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"Yes, but, Carlos--" she said

"I’m not finished yet So now he has a dead wife, courtesy of abilities he’d never bothered to learn anything about So what does he do? Decide that perhaps his father had a point? Of course not He goes insane and tries to kill hi to do," I said, furious

The girl in question had been Pritkin’s wife, and a low-level demon herself But unlike him, she hadn’t hated the demon world She’d loved it, coveted it, wanted to be part of itBut she was barred from it because of her alment that poith sootten with hienuine affection there, as well But if there was affection, it hadn’t been enough to stop her fro to increase her own abilities and thereby her status in the demon world

Unfortunately, it had backfired horrifically, and Pritkin hadn’t been able to stop it He’d never had sex with another de And Rosier hadn’t warned hi her intentions ahead of time

"We don’t knohat Rosier knew or didn’t know," Casanova argued when I pointed that out "She went to visit hi; who knohy? Perhaps she was atteet the two of them to reconcile Perhaps she just wanted to s We don’t know--and neither did he!"

"I think Pritkin knows his father a bit better than you do!"

"All right, say I give you that Say Rosier knew ahead of ti Does that soed son--the son who said he wanted to know nothing of their world, the son ore he wanted to live as a hu?"

"Yes! If he wasn’t a coht be crazy "De to do"

"And striding into hell to kill him wasn’t? Hoas that supposed to end well? And how is this?"

"Because this isn’t about Rosier," I told him impatiently "This is about the demon council They’re the ones who sentenced Pritkin to enslavement by his father for the attempted assassination They’re the ones who can reverse it"

"And why should they help you?" Casanova de to keep my temper Because he was an ass, but he was an ass with a point If he was co, he did deserve to know And because we needed him

Without Rian, ould never find Pritkin before Rosier’s forces found us, and without Casanova, she would be spotted and identified before she could help us She was supposed to be on earth, not here And it wouldn’t take anyone who had known her long to figure out why she’d suddenly decided to return ho it for a couple of hundred years now

"You said it yourself," I reods back anyto prevent that?"

"It’s done a pretty good job so far!"

Casanova sneered "It’s done a pretty good job against exactly one god, as already seriously weakened when he got here thanks to what he’d had to do to get through your estured up and down at ot him dead But I don’t think the next ones will be!"

"All theto let hih request; it cost the But the rewards could be substantial"

"Then why not ask them before we trooped in here?" he deo into another deht to violate another lord’s sovereignty And none of theht be used against the the operative word"

"--then they can tell Rosier it’s for the coood" Or whatever they wanted to tell him; I didn’t care But Mother knew deo for it--if we could get hi to Somehow But the city that shimmered into existence on the horizon, diht an extra canteen Becauseourselves," Rian said, a little sharper than her usual tones Maybe because she was looking at the city, too "If this goes according to plan, it should be a siroused

Yeah That’s what I was afraid of

Chapter Fifteen

As Rian had predicted, we reached the city at nightfall And once again I felt it, theI’d ever known and everything I was experiencing It had been happening a lot lately, dating fro frolass skyscrapers and the rule of law, to one filled with torchlight and stone castles and the rule of one man’s caprice

That had been a shock