He just shakes his head, staring at that last little distance between us. Do you remember when Malice told you about Abaddon’s sundering in Slaine's dungeon?

“Mostly,” I whisper. “It was hard to tell what was true and what was a lie.”

He nods solemnly. I imagine practically all of what he said was based on fact. The only thing he would have to lie about would be motive—just in case Slaine was listening.

I take my lip between my teeth, pondering. “So the part about the heart… how Malice was created without one…”

All true. Abaddon’s living, beating heart is hidden somewhere in this world—buried beneath several feet of ice after all these years, I imagine.

“It’s still fucking beating?”

Kaebl nods, seemingly unaffected by the information. High-powered demons like Abbadon and Slaine are incredibly difficult to kill. Sundering is the only known way, and even then, you have to collect all the parts and destroy them if you don’t want them to be resurrected.

“And Varys got to them first.”

Kaebl nods. He forgot the heart, though. The resurrection failed. Malice ran off into the night with the last piece that could bring Abaddon back, and the rest is as you know it.

Kaebl cuts me a look out of the corner of his eye. It’s that wretched heart that is endangering your life.

“I don’t understand.”

He lowers his head to his chest. The night before Fenryr went missing—the night before Malice kidnapped him—he discovered a loophole to resurrect Abaddon. Written in some ancient tome that took years to decipher was the key to it all; and the key was you.

“Me?”

He nods slowly. The act of creating living beings out of soul pieces is incredibly rare and only recorded once in the entire history of this world. In that instance, one of the sundered pieces of the demon lord was destroyed before it could be recovered, and they were forced to resurrect incomplete demons such as me. The corners of his eyes crease with despair as his mouth turns downward, clearly distraught over the part of the story he has to reiterate. They discovered the lord's fated mate could be used in place of the missing piece. That her soul could be forfeited so his could be whole. And it didn't matter how many pieces of the lord were missing—as long as they found his true other half, they could bring the demon back to life.

My eyes widen as horror floods my veins. “Did they find her? His mate?”