“Well, well,” she said. “Look who’s returned.”
And there she was. Cornelia. A name that meant horn. And she was certainly that. Sharp and deadly, able to puncture a man’s heart and coldly walk away as his very life drained from him.
She sat in the corner of the cage, wearing a robe made by human hands and natural fabric. One Koldo had tossed her after ripping off the one made in the skies, for the robes their people wore could clean themselves and their wearers. But he hadn’t wanted Cornelia cleansed in any way. He’d wanted her to know the feel of dirt that could never be scrubbed away.
Her skin was pallid, her freckles a stark contrast. Her long hair had been shorn and now fell to her ears, the locks tangled and sticking out in spikes. He hadn’t been the one to do this deed. A few weeks ago, she had been captured by a horde of pică and dragged into hell in an attempt to force Koldo to betray Zacharel. He hadn’t. He had rescued her instead.
He had no idea what else had been done to her, only that torture had, indeed, taken place. When he’d found her, she had hovered at the edge of death, and that was the only reason she hadn’t fought him as he doctored her back to health. Now, here they were.
Her, as hate-filled as ever.
Him, shockingly dissatisfied with the situation.
As a child trapped under his father’s reign, he had dreamed of punishing her in the worst of ways. And he still wanted to. Oh, did he want to. The desire was always there, burning in his chest. But he hadn’t. He wouldn’t. He’d allowed himself to do little things, like denying her the bed and proper robe, but nothing else. He was nothing like her, and every day he proved it. He would come here, pit himself against the pull to act and then leave.
Wise men knew not to even approach the door of their temptation, but Koldo hadn’t yet convinced himself to stop.
“Hello, Mother.”
She sucked in a breath. “I should have cut your tongue out of your mouth when I had the chance.” She tossed a pebble at him. The stone bounced off his shoulder and tumbled to the floor.
“Just like you should have drowned me. I know.”
Her eyes narrowed, long lashes fusing together and hiding the violet depths he so often saw in his nightmares. “I hadn’t the stomach for violence back then. But your father... I expected better of him. He should have done what I could not.”
“Oh, never doubt that he tried.” Many times.
Koldo thought back to the day Cornelia had flown him over his father’s camp and dropped him. As weak and agonized as he’d been, landing had hurt more than the brutal removal of his wings.
A huge, bald man with more muscles and scars than Koldo had ever seen stomped toward him. Cornelia called, “Meet your son, Nox—may you destroy each other,” before flying away.
Nox. A name that meant night.
Koldo had blacked out seconds after that, only to awaken on the floor of a spacious tent, the bald man looming over him, grinning widely, his eyes as black as his name implied.
“You’re my son, are you? Raised by a do-gooder angel.”
His mother? A do-gooder?
“I’m betting you’re filled with silly notions about right and wrong,” Nox had continued. “Aren’t you, boy?”
Concentrating on the words had proven difficult—everything inside Koldo had been screaming at him to run and never look back. But he’d been trapped inside a body too weak to move or flash. All he could do was watch as thin curls of smoke wafted from the male’s pores, scenting the air with sulfur.
That’s when realization had slammed into Koldo with collision force. A bald head, bottomless eyes and black smoke could mean only one thing. Nefas. His father hailed from the most dangerous, vile race in existence. A race that sneaked up on humans, poisoned slowly, painfully...destroying utterly. A race without a conscience.
A race just like the demons.
The Nefas were death dealers. Soul suckers.
The age of their victims never mattered. The gender of their victims never mattered. They lived to inflict pain. They killed. And they laughed while doing it.
“No worries,” the man had said. “You can unlearn.”
Nox had wanted Koldo to embrace the Nefas way of life, and Koldo had resisted...at first. But every time he’d tried to escape, flashing away, his father had been right on his heels, easily finding him and dragging him back—punishing him. Once, Nox had tied him down and poured acid down his throat. The time after that, Nox had plucked out one of his eyes and nailed it to the bar of his cage, so that he could watch himself watching himself. Koldo had had to win the eye back—and stuff it back in. By then he’d been a little older and had been able to partially heal it. Still, his sight had never been the same.
Bitterness and hatred had taken root inside him. Why him? Why had no one saved him? How much more would he be forced to endure?
Finally, he’d lost his will to fight. He’d given in. He’d raided villages. He’d helped his father and the other soldiers fit their mouths over their victims’ mouths and suck out innocent souls, leaving only lifeless shells.
A man will do just about anything to survive, boy.
It was the only one of his father’s lessons that he’d taken to heart.
Now, Koldo was certain he’d passed the point of redemption. He could have fought harder. Should have fought harder. That he hadn’t... Guilt would always ride him, and shame would always fill him.
He had too many memories. The dark kind that never went away. Each one made him long to pluck out his eyes, just to blank his line of sight, or cut off his ears, just to quiet the screams.
Over the years he’d earned a big-enough name to draw Germanus’s attention. An army of Sent Ones had swooped into his father’s camp to destroy Koldo, had seen the scars on his back and mistakenly assumed he wasn’t Nefas, for Nefas could not grow wings, and Koldo had obviously had them at one time. So, the soldiers had captured him instead.
That had been the beginning of his new life.
Germanus—a name meaning “brother”—could have and probably should have slain him despite his origins. Koldo had been feral. He had snarled and cursed and attacked anyone who neared him. After all the things he had done, after all of the people he had killed, he was supposed to forgive himself and adopt the “do-gooder” approach? Impossible!
But Germanus had looked deeper than the surface, had seen the shame and guilt in Koldo’s eyes. Emotions raw and intense, even back then.
The king of the Sent Ones had spent the next several years coaxing Koldo from his rages, doing his best to comfort a young male with such a damaged past, ensuring Koldo was trained to fight the right way, that he had a safe, comfortable place to sleep, that he always had a proper meal to eat.
It had been Koldo’s first taste of actual caring and concern, and he’d soon grown to love Germanus—would still die to protect him.
“Why did you mate with Nox?” he asked his mother as he stalked around the cage.
“Why not? He was a very beautiful man.”
Some women would find such a dangerous male attractive, Koldo supposed. Despite the bald head and dead eyes, he’d had a face far lovelier than any Koldo had ever seen. A purity of features, a radiance most beings could only ever dream about.
“Did you hope to tame him? Did you think you would be the one to change him?”
Cornelia pushed to her feet, always keeping her gaze on him, never permitting him to have her back, where her beautiful white-and-gold wings lay. She expected him to remove them. She was right to do so. It was one of his biggest temptations.