“What do you want, Hellen?” I asked warily. If she already had the Token. If she did something stupid with it …

“Did you think I wouldn’t recognise the mystery ‘demoness’ who suddenly caught your previously unenthused attention? Father may be a complete idiot, but I am not!”

“I don’t know what⁠—”

“Cease your lying, Junior!” She stepped closer, her wind whipping, now propelling me back towards the bed, the pressure of it shoving me down. Hellen stood over me, leaning close enough that I could see the vein bulging in her temple.

“You haven’t only been fraternising with that human filth! You’ve developed feelings for her! Ones that made you stupid enough to invite her to Hell so the pair of you could defile our hallways with your disgusting … emotions!”

My chest constricted so suddenly it temporarily stopped my breath. No. How could she have … she didn’t know what Jemma looked like; I’d never described her …

Alessio. In all his reporting, he had most likely given a full account of Jemma’s beauty. Father had been too drunk to notice last night. But Hellen had been sober. And no doubt very interested in me carrying off a new, strange, tailless demoness in a lust-fuelled fugue.

“Where is it?” Hellen shrieked.

“Where is what?”

Her fury doubled, her tempest holding me fast, the weight of her air like a boulder on my back. I gritted my teeth. She’d lose her focus soon. She always did, just for a second, but that was all I needed to be able to break free from it.

“The fucking Soul Token, Junior! Where the Home have you hidden it?”

I held my breath, so I wouldn’t gust out a sigh of relief. Wherever my pants were, she hadn’t managed to locate the Token. But if it wasn’t in my pants …

“I don’t fucking know where it is!” I snapped back. And for the first time in this conversation, I was telling the utter truth as anxiety bloomed in my gut, spreading outwards alarmingly fast.

Where was Jemma’s Soul Token?

“Liar!” she shrieked. Her wind swirled, which relieved the pressure on me long enough for me to surge to my feet.

“I do not lie. I have no clue where it is.” I pushed past her, out of reach of the worst of her power and scanned the room. Perhaps the Token had rolled out of my breeches when I tossed them aside? Could it have wedged into a crack in the rock somewhere?

“You had better come up with that Token in the next sixty seconds, Junior, or I will⁠—”

“You’ll what, Hellen?” I snapped, surreptitiously lifting the corner of my askew sheets with a toe. No tell-tale glow to indicate it was under my bed.

“I will tell Father that you’re sabotaging your own project, deliberately, because you’ve fallen in lo⁠—”