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She’d been raised like a princess, encouraged to be petty and cruel, while at the same time, never knowing how it felt to be beaten or betrayed. She’d always thought she’d been treated like royalty because her mother loved her and other demons revered her… but what if her treatment had been about making sure she’d never feel empathy, since she hadn’t experienced pain?

The very idea made her ill, but again, this wasn’t about her. She’d never suffered, especially not at the hands of her own father. Hell, she’d never even met her father.

For a moment she wondered if Arik’s father was alive, and then realized that Shade would never have allowed the man to live, and yet another stirring of jealousy went through her at what Runa had that Limos never would.

Shaking off the useless self-pity, she entered Arik’s room again. He was still out cold, sprawled on the bed as if he were sleeping off a wild bender. Right now, it didn’t seem as if he’d ever come out of the hell that he was living with inside his skull.

She sank down on the bed beside him and offered what little comfort she could, smoothing his shirt and brushing his hair off his forehead. She’d done the same for her brothers when they’d been injured in battle, hoping they’d find peace in her touch. Sure, they regenerated quickly, but if the injuries were bad enough, they suffered in misery for hours, even days while they waited.

This sucked. She felt so helpless. No matter what she did, things continued to get worse for Arik. Though… wait… maybe she could help. If he never remembered hurting Runa…

Yes. Smiling, because she could finally do something for him, she thumbed open his eyelids and stared into his glassy eyes. Very carefully, she reached into Arik’s mind with hers and snipped the pesky memory of striking his sister away. Unlike Ares, she couldn’t restore the missing memory, but she wouldn’t need to.

Runa’s visit was something he was better off never remembering.

Eleven

Kynan sat in the conference room at The Aegis’s Berlin headquarters, his head spinning. His mind was still trying to wrap itself around the information revealed in one of the three scrolls he’d brought to his fellow Elders with the other treasures in the vault Limos had taken him to.

The little artifacts had, so far, turned up nothing, but one of their historians was still researching their origins and could yet discover something useful. Similarly, two of the scrolls had been accounts of battles with demons—interesting, but ultimately, not great archaeological finds.

But the one scroll… Jesus. If what it said was true, it could alter the course of human history.

“So.” Valeriu, an elder who was distantly related to Kynan by marriage, lifted his glasses and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. They’d been studying the scroll nonstop, searching for related texts in their libraries, trying to hash out some of the most cryptic phrases. “We think this could be the key to stopping the Apocalypse. But do we want to risk an Aegi’s life on a hunch?”

Malik, who had fought demons for thirty years throughout the Middle East before being promoted to the Sigil, shook his head. “I do not like it. We have asked Guardians to do things we knew might end in their deaths, and they understand that danger comes with the territory. But this…”

Lance, a Canadian who lost his fashion sense somewhere in the 80s, spun a coffee stir stick on the table. “The Guardian would be a volunteer. She’ll know there’s no guarantee of success.”

Yeah, and that was assuming they’d get a volunteer for this secret plan. What they were going to reveal to the Guardian waiting outside the room was going to knock her on her ass.

Fuck. Ky didn’t like any of this. Life had been much less complicated when he was nothing but a soldier on the Aegis’s front lines. He’d been in charge of a large cell of Guardians, but mainly, he fought demons. Kill or be killed. Simple shit.

Now he was manipulating fate and lives, and none of it sat well with him.

Valeriu leaned back in his chair and stared at the painting