Page 76 of The Devil

“She’s with Cassian.”

“Surprising.”

Sev just gives me a warning glance and a slight shake of his head as we approach a large door where two soldiers stand sentry.

At a nod from Master Robertson, one slowly opens the door. Robertson steps to the side. From his angle Severin gets a first look inside. I’m about to make some remark, something about the overkill with all the guard but before I open my mouth, the very air shifts around us. Dread fills me when I feel rather than see my brother stiffen beside me.

It’s so out of character, so absolutely not Severin Blackstone. My big brother whom I often dismiss as simply being a bore with a stick up his ass but who I know has risked his life to protect mine, who was the anchor in my life when I needed one.

I see him now stop and steel himself, see the effort it takes him as he clenches his hands, his jaw tight.

It all happens in slow motion, but it can’t be more than a second, a moment in time but I follow his gaze into the room as the door is pushed wider and I understand why this sudden change in Severin.

I understand the shaking of the ground beneath his feet because I feel it too, now. I feel the slipping, the falling, the sliding back in time. Backwards to a decade ago. More than a decade.

When I was a boy and Sev newly a man.

Sweat trickles down my spine.

My heartbeats turn to loud thuds.

Blood rushes in my ears and the boy I was then cowers, whimpering inside my head.

It takes all I have to remain standing.

There, inside a room where the walls and the ceiling are painted black, where a massive stone desk sits in its center is a man we both recognize. Considering the role this man played in our lives it is a face neither of us could ever forget no matter how many decades pass.

We walk into the room, and I wonder if anyone else noticed that moment. The instant where both Blackstone brothers stumbled. Where a sensation I haven’t felt except in the deepest darkest nightmares creeps up on me and it takes all I have to remain upright. To wrap my brain around what the fuck is happening.

The door is closed behind us.

The man behind that table closes the folder before him as if he just now notices us. As if surprised to see us.

Fucking bullshit.

He raises his ugly head, a grin playing along his lips because he knows the effect he’s had. And it’s exactly what he wanted.

“Councilor Senna, I hope we haven’t kept you waiting long,” Master Robertson says.

I blink, turn my head to look at Robertson in his weird robes and my fingers twitch, itching to reach for the pistol tucked into the holster at my ankle and put a bullet between his eyes and another between Senna’s. But it’d be signing my death warrant and Sev’s and Amal’s because two more soldiers stand behind the Councilor, four in total in the room with us. Because we are on their island in the middle of a roaring, furious ocean and we are at their mercy.

Sev gathers himself before I can. “Councilor,” he says with a nod of greeting, and he almost sounds like himself.

“Severin,” the Councilor’s mouth curves upward into a mocking grin. He’s seen it. Seen Severin wrongfooted. “How unexpected to see you again.” He turns his gaze to me. “You and your brother. Jethro.” I hear the distaste as he says my name. As he looks down his nose at me.

He stands, and I’m at least relieved to see he’s wearing a suit, not the ceremonial robes of a Councilor of the Tribunal presiding over a trial. I think Sev must be relieved, too. Because the memory of it, of Councilor Senna a decade earlier as we stood before him in the Tribunal’s court of the New York chapter and Sev explained the action we’d taken. Sev who took us back to The Society to ask for their help because there was no other way.

We were different then.

We were innocent then.

“Sit, please,” the Councilor says as if we’re simply old friends visiting. He gestures to the two uncomfortable wooden chairs that have been set before the stone table. Something in that gesture, in the way he moves his hand or maybe it’s the hand itself, I don’t know, but something has all the blood in me turning to ice, a sensation of utter panic taking root at my core.

That whimpering boy in my head wants to run. Fucking run.

This feeling is something I haven’t felt in a very long time. In years. A sensation of dread I thought I could somehow forget.

The Councilor waits until we each take a seat. Robertson remains standing to the side, the soldiers unmoving around us.