Hazel
Blood didn't burn like fire, but it came close enough.
Hazel pressed her palm against the gash in her side and kept running. Her boots skidded on stone slick with rain—and things far worse than rain.
Behind her, the citadel was screaming. Not metaphorically. The towers actually shrieked as warded stone shattered, sending a long keening note vibrating through her teeth.
She had eleven men when she crossed into the Ashfall Court three nights ago.
She had none now.
"Move," she hissed to herself. There was no one left to say it for her.
Talia would have said it. Talia, who had gone down covering the east passage with a hex-blade through her throat, still trying to grin. *Go, princess. Go.*
Hazel went.
The mission had been simple on paper. But paper was a liar. Slip into the Ashfall stronghold, retrieve the sealed relic from the Lord's private vault, and vanish before dawn.
Her father—the King, she forced herself to think of him that way now, cold and titled—had sworn the wards would be down for exactly one hour.
The wards had never been down. They had been waiting.
She understood the truth around the second ambush. Watching her men get cut apart by soldiers who knew their exact entrance time, she realized this was never a mission.
It was a delivery. *Here are eleven demons and one half-blood embarrassment. Do with them what you like.*
A bolt of black flame screamed past her ear, exploding against the wall in a spray of sparks. Hazel didn't look back. Looking back was how Marek had lost his head three minutes ago.
The forest opened up ahead. The Ashfall border was a black smear of trees against a bruise-colored sky. If she made the tree line, she had a chance. If she reached the river past it, she had a real shot.
She didn't make either.
Something vast and silent dropped out of the dark. Suddenly, the ground wasn't where it was supposed to be anymore.
She came up swinging by pure instinct. She met empty air, which was humiliating.
"If you'd connected," a voice said, low and unbothered, "I might almost have been impressed."
Hazel scrambled back against a tree trunk, dagger raised. Her breath sawed in and out of a chest that refused to cooperate. Blood loss, probably. Or him.
Likely both.
He stood in the clearing like he belonged there. Black hair, wet from the storm, hung past his shoulders. Purple eyes caught what little light remained, holding a deep, breathless color.
Behind him, something huge shifted at the clearing's edge. Wings. A massive shape resolved into scaled black hide and a single, slitted amethyst eye watching her like a curiosity.
"Damon," she said. It wasn't a question.
Everyone in the Nine Courts knew that name—Lucifer's half-human son. The one nobody was supposed to mention at court dinners, who inherited his father's reputation and made it worse by being quiet about it.
"You know my name. I find I don't know yours." He tilted his head, assessing her like a blade he was deciding whether to pick up. "Though I know what you are. Half-blood. Demon king's daughter, unless I miss my guess. Sent to die quietly somewhere your father wouldn't have to watch."
"That's not—" The denial died in her throat. Because it was exactly that.
"Don't," he said, almost gently. That was worse than cruelty. "I can smell a betrayal from a mile off. It has a very particular rot. Yours is fresh."
Hazel's grip tightened on her dagger. It was a useless tool against him, but her hand didn't care about the odds. "If you're going to kill me, get on with it. I've had a long night."
Something flickered across his face. Not quite a smile, but the ghost of one.
"I'm not going to kill you."
"Comforting."
"It wasn't meant to be." He crouched, bringing those purple eyes level with hers.
Hazel hated that a traitorous part of her chest eased at his proximity instead of recoiling.
"You're bleeding out in my territory, half-blood," he said. "Hunted by your own father's men, with nowhere to run. Let's not pretend you can set terms."
"Then what position am I in?"
"The interesting one." He held out a steady hand, waiting patiently. "You strike a deal with me. Your loyalty, your obedience, whatever's left of your pride—in exchange for staying alive long enough to matter again. I have a use for what's under all that blood."
Her vision was starting to gray at the edges. Whatever was in her side wasn't healing. The blade that cut her must have been blessed. She had minutes before terms became irrelevant.
"Why would the Devil's son want anything from me?"
His mouth finally curved into a sharp, knowing expression.
"Because you're not just a half-blood, sweetheart." His hand stayed extended.
"You're a question I've been waiting a very long time to ask."
The world tilted. She took his hand because the alternative was the dirt.
Her fingers closed around his. Heat shot up her arm like a burning coal, but it didn't hurt. It felt familiar. Behind her closed eyes, something old and golden stirred awake, and she swore she heard a strange voice whisper a name that wasn't Hazel.
Then the dark took her completely.
Damon
She went limp before he even finished the sentence. Damon supposed that was fair. Most people didn't manage a witty rejoinder while bleeding out from a blessed-iron wound.
He caught her before she hit the ground. The moment her skin met his palm, something in his chest lurched.
Not metaphorically. It felt like a missed stair. Like his body had been walking toward this exact collision his entire life.
He went very still.
Behind him, Mordrek shifted his weight, claws gouging the wet earth. The dragon exhaled a low rumble of smoke that translated clearly: *Well, that's new.*
"Don't," Damon said, without turning around.
*I said nothing,* Mordrek replied directly into his thoughts. *Though you're holding her like she might combust.*
"She might."
*Interesting.*
"Don't," Damon repeated, sharper this time.
He looked down at the girl. She was blood-streaked and soaked, her hair plastered to her throat. Even unconscious, her jaw was set like she intended to keep fighting.
There was a brand on the back of her hand—old work. It was shaped like nothing he had ever cataloged in four centuries.
Strangely, the mark was warm. Warmer than a dying girl should be. He felt that warmth in his own palm like an answer.
*Curse-bound and you're already certain,* Mordrek observed. *You haven't even learned her name.*
"I'm not certain of anything."
*Liar. You went still the moment you touched her. I've watched you for three hundred years, hatchling. You don't go still.*
He didn't have an answer, which irritated him. So did the eleven dead demons nearby, and the King's spies he could feel withdrawing into the tree line, satisfied with what they'd witnessed.
*The King wanted this seen,* Mordrek added, following his thoughts. *He wanted you to find her. The question is why.*
"I know why." Damon's jaw tightened. The King wanted to put a knife somewhere it would do damage later, and call it an accident. "He wants her somewhere he can find her when it's convenient. He's betting I'll keep her too well-guarded to need watching."
*Will you?*
Damon looked down at her face, completely unguarded now. He felt that dangerous lurch in his chest again. An old, patient ache was finally finding something shaped like home.
"I haven't decided what I'll do with her yet," he said.
He gathered her up properly, lifting her into his arms. The brand on her hand pressed flush against his collarbone—right over his own skin where a twin scar sat. A scar he'd had since before he could remember.
The two marks rested warm against each other in the rain.
*A mate bond,* Mordrek said, the teasing gone from his voice. *After all this time.*
"I don't believe in fate," Damon said, turning back toward his territory.
*No,* the dragon agreed, unfolding massive wings and falling into step beside him. *But fate, hatchling, has never required your belief to be true.*