Chapter 196: Dominion 2
SÉVERINE
One corner of his mouth lifted.
"So that was your objective after what we did? Establishing proper mistress and familiar protocol?"
"I am choosing not to acknowledge that remark."
"You should know," he began carefully, "that true dominion extends considerably further than—"
"I said I was ignoring it."
I held his gaze until the amusement faded from his expression.
"What," I asked, "is a shade?"
He settled back, the teasing dropping into something more serious.
"People feel guilt," he said. "It is one of the mechanisms by which conscience operates. When you involve primordials, blood and suffering are byproducts of the arrangement. They are unavoidable. The first primordial to escape Gehenna made the error of not removing his witch’s shade before the pact was completed."
"What happened?"
"She felt everything that followed the pact. Every consequence. The guilt of it accumulated until she could not carry it any longer, and she took her own life. She had no children, which meant the line died with her and the primordial lost its anchor in this realm and was pulled back." He paused. "So they learned. After that, the shade was removed. The infection of empathy, as the primordials described it, was cut out before it could cause the same problem again."
I absorbed this.
"That is why you are functional," he said. "Right now. Your grandfather is dead , among other things. You understand that these things happened." He looked at me. "But you are not incapacitated by it."
"I cared about him," I said.
"In your own way."
"That is a condescending qualifier."
"It is an accurate one." He held my gaze without apology. "Everything and everyone in your life is secondary to your own ambitions and the specific desire you have to arrange the world the way you want it to be arranged. That includes me. That has always included me." He paused. "It has to include me, for me to be able to remain by your side. The primordials understood that the witch needed to be capable of making the hard decisions."
I sat with this quietly.
"You kept all of this from me for years," I said.
"Because you did not need it."
"You keep deciding what I need. It is a good thing that is out of the picture now."
"I was protecting you."
"From knowledge of my own nature."
He did not answer that directly, which was its own kind of answer.
"I want to know something else," I said.
He looked at me.
"You serve a primordial. The one who forged the original pact with my ancestor, Igor. The one whose bargain placed you in my bloodline." I held his gaze. "What is its name?"
"Séverine."
There was genuine warning in his voice now.
"Do not ask me that."
"I want to know."
He shook his head once.
"You cannot."
"Cannot..."
"The authority you have over me ends before that point." His expression had become unusually grave. "There are bindings older than our contract, older than your bloodline. Even your dominion cannot simply tear through them."
"We’ll find out."
I leaned forward slightly.
"Grigori."
His eyes met mine.
"Tell me your primordial’s name."
The effect was immediate.
His entire body locked.
It was not hesitation. It was collision.
I watched opposing commands crash into one another inside him, my order dragging him in one direction while something infinitely older pulled just as hard in the opposite. The muscles along his jaw stood out sharply. Tendons tightened beneath the skin of his neck. His hands curled into the bedsheets until the fabric strained beneath his fingers.
His mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
His throat worked once.
Twice.
Then, with visible effort, he forced the first sound.
"A..."
Fire erupted inside his mouth.
It did not spill outward immediately.
It bloomed beneath his tongue first, a deep crimson glow shining through flesh before bursting into violent orange flame. His tongue ignited. The roof of his mouth followed an instant later. Fire poured between his teeth, curling around every attempted syllable and swallowing them before they could become words.
He jerked violently, one hand flying to his throat.
The smell hit me a heartbeat later.
Burning flesh.
"Grigori!"
He doubled over, coughing fire instead of air.
Every attempt to force another sound only fed the flames higher, until they climbed from his mouth in twisting ribbons that licked across his cheeks without leaving so much as a scorch on the rest of his skin.
I was beside him before I realized I had moved.
"Grigori."
I cupped his face between my hands.
The flames licked over my fingers without heat, parting around my skin as though they recognized I was not their target.
"Stop." My voice came out sharper than I intended. "I take it back."
His body remained rigid.
"Grigori, I withdraw the order. I do not want the answer anymore."
For one terrible heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the fire collapsed inward.
The flames disappeared as abruptly as they had come, leaving only silence and the faint scent of smoke hanging between us.
He stayed exactly where he was, bent forward, breathing hard.
I searched his face instinctively for burns.
There were none.
His lips were whole. His tongue, when it briefly touched the corner of his mouth, looked completely untouched. It was as though the fire had existed only to inflict pain rather than injury.
Slowly, he lifted his eyes to mine.
I had seen Grigori angry.
I had seen him patient, exasperated, amused, protective, even embarrassed.
I had never seen him afraid.
Yet there it was.
Not fear of me.
Fear of something vastly older than either of us.
"You see," he said at last, his voice rough from screaming around flames that had left no wound, "why I asked you not to command me."
His gaze held mine for another moment.
"Demons live their lives by ranks. There are names that my lowly existence itself cannot dare speak. Some of those names are the names of the Primordials."