Page 85 of Judge of Saints and Sinners

“What are you reading about?”

“Do you really want to know, or are you just really bored?”

“Can it be both?”

Elbow over the back of the stiff-backed chair, she rested her chocolate eyes on me. “I’m learning more about silencing spells.”

I almost guffawed at the sarcastic lilt in her voice but ignored her obvious implication by asking more. “What are you best at?”

Her shoulders dropped. “Tracking spells.”

“For other people like us?”

My guess must’ve hit its mark because her lips quivered in a small smile before lifting. “How long did it take you to figure that out?”

“You're not doing a very good job of hiding that you’re the odd one out here. You dress differently, you act differently, and you said that the Drude took you from the system when you were a child. Nephesh told me they believe he’s hunting down the humans bound to his brothers. It all just kind of makes sense.”

Faye lifted her hands, as if to clap, but I held up a finger, halting her. “Except one thing.”

She waited expectantly. “And that is?”

“You would give up the chance to have a soul mate in order to work for someone like the Drude. You don’t seem like a bad person, yet you are serving a man who means to use people’s souls for ammo against a race of nearly immortal warriors.” I leaned close to her. “He’s going to lose, Faye, you know that, right?”

“We don’t know that. And we also don’t know if I’m anyone’s soul mate. The fact that you are Nephesh’s match is a rare oversight. Probably based on the pressure the original spell is enduring to make the soul remain split.”

Why did that make something in my chest ache. “His mother’s spell, you mean. And you think it’s changing…”

She shrugged. “I think it’s evolving to survive, just like we have.”

“Why though?”

“Because demons will spend their entire lives seeking out their mates. It is a drive one thousand times stronger than that of family or fortune. Without their mates will live half a life, and not just because of their souls being severed.” There was something else in Faye’s voice now. Sadness, maybe.

“But if we carry both their missing soul and are fated to be with them…”

“Then there’s no way they could resist the call,” Faye finished with an annoying little flip of her head. “Which is why even though Nephesh already has your soul, he will always come for you.”

“Because we are fated to be together.” I already knew this, but there was something different talking about it in such a casual way. It was almost clinical.

“Yes, I think so. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? You loved him before.”

I huffed, my cheeks feeling hot and tingly. “You don’t fall in love with someone over the course of a few days.”

Faye rolled her eyes and turned around. “We both know you’re lying, so just keep telling yourself that if you need to.”

Silence fell as I considered her words. “What would happen if I rejected the bond?”

“I’m not sure, to be honest. I guess that they’d continue on. Master says that plenty of demons and other Hell creatures find matches among their own kind. The fated mates thing is a bit overdramatized. It typically only happens in powerful types, like your Nephesh or my…”

“Your who…”

Faye turned her back on me. “I don’t know yet.”

“Hence the tracking spell, eh?”

“Leave it alone, Justine.”

I chomped down on my lip, a new plan already coming into light. But first I had to keep the conversation going. I needed to know more. Knowledge was power. “What is the least helpful thing that you know how to do with magic?”