She slitted her eyes up at him. “I vow to you I’ll get this collar off me, and when I do, I’ll demonstrate how powerful I’ve gotten!” The rain continued to pour; ghouls howled below. But Lanthe was too pissed to pay them any mind; she had eons of pain to vent. “I’ll command you to forget I ever lived!”
A muscle ticked in his clenched jaw, and those slashing scars on his cheeks whitened. “Never!”
“Why not, demon? Every day I wish I’d never been in that meadow when you flew over.”
He unfurled his wings to their terrifying full length, a span of over fifteen feet. “I’m no demon.”
“Uh-huh.” You keep telling yourself that. He looked to say more, so she cut him off. “Even if you manage to get me off this island, you can’t just keep me. I have friends who will come for me.” King Rydstrom—now Lanthe’s brother-in-law—was ferocious about Sabine’s and Lanthe’s protection, vowing to slay anyone who thought to harm either sister.
He understood that without Lanthe, his beloved wife Sabine wouldn’t have survived all those years, and he felt indebted to her. But Rydstrom and Sabine didn’t know the truth: Lanthe had caused the Vrekeners to descend on them in the first place—because she’d stupidly befriended Thronos, a fact that she’d never revealed to her sister.
“And what friends would those be?” Thronos grated.
“Perhaps you’ve heard of my brother-in-law Rydstrom, the ruler of Rothkalina, master of Castle Tornin?”
Rydstrom had alerted the king of the Air Territories—Thronos’s brother—of his protection. Any plot to harm either of the sisters would be considered an act of war against all rage demons. “Rydstrom is my protector.”
“I have no fear of him. Just as I had no fear of your previous protector. Omort the Deathless.”
She could only imagine what Thronos had heard about Omort. Once he’d stolen Rydstrom’s crown, Omort had instituted a reign of terror in Rothkalina. Though she and Sabine had resided with their brother—half brother—in the seized Castle Tornin, that didn’t mean they’d shared Omort’s sickening behavior.
They would’ve escaped, but he’d had lethal controls in place, forever forcing them to return to him.
She remembered telling Sabine, “I’ll scream if he beheads another oracle.” He’d butchered hundreds of them, peeling their heads from their necks with his bare hands.
“What can we do?” Sabine had said, sounding as blasé as ever. “Take it up with management?”
Anyone who contradicted Omort was slaughtered. Or worse.
Lanthe had a brief impulse to explain to Thronos what things had really been like with Omort. To explain that she’d lived in Castle Tornin under two kings—and now thanked gold for her new life under Rydstrom’s reign. But then she recalled that she wouldn’t be around Thronos long enough to waste the effort. Not that the Vrekener would believe her anyway.
So she returned to intimidation. “If you don’t fear Rydstrom, then maybe you’ll fear Nïx the Ever-Knowing.” The three-thousand-year-old Valkyrie was a soothsayer, rumored to be on her way toward full-blown goddesshood. Though Nïx was insane—seeing the future and past more clearly than the present—she was steering the entire freaking Accession, that great immortal killing time.
“Nïx, then?” he scoffed.
Okay, so maybe she and Lanthe weren’t tight, per se (they’d scarcely spoken). But Nïx had been in on the plot to kill Omort, had aided Sabine, Lanthe, and Rydstrom. Rydstrom considered her a good friend. “Yes, the Valkyrie is one of my best friends.”
“With so much practice, sorceress, I thought you’d be more skilled at deception.” He drew his lips back from his fangs. “Who do you think told me how to find you?”
Lanthe rocked on her feet—either from shock or because the ground was moving again. “She wouldn’t.” Lanthe should’ve known better than to trust a Valkyrie!
“She would and she did. Along with some advice concerning you.”
“Tell me.”
His answer: a smirk.
“Then you did let yourself get caught by the Order?” He had to have—how else could mortals have captured a male who could fly?
But then, how the hell had they taken half of these beings? She’d probably been their easiest catch. When Lanthe had left Tornin, heading to the mortal realm to find a lover after her long sex drought, a woman on the street had offered her discount gold; Lanthe had followed like a slavering dog—right into a trap.
“That’s a big risk, based on a mad Valkyrie’s word,” Lanthe said.
He raked his gaze over her. “My reward is commensurate. As will be my revenge.”
Squeezing her temples, Lanthe began to pace the small expanse of land, steering clear of the edges, while keeping away from Thronos’s imposing presence. She’d spent ages bolting at the sight of him; now this proximity was messing with her mind.
Unrelenting Vrekener attacks had affected Lanthe and Sabine in different ways. While Sabine had been left deadened to fear, Lanthe had grown chronically nervous, always expecting another surprise strike. Now her every instinct for survival was on high alert just from his nearness—
The plateau suddenly split open like halves of a log chopped in two. She screamed as a gorge yawned between her and Thronos.
When the motion stilled and she could clear her vision, she saw they were on opposite sides of a brand-new chasm.