: Chapter 23

Silence fell in the cottage the next morning after Wynter dropped the “Unfortunately, the Ancients now know what I am” bomb on her crew. Sprawled around the living area, they shifted uncomfortably and exchanged glances.

“It goes without saying that this isn’t good,” said Anabel.

“I had no choice but to come clean. There was no way I could pretend I hadn’t just died, or any way for me to hide Kali’s mark.” Cradling her cup with both hands, Wynter sipped at her tea. “I told myself when we first came here that I’d be able to keep the truth from the Ancients, but I knew deep down that they would likely find out sooner or later.”

“I suspected they would too, but I was all for ‘later.’” Anabel nervously rubbed at her shoulder. “At least we now know that an Ancient can’t permanently kill you—I know you worried they could.”

“I don’t know for certain that they can’t. Ishtar’s strike wasn’t meant to be fatal. It was more like a swat. An Ancient would have no more than winced. I freaking died. If one—or all of them combined—really put their back into it, they might well manage to wipe me out for good.”

Hattie flicked her hand. “They’d be fools to harm one of Kali’s Favored.”

“That Ishtar woman is a complete fool,” said Delilah. “I can totally see her doing something so stupid.”

“Yeah, she’s one spiteful little bitch,” said Xavier, idly shuffling his tarot cards. He glanced at Wynter. “I’ll bet she felt all smug when her power killed you. It meant you were not only dead but that she could cry ‘accident.’”

“I think she was more furious that I came back from death than she was that I’m a not a mere witch. Although it will undoubtedly gall her that she can’t brand me weak any longer.” Wynter took another sip of her tea. “She pounced on my being a revenant, trying to use it to turn the others against me.”

“Did it work?” asked Anabel.

“Not with Cain,” replied Wynter. “It didn’t seem to work with the rest either. They don’t like that they have so many unanswered questions, but they don’t seem to view me as a potential enemy. Still, I doubt they’ll like being around me much.”

Anabel nodded. “They don’t have an ‘edge’ around you the way they do others; they can’t say and do whatever they like to you with no fear of repercussions because you can actually kill them. They won’t be used to that. It’ll annoy them, if nothing else.”

“They’re mostly focused on the upcoming battle with the Aeons. My worry is that when the war has passed and they can give my being a revenant more mental space, they might suddenly share Ishtar’s apparent concerns.”

“They might,” mused Xavier. “But if it looks like they’re going to turn on you, we’ll go before they have a chance to act on it. At the moment, I don’t think there’s a risk that they’ll attempt to kill you. They need you to lure the Aeons here.”

“Not necessarily,” said Anabel. “Wynter has already succeeded in luring them here—it won’t be long before they make their move. The Ancients don’t need her alive at this point. It’s not like they’d have to prove to the Aeons that she’s safe and well.”

Xavier pointed a finger at the blonde. “Now that’s true. I didn’t think of that.”

Neither had Wynter. Hence the cold fingertips that trailed down her spine.

He cut his gaze to her. “Now that they know you’re a revenant, they’ll also know that your life-force isn’t tied to the curse. They literally have no real reason to want you to live unless of course they don’t object to your existence.”

“Not true,” Hattie objected. “Kali is an excellent deterrent. She would never stand for anyone hurting one of Her Favored. They know that well. I doubt even the Ancients would want to take on a deity. I’m not all that worried—Cain wouldn’t allow any of the others to do Wynter harm. He’s firmly ensnared.”

Wynter frowned. “Ensnared?”

“Hooked. Enthralled. Bewitched.” Hattie gave a firm nod. “He’ll keep you safe. Or you’ll kill him. One or the other. I’m leaning toward the first, though.”

“I do agree that Cain wouldn’t be party to anything that harmed you,” Anabel told Wynter. “I don’t know what he feels for you, but I do think he wouldn’t turn on you. I also think he’d likely protect you from the other Ancients if necessary. Maybe that will be enough to stay their hands.”

Delilah crossed one leg over the other. “We only have that comfort if Cain truly took the whole revenant thing as well as he seemed to. Do you think he did, Wyn?”

Considering he’d fucked Wynter on his dining table like he hadn’t seen her in decades … “Yeah, I do. I have no doubt he’s a very accomplished liar, considering he’s been keeping secrets for most of his life—and he’s lived a very, very, very long life. But if he’d been creeped out or disgusted by what I am, I would have picked up on it. My monster would have sensed it, too.”

Xavier’s brows snapped together. “Why would Cain be disgusted?”

“Well, I am a revenant.”

“But not a typical revenant,” said Xavier, setting his tarot cards on the coffee table. “It’s not like he’s been banging a walking corpse. The only thing about you that’s truly undead is your soul, and he already knew about that.”

“True, but I’m not naturally alive. Kali’s power brought me back, and it keeps me here. So it wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d been a little freaked. He was more bothered by the fact that I’d died right there in front of him.”

“Like I said, he’s ensnared,” said Hattie. “And I’ll bet he’s encountered far stranger things in his life than a revenant who’s not a regular revenant—it would likely take a lot more than that to spook him. Which is a relief, since he has access to your soul and could cause you some serious pain.”

Oh, indeed. Wynter would like to think that he would never hurt her, but she liked to think a lot of things. Such as that her crew would start valuing their own safety instead of constantly risking it.

She zeroed in on Hattie. “Speaking of pain … are you sure your eyes aren’t sore? They’re seriously bloodshot, and I don’t think it’s just because of the damn joint you smoked earlier.”

Hattie waved away her concern. “They’re fine. Really. I was up all night finishing a book, that’s all. I couldn’t put it down; it was a real page-turner. I wasn’t crazy about the dolphin shifters, though.” Her face scrunched up in distaste. “Dolphins are nasty creatures.”

Delilah blinked. “Nasty?”

Hattie nodded. “They act all sweet and friendly, but they’re sociopaths down to their fins.”

“Kind of like you, then,” said Delilah.

Hattie’s brow wrinkled. “I don’t have fins.”

“But you are sociopathic.”

“That doesn’t make me a sociopath. I feel empathy. Love. Remorse. I have a conscience.”

Delilah arched up a brow. “The same conscience that saw no reason why you shouldn’t kill any of your husbands?”

“They were crimes of passion.”

“They were incidences of premediated murder.”

“Their betrayals were premeditated. They had full-blown affairs, every one of them.” Hattie put a hand to her chest. “Broke my heart, they did.”

“You know, most women in that situation just get divorced.”

“I don’t believe in divorce, it’s a sin.”

Delilah shook her head and mouthed, “Wow.” She pushed to her feet. “And on that note, we’d better moving. We have a shop to open.”

The day was both as busy and as normal as any other day. So it took Wynter by surprise when Cain strolled into her bedroom that evening while she was packing her duffel for yet another night at his Keep. He’d only ever turned up at the cottage once before, and that had been to find out why she was late. A quick look at her quirky wall-clock told her she wasn’t running late tonight.

“Oh, hey.”

“Such a gushing reception,” he teased as he crossed to her, calm and predatory and far too sexy for her damn liking.

She snorted. “I’m not one to gush.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed.” He planted a soft kiss on her mouth and swept his hands up her arms. “I was passing your street. I decided to stop by.”

She narrowed her eyes, skeptical. He never simply stopped by. And, considering how busy he was, she wouldn’t have expected him to ever take the time to do so.

A sneaking suspicion slithered through her mind. “You came here to check that I wasn’t packing all my stuff to hightail it out of Devil’s Cradle, didn’t you?”

After a brief moment, he inclined his head. “It occurred to me that you might prefer to leave now that your secret has been exposed to myself and the other Ancients.” He twirled a strand of her hair around his finger. “Of course, I would have had to stop you.”

Wynter fought a smile. He wouldn’t find it so easy to detain her, but she’d let him think otherwise. “If I snuck off like that, I would have been leaving partial rights to my soul behind.”

“You wouldn’t be the first. People have done such a thing before. Mostly if they broke a rule and didn’t wish to be held responsible for it. In fact, Bowen and Annette left without notice only recently—Azazel and I suspect they might have committed some crime. You’ve not noticed their absence?” Whatever he saw on her face made him squint. “What is it?” he asked.

Damn, this news probably wouldn’t wash down well. “They didn’t actually leave willingly.” Far from it. “See, Annette killed me,” she blurted out.

His brows snapped together. “Excuse me?”

“She came to the shed where I work and skewered me from behind with a sword.”

His eyes flared, and his mouth set into a hard line. “Did she now? When?”

“Not long after you killed her father. Bowen rushed in, saw what happened, and talked of covering for her and … well, I didn’t like it much. So when I woke up, I dealt with them.”

“I can still feel her soul; she’s not dead.”

“No, I, uh …” Wynter rubbed at her earlobe. “I kind of stuck them in the netherworld.”

Taking a moment to digest those words, Cain did a slow blink. His creature stilled, surprised. “The … the netherworld?”

“I didn’t know where else to put them,” she burst out in her defense. “I couldn’t kill them for obvious reasons. But they’d seen me rise from the dead, and I couldn’t risk that they’d go blabbing about it. They’re not exactly trustworthy people, and they wouldn’t have done me any favors.”

For long moments, Cain could only stare at her. His woman never failed to take him off-guard. Never. “How, exactly, did you put them in the netherworld?”

“I’ve been able to open a portal to it ever since I first became a revenant. I don’t know if it comes with the revenant package or it’s simply because my soul is undead and so I therefore have a connection to it.”

Of all the scenarios he’d considered when he tried making sense of why he couldn’t properly touch Annette’s soul, this hadn’t been one of them. His monster was thoroughly impressed by Wynter’s ability. Cain, however, didn’t like the thought of her having any such connection to a separate realm—it felt too much like she wasn’t fully in this realm. “You made it look like she’d left?”

“It wasn’t hard. She’d already packed up her stuff and stashed it in a car she’d parked outside of the town’s boundary. It was just a matter of moving said car so it looked as if she headed off somewhere.” Wynter bit her lip. “You mad?”

“At you for what you did to protect your secrets? No. Particularly since Annette took it upon herself to end your life, forfeiting her own. But I am angry. Angry that she dared put her hands on you. Angry that I didn’t foresee she’d do such a thing. Angry that I’m only learning of it now.” He didn’t bother asking Wynter why she hadn’t told him before today—the answer was obvious. “I will explain to Azazel about Bowen. He will understand; there’ll be no reprisals.”

“Bowen was one of his aides,” she reminded him.

“Not a prized one. In any case, Azazel wouldn’t punish you for protecting yourself. That was all you really did. And I wouldn’t dare allow it if he tried, so there’s that. Can you bring both berserkers back out of the netherworld?”

“Only if they haven’t died there. A soul can’t, obviously, but a living being can. I can go look, but it might not be so easy to find them—”

“Then leave them where they are.” Cain didn’t want her roaming around that realm when he’d have no way of getting to her if need be. He didn’t trust that Kali wouldn’t decide to keep Her there. “I would only seek to punish them anyway. They’ll suffer plenty in their present location.” He’d heard enough about the netherworld to know that there was nothing pleasant about it. “Are any other residents roaming there?”

“Nope, just them.”

“You certainly keep things interesting, little witch. Just full of surprises, aren’t you?” He cocked his head. “Did anyone at Aeon ever discover your secrets and find themselves subsequently dumped in the netherworld?”

“Only one. Nobody suspected I had anything to do with his ‘disappearance,’ thankfully. Being an absolute asshole who regularly beat up women, he had a whole host of enemies. It was believed that a relative of one of those women probably killed him. The investigation into his death went nowhere, though. The Aeons didn’t pursue the matter. They don’t care much what happens to the mortals there.”

“What did he do to earn that fate?”

“He stumbled upon me covered in blood and gore after I let my monster chomp down some dude who tried raping me.”

Cain felt his jaw harden as rage shot through him. “I see.”

“No one ever traced that death back to me. The guy who tried raping me was actually a keeper. Aeon … it’s not like here. You and the other Ancients all run a tight ship. Although there are plenty of rules at Aeon and a high number of keepers to enforce them, the Aeons themselves don’t keep a close watch over ‘mortal matters.’ They don’t oversee the activities of the keepers or make sure justice is always served. The keepers exploit that and get up to all sorts of shit, confident there’ll be no repercussions.”

“So our source often says.”

Her brows lifted. “You have a spy there?”

“There isn’t much he’s able to tell us, since he has no access to the underground city, but he occasionally passes on helpful information.”

“That’s how you knew about the blight.”

“Yes. I didn’t believe it at first, or that people there could possibly be falling sick. But our source was adamant. And, according to Azazel, very afraid.”

She twisted her mouth. “How come you need a source? You once said you have ways of getting glimpses of the world outside of Devil’s Cradle. Can you not spy on Aeon that way?”

“No. The town is shielded from view by the Aeons’ power, hence why it’s never been detected by human satellites. It’s just as shielded from preternatural surveillance. Devil’s Cradle is similarly shielded by myself and the other Ancients.”

“Speaking of the Aeons … you never told me what Lailah offered to give you in exchange for my life.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“I didn’t want to ask too many questions because it might have prompted you to do the same, and there was a lot that I wasn’t ready to tell you back then.”

He nodded, understanding, since he’d been in exactly the same boat. He still was, really. There was so much he could never tell her if he truly meant to keep her.

“But you know one of my secrets now,” she went on. “That doesn’t mean you owe it to me to tell me any of your own, but I was hoping you could at least tell me this.”

Cain toyed with the ends of her hair. “Lailah offered to hand over Eve.”

“Your mother? She’s a captive at Aeon?”

“In a sense. She lives in comfort and is able to go about her daily life, but she has many restrictions and wouldn’t be permitted to leave. As they say, a gilded cage is still a cage.” Cain tensed when Wynter pressed herself against him, giving him a comfort that was as foreign to him as the offer of it. Forcing his muscles to relax, he curved his arms around her.

“Were you close to Eve?” she asked.

“No. I didn’t have much of a relationship with her, but that was neither her fault nor mine. It is a very long story,” he quickly added when he sensed she’d question him further on it. “One I will share with you some time. But not now.”

Wynter looked like she might press him, but then she dipped her chin. “Okay. If she’s a captive of sorts, is it because she sided with you in the war or something?”

“No. Eve’s gilded cage was created long before then. Unlike the other Aeons, she didn’t betray me or the other Ancients. She chose to stay neutral, all the while hoping everyone on both sides of the war would throw down their swords and wave a white flag.”

“Out of optimism or naïvety?”

“The latter, mostly.”

Wynter nibbled on her lower lip. “I guess I can understand why Lailah would think you’d jump at her offer.”

“I will personally retrieve Eve once I’m free, providing she wishes to come here. Given that Aeon is wasting away, I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t.”

“So this is what Ishtar meant when she said that the Aeons had something you want.”

“Yes. But I don’t believe that Ishtar truly thought I’d give you up to them in exchange for my mother or anything else. I think she simply wanted you to believe it might happen. Sowing seeds of distrust is a favorite game of hers.”

“I have to say, I struggle to understand what it is about Ishtar that once appealed to you. Yeah, okay, she’s beautiful. But she’s also a pain in the ass.”

He pursed his lips. “She didn’t used to be so petty and vindictive. Those qualities crept up on her during our imprisonment. But she was always a person who needed to be the dominant figure in a relationship. I was never going to be a submissive partner. In that sense, we were each a challenge for the other. Challenges give you a reprieve from boredom.”

Wynter sniffed. “I guess.”

Cain bit back a smile at the slight note of jealousy in her voice. He didn’t think his little witch would appreciate that he liked it. “I didn’t care for her. She didn’t care for me either.”

“You sure about the latter? Because she seems intent on snagging you.”

“Ishtar has a habit of wanting what she can’t have. She pursues it because to actually obtain it would shine her ego and make her feel empowered.”

“And a part of her doesn’t like others playing with her old toys.”

“There’s a little of that, too.” Cain stroked a hand over her sleek, dark hair. “She’s no threat to what you and I have, Wynter. She never held even the slightest bit of appeal to me that you do.”

“Did you put one of those barrier things inside her?”

He shook his head, watching as some of the starch slipped from his witch’s shoulders. Once upon a time, his monster had wanted Ishtar plugged, but it hadn’t pushed Cain to do it, just as it hadn’t attempted to take the matter into its own hands. And Ishtar had hated that his creature showed no real possessiveness toward her.

“You know, you said this barrier you put in me would fade. It hasn’t.”

He smiled. “And how would you know? Tried pleasuring yourself again, did you?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Actually, no, I simply decided to check. You thoroughly see to my needs, which means I don’t have to do it myself nowadays.”

“I intend to see to them again once we get to my Keep. Or … perhaps I could do that right here before we—” He cut off as a crash came from above them that was quickly followed by muffled feminine oaths. “What was that?”

“Anabel, tell me you’re not testing shit on yourself again!” Xavier yelled from downstairs.

“I knocked over a lamp, that’s all!” the blonde shouted.

“You don’t have a lamp!”

Another crash, another female curse.

“Dammit, Anabel, don’t make me come up there!”

“Try it and I’ll fry you!”

Both continued to bicker loudly until a monstrous wild-cat roar split the air.

“Christ Almighty, can a woman not read in peace?” griped Hattie from the neighboring room.

Wynter swiped a hand down her face. “No, I’d rather we just head to your Keep now. I don’t think you need to ask why.”

He felt his mouth quirk. “No, I definitely don’t.”