Her hair was soaked from the many times the man called Dean Stefano had held her head underwater, preventing her from breathing, forcing her to suck in mouthful after mouthful of liquid. Now those ice-cold droplets covered her, keeping her awake, ensuring she felt every bit of pain.
Not as bad as hell, she told herself. You’ll survive. You have to survive.
“Galen left me in charge of your care,” Stefano said, his face streaked with soot and patches of his skin blistered, “specifically asking that I interrogate you. And I will. I promise you. Your friends did this to me, you see. They burned me and what had become my home. I barely escaped, and owe them one. Or two.”
She looked away from his wild eyes. She was in a warehouse of some sort. A warehouse with a concrete floor and metal walls. The room she now occupied was small. There was a table piled high with knives she fully expected the bastard to begin using any moment now. There was a basin of water deep enough to drown her in, which she’d already gotten up close and personal with more times than she could count, and the chair she sat upon.
“Ready to talk now, angel?” How calm he suddenly sounded. Not at all like the cruel man he was.
If only she’d tell him what he wanted to know, she would be saving the Lords the agony of losing a war, she thought, then bit her tongue. No. No! Galen must be nearby. His demon, Hope, must be playing with her, for that thought had not belonged to her.
Stay strong.
“All you have to do is tell me where the Lords have hidden the Cage and this stops.” Stefano offered her a kind smile. “Surely you want that.”
Did she want it to stop? Yes. Who wouldn’t? But once she told him what he wanted to know, he would kill her. Don’t forget that fact. She pressed her lips into a mulish line.
He plucked a feather that had fallen to the floor when Galen dumped her here and caressed the tip along her jaw. “The Cage. Where is it? Tell me. Please. I don’t want to hurt you anymore.”
You know what you have to do, a voice suddenly growled through her head. Not Lucifer, not Galen. The third that day. This time, she fought back a sob of relief. Lysander. He was here. She couldn’t see him, couldn’t sense him, but she knew he was there.
She wasn’t alone in this any longer.
“Angel,” Stefano snapped. Directly in front of her, he curled his hand into a fist, preparing to hit her already-shattered arm. The feather had floated to the floor and now mocked her with its softness. “Talk.”
“I don’t…I don’t know where it is,” she rasped. A lie. She’d never thought she would be grateful for the ability to tell them, but she was now. Of course, that meant the human could choose not to believe her.
Olivia. Say the words, and I’ll take you home.
Oh, she knew she could leave. Knew she could return to the heavens as planned and escape this. All of it. The pain, the humiliation. But she’d made a promise to Aeron, and it was a promise she intended to keep. She had to tell him goodbye. She would tell him goodbye.
“You do know,” Stefano said. “You traipsed that fortress for weeks without anyone knowing you were there. You had to have seen it.”
Olivia, please. Return with me. I can’t stand to see you like this. I can’t stand this sense of helplessness, of knowing I can save you but being unable to act.
“I can’t,” she told him.
Stefano punched her arm, just as she’d known he would, and a small cry finally found its way free. Stars winked over her vision, and dizziness rushed through her head, slamming from one temple to the other.
Olivia!
“I can’t,” she said again, gasping for breath.
Slap. “You can,” the human replied, thinking she had spoken to him. “You’re not giving me enough credit for what I can and will do to you, and that hurts my feelings.”
The sting inside her already-cut mouth spread.
Olivia, Lysander snarled again. This is madness. Nothing is worth this. Come home. Please. I can’t help you any more until you do.
“Your wife…would not have…wanted this.” This time she was speaking to Stefano and ignoring Lysander. She was glad he was here, yes, but she wouldn’t cave in this matter.
Through her spying, Olivia knew that Darla, the wife in question, had committed suicide. Because of Sabin, keeper of Doubt, and Stefano—the two men who had loved her. She’d been locked in a tug-of-war between them, death her only escape.
Stefano’s eyes narrowed, shielding the darkness of his irises. “She was tricked. The demons tricked her into liking them.” He leaned down, flattening his palms on her bound arms—on her broken bone—and pressed. “If she’d been in her right mind, she would’ve wanted me to do more.”
Another cry escaped her. The pain was so sharp, it traveled through her entire body before collecting in her stomach and burning.
Olivia!
“Aeron will hate me more than ever, as well, when I send him one of your fingers,” Stefano said, as calm as when he’d caressed her with that feather. “Then he’ll come for you. He’ll end up dying for you. Is that a price you’re willing to pay? Tell me where the Cage is, and I’ll spare his life.”
There it was again. That hope for a better future. If she told Stefano what he wanted to know, she would go free, return to Aeron, and they could be together forever. They could make love again, and even start a family.
Did Galen know what his man was doing in a bid for the answers he sought? Did he care? Did he realize what his nearness was doing to her?
Olivia, damn you. You don’t have to tell him and you don’t have to endure. Just come home.
In and out she breathed. Fighting herself, her desires. Fighting that silly hope. Fighting the pain. She opened her mouth. What she planned to say, she might never know. Stefano hit her and she couldn’t form a single word…was fading…sinking…blessedly lost…
“IT’S GOING TO TAKE A WHILE and could yield no results.”
Aeron studied his friend, barely able to stop himself from latching onto those massive shoulders and shaking. Lucien’s mismatched eyes, one brown, one blue, were regarding him with grim resolve. “I don’t care how long it takes. Just do it.”
He wanted to shake himself for not thinking of this sooner.
Everyone here thought that Olivia had returned to the heavens, as Legion had claimed. Hell, they’d all watched the video Torin’s camera had recorded. The one of her jumping from the balcony in his bedroom.
The scene played through his mind constantly. She’d been standing inside his room, staring out at the night. She’d stiffened, turned. Then she’d turned again, walking outside, her mouth moving as if she were talking to someone—Legion said she’d been mumbling about her excitement to rejoin her friends—but it had been terror that had bled from her expression. Then she’d leapt. Fallen, fallen, begun to soar. Without her wings.
How could she have flown without her wings? Why had she been afraid?
The others assumed that terror stemmed from the unknown, of wondering how the angels would receive her. Aeron knew better. Olivia wouldn’t fear that. She’d told him the angels were forgiving—patient, had been her word—and that they would welcome her with open arms.
The only rational conclusion was that Legion was lying. Again. Which meant Olivia had been taken, as he’d first assumed. And there was only one way that could’ve happened. Galen. Galen had used the Cloak of Invisibility.