Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 131708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 659(@200wpm)___ 527(@250wpm)___ 439(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 659(@200wpm)___ 527(@250wpm)___ 439(@300wpm)
Mia’s mind touch hers. What is happening? she asked.
I have no clue, Ella replied, swallowing hard.
The entity cocked its head. “You’re wary of me,” it noted. “There’s no need for fear. I’d never harm you. If it makes you feel better, I promised Viper I wouldn’t.”
It was a little worrying that Viper had felt a need to extract such a vow. “Do you always keep your promises?”
“No.” But the entity didn’t appear to see why she might not feel so reassured.
Oookay.
“He’s telling you the truth,” it went on. “There was no betrayal.”
“Why won’t he explain what Prophet meant?”
“He doesn’t have your full trust, loyalty, or commitment. He has no surety that you will hold your silence. In his position, would you so easily confess a secret that keeps many safe?”
Well, no.
“Maybe you can be trusted to say nothing, but there are ways of extracting information from people. For instance, I could enter your mind, take out anything I wanted—even the memory of this conversation; you’d never know we’d had it.”
She went cold all over.
“But I won’t,” said the entity. “Instead, I propose a geas. You would promise to never repeat what you are told, and you would be bound to silence by his power. It would also mean that no one could take the information from your mind—the geas would keep it hidden from prying psychic eyes.”
Ella blinked, having not expected such a suggestion. She’d heard of geasa, of course, but she’d never had reason to use them. Considering that death was often the infraction for violating such oaths, the idea had never appealed to her. “I wouldn’t be bound to my word. Geasa can be broken.”
“Not those put in place by celestial power.”
Fair enough.
“We can do something similar with a spell,” Mia told the entity. “The magick would bind us to our vow to never repeat whatever we hear.”
The entity considered it for a moment but then shook its head. “Another incantor could undo it.”
“We overlay our spells with wards so they’re not easily untangled.”
“But they can be untangled, can’t they? I have witnessed many be destroyed or nulled.” The entity pinned Ella with a serious look. “You would have to agree to a geas … or walk out of this club, out of his life, and never know what he might have told you. Never know that he was, in fact, telling you the truth.”
Mia telepathed her again, asking, What do you think?
I’m not crazy about being under a geas, Ella replied, but it’s not as if I’d reveal what they told us anyway, so it doesn’t make much difference.
You make a very good point. A sigh. All right, I’ll agree to it.
“A geas it is,” said Ella.
Triumph momentarily rippled across the entity’s face. “Right decision.” It retreated, and Viper’s eyes went back to their normal startling blue. Eyes that then intently watched her … as though he were searching for signs of revulsion on her part.
He wouldn’t find any. Hey, she was leery of his entity, but not repulsed. It would have been hypocritical if she were, given that she had her own inner entity.
An awkward silence fell, but Mia quickly broke it, saying, “Well that I hadn’t expected.” She looked at Dice. “Do all angels have inner entities?”
“Yes,” Dice grunted.
“Why do you keep it secret?” Mia asked him. “It’s not that big of a deal. We demons have our own entities—we wouldn’t be spooked.”
“But your kind would be surprised,” Dice rightly stated. “They think they have the Fallen figured out; that they know all they need to know about us. If they realize they don’t, if they realize we kept something like this from them, they’ll wonder what else they don’t know. We don’t want their scrutiny.”
Viper drowned out the conversation between his brother and Mia, focusing instead on his woman. She was watching him, her eyes slightly narrowed—not in suspicion, fear, or distrust. It seemed more as though she felt she was seeing him for the first time.
Fuck Prophet for being so damn careless. The angel had telepathically apologized mere moments after fleeing, but Viper wasn’t feeling all that forgiving.
Prophet had known that the sisters were in the club. Okay, so he wouldn’t have seen through their glamor. But he surely would have sensed that two people were close behind him.
Neither Viper nor Dice had asked to be notified if people they regularly fed from arrived. Still, if Prophet had really felt the need to inform them, he could have done it mind-to-mind. Instead, he’d come to the office—not entered, just stuck his head inside and kept the door partially open—and spoken aloud without a thought to whom could be nearby.
If Viper didn’t know any better, he’d think that Prophet had planned for the sisters to overhear.
Either way, Viper could honestly pummel him into the ground and think nothing of it. He telepathically reached out to Dice, saying, That was careless of Prophet. Careless in a way that makes me a little suspicious.