Page 119 of Demon Demands

“What about them?”

“That’s where I saw them,” he babbled, and I had no idea what he was talking about.

The confusion must have been clear on my face because he grinned at me, and I felt how flustered he was over… whatever he was going on about. It was the first time I’d really felt his emotions through our bond.

“The memorial. I met you there, and your eyes haunted me for years, Kitten. Years. I have notebooks full of drawings of you. Well, more specifically, your eyes.”

“That doesn’t sound strange at all,” I snarked. “You draw?”

“That’s not my point.”

“Right. My eyes.”

He shook his head at me. “No. I mean, yes, but also no. They’re in the journal.”

“Stone. I have no idea what you're talking about.”

He pulled himself out of the water to sit on the edge near the lava. “You know I went to my parents’ house the other day? I found a journal on my father's desk, but it’s never been there before.”

I nodded slowly, trying to follow along. “What does it say?”

“It’s about the moths on my back.”

My body went through two dozen reactions before he huffed at me.

“Look,” he commanded, twisting to show me his back.

“Uh-huh,” I drawled, watching his muscles flex under the bugs.

“Do you see them moving? They’re alive, Kitten. They aren’t part of my tattoo.”

I swam closer to really look at them. They weren’t in the same spots they’d been in when I’d glimpsed them a few days ago. And right before my eyes, the biggest moth fluttered his wings.

“So, you weren’t flexing for me, your bugs were,” I blurted, not totally thinking as I reached up to touch it.

He didn’t react at all, but the moth flapped under the surface of his skin. Or made a fluttering motion, I wasn’t entirely positive that I understood what was happening.

“My father passed them to me the day before he died, but I’ve never known anything about them. He didn’t get a chance to teach me how to call upon them or use them. Command them? I don’t know what the right term is.” He shrugged.

“Have you read it?” I asked, thinking about the journal.

“Not completely,” he admitted hesitantly. “But I’ve skimmed the pages. I’m not sure that I can trust the information in it. Whoever wrote it also talks about a few objects that my parents collected in their travels. Fae artifacts and dragon eggs, things that have been missing since the tomes were stolen from them.”

I pushed myself out of the water, wringing my hair out as I looked for my clothes. “We should go look in Lucifer’s library. You guys were supposed to be learning about the hellhounds, anyway.”

“Now?” He inquired, smirking at me as I searched for my clothes. “You left them on the cliff.”

Snapping my fingers, I pulled my clothes to me. “After we visit the Fates. They’re on the way.”

“They live between here and Hell? It’s nothing but woods and swamps.”

“Uhm, yes and no.” I grimaced, popping my shirt over my head. “The Fates live in the core. We’re standing above them.”

Stone stopped with one leg in his pants, quirking a brow at me. “I didn’t know that the Fates were in the Underworld.”

“Oh, they aren’t. But one of the gateways to them is. There are five,” I informed him, tugging my tights on. “No, six. Mmm, maybe five. I’ve never asked York if there’s one in the druid’s realm.”

“Where are the other gateways?”