Page 104 of A Bond in Flames

This was true; the male was skilled.

I turned back to the temple. Marigold was just inside. I almost had her in my arms. I just had to get through that door, and I’d have had my baby back. I’d have my daughter.

Lightning flashed in the distance, cracking through the sky right over Nox’s tower.

“They’re fighting,” Pascal said. “Last time they fought like this, it felt as if the world were ending.”

The first time Nox killed me, they’d battled. I hadn’t asked Death how. “Death’s powers are weakened here.”

Pascal shrugged. “They don’t seem weakened anymore.”

He’d better be okay. “We need to make a move.”

He nodded, jaw tightening with determination. “Just get to Marigold, and leave the rest to me.”

“If you betray me, if you turn on me—”

“I won’t.”

“If you do, if my daughter gets hurt because of you, I will hex you. I’ll make you wish you were dead,” I said, meaning every word of it, the words coming from my gut, an oath wrapped in power.

He dipped his chin. “And I’d deserve it.” He slipped one of his blades from his chest holder, sliced his palm with a wince, and grabbed mine. “I will never betray you, Zinnia, or anyone you love.” Our blood mingled, binding his words in a blood oath.

Okay, I was definitely starting to like this guy. “Glad we’re on the same page.”

He grinned. “Me too. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be your enemy.”

“Wise.” Death’s cloak was like a stormy sky gathering around me. It sensed the temple as well.

I dug one of Mags’s potions from my pack and handed it to him. “Wait until the demons are close, then throw it. The glass needs to smash, but get the hell out of the way fast.”

His brow lifted as he slid it in his pocket. “What does it do?”

“Melts faces off.”

His eyes widened, and then he grinned again. “Excellent.”

Taking the vial of Death’s blood from my pocket, I poured some on my palm, and the shadows slid along my arm, around my hand. I turned to Pascal. He stood beside me, a wicked curved knife in each hand, twirling them slowly as he scanned the area around us. “Ready?”

He flashed another grin. “Let’s do it.”

“In three, we run.”

He dipped his chin.

I held up three fingers.Three. Two. One.

We both exploded out of the trees and made a run for the temple door. The demons hiding, guarding the place, hadn’t been expecting us. They’d obviously bought Death’s lie. We made it to the door, and I copied the symbol Death had done when we first came here, drawing it in his blood while Pascal guarded my back.

Demons swarmed us, closing in.

The shadows gathered thicker around my hand, and the door rumbled; then slowly, shuddering, it finally swung open. “Come on!” I called to Pascal.

“I’m right behind you,” he said, fending off the demons, using those knives, moving with a kind of grace, a dance, like nothing I’d ever seen before.

I ran in, my heart slamming against the back of my ribs. Every muscle in my body trembled, adrenaline pounding through me as I slowed and walked weak-kneed down the hall toward my daughter. She’d been in stasis so long, so very long. There was no way she could know who I was. When she went to sleep, I was someone else. My heart knew her, though, and my memories were so vivid. Her birth, the weight of her in my arms, the way she smelled, the sound of her voice—it was all there, so real, as if it were this body, this life, that had experienced all of it.

Taking a deep breath, I pressed my hand, still stained with Death’s blood, to the door in front of me and whispered the words he’d given me to gain access.

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