How to Marry a Warlock in 10 Days (22 page)

That’s what he could do for her, he could be honest. “If I could have those feelings for anyone, Midnight, it would be you.”

“Now that you’ve said it, it feels true.” She snorted.

“That sounds stupid.”

Her heart was so big, big enough to love him when he had nothing to give back. Dred knew that even thinking those thoughts was grounds to suspend his man card, but he didn’t care.

Because he was a bag of dirty dicks.

Now was as good a time as any to tell her about the wedding.

“I guess it’s a good thing that you love me.”

“Oh, why is that?”

“You have to marry me now.”

“Look, I said I would plan the thing and—”

“Middy.” He let his fingers tangle in her hair. “You took the potion. We have to get married in ten days or you’ll lose your magick.”

“If we get divorced, you’ll lose yours,” Middy cried.

“Not unless you have the tattoo,” Dred said as if he were teaching a class on the matter. “Those words that were in-scribed on the ring you were asking about? It’s fine as long those didn’t manifest in the tattoos.”

“These?” Middy turned her wrist so he could see the words of the ring that were twined in her engagement tattoo.

“Where the fuck did that come from?”

“So, now that you’re tied to me as well, I’m a scheming bitch. I can feel what you’re thinking.” Middy moved away from him.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to. Let’s just find whatever it is we’re supposed to find and get the hell out of here.”

Middy stood up, but it was a slow and painful process.

When he tried to help her, she jerked away.

“Middy, what am I supposed to believe? We’ve got this inexplicable connection and now we’re bound together forever. Do you really want to live without your magick?”

She turned to him, her dark eyes like coals. “No, but I will. Just because I love you, that doesn’t mean I’ll spend my life married to a warlock who
doesn’t
love me.”

“Then I guess I’d better figure out how to love you. I won’t live without my magick. I can’t.”

He realized then that he’d jammed a sharp object into a tender place. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“But you did.”

“Middy, you can’t live that way either. Look what you did for that hatchling. There’s great power in you and it would be selfish of you to give that up, not when there are so many you could save.”

Her eyes were pools of despair, deep and endless as his words cut into her further. Oh, he was worse than a bag of dirty dicks. He was a bastard, the same bastard that he’d promised himself he wouldn’t be.

“You’re right.” She nodded her head slowly. “I could do something for a change. Something real, something tangi-ble. Not just be arm candy on some spy mission. I could be worth something.”

“Midnight . . .” he trailed off. He wanted to tell her that she was worth a lot of something. That she was worth it to him, but that was too close to a declaration.

She turned on her heel and left the room to explore the rest of the ruins, but promptly tripped over Tristan Belledare.

He was dead.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Hero at Rest

The face that had last looked at her with such concern was now frozen in a pale death mask. Those lips that had sought hers were cold and blue. The hands that wanted to touch her could feel nothing. Not even her fingers as they intertwined with his.

Middy hadn’t really liked him in life, no. His death hadn’t changed that, but she couldn’t help feeling that his death was tied to her somehow. She wondered where he’d gone with Tally and if she’d been the last witch to see him alive.

There was something in his hand. Something firm, like cardboard was tucked into his palm. She let go of his hand and found a matchbook. It was black and highly processed, with a satin finish. The gilded imprint read “Donatien.”

What the hell was that?

The cause of death wasn’t readily apparent until Dred rolled him over. Tristan’s back was nothing short of a horror. It had, at one time, been a bloody mess. Now, it was just gaping flesh and hanging fascia. Bloodless. Middy could see inside of his body and ribs were missing. So were precise sections of vertebrae: the axis bone of his cervical spine, two from the thoracic, and one from the lumbar. It appeared as if another from the lumbar had been chosen, but abandoned. There were score marks that could only have been made by powerful teeth set into even more powerful jaws. Something had drained the blood and the marrow from him.

Something like a lamia.

Tristan hadn’t deserved to die like this. He’d been a hero.

She stole a glance at Dred. He was a hero, too, but if he died, his funeral wouldn’t be a warlock holiday. His coming and going would be noted with a column in
Magickal Finance
and no one would ever know he’d tried to save the world.

Middy wasn’t angry because he didn’t love her. She was angry because she’d trusted him enough to confide in him and he didn’t trust her the same way. He assumed that because he felt something between them, that she’d done something to manipulate him when he’d been shortening the strings himself all along.

Would she marry him? Probably. He was right about her responsibility to use this new magick she’d found. She couldn’t do that without marrying him after Aradia had cheerfully stuck her finger in the pot and stirred.

Dred pulled out his Witchberry and snapped pictures of the crime scene, excruciatingly efficient while she was pondering the unfairness of life. She watched him work and understood why he was the way he was, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.

Middy had to turn away. “I can’t look anymore, but when I look away, I still see it.”

“That never changes, you know.”

“How do you keep all of this in your head?”

“Someone has to,” he said, taking a last snapshot before he rolled Tristan on what was left of his back.

“Why does it have to be you?”

“Why does it have to be anyone?” Dred shrugged.

“I wonder how he could have been right outside the door all this time without Sera Ann tripping over him when she was exploring.”

“Unless he wasn’t there for her to trip over. That would mean someone or something dumped the body here for us to find.” Dred frowned, his mouth a grim line. “It’s no accident that this convent is so close to Shale Creek.”

“Do you think Tristan’s death has something to do with what happened there?” Middy asked.

“Did you really believe what you said to Belledare in the library?”

“I said a lot of things to him in the library. Which thing do you mean?”

“Let me ask a different question. Do you believe that I tried to kill him for a Hand of Glory?”

“No,” Middy said without any hesitation.

“How can you be so sure?”

“I just know.”

“Because of the potion?”

“I knew that before the potion. For a spy, who is supposed to be aware of all things at all times, you’re awfully thick in the head.”

“No one else has ever believed me innocent. Even Hubert.”

“A Hand of Glory is powerful magick.”

“I still have it. Does that change what you think of me?”

Dred asked carefully.

“No, but why does it matter?”

“I’m going to need you to trust me for what happens next. And you jumped from a broom at thirty-some-odd thousand feet in the air because you thought I was going to hurt you.”

“You startled me.”

“Midnight Cherrywood, you thought I was trying to hitch a ride on the Hershey Highway without so much as a ‘Do you like gladiator movies?’ ”

Midnight blushed and turned away. “Well, what would you do if you tried to sit down and found your chocolate cherry about to be snatched from you either by unhappy accident or devious device?”

“Devious device?” Dred snorted.

“You sound like a pig.”

Dred looked around for a moment as if considering.

“Yeah, kind of. I’ll own that. Sure. Why not?”

“So, you were saying something about trust? This isn’t your perfunctory ‘Do you like gladiator movies?’ is it? Tally has told me some stories about the trust conversation and for some reason, it always comes back to the chocolate cherry. Or an orgy.”

“Midnight, I will try anything that turns you on or gets you off, but I’ve had my share of chocolate cherries, orgies, and pretty much anything that you can think of. Which brings us back to the trust.”

“See, Tally told me the trust conversation always comes back to some strange sex act. Well, hit me with it. Goddess, if this what being married to you is going to be like, I don’t know if I can take it. And you’re certainly not going to have anything on the side because I—”

“That matchbook you found in Belledare’s hand, it was stamped with a name. Donatien.”

“How did you know that? I didn’t even show you the stamp.”

“Because I’ve been there. I recognized the box. It’s a sex club not too far from here.”

“We’re going to a sex club?” Middy’s voice hit a rather high pitch.

Dred laughed.

The bastard.

“Not just any sex club, my sweet. Donatien caters to a specific sort of kink. It’s named for Donatien Alphonse François, the Marquis de Sade.”

“The guy who liked to write dirty stories with his finger up his ass?”

“I see you’ve watched
Quills
.”

“And you want me to go to this club? Have you lost your mind?” Middy asked him in all seriousness.

“No, Midnight, I have not. In fact, I think you’ll rather enjoy it.”

“Why would you think that?”

“I suppose since I’m asking you to trust me, I should be honest.” Dred looked a bit bashful. “Whenever someone tries to access a function that I’ve not okayed for my centerfold, it sends feedback to the company. Which just happens to be part of my financial portfolio.”

“So, you’ve been spying on me?”

He looked as if he was going to say no and maybe rationalize, but instead he answered with a simple nod of his head and a shrug.

Middy held her temper. It was only by a thread, but she was clinging to that thing for dear life. He wanted to play master and slave? Okay. She could do that. She was going to make him lick her toes. It didn’t matter that she thought that was gross, it didn’t matter that she’d tickle herself into unconsciousness by demanding that he do it. All that mattered was that she was going to make him pay for spying on her like that. Her and Cerridwyn knew how many other women. That was how he knew about her fantasies.

He’d known all along that she wanted to fuck him six de-viant ways from Sunday brunch.

“Yes, Dred. I’ll go.”

“Great!” His eyes sparkled and he looked like a little boy who’d been turned loose in a candy shop with a hundred-dollar bill and no parental supervision.

“I’ve got a condition,” Middy added.

“Witches always do.”

“You’re the slave.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Mistress
.”

Son of a blue-furred goblin! Even when she was in the dominant position, he could still play her body any way he chose. She was wet for him again, and even after all of the horrors they’d seen, all it had taken had been the one word out of his devil-sculpted mouth.

Middy did her best to act unimpressed. “I think we should explore the rest of the convent before we go traips-ing off to Salon Hell, or whatever it is.”

“I think we’ve seen all that we need to see. Every minute we spend here is dangerous.”

“What do you mean?”

“This is where I opened the portal. This is where the gargoyles conjured that thing from the Abyss that deci-mated a good number of our troops at the beginning of the war. The veil here is thinner because of all of the blood spilled and the fake exorcisms. It tears easily.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Lady and the Tiger

Aradia Salome Du Lac-Shadowins stood before the Warlock’s Council to present her son’s wedding for council approval. She knew that it should have been done before Dred had asked the witch for her hand and certainly before the potion had been administered, but it was merely a formality. The Shadowins family had married as they pleased for generations. No marriage had ever been denied. Aradia was confident that Dred’s would be approved, too.

Until she saw the unhappy frown on Hubert Godrickle’s aged face.

What was this fuckery?

Aradia never let her icy veneer slip, at least not on her face. Her lips twisted into a hard smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. She appraised each of the council members coolly, watching for the one who wouldn’t meet her gaze.

“Lady Shadowins, I regret to inform you that the council has denied your petition.” Hubert’s mouth was turned down in a grim frown.

“On what grounds, High Chancellor Godrickle?” Aradia wrinkled her nose as if it were an insult that she was forced to breathe the same air as the rest of them.

She wore her status and position like armor and, usually, it was enough to get her by. Aradia wondered just how much this was going to cost her and began to mentally list her assets, both monetary and organic.

Yes, organic. She’d take whatever steps were required to secure this marriage for her son. He wanted Midnight Cherrywood, then by Merlin, he would have her.

“The bride in question isn’t highborn,” Godrickle answered, but it was obvious that the words were sour on his tongue.

“If it doesn’t matter to me or my son, how does that concern the council?” Aradia raised a brow and met each chancellor’s gaze with the hard stare of a witch used to getting her way.

“It’s for his own good,” Vargill interrupted the High Chancellor.

“Indeed, and how is that,
Martin
?” Aradia said his name with a sneer as if it were a dirty thing. Further, it demonstrated to the council that she did not respect his position or his family line.

“The Shadowins bloodline must be continued with only highborn blood.”

“My son will have no woman if he cannot have Midnight Cherrywood. Is the end of the Shadowins line prefer-able?” Aradia said softly.

“The council can order him to marry.” Vargill shrugged.