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

weeks.”
    “Weeks?” Oh, god. He’d been here weeks. While I’d been running away, he’d been facing my father. Weeks trapped down here and still he’d looked Asmodeus in the eyes and fought. A nervous chitter rattled from my throat. “Stefan, had I known, I’d have come. I wasn’t in Boston—I… I had to get away. After… After what happened…”
    He pressed his hands to my face—chains rattling—and silenced my rambling with the kind of look that had heat flaring in my veins. “I get it. You’re here now. That’s good enough. Stop agonizing, and help me think of a way out of this.”
    “A way out…” Ri ght. The manacles. A key. Get the key. To do that, I need to get out of this dungeon. “Hold that thought.” I left him and tried the door my father had locked: still locked, obviously. And when I tried to pour hear into it, glyphs bobbed to the surface and volleyed my efforts right back at me. I searched the other stalls for anything we could use or any weaknesses in the walls, but to no avail. We weren’t breaking out; that was for sure.
    Stefan lifted his head when I returned to his stall. “No luck, huh?”
    “Nope.”
    I sat beside him against the back wall, hugged my knees to my chest, and sighed. “Yukki found me when I returned to Boston. She told me you were missing. We were going to look for you together, but then my father found me, and…” The memory of my father appearing in my apartment as Stefan reminded me how he must have played the same game with Stefan. “He said he wanted me to stand beside him. I have to find Jerry and figure out how to restore the veil. Figured I’d kill two birds with one stone.”
    Stefan draped his arm over his knee and turned to face me. “But Asmodeus wants proof you’re demon to the core?” I bit into my lip and looked away. “That’s what he meant about proving your worth?”
    “Yeah.” I whispered and cleared my throat. “I thought I could pretend I was part of their evil club, but I didn’t factor you in.”
    “Asmodeus did.”
    “Yeah…” He’d had it planned weeks ago when he’d first taken Stefan. Stefan was my weakness. And like an idiot, I’d walked right into my father’s trap.
    Minutes passed in silence. But it wasn’t a silence that begged to be filled. Stefan’s cool presence grounded my thoughts. There had to be a way out of this. I needed to think.
    “He wants you to wield lust.” Stefan finally said what we were both thinking.
    “Yeah.” I bowed my head and glued my gaze to a crack between the stones. “He’s already tried to force me into it. He killed the half-blood I was meant to mind-fuck when I failed.”
    Stefan shifted beside me. I skewed my gaze sideways. He’d dropped his head back and peered up at the concave stone ceiling. Considering what I’d just told him, the smile on his lips was a mischievous thing. “For once—just once—it’d be great, if the universe would stop screwing with us.”
    I smiled. “Wouldn’t it just.”
    “Chocolate ice cream.”
    “Huh?”
    “When we finally get to go on that date you owe me. There will be chocolate ice cream.”
    “Hell, yes. With chocolate chips.”
    He nodded appreciatively. “Can you do it?”
    “What? The chocolate chips? Yeah, I mean, it’s not like I have to cook them. Don’t ask me to cook anything, ever, by the way. I’m—”
    He turned his head and held my stare, his smile failing. “The lust.”
    Oh, that. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried. And it’s not the sort of thing that comes up in conversation. But my brother could, and my father is… Well, we know what he is.” I had it in me to be a monster. Everyone knew it but me. “I suppose, somewhere inside, I can.” Stefan raked his fingers through his ice-bound hair and sent his gaze skyward again. I couldn’t hurt him. “I won’t.”
    He sighed. “You will.”

Chapter 7
    I woke curled like a cat inside Stefan’s embrace. My scorching heat and his searing cold