Page 83 of Commanding Blood And Bonds

If I hadn’t already had enough reason to burn the Paladins to ash, selling souls out to the demons would have sealed it.

Motherfuckers.

SEVENTEEN

LITTLE HISTORIAN

CYRUS

Four screens illuminated my cave of an office when my shadows warned me of an intruder. It wasn’t the motherfucking time—or place, for that matter. My parents and Mother’s Guardians might bend a diligent knee to human evils, but from where I stood, the balance was directly impacted by the ravages of human disease. They’d become a cancer on the planet, destroying anything good or innocent in the process.

Don’t get me wrong, I was far from some glittering fucking snowflake, but my respect for my Mother’s guidance ended the day she denied my request to send her precious Wings after the lowest kind of parasites—thriving in our backyard.

Not impactful to the balance.

Bullshit.

Something intrinsically evil had infected human blood, nesting in their governments and celebrities, and magnified by media manipulation. What was the point of being a tool of balance if I wasn’t allowed to define what that meant?

To me, it meant defending the defenseless.

There was no way under the stars my mother could predict if one of those children being preyed on would grow up to be the next Einstein, the next earth-whispering prodigy. Yet she still chose policy over protection.

So yeah, my plate was overfull before the Wraith came sniffing after the bin of information sitting beside me. Floppy disks. Fucking ancient. It had taken me a week to track down a drive that could read the archaic fossils, and now I was filtering through one file at a time, trying to decipher what she was after. Not even my software could identify a pattern.

The moment my shadows sensed him, the hairs on my arms stood on end. Power. Heavy enough to make the air thrum.

I didn't bother hiding the scowl that split my face when I hit the key to pull up a screensaver, closing the files I wasn’t ready to share.

“Did I stutter, Princeling?” he drawled as his shadows poured into the office like smoke, crawling up the legs of my desk like ivy.

“I don’t have time for company,” I bit back, voice mirroring his drawl as my thumb ran over my signet ring. The raven wing etched into the silver soothed me more than I cared to admit.

“I'd offer a trade if I believed you could hold up your end.”

“A trade?” I snapped, spinning to glare at him—and nearly doing a double take. The bastard was draped across the armchair in the corner like a ragdoll. His limbs barely fit. One hand pinched his temples like he willed away a migraine.

He was exhausted. I didn’t need to see his face to know that.

“Are you or are you not targeting the O’Haires?”

Goosebumps crawled down my spine and I just stared. How the fuck did he know that? But he'd already proven he didn’t need to be invited in. Clairvoyant. Disturbingly accurate.

“Are you going to continue pilfering my time contemplating how deep my gifts reach, or make yourself useful and take a target off my list by adding it to yours? Should they survive the next drop, their power will double, maybe triple. I'm offering you a favor. Evil thrives in chaos.”

He leaned forward, voice tightening. “In exchange, you finally deliver your side of our prior bargain. Perhaps this time, you’ll be capable of following my instructions.”

“You didn’t tell me she was a lightning wielder.”

He stilled. Fingers stopped moving. Then, quietly: “She isn’t. In no life has she ever been.”

“Then explain the charred skin on my men from indirect hits.”

He vanished in a whisper of shadow, reappearing inches from my face. “Hold still,” he said, peeling off his gloves.

“You’re not my type.”

“Hold. Still.”