He reached the alley within seven seconds.

The air was thick with motor oil and old brick dust, but beneath it, beneath everything, was her. Twisted and fading, but real.

And Mallorn’s car had gone east.

Kesh’s breath stalled in his throat.

That route.

The route to Hell.

He took her back to the brothel.

Back to Jimmy.

Back to enslavement.

His Second. His most trusted.

The betrayal struck like a blade to the spine. Not just a theft. Not just treason.

He had delivered Georgia.

To that place.

To that fate.

The air around him crackled with his darkness.

Minutes that seemed like hours passed in blur that felt like drowning, then the doors to Hell were giving way beneath his hands, slamming open with a groan that echoed through the dark.

Kesh stepped into stillness.

No lights. No movement. No scent of blood or sex in the air. Just cold, abandoned silence.

But she had been here.

That tether deep inside him pulled taut. Not her scent. Not her magic. Something else. Like the memory of her fear stamped into the walls.

He forced down the rage clawing at his throat. If he let go now, if he gave in before he had her⁠—

She would be gone.

He moved deeper into the brothel, past empty booths and overturned beds. No bodies. No women. No demons.

Each step made it harder to breathe.

Then—

A sound.

Small. Muffled. From the back of the building. Jimmy’s office.

Kesh stilled.

Heat bloomed under his skin, quiet and lethal.

He turned toward the door. And walked in.

The office door, unlocked and undefended, creaked open under Kesh’s hand. Inside, Jimmy stood with his back turned, crouched over his desk. A large suitcase lay open on the floor, glittering with jewels, and gold, and something small and wrapped in velvet that glinted in his hand—an artifact, maybe. Irrelevant.

The demon froze when he heard the door. Turned.

“Your Highness,” Jimmy said, too quickly. “I didn’t expect⁠—”

Kesh’s hand closed around his throat before the last syllable hit the air.

The room lit up with magic, raw and scorching. Power curled through his fingers like black fire given shape.

“You get one chance,” Kesh said, voice low and lethal. “Where. Is. She?”

Jimmy’s eyes bulged as he clawed at Kesh’s wrist. “Wait—wait, please—just listen—” The velvet-wrapped artifact clattered to the floor as he thrashed. “I didn’t hurt her! I didn’t touch her—I swear on my blood⁠—”

Kesh said nothing. Just watched. His grip didn’t tighten, but the magic did. It seeped through Jimmy's skin like acid, slow and deliberate. The pimp gasped as steam curled off his neck. The skin around Kesh’s hand began to blister, then split. Muscle smoked.

The stench of charred flesh filled the room.

Jimmy screamed.

“I’ll talk—I’ll talk, please⁠—”

Kesh tilted his head, his fury held perfectly still in the iron grip of his hand around the slithery demon’s oozing neck.

“She’s gone,” Jimmy sobbed. “Europe. Prince Aragalan. He’s taken her back to put her up for auction for the lords who support the old royal bloodline⁠—”

More skin peeled away beneath Kesh’s palm. Jimmy shrieked.

“Please! It wasn’t my plan! It was Mallorn—Mallorn brought her to me. Said you were going to kill me for whoring her, kill him for challenging you. That this was our only way out⁠—”

Kesh’s magic surged, and Jimmy choked on his own scream.

“Where?”

“Rome! To the palace! She’ll be mated before nightfall tomorrow. Please, just—just let me⁠—”

The words dissolved into howling when the magic dug into his flesh, flared like a pulse.

Kesh’s breath stuttered in his throat.

Rome.

The palace.

Not just enemy territory. The poisoned, beating heart of the enemy that wanted him, his family destroyed.

Auctioned.

They wouldn’t delay; they would want her secured to one of their supporters as swiftly as possible. No time for strategy. No window for siege.

And if the auction began⁠—

He knew what they were like. The Europeans followed the old ways. A woman subjected to that would not come out the other side with the light in her eyes still intact.

Something broke inside him; dark and violent and powerful.

The ground shuddered beneath his feet, the floorboards splitting with a thunder crack. Jimmy’s scream cut off mid-breath as he disintegrated, body turned to dust in a flare of heat and raw energy.

Then the room exploded.

Not outward. Not upward.

Every atom of the building detonated in every direction at once.

The blast hit every surface; stone liquefied. Metal screamed. Fire rose in a column a quarter mile high.

Hell was gone.

All of it. Reduced to a crater still glowing at the edges, ash spiraling into the air like smoke off a funeral pyre.

At the center, Kesh stood alone.

Breathing.

Barely.

Eyes burning amber with only one thought left in his mind.

Save her.

45

Georgia

The royal palace was quiet.

Not the kind of quiet that comforted. The kind that made it hard to breathe. The velvet runner underfoot swallowing the sound of their steps, as though sound wasn’t allowed in this place.

Georgia walked between her kidnappers. Aragalan on her right. Mallorn on her left.

She kept her eyes on the floor. The hallway stretched ahead, a gallows walk, an endless runway of opulence and excess. The contrast to Kesh’s casino was stark enough to register through her numb horror as she was marched through the palace.

Somewhere over the Atlantic, once the realization finally set in that there was no way out, her mind had slipped from raw terror into the kind of cold, creeping dread that settled in bone. No more bargains to be made, and no rescues to be had. Kesh wasn’t coming to get her.

Her heart gave a dull throb deep behind her ribs. How she was still capable of feeling something as ridiculous as heartbreak amid the despair, she didn’t know. Mallorn had fooled her so easily, because he’d known exactly where to twist the knife: he’d fed her stupid heart hope, and she’d leaped at the chance to believe that Kesh loved her after all, despite all the proof to the contrary.

But now?

Even if he did care, he wasn’t going to save her. Not this time. She was deep in enemy territory, and the cost of retrieving her was not justifiable to a prince with subjects and territory to protect.

She wasn’t worth the price.

“I can still smell it,” Aragalan’s voice was almost soft; a velvet caress laced with poison. He didn’t look at her, but his hand constricted slightly around her upper arm. “The sadness. The fear. I believe I have made myself clear that I do not tolerate pheromone manipulation, Breeder.”

“I can’t control my smell.” In the past, she would have apologized, cowered. That girl would have done everything in her power to diffuse his anger, to make herself as small a target as she could.

That girl, who still thought there might be way to lessen the horrors that lay ahead, was dead.

“In that case, I’ll make sure you stop stinking of fear myself. There are ways, even if I can’t yet twist that pretty little ring Jimmy said you’ve been fitted with,” the prince said, almost lightly. “We’ll make sure you enter your auction with the sweet smell of submission staining your skin instead.”

Georgia didn’t respond, couldn’t. What was there to say? No pleas would spare her, so she said nothing.

They stopped in front of a set of towering double doors, carved from some ancient black wood and inlaid with a sigil she didn’t recognize. Two guards stood on either side, unmoving, weapons held at rest.