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His eyes blaze scarlet, and his human glamour shifts out of place to reveal hints of the horns beneath.
My heart pounds, the pulse echoing in my veins and dropping to pool in my gut. Dread courses through my blood.
This isn’t the first time my father has lost track of his surroundings. It happened yesterday while he welcomed a foreign dignitary to the royal court and he almost roasted a noble over a pit of hellfire before I intervened.
I brace, ready to jump in again. Interfering with anything a king does is tricky business. Taking the brunt of my father’s temper as his son is no less dangerous. Only my mother can soothe him, and she’s not here. But I won’t let him hurt Gilly or Nic. If Dupree gets caught in the crossfire, oh well.
Father drops his human glamour, snapping out his wings and knocking over chairs. A rush of flame comes from his hands, incinerating the cards he holds and rushing over the table. Glasses of whiskey explode, sending shattered shards flying and firing a blaze upward to crawl along the ceiling.
Both my sisters scramble away from the table with Dupree not far behind.
I let my glamour roll away, missing the tailored elegance of the human form as my demon self emerges from beneath, massive and monstrous. “Father! Stop.”
My shout seems to shake him from whatever stupor took over. Rage replaces his confusion.
Roaring, he tosses the table into the far wall where it splinters with a crack. At least most of the flames extinguish.
“This game’s over,” he declares on a growl and storms from the room.
Silence surrounds us, interrupted only by the occasional crackle of a spark left burning. The others tense the same as I do—probably waiting to see if he returns and finishes the tantrum he abandoned.
Gilly recovers first, straightening her blouse and tucking her hair behind her ear. “That’s one way to fold,” she says.
“I need another drink.” Dupree helps himself to the entire bottle of an expensive single malt.
Nic touches my arm. “You’re our best chance at keeping everything together.” She glances back at her phone where the reality show still plays.
The camera zooms in on Val Bonetti with her long lashes and piercing blue gaze that seems to reach through the screen to me. My fated mate, my one shot at unlocking magic powerful enough to hold the hell dimensions together, my deserved repayment for the powers my family bestowed on hers.
“I’ll fix this,” I promise my sister. “I’ll get the Bonetti woman to submit.”
“But the mating magic isn’t guaranteed unless she gives full consent to the two of you being destined for one another. Unless she loves you.”
“Love doesn’t matter. Not with a kingdom at stake.”
“Love’sallthat matters,” my tender-hearted sister says. “And maybe a little bit of luck.”
She’s wrong. Only the crown matters. But I won’t waste my time debating priorities when I have more important things to do—interdimensional portals to protect, monsters to match, my father to keep from wrecking our world.
Val Bonetti is a means to end. Besides, her family owes mine for everything they have. I’m simply collecting the debt.
CHAPTER TWO
Val
“Who’s excited for this exclusive Bonetti family event?” the announcer booms.
The crowd outside cheers, the shrieks echoing off the walls in the art gallery where we’ve set up to receive them.
The camera crew moves around us, ready to capture every moment for our reality television show. With the air conditioning blasting, chill bumps prickle over my skin, and I wish I’d grabbed a wrap for my lowcut dress, although our producer wouldn’t have allowed me to cover up. Ratings go down when I’m not showing cleavage. Not that I’m the star of the show or the golden child of my family. I’m more like the magnet for misfortune, the bad luck charm, the jinx.
The lighting and sound techs already moved their poker game far from me, groaning when I offered to stand in for a player who’d been called away. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know the rules of their particular game or why the jackpot inthe middle of the table was made up of condiment packets. The rejection still stung.
So I’ve resorted instead to helping the stressed assistants struggling to fill hundreds of bags with product samples before the mob descends. Never mind how much the grit and goop of spilled product and the piles of scattered mess are driving me nuts.
“Val,” my mom calls my name with false cheer between clenched teeth, pulling me away from the neat piles I’d sorted of bags, tissue paper, mascara minis, and my car keys. How did those get in there? “Honey.” Mom tosses out the endearment like a verbal grenade. “Don’t touch the merchandise. We don’t need you jinxing the products.”
See?Jinx.
