Page 155 of Devoted

“Just try it, piccola, and I’ll turn you into a lizard. An ugly one.”

We followed the priests and their torches to the temple. This place smelled different from Valeria’s island, and I already missed the clean, salty air, the way the waves crashed on the…

I blinked, and the idyllic retreat became blood-splattered stone and burning beams, black spiders creeping over the ground like a living mat of black.

No, I wasn’t going to think about what happened.

Not yet. Not when everything was still so fresh.

As usual, the temple’s interior was lit with a host of candles, the light not quite reaching the high ceiling, gold veins sparkling along the black onyx columns as we passed cabinet after cabinet of relics, an arcane display meant either to impress… or warn.

I took special care to avoid the runed patterns in the floor, shivering at the memory of being trapped inside that circle. Even in bare feet, every step echoed against the hard surfaces, and I wondered how the priests remained so silent.

“Where did the healers take Valeria?” I asked, drawing even with Emilia. “I should check on her before I do anything else.”

“Down that hall, second door on the left. Her injuries will be tended to, but after what she saw today…” Emilia’s voice trailed off, and I nodded. Valeria had lost everyone in that villa today. Vampires she’d likely known since she was a child, and then her piece of shit father had thrown her to the wolves.

I found Valeria sitting on the edge of a big, comfortable bed, wrapped in a fluffy blanket, and she looked… smaller. Not once had I imagined I’d feel pity for her, but sitting there with her gold hair matted with blood and her eyes glassy… she looked like someone whose entire world had just collapsed around her.

I paused in the doorway. Unsure.

We weren’t… friends.

But we weren’t enemies, either.

“Hey. I thought I’d see how you were doing.” One of the healer-priests glanced at me, and I nodded toward the door, in a not-so-subtle hint. Leave us. They both slipped out around me, leaving me fumbling for what to say.

Wondering how to comfort someone who’d just lost everything.

Valeria didn’t look up as I crossed the room and sat beside her, close enough that our shoulders brushed. After a brief internal debate, I put my arm around her, and she laid her head on my shoulder, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

“He didn’t even try to save me,” she whispered flatly. “He said the most awful things. Then left me there to die.”

“He did. And I’m sorry,” I told the truth, because she didn’t need me to pretend right now.

“My father was never kind, but I always thought he was fair.” The word came out broken. “I tried all my life to make him proud. I would have done anything for him to…” Valeria heaved out a ragged breath, tugged the blanket tighter. “I tried so hard, and look where it got me. On my knees in the dirt while he told me what a failure I was.”

Valeria deserved better.

She deserved so fucking much better.

Valeria’s jaw tightened. “I put everything on the line to save him… you put everything on the line to save him, and for what? So he could sell us out and join the very people who were going to execute us? The whole time I was on my knees, I kept telling myself, he has a plan. He’s going to save us. But he just… walked away and left me there.”

I studied the elegant bones of her face, the exotic tilt of her eyes. I’d always been jealous of Valeria’s looks. Her poise. Of everything, really, but I wasn’t jealous now. Not now. Not knowing what a terrible weight she’d carried all these years.

“I need you to listen to me. You are strong and smart. You understand the business better than he ever could. It’s not your fault his hatred makes him blind to how clever you are,” I said gently. “Rocco Demente is a greedy male with a hole inside him that will never be full. He wouldn’t have been satisfied until he used you up, Valeria. You deserved better than having him as a father.”

“I’m just so godsdamned tired,” she admitted brokenly. “Of never being good enough.” Her face was red and puffy, and she was still in her ruined clothes, soaked in the blood of the healer she’d tried—and failed—to save.

“You’re good enough for me,” I told her fiercely. “You’re good enough for us. You are stronger and smarter than Rocco ever was, and when this is over and you’re the one sitting at the council table, when you’re the one making the decisions that shape our future, your father will be rotting away, and nobody in this Dynasty will remember his name.”

“Do you really think that?” She sounded slightly surprised.

“Of course I do.” I took her hand. “I’m glad you saved us that day at the Arsenale. I’m glad I got to know you. And I want us to be friends. Real friends.”

Surprise flickered across her face—followed by the ghost of a smile. She looked down at our joined hands, then picked at her bloodstained shirt. “I should get cleaned up,” she murmured, as if she could barely form the words, “and sleep for a year.”

“That sounds like a good plan. By now, they’ll know we’ve escaped.” I grinned. “I’ll bet your father is so pissed right now, he can’t even see straight.”