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“But you don’t need to keep poking the hornet’s nest.” Thanatos gestured to Artur. “Take the body to the ice chamber.” Once the vampire was gone, he turned his attention back to Limos. “What did the demon tell you before you killed him?”

She studied her multi-colored nails to conceal her concern. “That Arik is going to be executed.” And that Arik had refused to make a deal that might have freed him but would have doomed me.

“When?”

Dammit, she’d chipped the orange paint off her pinky. “Soon.”

“No doubt they’ll kill him in Sheoul instead of aboveground. Damn.” Than wanted Arik dead so Li would no longer have to worry about Arik speaking her name, but killing him in Sheoul was not the answer.

In fact, it would be worse for his soul to be tortured down there than his human body. Souls didn’t pass out from pain. He’d break within days, and she’d be honeymooning in the Taj MaHell.

Though she had no doubt he could set records for holding out.

Once again admiration washed over her, this time accompanied by a fierce surge of desire that wasn’t entirely sexual. Over the last month she’d fantasized about him, what it would be like to bed him, but also, what it would be like to just… be with him. To have that strength of character wrapping around her and making her feel secure. Yeah, she was an immortal Horseman, so mighty that she didn’t need any male’s physical protection. But, as she had seen with Ares and Cara, power didn’t always come from muscles.

Li shifted her focus from her nails to her hair, wrapping a still-damp strand around her finger. “I did manage to get a little intel from Rhys. It’s possible Arik is being stored near a hellmouth.”

“Erta Ale,” Than said. “Kynan mentioned it during our chat. He wants to search the area surrounding the volcano, but he won’t be able to find the exact location of the entrance.”

“Because he doesn’t have enough evil in him.” That was the thing about hellmouths—humans could enter without demonic assistance, but only if they were evil. “Guess that leaves me.”

Than’s alreadyiv>’s al deep voice hit rock bottom. “I know you aren’t thinking of sniffing around inside the hellmouth.”

“Oh, I’m sniffing.”

Thanatos burst out of his chair, veins bulging in his neck, visible even under the collar of his black turtleneck. “Dammit, Li, if you get caught, you’ll be barefoot and pregnant with Satan’s hellspawn before you can so much as scream. You can’t—”

“You think I don’t know the risks?” she interrupted. “I didn’t escape just so I can get caught again.”

Actually, she hadn’t escaped at all, but that was something she could never say out loud. There was only one thing she feared more than marriage to the devil himself; losing her brothers. They’d taught her to love when, for countless years, she’d thought love meant enjoying others’ suffering.

“Then I’m coming with you.”

“Okay.”

Than blinked. “Okay?”

“What, you expected me to argue? I’m not a complete idiot.”

“That,” he said, “you are not. Usually.” His gaze shifted over her shoulder, and she followed it, turning to see Ares striding across the room, his expression grim, tension oozing from every pore in his nearly seven-foot-tall body.

He was dressed for battle in his leather armor, his sword at his left hip. Trailing behind him was an ox of a hellhound. Limos hated the beasts, whose bites could incapacitate her and her brothers, leaving them paralyzed and vulnerable. Any weapon coated in their saliva could cause the same damage. Limos knew that firsthand. But Ares’s wife, with her gift of animal whispering and healing, had charmed the damned things, and was bonded to every hellhound in existence. Thanks to the bond, she was now immortal, and all of the beasts held a powerful desire to protect her and Ares.

“Hey, bro,” she said. “What’s up? Where are Cara and Rath?”

Ares’s black eyes heated at his wife’s name, momentarily replacing the icy glint. “She’s home, nursing a newborn hellhound pup. Pestilence killed its mother. Rath’s napping.”

Rath was their adopted kid. Literally… kid. He was a baby Ramreel, a goatlike demon whose father