Page 1 of Prince of Ruin
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Lights and sirens wailed past as Sera paid the driver and stepped from the cab.
“You sure you want to be here, sweetie?” he asked, looking around. “This quadrant’s not the safest in the city. The demons will be out to play tonight.”
Sera flashed him a smile. “I’m fine. Maybe if they’re lucky, I’ll play back.”
He shook his head at her as if to say, ‘I tried,’ and then he pulled back into the traffic.
Sera slung her purse over her shoulder, tottering in her three-inch heels. “Alright. I’m here. Let’s do this.”
Uriel’s whisper-soft voice haunted her memories.
I need to ask a favor.
You won’t like it, Sera, but times are desperate.
There’s a rumor that one of the shards of Michael’s sword has been found…. And not by us.
“I’ll do it,” Sera had promised him. “I’ll get the shard back. Where is it? Who has it?”
Because she’d wanted to prove that her loyalties—long questioned among the Brotherhood—were true. And because “reclamation” was her forte.
But she hadn’t known the full truth in that moment.
Uriel had paused, the hood of his sweater shielding half his face. His golden eyes had met hers, and for a second she’d lost herself in the power of that look. He was a broken king, ruling his territory with an iron fist, but there were times when the Fist of Heaven looked back at her, times when she could see the power of the creature he’d once been flood through him. “It’s in the Swallows.”
Her heart had plunged through her feet as she realized exactly what he was setting her to do.
And why he’d soughtherout for this particular task.
There was only one creature in the Swallows who might have gotten his hand on a powerful relic from a long-forgotten era.
One demon who ruled the territory with murder and malice, and every single kind of twisted sin possible.
And she’d been running from this meeting ever since she woke up in the mud of a new world, gasping for breath and staring at her newly mortal fingers in horror.
The Prince of Ruin.
If the shard was here, thenheowned it, the same way he owned everyone and everything that dared cross his territorial boundaries.
You can do this.
He won’t recognize you.
It’s been years….
Centuries.
He’s not the same.
But the choking feeling in her chest felt the same. Call it fate, call it kismet, but she felt like flotsam in a whirlpool, desperately trying to avoid this confrontation all these years, only to find herself spinning faster and faster, toward the center of an earth-shattering collision.
Seraphine Murdoch—according to her fake license—strode across the sidewalk, her fingers toying with the tiny purse she carried. Nerves. Not the best place to show them, but if any of the creatures that lurked in the Swallows saw her as prey, she could disabuse them of that notion.
No prey here, demonspawn.
But come on…. I dare you.
