She sidestepped, dodging that first arrow-shaped boulder, the charred one from before.
“Don’t head for the tree!” She was heading for the tree! “There’s a pit between the roots!”
Still not hearing him, she skipped over the roots. Then . . . too late. Her upper body jolted forward before she righted her balance.
She murmured, “Thronos?” Even from this distance, he could hear her distinctly, felt the timbre of pure fear in her voice.
Their eyes didn’t meet this time; he was too busy hacking at his legs. Break the bones in one go or she dies. “Just hold on! I’m coming for you!”
Every muscle in his body strained. He could already hear the gravestone’s descent.
Thrashing, kicking, sweat burning his eyes. The gravestone snapped the limb high atop the tree.
Thronos’s bone cracked—earlier than before! I can do this, I can reach her! With one leg freed, he dared a look. “I’m coming!” The next limb down was bowing.
She knew a boulder that big would kill her. She struggled wildly.
“Just hold on!” He bit back yells as he cut, hacking through the bloody calf muscle of his other leg. Taking too much time, too much!
The boulder plummeted like a juggernaut, crushing one limb after another until it caught on the one directly over Lanthe, not twenty feet above her head.
A final defense.
“Thronos?” She’d gone still, as if she feared making too much movement.
“I’m not letting you go! I’m coming for you! We’re not done, Melanthe.”
“I wish things had been different,” she said, voice thick with tears.
“They will be! Fight, Lanthe!”
Their eyes met again. “Tell my sister I love her.” Chin raised, Lanthe gave him a salute.
Second leg free! The tree limb was about to go. He took to the air, diving for her; she kept her gaze on him, as if for courage.
Craaaack. The boulder crashed down. He collided with it. An instant too late.
“NOOOOOOO!”
He dug his claws into the stone; using his wings for propulsion, he shoved with all the strength he had left. Ruined my second chance!
He directed his five hundred years of hate—at himself. I am the enemy. He’d had three fleeting nights with his mate, and he’d taken every opportunity to frighten her, to shame her, to hurt her. As if hundreds of years fleeing his kind hadn’t been enough pain.
I squandered what I was given, never comprehending the treasure.
She’s dead.
Another shove. Another. And another. And another. He gave an agonized roar, clawing at the stone in a frenzy. As he rammed his horns into it, madness threatened, his thoughts taking flight in odd directions. He recalled the end of that encounter he’d had with her mother. . . .
“Melanthe will never be what you need her to be. You can’t break my daughter, and that’s the only way she’d love you.”
Thronos sputtered, “I-I don’t want to break her!” Melanthe was perfect as she was!
“Then you’ll have to break yourself, hawkling.”
Perfect, if only? Melanthe would be perfect.
If only she were alive.
As blood poured into his eyes, he closed them. Please, gods, give me just one more chance.
“Something’s behind me, isn’t it?”
Thronos’s eyes shot open. Melanthe was before him, heartbreakingly beautiful, not a mark upon her. The sun was starting to rise, purple clouds in the background like a halo over her black hair.
The hound’s howl marked the beginning.
Hell conspired.
Minutes later, the boulder was poised to fall above Lanthe.
Thronos was missing a wing and a leg. Slashes and puncture wounds covered him. The reptilian predators in the brush that had snatched the first hellhound had come for him this time.
Shouldn’t have ignored that direction. Won’t next time.
What if he didn’t get a next time? What if three was the limit?
He prayed to any gods listening: I will do this until I get it right. I will do this for eternity if I have to, but I will save her. . . .
THIRTY-THREE
Lanthe toed Thronos’s convulsing body, then hopped back. Her gaze darted from one marble marker to the other, looking for the threat.
One minute, she and Thronos had been arguing. The next, his eyes had rolled back in his head and he’d dropped like a rock. He was now unconscious, seizing on the ground as if afflicted by a supernatural malady.
What zone had he crossed into? The nightmare sector? The noxious-air belt? The markers were inscribed with those weird glyphs, and her translator was currently writhing, out cold on the path.
Lowering clouds closed in, darkening the morning. A soft rain began to fall; lightning streaking above. What to do? Despite his dickitry, she couldn’t just leave him like this.
It was almost as if she felt the same kind of loyalty to Thronos that she did to Sabine. But Sabine had never hurt her the way Thronos continued to do.
Even so, Lanthe would drag him out of the zone. All seven feet of him.
“Thronos, you are such a pain in my ass,” she snapped at his unconscious form. “Here I am—saving yours yet again! I want this noted.”
Careful not to cross the markers herself, she reached for his feet, lugging him toward her. The instant she’d pulled his head out of the zone, his eyes shot open, locking on her. “Melanthe?”
She dropped his feet; he scrambled to stand. With his irises fully silver, he jerked his gaze around, as if danger was on the horizon. He scented the air.
Under his breath, he grated, “Not real?” The crazed look on his face had her backing away from him.
Then he turned to her. “Not real.” He eased closer.
“Um, what’s happening, Thronos?”
“You’re here.” In the light rain, he reached for her, cupping her face with hands that shook. His thumbs brushed along her cheekbones. His brows were drawn together, lips thinned.
She’d seen this yearning expression before—after that three-day absence when she’d called him a demon. So long ago, when he’d finally returned to their meadow, his eyes had told her, I’ve been pretty much lost without you.
“I want your future, Melanthe,” he rasped now. “I don’t care about the past. We’ll work out the f**king details.”
Where was this coming from? Why had he changed—
His lips descended on hers. As in her dream, his pained groan rumbled against her mouth. He sounded like he’d die if she didn’t return his kiss.
A claiming kiss. A no-going-back kiss.
Despite her issues with him, she found herself parting her lips beneath his. He groaned again, as if she’d conceded far more than a kiss. When his tongue dipped, her eyes slid shut in bliss.
His lips slowly slanted, his tongue sensuously tangling with hers. For someone with so little practice, he was turning into a devastating kisser. Her hands twined around his neck, her toes curling as they began sharing breaths.
When he drew back, he left her dazed, blinking up at him. “Thronos, I think that’s the best conversation we’ve ever had.”
He didn’t release Melanthe, just kept his quaking hands on her cheeks.
She was brimming with vitality, sorcery, life. He savored the beating of her heart, the coursing of her lifeblood.
Each wondrous breath she took.
Though she’d initially looked stunned—and pleased—her brows were drawing together. “What’s going on with you?” She dropped her hands, ducking from his grip. “You have a seizure, and now you’re thinking clearly? You’ve suddenly realized how stupid it is to obsess about my past?”
“I almost lost you.” He bit out the words, unable to process what had just happened—what he’d seen and felt.
“What are you talking about?”
“You . . . you dragged me out of it.” He opened and closed his fists, needing his hands on her. “Delivered me from it.”
“From what?”
“Hell. I was in my personal version of hell.”
“Hell changed your mind about my past?”
He nodded. “You talked about traps when we first arrived, about repeated labors. I believe I was in a loop of some kind. In each repetition, no matter what I did, I couldn’t save you. You . . . died. You were crushed by stone.”
She arched her brows. “Typical. The harlot got stoned to death.”
His voice hoarse, he said, “Don’t talk like that. Please.” He took her hand in his, never wanting to let it go.
She gazed up at him as if she was measuring the emotions in him—the ones he didn’t bother to hide. How asinine he’d been! He wanted to make a life with her, a marriage and family. To have all those things, he need only look to their future. It was there—for the taking!
She was.
Unless he’d already ruined things beyond repair.
“What do the markers say?” she asked.
“Pain confesses all. And Time cares naught.” He now comprehended that what he’d just gone through wasn’t real.
But the lesson had been.
“What does it mean?”
“Time cared naught when it allowed itself to repeat.” With his free hand, he tucked a lock of raven hair behind her ear. “And pain clarified my thoughts about us.”
“That sounds . . . intense.”
You have no idea. “We need to move away from the edge of this zone. If we’d both crossed into it, we could’ve been there for eternity. And I’d rather spend forever with the pest that is.” He brushed the backs of his fingers along her delicate jawline, vowing to all the Lore, to all the gods, that he would protect this woman for eternity.
“You haven’t stopped touching me, Thronos.”
“You’ll have to grow accustomed to that—”
A demon war bugle sounded from not far in the distance.
She gazed over her shoulder. “They wouldn’t be signaling a charge during the day . . .”
“Unless they’re coming for those keys. Let’s put some distance between us and them.”
“Where? We can’t go back. And we don’t know which way this zone’s edge extends.”
He craned his head up to the sky, biting out a curse. “We can’t go up.”
Outlined by bursts of lightning, a pack of Volar demons hovered above. An advance contingent? Their position pinned Thronos and Lanthe against the hell zone.
Their backs were against an invisible wall.
THIRTY-FOUR
If I take you into the air, they’ll rip you from me,” Thronos grated as the ground began to vibrate beneath their feet.
“More are coming!” Lanthe cried. Just beyond the brush, demon foot soldiers were charging toward them.
“I’ll have to fight them here.”
She’d seen him victorious against a number of ghouls, but demons were cunning.
With reluctance, Thronos released her hand, bringing his wings in tight to strike. “Stay behind me—right at the edge of those markers. The demons won’t go near them.”
She edged back.
“But don’t cross the line, Lanthe—”
The first wave broke from the brush. So many of them!
In a blur, swords arced out, whistling all around Thronos. He struck with both wings. Heads rolled across the ground like horned bowling balls. Jugular blood painted the silver grass red.
More demons advanced. More died. When Thronos’s wings whipped like sails, billowing the air, a fine mist of crimson sprayed over her face.
Any demon who attacked paid with his life. Thronos decapitated with a ruthless efficiency.
But they kept coming. Even the demons at the back started firing on Thronos, lobbing a hail of spears and daggers, fire and ice grenades.
He had to use one wing as a constant shield against the sky as more warriors closed in, swarming like ants from a kicked mound. He deflected the volleys, but he was getting slower, expending so much strength. He couldn’t stall them for much longer.
Only a matter of time.
Then he would die, and she’d be captured. Unless she did something. When in trouble . . . Portal!
She had some power, but was it enough to create a gateway to a different world, under pressure, just two days after her last one?
It’ll never happen.
Still, she raised her hand, dispelling sorcery right at the edge of the hell zone. As she labored to split the seam of this reality, Thronos must have felt the energy; he turned to her with his blood-wetted wings splayed, a warning in his eyes: Do not run from me.
She gasped. In the lightning flashes, he looked like a . . . legend.
Like an avenging angel.
From hell.
Every inch of his skin was coated with others’ blood, his own as well. Gashes sliced his flesh, bisecting ancient scars. Stark against the crimson, his eyes were fully onyx—and locked on Lanthe as he began fighting his way toward her.
A rift was opening, drawing her attention from him! Come on, portal! Come on! Almost big enough for her to step through. Rothkalina, Rothkalina, Rothkalina, she repeated like a mantra.