“Ian!” My voice rose as the promise of death filled his gaze. I couldn’t let him attack the council, for many reasons. “I said when you get someplace safe, call me.”

The killing rage left his gaze. I heaved a sigh of relief. Good, he understood. Then, I turned to the council.

“I demand a formal trial before any sentence is carried out. Considering my millenniums of service, it’s the least I deserve.”

“She is right,” Hekima said, though her glance held no hope for the sentence to be anything except death. “We will reconvene in Athens, where all eleven of us will be present. Until then, Veritas, you are under arrest. One of you, restrain her.”

“You’ll have to wait a few minutes,” I replied calmly. “The barrier around this area doesn’t drop until dawn.”

They tested that, of course. Then they stood on the other side of the barrier, exchanging awkward looks with each other.

Ian came over to me. I took his hand in mine and winced at how I only felt bones. Please, let him heal, I thought again.

He must have sensed my worry because his mouth curled. “I’ve come back from worse, or so I’ve been told.”

This was the second time that fighting by my side had reduced him to a near-skeletal state. “Marriage is proving to be harmful to your health,” I replied with a shaky laugh.

“That’s saying something for a vampire,” he quipped. Then his amusement faded and he said, “Ereshki is dead,” with savage satisfaction.

How he’d managed to kill her in his state was remarkable. Then again, Ian had always surprised me—and anyone who dared to underestimate him.

“Good,” was all I said.

The sun was coming up. In moments, it would shine through the smashed-out windows of the ski lodge and touch the blue diamond, breaking the boundary on the encircled pentagram.

“I love you,” I whispered, reaching for his hand again.

He squeezed, the horn making a cracking sound as if it had turned into nothing more than a dried twig from all the power it had expelled taking down the walls of our trap.

“Love you, too, my little soon-to-be-former Guardian.”

I felt the spell drop the next moment. A breeze came from the pentagram as the potent magic was extinguished like a candle being blown out. The council members and Law Guardians felt it, too. They shifted before one of them put a tentative foot over the invisible line that had been blocked off before.

Ian’s bony hand tightened around mine. For an instant, the trees, lodge, and mountainous slope began to blur. Then that blur collapsed, and he gritted out a curse.

“Can’t do it, luv.”

I had no doubt that he couldn’t teleport. I didn’t even know how he was still standing.

“Don’t let your guard down,” Ian whispered, so low I could barely hear him even though he was right next to me. “Can’t be sure, but I think I feel Yonah’s spell activating.”

I gave him a surprised look. One of the council members or Law Guardians had traces of Dagon’s power in them? No. None of them would consort with, let alone become branded by, a demon. It must be the spell in Ian short-circuiting because of the state he was in.

Or . . . could Dagon have ordered his people to bring part of the council and several Law Guardians here for more than the hope of saving himself? Could one of them really be his secret acolyte?

“The barrier is down,” Haldam said, with an impatient swipe toward the Law Guardians. “Arrest her.”

The Law Guardians glanced at each other, at me, and hesitated. After everything they’d seen, none appeared eager to be the first to try.

Xun Guan was the one who stepped over the spot that had been blocked by the pentagram’s encircling barrier moments before. Her expression reflected her pain, but her steps didn’t waver as she pulled out a pair of restraints and came toward me.

“Faithless to the end,” Ian said with contempt, earning him a look that was so cutting, it should have made him bleed.

“This is your doing,” Xun Guan snapped. “None of this would have happened if not for you.”

“You’re wrong, Xun Guan,” I replied. “Ian didn’t make me who I am. I was that person long before I met him. He only helped me accept it.”

Once again, pain etched her lovely features. “Then, all this time, you were lying to me.”

Maybe it was my newly merged nature that prevented me from feeling the shame Xun Guan obviously wanted me to feel. The other half of me had seemed incapable of emotions like that. Or maybe, that merging now gave me the clarity I’d lacked before to realize that I wasn’t the one who should be ashamed.

“It should upset you more that I lived in a world that forced me to hide what I was,” I replied. “I was born different, but that doesn’t mean I was born wrong. No one is. What’s wrong are the laws that make people like me hide what we are because others are too bigoted or too afraid to let us live in peace.”

A slow, proud smile curled Ian’s mouth, but Xun Guan stared at me in disbelief. Hekima closed her eyes, shaking her head in what could have been regret. She was one of the few council members who’d voted against sentencing Cat’s daughter to death.

But Haldam snapped, “That’s enough. You will have a chance to say your piece at your trial, unless you waive your demand for a full hearing and want your sentence carried out now?”

The sound Ian made had me gripping his hand until I heard the snap of fractures. “No,” I said, dropping his hand to hold my wrists out to Xun Guan. “I demand a full, formal trial. I’ll speak to you later, Ian. Now, please, go.”

He gave me a frustrated look, then gave another, even more frustrated one down at himself, as if silently cursing the state he was in that prevented him from teleporting us out of here.

Then, for the second time in the past hour, Ian left when he didn’t want to.

Chapter 44

Ian didn’t head toward the lodge to retrieve the priceless diamond we’d left lying on the floor. He walked deeper into the woods. I watched him until the thickening line of evergreens blocked him from my view. Then, I turned back to the council.

Haldam was staring in the direction Ian had gone while stroking his long beard. “Perhaps we shouldn’t let him leave so easily. He should stand trial, too.”

I gave the highest official in the council a look that made him take a step backward. “You don’t want to do that.”

“Veritas is the only one in violation of our laws,” Hekima said, stepping in front of Haldam so she blocked the lethal glare I gave him. “We have no need to question her husband,” she went on. “For all we know, he was here because he was trying to stop her.”

I stifled my snort. I’d always liked Hekima, and she was helping as much as she could under the circumstances. I wouldn’t disrespect that by pointing out that Ian had zero respect for the law, and even less for people who zealously followed it.

“Your wisdom is appreciated, Hekima,” I replied.

“The prisoner will not speak again!” Haldam thundered at me. To everyone else, he said, “Does anyone have a mobile? We need to arrange transportation out of here, as well as contact the other council members and convene a full trial immediately.”