Ties That Bind: A Muse Urban Fantasy (The Veil Series Book 5) by Pippa DaCosta Read Free Book Online

did the same. He rose from his sprawled position slowly, methodically, showing no signs of weakness. Chain links chinked and rattled. Taut muscles quivered. Demon skin shimmered. His gaze scored though to my very soul. Fury—brittle, sharp, and ice-white—burned in his eyes. The manacles around his wrists restrained his element, but he didn’t need his element to send a chill through me.
    “Stand.” My father’s order barely penetrated the shock wrapped around me.
    Stefan’s eyes narrowed. Frigid anger sharpened his glare. His lips thinned as he pulled them back over his teeth.
    “Stand.” My father repeated.
    I slid my gaze right and caught sight of my father behind me. A clean blue shimmer danced on the walls, thrown there by the elemental blade in Asmodeus’s hand. Only the princes could summon it. I’d seen it a handful of times, usually right before the shit was about to hit the fan. Anti-elemental glyphs licked across the flanks of the sword. It would make quick work of my skin and my element. The threat was clear.
    Stefan hissed. His chains groaned as he got to his feet. The order was for him? Every breath hissed through his clamped teeth. He’d curled his hands into fists.
    Asmodeus lunged for Stefan. I winced. Stefan stood firm and let my father clasp his left hand around his throat. Asmodeus’s sword arm tensed, his wing shifted—
    “Stop!” I couldn’t let this happen. Screw the demon act. Fuck the veil. My father was not laying a hand on Stefan.
    Asmodeus held the sword aloft. Ripples of light lapped over them both: my father, his crimson skin aglow and Stefan, glacial, deadly. They glared, challenging. Stefan couldn’t win. He was trapped and weakened. But he outshone my father. Crystal wings bloomed from his back, layer upon layer, until they arched every bit as wide as my father’s. Stefan might have been elementally restrained, but he was still demon and a Prince of Hell.
    Asmodeus’s upper lip curled. “Muse will rip your mind asunder. If she fails, you both die here.”
    Stefan made no reply. A muscle fluttered in his jaw, and ice dusted his face, but he didn’t attack or move to protect himself. A growl bubbled from the depths of my father’s monstrous body until it peeled from his lips. With one great sweep, he threw Stefan against the rear wall of the stall. Stefan’s wings shattered. He fell but sprang forward, lunging for Asmodeus.
    “Stefan, no!” My cry rang out as Asmodeus struck Stefan with a bone-jarring crack of his fist, throwing Stefan to the floor, out cold. Melt water pooled around his motionless body.
    Hot and bitter rage burned my throat as it bubbled up from inside. I dug my claws into the stones. Raw, elemental heat throbbed from my flesh.
    I climbed to my feet—movements deliberate and precise—lifted my chin, and closed my eyes. The beacon of heat that was my father blazed like a furnace. Sending my element out, I latched onto his source. He swung the blade. He really would kill me. I ducked and spun, punching my claws into his torso. Hooking them closed, I tore out a handful of muscle and flesh. He roared and turned on me like the demon prince he was. I saw teeth and claws and fire and felt the terrible flash burn of pain down my entire right side. Unconsciousness washed in, but receded just as quickly. The third or fourth time my father slammed me into the wall rattled some sense back into my head. I hissed and tore his heat from inside him like pulling the rug from under his feet. His sledgehammer fists beat into me. He could have killed me, but that wasn’t his intention. When he pinned me underneath his foot and yanked my wing up, panic instantly banished apathy. Not my wing. No. No! Not that!
    I bucked, writhed, twisted, but like so many years ago, I couldn’t out-muscle a full-blood demon. Sure, when fully charged, I could blast a battlefield, but in a brawl, I was deeply flawed. I surged my element into his, tangled around his heat, and knotted flame