Chained to the Devil’s Daughter (Mating the Elements #1)

8

Searra

B efore I could interject their squabble, jet-black flames engulfed the men. The peculiar flames did more than obscure their bodies. It seemed to swallow their sound as well, like a rift in reality.

“Ash!”

If the void didn’t shred them, this crowd would. Gasps rang out as I pierced the magic. I hissed at the heat that seared my fingers, but it cooled before I could yank my hand away. Unseeing, I groped through the blackness until I found his shoulder and heaved him around.

His pupils were all black, leaking from the corners. He looked like a spectral with the lingering flames obscuring his form. Then it was gone, fluffy gray ash falling onto Fuegis as his body dropped with a thud.

“Se-Firefly,” Ash’ren whispered. He glanced at the ash-covered man at his feet and grimaced.

“Use her proper title, mangy mutt,” Fuegis growled. I barely bit back a scoff. The gall! How simple could he be, to poke a predator after narrowly avoiding their jaws?

“Enough.” I gave them each a super-duper queenly stare before wedging myself between them. “Forgive my—my friend. Show me this new gadget.”

“Yes, Your Bone-Blessed Majesty.”

Ugh. Bile clumped in my throat as the word clunked over my tongue, threatening to spill forth at the use of that damned title. I still hadn’t gotten used to it. The bowing, the constant formalities, the fear and reverence of my great authority . When I was Princess Searra or simply Devil’s daughter, I’d received unsavory glances aplenty. Now they looked at me and saw my father.

“This way.” Fuegis took the lead, dusting off his brocade tunic. He bumped Ash’ren’s shoulder as he passed. I held my breath, but Ash’ren didn’t take the bait.

My gaze lingered on Ash’ren’s profile. His strong jaw twitched. Without moving, his gaze slid to mine. The smirk in them didn’t reach his lips, but it sent liquid heat straight to my core and prickly heat up my neck. I snapped forward as my foot collided with something stuck in the sand.

Quickly, I smoothed my expression and returned my attention to the very important, very queenly task at hand. Oh, rings! I was hopeless.

“Hello, princess!” called Geysis, the merling who’d double-crossed Devil to join our cause. Her short curls, a deeper aqua than her skin, bounced as she rocked in her chunky boots, which added a full six inches to her petite frame. The many bits of metal that decorated her ear fins glinted in the final ray of sun that still reached the trench of Ring Ten.

“Hello, Geysis. I’m thrilled to witness another stroke of your brilliance.”

A teal lip decorated with a gold ring disappeared under her teeth in a barely contained grin. With a bit of flair, she held up a pair of shackles. The cuffs had about six inches of chain between them. “I call them the Maniacal Manacles!”

I bit my knuckle and didn’t dare glance at Ash’ren. Not that our laughter would offend Geysis, but those observing didn’t need more reason to doubt her.

“Manacles? How could it possibly work if you’re bound?” I appraised the cuffs, looking for clues. They were polished tungsten, free of the dirty gray hue that belied the use of the Forgotten Ones’ bones.

“Allow us to demonstrate! Come on up here, assistant!” Geysis waved frantically at Fuegis, who scowled back. Tough to act like the smartest one in the room when he so clearly wasn’t, I suppose.

My soul nearly exorcised straight from my body with the effort of withholding laughter as Geysis locked them together. One cuff on his right wrist, the other on her left. Their free hands outstretched to the side, palms up. Blue designs lit along Geysis’ skin, the glowing symbols waving and swirling in a hypnotizing oceanic pattern. Fuegis’ smooth palm squeezed into a fist as sparks raced up his arm and across his chest to gather at their bound hands.

His burst of fire was met with a jolt of water. Their magic danced, a swirling mass of orange-hot flame and rivulets of crystalline water.

“Incredible,” I breathed. “Do you realize what you’ve done? Beyond clearing the Firefolk, you’ve created technology that could make water and fire relationships easier!”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Filaris said with a chuckle. I rolled my eyes and shook her by the shoulders until she gave me that look that said I was being an insufferable child.

Geysis cast a mischievous glance over her shoulder. Her underwater accent, a higher pitch that wasn’t common in Hell, lent to her charm as she promised, “That’s nothing, guys!”

The mass of opposing magic surged. Orange flames ricocheted back to Fuegis’ free hand, gathering around his fist so hot his whole left side appeared wavy-gravy. While he contained the sphere of flames, water magic rushed from Geysis’ outstretched palm with a force to rival the waterfalls in Aqualis, the City of Falls in Hydra. At least I assumed, based on my textbooks and Geysis’ homesick descriptions.

I approached cautiously. “May I?”

“Be my guest!”

“Let your friend feel it, too, your highness.” Fuegis goaded.

I winced. That petty fool. Ash’ren appeared at my side, ready to provide the humiliation Fuegis sought with an aura of violence glimmering in the space between them.

“Woah, woah! Is that safe?” I asked Geysis. “Has it been tested?”

“It has. . .” The drawl of her words did not instill confidence. “Though not on someone with such great power.”

Oh, flames bless my tenuous hold on decorum. My eyes rolled right around my head to meet Ash’ren’s.

“Just a finger, then,” I bade him.

He stepped forward and bent to my ear in a mock bow. “Only one.”

Cheeks hot, I pressed my lips together. Damn him, damn decorum!

“Afraid, Ash Render?” Fuegis pretended to be enthralled by the waterspout.

My heart sped up. Please don’t let him take the bait. Please, let him retain the same self-restraint as before—at least, when the time called for it, for I also loved the unrestrained version of him, but those thoughts were inappropriate at this time. Inappropriate and totally not invading my brain at all.

Ash’ren’s attention remained solely on me as he extended his middle finger, adorned with black flames, into the water. I was probably the only one who could tell he tensed before impact, but his surprise was delightful. His face brightened, his awestruck gaze flicking to Geysis and sharing the merling’s proud grin before slipping his whole hand into the spray.

“Appears to work even with his impressive amount of power,” I said with a sly smile, daring to meet my ex-suitor’s baleful glare. Screw decorum sometimes.

“It tickles,” Ash’ren reported with a chuckle. “But how will this help your cause?”

“Our top priority is the Firefolk’s safety.” Devil used them in dark magic rituals like they were not living beings, only resources for evil. Poachers invaded the labor rings to kill trophies, harming laborers in the process. All the Firefolk wanted was to be free. A sentiment I dearly wanted to help them achieve. “Possible uses for anything like a battle are still being contemplated. For now, this is not a weapon, but an evacuation tool.”

Many people were afraid of the Firefolk, especially the outsiders pulled into Hell through Devil’s portal. The Firefolk had inhabited these lands too long to imagine, long before the first demons, nymphs, humans, or any other civilized species who possessed a small affinity for magic. Firefolk were made of fire, their blood molten lava, their entire existence dependent on their flames remaining lit. Water would kill them, and it was not always quick.

A shadow crossed Ash’ren’s features, and I knew he remembered the night we snuck onto the bottom of a gryffion carriage in my father’s entourage. When they reached the construction site of Ring Ten, Ash’ren flew us down the bridge and hid. I clung to his back and watched as the Firefolk became steaming puddles of mud.

We were practically babies then, Ash’ren seventeen and me fifteen. Days before, Ash’ren had enlisted in Devil’s army of devotees—an enlistment that would be denied due to his foreign birth—in the hopes of gaining my father’s favor. For years we’d been sneaking out, playing and laughing, the tension between us growing to a fever pitch since we’d become teenagers. That night, we didn’t speak for hours. Even when we snuck back into my room to play a game of bargains that usually ended in a breathless battle of tongues, the air was somber.

“The Firefolk have been through enough,” Geysis agreed. Her hand, now dry, landed on my shoulder and squeezed.

Despite the few gasps spurred by her daring touch, I readily accepted the merling’s kindness. Seriously, screw decorum. Hell sucked too badly not to show kindness at every possible chance.