little off track with what? How long had Roth been here? Pushing my hair back from my face, I felt as though my brain was running in slow motion. I glanced at Zayne, but he was focused on Roth as if he wanted to punt kick him back to Hell. The corners of my lips slipped down. I got that Zayne and Roth could never be BFFs, but had Zayne forgotten what Roth had done for him?
Maddox had made his way outside and stood beside a silent Dez. At some point, Maddox must’ve shifted, because he was in his true form. His skin was the color of granite and his wings reached out to an impressive eight feet. Nostrils flat and yellow eyes glowing fiercely, he showed his fangs. “There can be no reason why we’re allowing them to stand here.” He turned to Abbot, clawed hands forming fists. “Tomas is missing and I’m wagering they have something to do with it.”
Uh...
Bambi curled around my stomach and then stretched, as if she were happy with the reminder of her early-evening meal.
“I have no idea who Tomas is,” Roth replied, his lips—lips that had burned themselves into my memory—curled into a smirk. “Then again, you Wardens do all look alike.”
Maddox hissed. “You think you’re cute?”
“Nah, I think I’m sexy.” The smirk spread, but it didn’t reach his cool ocher eyes. “And I also think I’m hilarious.”
Dez and the rest of the Wardens tensed. I guessed they thought Roth should be intimated by so many of them, but Roth...well, the more sticky the situation, the more of a smart- ass he became.
Cayman winked at me as he swaggered forward. My brows rose. All of this seemed surreal. Maybe I’d lost too much blood, passed out, and all of this was just some kind of bizarre dream.
“Can we get to the point?” Cayman asked gamely. “Time truly is of the essence.”
Abbot exhaled deeply, nostrils flaring, but he nodded.
“We have a huge problem,” Roth said, focusing on the clan leader. The smirk slowly slipped from his face, and a chill slithered down my spine. “A Lilin has been born.”
All the Wardens stared at him as though he’d dropped his pants and done a little dance. I gaped at him, mind rapidly replaying what Roth had said. We couldn’t have heard him right. There was no way a Lilin—a race of demons that could strip souls with just a touch—could have been created. They were so vile that stripping the souls didn’t just kill the human or Warden in question, but turned them into vengeful wraiths—spirits hell-bent on causing destruction. The Wardens had been created to wipe the Lilin off the Earth back during the times of Eve and that damn apple.
“That’s impossible,” Zayne snarled. “What kind of crap are you trying to pull?”
Roth shifted his gaze to him, his expression a hard mask. “I’m not trying to pull anything and trust me, there’re more interesting lies to be told.”
“It can’t be true,” Abbot stated, folding his massive arms across his broad chest. “We know what it takes to raise the Lilin and those things didn’t happen. Not to mention, Paimon was stopped before the ritual could be completed.”
“A demon trying to lie to us?” Dez snorted as a cold breeze stirred his hair. “Such a surprise.”
Mischief, the kind that would bring down entire cities, flared in Roth’s eyes. He opened his mouth, but I stepped forward. “How is this possible? You—we know that it’s not.”
Roth kept his gaze trained on Zayne. “It is.”
“How do you know?” I demanded.
A Warden snorted and muttered, “Can’t wait to hear this story.”
His lips curled up on one side. “As all of you should know, if you’ve read your ‘when the shit hits the fan’ manual, there are four chains securing Lilith in Hell.”
I nodded. I knew that Lilith, my estranged mother, was chained in Hell, but didn’t see how that had anything to do with this.
“Two of the chains broke when Paimon tried to perform the ritual, leaving only two chains secured,” he continued. “A third—”
“Wait.” Abbot raised a hand. “How exactly did two chains break? Paimon was stopped and Layla’s innocence—the key to the ritual—remains in place. So this cannot be true.”
Oh my God...
The whole innocence thing again. I bit back a groan as I folded my hand around my necklace. For the Lilin-raising ritual to have been completed, several things had to have taken place. The blood of Lilith had to have been spilled and that had come from the ring I still wore around my neck. My blood had to have been drawn and that also had happened, but the last two were the biggies.
I’d had to have taken a soul and would have had to have lost my innocence, like in the biblical sense. Only Zayne and Roth knew I’d taken a soul and Abbot could never know or he’d put me down. The other part? I was still a virgin, so it couldn’t—
“Paimon had the blood parts down,” Roth said, following my train of thought. He didn’t look at me as he spoke, but there was a razor-sharp edge to his words. Knots formed in my belly. “She was cut. I saw it.”
How in the world he’d seen the tiny prick during the fight was beyond me. “Yes. Paimon drew my blood and it spilled, but...” That night came back to me in a rush. After Roth and Paimon had been trapped and sent to the fiery pits, the floor had been scorched where they’d stood and there’d been a hole in the ground, right where I’d been tied down.
Abbot’s brows slammed together. He opened his mouth and then turned a piercing stare on me. I shrank back from the accusation in his glare. Did he know about Petr? That I’d taken the Warden’s soul in self-defense? I could already feel the noose circling my neck. Zayne shifted closer to me, and the air leaked out of my lungs.
“Your innocence,” Abbot said in a low, deceptively calm voice. “You claimed that you were still innocent, Layla.”
Claimed? “I didn’t lie to you.”
“Then how did the chains break?” he demanded.
“Now he believes us,” Cayman said, shaking his head. “How quickly he doubts Layla.”
Even though that accurate observation stung, I ignored the infernal ruler as my gaze tracked over the demons and Wardens. Nicolai looked away when my gaze met his. Dez and Maddox stared at me with a look of dawning understanding. I couldn’t even look at Zayne to see if he was also jumping to conclusions.
The only good thing I could see right now was that no one assumed I’d taken a soul. Instead, they believed I dropped my undies. My lips pursed. I was torn between denying what they were assuming, thereby revealing what I’d actually done, and keeping my mouth shut.
Zayne let out a deep breath. “Layla told us that she’s...well, you know what she said. We have no reason to doubt her, but we have every reason not to trust them.”
The relief that coursed through me was short-lived when Roth arched a graceful brow. “Considering I threw your ass out of that trap and took your place, I’d think you’d have a tad bit more faith in me.”
