Page 29 of Devoted

She was bleeding, and she’d dropped out of the sky, and…

Shoes scuffed on pavement as Gabriel materialized beside me, wildly scanning our surroundings, catching the same cloying, coppery scent, and my heart clenched in fear and something far more frightening.

Then the scent of lemons and lavender drifted out from a darkened corner, and I bolted down the narrow alley. There she was, leading a shell-shocked Luca by the hand.

Her arm was smeared in dried blood, and my fear didn’t yield. It strangled.

My wife stopped. Sobbed out my name.

Then she was running. We crashed into each other, Emberline repeating my name, over and over, her whole body shaking as I held her close, my nose buried deep in her hair, searching out where she was injured and how badly.

Gods. She was alive.

I set her on her feet with trembling hands, then pushed the hair out of her face to get a better look at her wide, tear-lined eyes. Dark. Full of terror and something bleaker that shook me to the core. Whatever had happened… whatever she’d seen…

Later.

We would talk about it later.

I checked her over more thoroughly, cataloging what I’d missed before. The deep gashes beneath the dried blood, four evenly spaced marks, almost to the bone. “Ashbound?” I asked softly, recognizing the pattern. I turned her hand over gently, moving her fingers to make sure there was no tendon damage.

“I wasn’t looking, and the damned thing got me good.” She grimaced when I rotated her thumb. “Won’t stop bleeding.”

She sounded so irritated, some of my fear edged off. “Is your brother hurt?” I nodded down the alley to Luca, at the shell-shocked expression on his face and the splash of blood on his bicep.

“Just shaken up, I think,” she whispered, her fingers digging into my arm.

“Did everyone get out alive? Where is Nico? What about Rocco? Who stole our godsdamned boat?”

More of that tension inside me loosened at her direct, rapid-fire questions, at the fact she was pissed off and furious and surprisingly intact, given the gauntlet of guards and monsters she’d faced. I gathered her closer, pressed tight against me, her heart thumping in tandem with mine.

“Everyone is fine. But… gods, I thought I’d lost you.” The words escaped before I could stop them.

She just laughed, pulling back to cup my face.

“We went back for the boat, but it was gone, and then… there was this… thing. Like a spider. And Blackwood’s guards casting creepy black magic. And Ashbound. We had no choice but to hide in one of the tunnels leading to the palazzo, only to run into even more of them, and…”

She shot a worried look at her brother. “There’s more I have to tell you, but we should get moving. I’m afraid I left a blood trail behind us.”

Gabriel immediately tore off the bottom of his shirt—I didn’t have any fucking fabric to spare—and bound up her arm.

“She’s right.” Gabriel gestured for us to follow him. “We’ll lead you both to the rendezvous point; there’s a boat waiting to take us out of the city and back to the island. The boat’s warded, so we should be able to get out of the city unnoticed. You can fill us in during the ride.”

She frowned, then used her nail to scrape something off my cheek. Probably dried blood.

“Are you okay?” Her voice gentled, fingers catching my arm. “Things got pretty intense back there.”

She meant when the demon took me over.

“I’m good,” I stretched out my arms and made a turn. “I like these clothes, even if they are a bit tight.”

Her lips curved up into a smile. “Just a bit. At some point, you’re really going to have to work out your clothing issues, husband.”

I couldn’t describe the warm, happy feeling I got when she called me that, but she was right.

We had to move.

Luca looked exhausted, his skin several shades paler than before, and every few seconds, he rubbed absentmindedly at his right arm, where a speck of blood stained his shirt.