A dozen or so cloaked mages peeled out of the shadows of trees and closed in on me, their wands all pointing at me.
“Stop wearing a demigod’s face, asshole.” I shouted at the demon prince. Then I stabbed two fingers in Brittney’s direction. “Do you know whom you’re mixing with this time, bimbo? You didn’t get the Demigod of War. You got a prince from Hell.”
The demon prince shoved his female companion aside, no longer needing her.
Brittney face-planted into a tree trunk with a yelp of pain. If she weren’t an Olympian descendant, she’d have a cracked rib and a broken nose.
“Take care of the trash,” the demon prince said cruelly before turning to me with a lopsided smile. “So, you know who I am.”
Axel’s face melted from him, and a gorgeous demon prince stood in front of me.
Unlike other demons, he didn’t have horns and claws. He didn’t carry a weapon or wear their scaled armor that was damn hard to pierce, yet he was the most dangerous demon I’d met.
With my innate knowledge, I knew he could conjure up horns and fangs easily if he wanted to have them. Demons had all kinds of shapes. The ones with a humanoid form were the descendants of the most powerful fallen angels. They were cold, brutal, powerful, and merciless.
This dark prince’s power grade was only a scale lower than Lucifer’s. That was likely why he could get inside the walls of the Academy, the heart of the demigods’ territory.
His mage pawns, who were powerful magic users, had probably assisted him in breaking down the wards.
He’d worn Axel’s face and fooled me, taking advantage of my blind, jealous rage.
This demon prince could shift shapes at will, but now he wanted me to see his true form. I perceived his intention—he wanted me toseehim.
Clad in a white shirt and a pair of dark jeans, the demon prince could blend into any setting and any human society. Humans would mistake him for a rich, bored heartthrob, and none of them would recognize him as a soul-stealer and the incarnation of a nightmare.
His face was perfection, like an angel carved out of dark gold. Only the material came from Hell. His long eyebrows were black and sharp. His bottomless, unfathomable eyes contained an infinite darkness that was born to devour light.
Yet he was the most sensual man I’d met, because he was the very definition of seduction. He created it and rewrote it. When his lips moved, no woman could resist him.
But I wasn’t an average woman, not at any time of the day.
Lust didn’t pulse in my bloodstream, as he had clearly intended. Instead, a chilly repulsion rolled in my belly.
“I know what you are,” I said. “I just don’t know your name.”
But he knew me by name. He’d gone through a lot of trouble to breach the wards, as no demons could have done before, just to get me. He’d even gotten a pawn—Brittney—to help him lure me here.
In my stupid jealousy, I’d thrown every caution and reasonable thought out the window. I hadn’t even bothered to distinguish the demon prince’s power signature from Axel’s when I’d first sensed his potent presence in the ballroom.
The demon captain who had escaped Héctor and me must have ratted me out and told his great master—the demon prince—that I was the “Lost One.”
And now I was trapped like a fly in a net. But I wasn’t going to act like one.
I secretly sent my invisible magical fire to trace the barrier, feel its weaknesses, and find a crack to break through.
“A spitfire you are,” the demon prince barked out a laugh. “I like that. You’re just what I expected. You’re not a weakling. To save you some trouble, I suggest you give up unweaving my spells, which are specifically designed to withstand any fire from a descendant of any alien gods.”
My magical readings returned to me. He wasn’t lying.
The orb was formed by complicated dark spells and Hell’s magic. Blunt force couldn’t shatter it, and fire couldn’t burn through it.
I sent stronger fire—stealth was no longer necessary—to study the spells that entrapped me in this black, half-transparent orb.
How I hated to be caged again.
“You got me here,” I said, stalling the demon prince. “You obviously want something from me. Aren’t you going to be a dear and introduce yourself properly?”
He laughed. “Others quiver in my presence, yet your knees aren’t weak.”