TEN
Lanthe’s thoughts were in turmoil.
Encountering Felix again after all these years was throwing her. Not to mention seeing Ember’s lust for Thronos. The fire queen’s need to seduce him had affected Lanthe in surprising ways, ways she’d have to think about later.
For now, she was a mite busy preparing for an amputation. Sweat dripped down her forehead and neck, pooling against her damned collar.
“Lose your tongue, and gain your freedom,” Ember sneered.
Thronos bellowed at that, his wings flaring inside his cage. As if he cared about Lanthe. He acted this way because of uncontrollable instincts—despite hating everything about her.
Was Thronos that much different from Felix? Two males wanted something from her; yet neither cared about her. They only saw what she could give them, how they could use her.
“Be quick about it,” Felix said, earning a scathing look from Lanthe. “The sooner Mel’s tongue goes, the sooner it regenerates.” Flashing white teeth, he quipped, “I know just how she’s going to want to break in her new one.”
Lanthe shuddered. He could make her believe she loved every minute of her violation.
“Open wide!” Ember cried. “Don’t worry—the blade’s not quite hot enough to cauterize.”
Lanthe swallowed again. All the Pravus allies closed in on the scene, the promise of gore exciting them. Seeing them like this, she could almost understand why one species would feel the need to police them.
Unless someone swoops in to save the day, I’m about to lose my tongue. Though it’d grow back, tongues were supersensitive; mother of gold, this was going to hurt.
A toll I’ll pay to get free.
She glanced over at Thronos. He was thrashing against the immovable stone. When she stuck out her tongue and Ember pinched the tip with her gauntlet claws, he grew crazed, ramming his horns into the rock until blood dripped down his face.
She tensed, readying for the pain.
Felix murmured, “Be over in a minute, Mel.” Soothing words, even as he avidly watched—
Slice.
She screamed, blood spewing. Cheers and laughter broke out.
Agony assailed her; black dots swarmed her vision as she choked on blood. When her legs grew weak, Ember held her up by the collar. With her other hand, she raised Lanthe’s severed tongue for all to see. Then she tossed it into the crowd.
Stay conscious, stay conscious.
Portia ran Fegley’s hand over Lanthe’s face before she used the thumb to remove the torque.
Freed, Lanthe dropped to her knees, digging into the ground. She spat up mouthful after mouthful of blood, crimson streams splattering over her gauntleted hands.
Colorful enough, you bitches?!
“The threshold, Lanthe,” Portia said in a casual tone. “Directly to the centauri capital, if you please.”
Lanthe gave them a shaky nod, as if she was about to get right on this. She began manifesting her sorcery, and the pleasure of it counteracted her pain. After her enforced hiatus, she was brimming with power!
When she caught Thronos’s gaze once more, she smirked around pouring blood. Like him, these Sorceri continued to underestimate her.
She had a secret ability, one she’d been sure not to reveal in their cell. Because at heart, she was a sneaky, suspicious sorceress.
Even her new friend Carrow hadn’t known Lanthe could communicate telepathically, a power stolen more than a century ago.
Lanthe’s persuasive commands didn’t have to be uttered by her; they merely had to be heard by her victims.
She raised her bloody gauntlets, iridescent blue light and heat blurring the air all around her. They’d think it was for the portal.
Wrong.
She would utilize the command that came in so handy whenever Auntie Lanthe babysat Cadeon and Holly’s twins. She mentally ordered: —Pravus, SLEEP.— She watched as their legs grew unsteady, lids heavy, expressions baffled. —SLEEP. And forget I was ever here.— Bodies collapsed one by one. Portia and her platform of pebbles dropped to the ground, motionless.
Ember yelled, “Portia!”
—You are exhausted, must sleep NOW.—
Ember fell unconscious beside her lover’s slumbering form.
All the Pravus were out.
The sorcery expenditure and continued blood loss had debilitated Lanthe, but she was in no way safe. Because for some inexplicable reason, she’d excluded Thronos from her commands.
Without Portia’s force against the stone cage, he was able to lift the top slab. His scars and limp had always made Lanthe discount his strength. When he tossed the slab away like a piece of tile, she promised herself she never would again.
If he captured her once more, she’d be right back where she started from, minus a tongue. Just because she hadn’t necessarily wanted him to be a Sorceri plaything didn’t mean she wanted to be his!
So dizzy. Need a portal. She could crawl through it—away from him, from this treacherous island. She had a moment’s worry for Carrow and Ruby, but they had been in the care of that lethal vemon. Surely, he’d protect them.
Lanthe spat more blood. Did she have the power to open a rift? She had just used her persuasion, and so many things could go wrong with a portal opening.
The last one she’d created had been to Oblivion, one of the demon hell planes. But she’d only had to reopen a portal that was already in place.
Easy as easy pie.
Now, in her exhaustion and haste, she might point a door back there. Or what if she portaled herself to somewhere even deadlier? Like a plane with mustard gas instead of oxygen, or a completely aquatic bubble realm?
Even worse than instant death, some planes could change a person forever.
Thronos limped toward her, his gray eyes intent, his expression determined. Behind him more centaurs galloped into the clearing, taking in their fallen comrades.
Double threat—no choice but to portal! Swallowing back blood, she began to open a rift, a small scalpel cut in this reality. She tried to concentrate on her home of Rothkalina, yet fears of all that could go wrong tangled in her thoughts.
Opening, opening. With a yell, Thronos started sprinting, snagging a sword from a sleeping demon on his way.
Opening . . .
When the centaurs charged behind him, Lanthe scuttled backward toward the threshold.
As he ran, Thronos kept his gaze locked on her, even as he made a sweeping downward cut with that sword. Why would he . . . ?
The blade came back bloody; Felix’s head was rolling from his body.
Her jaw slackened, blood pouring from her mouth. The Vrekener’s crazed. She twisted over to her hands and knees, now scrambling through the portal.
Night. Fog and murk. Definitely not Rothkalina.
The overcast day of the prison island flickered into this rainy world like a flashlight’s beam. Before her eyes could adjust, she heard Thronos bellowing for her.
She commanded the portal to seal itself. Just as the seams were about to meet, he dove through them, crashing beside her.
As soon as the rift was no more, territorial growls and hisses sounded from all around them.
In the gloomy dark, Thronos grated, “Have you taken us to hell, sorceress?”
ELEVEN
Thronos struggled to get his bearings—while biting back his rage over what he’d just seen.
His female, maimed. By her own kind. He wished he’d had time to liberate all of their heads from their bodies.
Focus, Talos. He scented the air, surveying his new surroundings. They were on a small island of rock encircled by water that looked like mercury. Mist cloaked the night. Some kind of preternatural swamp?
Though he’d traveled to foreign planes in pursuit of his mate, he didn’t recognize this one. She could’ve taken them anywhere. Thronos despised her portals; every time he’d seen one in the past had meant he was about to lose her yet again.
A massive red sea serpent crested above the water to their right, a razor-sharp fin slicing through waves. “Yes. We’ve gone to hell,” he said, just as a green serpent surfaced to the left.
Melanthe would be creating another portal directly. But not to the Skye—he would never give her the directions to his hidden home, in case she somehow escaped him and decided to portal an enemy army there.
“Make another threshold back to the mortal realm,” he ordered her. “Somewhere in Europe.” He knew she couldn’t talk—blood still spilled from her lips. Yet all she had to do was nod, then get to work.
Once they were away from here, he would question her.
How did you make the Pravus sleep, and why not me? For what purpose would you ensorcel Omort? Do you grieve that sorcerer I beheaded?
“Be about it,” he snapped, unused to repeating his orders. When Thronos led troops of his knights on Pravus raids, no one dared disobey him.
She shook her head, her braids bouncing over her slim shoulders.
Denying him? He crouched in front of her, baring his fangs. “Do—it—now.”
—It’ll take me five or six days to renew my threshold ability. I’m in a lag till then.—
He jerked away, grimacing from the feel of her words laid directly into his mind. So that was how she’d commanded them to sleep! Telepathy.
Now that he thought back, he could tell she’d had to feign hesitation under the threat of that blade. She’d had a plan, and she’d been desperate to get that torque removed.
He hated telepathy—a glaring reminder of what she was. But at least she could communicate with him until she regenerated. He knew he could reply the same way, thinking his words rather than uttering them, and she could pick them up with her mind-reading ability. But he refused to allow her entry into his thoughts, had developed mental shields specifically to block her. “How many other abilities do you possess?”
—Alas, only three.— Was she lying?
“If you have power enough for telepathy, then why can’t you open a portal?”
—Just because I’ve walked for miles doesn’t mean one of my eyelids is fatigued.—
“Your powers empty and regenerate independently?”
She shrugged. —Telepathy is second nature. Cutting a rift into reality . . . not so much.—
She’d said nothing about her most devastating ability. “And your persuasion?” Could she use it only every few days as well? Once she was strong enough for a threshold, she might be able to command him. A double-edged sword. He was in the same position as those Sorceri, could trust her just as little.
The loss of her collar was a grave one.
—Persuasion is unpredictable.— In the rain, she rubbed her chin over one pale shoulder, smearing blood there. Crimson ran down her arm, dripping from her elbow into a rivulet of runoff. —It tends to come online when I’m in jeopardy, so you probably shouldn’t frighten me again.—
He shuddered to think of all the things she could persuade him to do. Could she truly make him forget her? Even as his rational mind thought, Maybe that’s exactly what should happen, his instincts rebelled.
His body rebelled. Would it remember that Thronos was never to take another?
“There must be some way for you to shave days off your . . . lag.” They couldn’t be trapped here. Something about this realm put him even more on edge. Of course he perceived danger all around, yet his main sense was of expectancy.
Because he was with her?
—I have to wait several days, for me to create myself a threshold for me to use. You’re s.o.l.—
So, unless they could find another portal or a Lorean who could teleport, they were stranded. “Where are we?”
—I don’t know.— When the rain intensified, she started shaking even harder. With the amount of blood she’d lost she must be freezing in this weather. And regeneration was punishing on the body.
The wind picked up, bringing traces of scents. His muscles tensed when he smelled lava, corpse rot, and Lorean blood. Copious amounts of it. “Of all the realms, why did you pick this accursed land?”
She slitted her eyes at him, her own blood streaming from the corner of her lips. —No one forced you to come with me! And hitchhikers don’t get to complain about the destination!—
“Answer me!”
—Sometimes I can’t control what door I open! Especially not under pressure.—
He exhaled a breath. He’d best figure out how to keep them alive in this place. He squinted through the mist, spying what might be a pair of mountains in the far distance. He thought a high plateau stretched between them.
There were two other small islands between here and that coast, but each one was miles away, too far for even an immortal to leap. Without both of his wings, he had scant hope of crossing that span.
Another serpent swam by. Were they getting more numerous? This one flicked its forked tongue in the air directly beside their island. The tongue was as long as Thronos’s leg. Rows of razor-sharp teeth glinted in the night.
When the skies opened up and rain thundered down, Melanthe shuddered beside him. The paler her skin grew, the more those bruises on her finely-boned face stood out.
Without thought, he started moving his good wing over her—but stopped himself, stifling any unwanted sympathy for her. “It seems you would want to work together with me, sorceress. You can’t fly, so how will you escape this predicament? Or were you planning to remain here with the serpents for the better part of a week?”