Page 5 of Iridian

“I’m in love with Taland,” I started, and again, she didn’t react. “He promised the Devil something from the IDD Vault in exchange for his freedom from the Tomb. He came in and stole it. I was there, too. We got caught and I helped him escape—I’m sure you know this. But he lost what he stole from the Vault in the fight with the guards, and then the Devil imprisoned him.” Never mind that the asshole had gone and turned himself in without telling me. He’d gone and turned himself in to the Devil, knowing he wouldn’t make it out of there alive, and I knew why he’d done it.

Because ofme.Because he figured that, if the Devil’s people came looking for him, they might find him while he was with me, and they might hurt me, too. That’s why he did it. I didn’t have to even ask him to know it—that was his reason.

And I was going to fucking smack him in the head if I ever saw him again.

“So, I went to the Devil’s lair to get him out.” I swallowed hard, gave my words a moment to sink in as I watched her. No expression. Not a single hint of what she was thinking.

“I offered him a bracelet in exchange. A braceletIstole from the Vault a few days prior.”

Not a flinch. Goddess, she wasgood.

“I came in here that night you went to that charity event, Grandmother. I went through your library”—I nodded my head at the shelves against the wall behind her —“and I found the one called The Delaetus Army. It had pictures in it. Illustrations. I saw the army and I saw their bracelets, the same as one I saw in the Vault earlier that day.”

Now she finally gave me a hint when her left eye twitched, and when she began to play with her ruby ring, to spin it around her finger like she did when she wasextrapissed off. Or maybe just frustrated. Possibly both.

“You came into my office,” she said, her voice low, and it wasn’t a question or anything. Like she was simply trying to understand the meaning of those words better.

“I did,” I answered anyway. “And the next day, I went back to the Vault and I stole that bracelet.” I shook my head, my own magic raging still, but she had such a good grip on my body that no matter how hard I was trying to just move my hands, I couldn’t. “Remember that time you knocked me out and took me to the Council’s chambers, and on the way back you said that my magic was not thedifferentthey were looking for?”

She stopped a heartbeat, froze completely. Didn’t spin her ring around her finger or the whiskey in her glass.

I smiled just to spite her. “You were wrong. It is. It’s exactly thedifferentthey were looking for.”

Magicleakedout of her. I felt it in the air, coating my tongue, going down my throat. Hers had a special flavor, spicy and overly sweet at the same time. It made me so nauseous, but I bit my tongue and kept going.

“I am, after all, a Laetus, even if I drained the Rainbow. And with that bracelet, I could do colorful magic. Thedifferentkind of magic you were so sure I didn’t need to know about.”

This I said to make her feel stupid, but I don’t know why I bothered. Of course, she wouldn’t—this was Madeline. Instead, she just looked down at her drink for a moment, then threw it all back before filling it once more.

“Continue,” she said.

So, I did.

“I went to exchange the bracelet, which is a Laetus anchor, we believe,” I said and gave her another pause to see if she’d say something. Twice now I’d used the termLaetus,notMud,and she hadn’t corrected me. “The Devil agreed. He was going to take the bracelet and let us go, consider Taland’s debt paid.”

An arched brow. “And your magic, it was?—”

“Powerful,” I finished for her. “Colorful.”

“And you were going to give that away for…a man?”

Hold up, wait a minute…she was not reacting the way I thought she would.

Now I was the confused one because I’d thought for sure she’d have a big problem with me stealing and discovering the Laetus and doing colorful magic, but she was more concerned that I’d wanted to give it away?

“A man I love, yes.”

Her laughter was awful, always had been. So…untrained.Unpleasant. VeryunlikeMadeline.

“Love—oh dear,” she said. “You were going to give away all that power forlove.” Again, she laughed.

But her spell must have been getting weaker because when my instincts took over and I tried to get up, to move, I could, only a little bit.

Here’s hoping she doesn’t notice,I thought, but then again, what the hell could I do if she didn’t? Even if I wasn’t being forced to sit on that couch, I had no weapon on me, no anchor.

But if I did…would I actually use it against her?

The question scared me because the answer was so readily available to me.

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