anything helpful. I’d have found more creature comforts in an Institute cell.

“Muse.”

Maybe if I could read the metal, I might discover a way to remove them? A cut, a little blood, and I might—

“Muse…” Stefan pulled his wrist free of my grip and touched my chin. His icy skin tingled against the fire of mine, sprinkling shivers through my flesh. He tipped my face up. “Now would be a really good time to tell me you have a plan.”

“I did.” I moistened my lips and watched tiny filaments of ice in his eyes capture the torchlight. “I do.” But I hadn’t planned on him. Asmodeus wasn’t going to accept anything less than Stefan’s mental obliteration, and there was no way in hell I could do that to him, even if I knew how.

Stefan’s smiled steadied and slanted sideways. “It’s good to see you, y’know. And not only because you’re the only real company I’ve had for weeks.”

“Weeks?” Oh, god. He’d been here weeks. While I’d been running away, he’d been facing my father. Weeks trapped down here and still he’d looked Asmodeus in the eyes and fought. A nervous chitter rattled from my throat. “Stefan, had I known, I’d have come. I wasn’t in Boston—I… I had to get away. After… After what happened…”

He pressed his hands to my face—chains rattling—and silenced my rambling with the kind of look that had heat flaring in my veins. “I get it. You’re here now. That’s good enough. Stop agonizing, and help me think of a way out of this.”

“A way out…” Ri
ght. The manacles. A key. Get the key. To do that, I need to get out of this dungeon.
“Hold that thought.” I left him and tried the door my father had locked: still locked, obviously. And when I tried to pour hear into it, glyphs bobbed to the surface and volleyed my efforts right back at me. I searched the other stalls for anything we could use or any weaknesses in the walls, but to no avail. We weren’t breaking out; that was for sure.

Stefan lifted his head when I returned to his stall. “No luck, huh?”

“Nope.”

I sat beside him against the back wall, hugged my knees to my chest, and sighed. “Yukki found me when I returned to Boston. She told me you were missing. We were going to look for you together, but then my father found me, and…” The memory of my father appearing in my apartment as Stefan reminded me how he must have played the same game with Stefan. “He said he wanted me to stand beside him. I have to find Jerry and figure out how to restore the veil. Figured I’d kill two birds with one stone.”

Stefan draped his arm over his knee and turned to face me. “But Asmodeus wants proof you’re demon to the core?” I bit into my lip and looked away. “That’s what he meant about proving your worth?”

“Yeah.” I whispered and cleared my throat. “I thought I could pretend I was part of their evil club, but I didn’t factor you in.”

“Asmodeus did.”

“Yeah…” He’d had it planned weeks ago when he’d first taken Stefan. Stefan was my weakness. And like an idiot, I’d walked right into my father’s trap.

Minutes passed in silence. But it wasn’t a silence that begged to be filled. Stefan’s cool presence grounded my thoughts. There had to be a way out of this. I needed to think.

“He wants you to wield lust.” Stefan finally said what we were both thinking.

“Yeah.” I bowed my head and glued my gaze to a crack between the stones. “He’s already tried to force me into it. He killed the half-blood I was meant to mind-fuck when I failed.”

Stefan shifted beside me. I skewed my gaze sideways. He’d dropped his head back and peered up at the concave stone ceiling. Considering what I’d just told him, the smile on his lips was a mischievous thing. “For once—just once—it’d be great, if the universe would stop screwing with us.”

I smiled. “Wouldn’t it just.”

“Chocolate ice cream.”

“Huh?”

“When we finally get to go on that date you owe me. There will be chocolate ice cream.”

“Hell, yes. With chocolate chips.”

He nodded appreciatively. “Can you do it?”

“What? The chocolate chips? Yeah, I mean, it’s not like I have to cook them. Don’t ask me to cook anything, ever, by the way. I’m—”

He turned his head and held my stare, his smile failing. “The lust.”

Oh, that.
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried. And it’s not the sort of thing that comes up in conversation. But my brother could, and my father is… Well, we know what he is.” I had it in me to be a monster. Everyone knew it but me. “I suppose, somewhere inside, I can.” Stefan raked his fingers through his ice-bound hair and sent his gaze skyward again. I couldn’t hurt him. “I won’t.”

He sighed. “You will.”

I
woke curled
like a cat inside Stefan’s embrace. My scorching heat and his searing cold somehow plateaued between us, so his touch didn’t so much burn as tingle. Clearly, my chargrilled skin didn’t bother him because he’d draped an arm over my waist. My wing was numb, but I could live with that if it meant I could stay there, watching him sleep. At rest, there was barely a line on his pearly-smooth face. Ice dust sparkled on his lips and lashes. He could almost pass for human: someone who’d spent a few days in a freezer. Fractals occasionally skittered beneath his skin like dallying snowflakes. They were gone as quickly as I spotted them. I lifted a hand between us and poked gently at his cheek. Tiny spikes of ice reached for my finger, as though his ice was alive. I’d seen him craft himself ice-armor, and knew he could power up his defenses. I wondered what else he could do. I trailed my fingertip across his lip and watched the ice sparkle in the wake of my touch. In the past, when I’d been this close to him, he’d usually been trying to kill me or scare me. Demons didn’t do hugs. I’d never been truly intimate with another demon as a demon, at least, not by choice. I’d been curious though. Ever since I’d met Stefan—what felt like centuries ago now—I’d wondered what
would
it be like to be together as demons? We were elementally opposed. When demons rucked, they did so among their own elements, and it was usually violent. I’d seen it once a long time ago. I’d thought the demons had been trying to kill each other. When I asked Damien, he’d taught me exactly what rucking was—by doing the same to me.

“Stop poking me, or suffer the consequences.” Stefan opened his eyes. His pupils dilated. Sparks scattered through the brilliant blue of his irises.

“Ah, hi.” Stefan’s mock growl sent embers fizzling across my skin. Not for the first time, I was grateful he couldn’t see a blush on my dark skin. “I was, er… I was—you’re beautiful,” I blurted.

“Beautiful?” After tugging his chain out from under him, he propped his head up on a hand. “Don’t ever tell Ryder you said that. I’ll never live it down.”

The arm draped over my waist shifted, and his hand settled against the small of my back. The fire in my veins flared. I hoped he didn’t realize how my body betrayed my racing demon heart. “You are, though. I’m… Well, I’m all leathery and burned, and you’re all magnificent and sparkly. It’s not fair.”

“Seriously?” When he smiled, the glint of his sharp teeth showed. “Muse, you’re like nothing else this side of the veil. You move like fire. When you fought your father, you were so damn fast I could barely track you. And you’re strong too. Proud.”

“Proud.” I snorted and twisted into him to release my wing, stretching it out behind me. “One raggedy wing, full of holes. It couldn’t be more useless. I’m tiny too. It’s pathetic.”

“During the battle, before Dawn tore through me, I saw you… Really saw you.” He eased his hand over my hip, sliding his tingling touch higher. “You were fire. You glowed so damn hot, I couldn’t look right at you. Like an avenging angel.”

Avenging angel. I’d been avenging all right. It had been by luck more than judgment I hadn’t killed every single human being on that battlefield too. I wouldn’t have been much of an angel then. “I have horns.” I rolled my eyes up but couldn’t see the horns in question. They swept back, over my skull, and kicked up behind my ears.

He grinned. “Horns are cool.”

“I trail ash everywhere I go.”

“Yeah, but wherever you are, it’s never dark.”

A little smile broke through my restraint. “Show me your wings.”

“Always with the wings.” Even as he spoke, they were forming. Quills of ice layered one over the other. A crystal wing arched over us and behind me, enclosing us. Almost instantly, my heat began to melt those beautiful feathers.

“Can I touch it?” I asked. He nodded, and I twisted onto my back to reach up and trail my burning fingers along the smooth wing surface. “Can you feel that?”

“No. They’re not like your wing. They’re manufactured. Yours is real.”

Water trailed down my wrist, hissed, and turned to steam. While I swirled patterns in the ice, his hand settled on the flat of my stomach. “Can you fly?” I asked, utterly failing to keep the awe out of my voice.

“Not really. Do you remember the night Akil pushed you from the top floor of the Atlantic Hotel?”

“How could I forget?” I pushed my finger into his wing and drew a smiley face in ice.

“Well, I followed.”

“You what?”

“How do you think I got there in time to yank you out of the drift?”

“I dunno. I’ve never really thought about it.”

“Wings. Well. Kind of. I fall with style. Naturally.”

I remembered it well. Plunging into a snowdrift from a skyscraper tends to leave an impression.

“I’d like to tell you my leap of faith was graceful.” He flexed his shoulder. His wing quivered. The quills sighed in unison. Damn, he was something else. Droplets of water rained down and vaporized on my sizzling skin. “But it really wasn’t.”

An image of him flinging himself out of the window after me had a wild surge of laughter bubbling up my throat. I fought to keep it in behind twitching lips but couldn’t, and once the laughter was out, I couldn’t stop. Stefan’s quizzical look didn’t help.

“We could have died.” His lips worked to hold back a smile. “I didn’t know if I could pull my element from the veil and turn it to snow before we hit the ground.”

I laughed harder. “That was a terrible plan.” I snorted a guttural demon sound. Stefan’s eyes widened. The look on his face as he fought back his own hilarity was priceless and had me laughing so damn hard I couldn’t see or breath or think.

“You’re insane,” he muttered with a chuckle.

Considering where we were, I could live with that. “I know, right?” I’d never laughed so hard as a demon before. It was…satisfying.

“You’re also glowing a little right now.”

“I am?” I looked down at myself—the glow of my fiery veins, the crumbling skin—and watched Stefan lift his crystal hand and trail it higher. His smooth fingers skipped over my navel, skimmed the dip of my waist, and danced just below my breast. I wanted him to roam higher, wanted to turn my head and look at him, to read his thoughts on his face, in his eyes. But at the same time, I didn’t. I was still afraid of what it might mean, of what I was supposed to do.

His hand lingered, fingers twirling, and I worried my lip between my teeth. Why did it have to be him? I couldn’t hurt him, not even for the world. I had to; I knew that. To get free, to find Jerry, to restore the veil, I had to hurt Stefan. “I can’t.” I spoke so softly I was sure he wouldn’t hear me.

His lips brushed my ear. “You can,” he whispered, and then nipped at my cheek. Ice burned, water sizzled. “You’re amazing, Muse.”

“Stop.”

He curled his hand around my side, splayed his fingers, and rolled me against him. His eyes were all I could see, at once dazzling and terrifying. Fire surged, but I pulled it back. He didn’t have control of his element. I couldn’t risk pushing too far.

“You remember the first time we were together?” His hand was on my face suddenly, holding me still. “Remember how I held back?”

I blinked and nodded. At the Institute, a lifetime ago, before he’d gone through the veil, he and I had shared ourselves—explored, in the way new couples do. At the time, I’d been dosed up on PC34 and unable to call my demon. He’d tempered his element, his demon, to keep me safe from that half of him.

“Now it’s your turn to own that control.”

“Stefan, I—” He pressed his thumb to my mouth, sealing away my denial.

“You have to do this. I trust you to do this.”

I don’t know how!
He must have seen the fear in my eyes because he smiled and brushed his ice-lips against the dry heat of mine. “It will be okay. Jenna survived Val. I’ll survive you.”

His words teased against my mouth. His hand slipped around behind my head, down my neck, my shoulder, and in its wake, sparks flared. Even though I trembled, and needed, in a wholly demon way, fear held me back. I’d faced demons the size of mountains. I’d murdered thousands of my kin in a blink. I’d torn my owner’s throat open and burned him from the inside out. But there, in Stefan’s arms, I quivered, terrified I was about to hurt the only man I’d ever truly loved. A love without conditions, without fear. Honest love. True love. I loved him. Demon and woman. All of me. Every messed up, broken and remade half-blood piece of me loved Stefan. And I was about to break him.

“Stefan I—”

He pulled me into the kind of kiss that robs you of control. Rational thoughts vanished, pushed out by the very real feel of him. He hooked his leg around mine and tugged me tight against him. Sensations spilled over my flesh: hot shivers, cold ones. Fire and ice. Wrong, but so damn right. So exquisitely right. So goddamned demon. Fear burned away beneath pleasure and pain. I fell into that kiss, into him, and held on for the life of me—of us. But I had to tell him the truth. Biting my lip, I pulled away. I lifted my fingers and hovered their tips beside his cheek. Steam swirled around my claws. His cold nipped at my ember-dashed flesh, sending darts of pleasure and pain skittering down my arm. “I’ve lived a life of lies, but there’s one truth nobody can take from me,” I said softly.

“Muse, I—”

“Ssh,” I pressed a finger to his lips. He stilled, eyes widening before his gaze sharpened, like a predator fixed on his prey. Ice gathered on his lashes, in his hair. My element licked up his leg, around his thigh, higher. “Whatever happens, know that I love you. I’ve always loved you. Since you walked into my workshop and blew my world to bits, I hated you, but I loved you too. I love your smile, your laugh, and how I know you’ll always try. I love how you’ll fight until there’s nothing left worth fighting for. You’re my hope, Stefan. The reason I’m still here. You’re as broken as I am, and I love you all the more for it.”

I kissed him, pressed hot lips against the coolness of his mouth. Ice and fire, we clashed and combined. My element surged. Ice nipped at my lips, burned against my tongue. It should have hurt, but it didn’t. Tingles spritzed through me where my body touched his. He kissed me back. Ice pushed against my lips, working its way inside. I fluttered my wing open and leaned into him as he quivered against me. I wanted his cool embrace closed around me. I needed him to touch me.

He pulled back, just enough to take a breath and rest his cheek against mine. “You know,” he whispered, “when I first saw you in your workshop, I thought it would be easy. You were just a half-blood pet. But when I watched you working at the forge, hammering the hell out of that half-made sword, I knew… I knew you were so much more. Maybe I knew then that I’d never escape you.” He brushed his cheek against mine and purred. “I hated you for the longest time,” he whispered, “but I’ve loved you for longer.”

I held him close, so close I couldn’t breathe. Fire and ice entwined. His snowflake kissed settled on my face, my chin, my neck… His cool touch ignited the fire beneath my skin. He couldn’t see the molten tears. They soaked into my cheeks and vanished. “I can’t hurt you.” I closed my eyes and swallowed a sob.

“You have to…”

He gathered me off the floor into his lap. I locked my legs around him, holding so tight, afraid of the moment. His cool hands stroked up my back. I opened my wing, allowing him to dance his icy touch across it.

“Muse.”

I can’t do this.

“Muse.”

I buried my face against his neck, relishing how our elements repelled, quivered, and danced in their own intimacy. “I’d rather die than hurt you this way.”

He captured my face in his hands and forced me back, so I had no choice but to look at him. And look I did. He shone, so perfect. His wings splayed behind him, glorious and surreal. The eternal glow from my veins rippled warm orange light over the crystal blue of his body. I touched his face, the way I had a dozen times before, but this time, I touched him as demon, felt the chaos in him, soaked his ethereal touch into me while I pushed inside him with mine.

“Just enough to convince
him
. That’s all. We can survive this together. You have to be free of this place, Muse. You have to be one of them to beat them. You can. I know you can.”

Damn him. Why did he have to be so right? Why couldn’t he be selfish like me? Why couldn’t we have this moment and make it about us? “I don’t know how,” I whispered, searching his brilliant eyes. But it was a lie. There was something in me: a wild hunger. I’d touched it briefly only a few times. Once, as a naïve half-blood girl half in love with the Prince of Greed, I’d used it to seduce Akil and test him for lies—so long ago the memory felt like it belonged to someone else. I had it in me to summon lust. Lust was in my blood.

“Be demon.” Stefan’s sorry smile chilled my firestone heart.

I gave a tiny shake of my head, but he held my face too tightly and kissed me hard. He was helping me do what had to be done. He wanted me, demon to demon. Would it be so bad if I poured gasoline on the spark and torched his soul with an inferno of lust?
I can’t. I can’t. I CAN’T.

He skipped his fingers up my wing and a gasp tore from my lips. Every frozen touch, every ice-fragile kiss, every fluttering whisper…he knew how he burned me.

I spread my hands on his chest and pushed him down. “I’m sorry.”
So goddamned sorry.

He lay back on the cool stone floor, wings unfurled. “I know,” he said, crooked wise-ass smile so typically Stefan.

He was ready. Demon urges demanded I take him. All I needed to do was shift my straddling position, and I’d have him inside me. I swallowed and leaned over him, my wing arched high. I settled a hot kiss on his chest and swirled my tongue around his nipple. A tight gasp and the twitch of his hips was my reward. “I love you,” I whispered, so quietly that he might not have heard me, but he’d have felt the heat of my words against his skin. Now. It was time.

I reared back, lifted my head, splayed my hands on his chest, and opened my mind to the madness. A hungry wash of jagged needles tore from inside, broke free of the mental chains, and poured down my arms, through my hands, and into Stefan.