“In our wager, you were able to resist me because you wanted to get back to him.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Won’t tell me his species? Then what is he to you?”
Everything. “I’d die for him.” Her words were slurring.
Black forked out over Rune’s eyes. “You love him?”
“Whaa?” Silly question. “More than anything.”
Rune sank down on the side of the bed again. Just as abruptly, he rose. He dipped his hand into his pocket, rolling something there over and over. The trinket? “You love him so much you drank from me? Then you gave me your body for a night? How would he feel to know you can’t get enough of my forbidden blood?”
What did that have to do with anything? “You wouldn’t understand.”
As she slipped back into sleep, he muttered, “I understand the demon in me demands his due. I’m off to service a harem of nymphs.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Rune’s head pounded, his ears ringing.
Josephine had used him, sighing his name and coming on his tongue. She’d given him his first real kiss. But her reactions had been feigned so she could return to the one she loved.
Loved. She’d given her heart away. Lore females didn’t do that lightly. And I’d actually been worried about her getting attached to me?
The night she’d fouled his shot, she’d been dressed like a man-eater—because she’d known she was going to see Thad. The body Rune had lost himself in belonged to someone else.
He pinched his temples. He’d planned to go to the tree nymphs’ covey, but couldn’t quite bring himself to leave. His headache worsened, and an unfamiliar, churning aggression filled him. Damn it, that night with her had meant something to him.
Shared breaths, discovery, barriers broken. It’d been different; it’d been more. How much had been real for her?
He did the using. Artifice was his specialty. He gritted his fangs, pacing the room. He craved angry sex, a good hate fuck. He wanted to hurt Josephine. Needed to.
He could return to New Orleans and take down her male. From his ever-present quiver, Rune pulled a gray arrow. The eraser, they called it. A shot to the chest with this one, and there’d be too many pieces to find.
The demon in him whispered, Do it. Then piss on his grave marker.
The fey in him said, She’s too young to know what love is. She’s too young for you! Just think about this and calm yourself.
She might have a man, but Rune would keep her from him. He couldn’t allow a security risk like her to be freed—
One of the symbols on his arm began to glow and tingle. An alert. Someone had tripped his perimeter wards. A trespasser in my sanctuary.
He pictured Josephine—small and helpless in his bed. The demon in him commanded protect. Fangs bared, he unslung his bow, then traced to the observatory. His scowl deepened. He had a guest.
Sian was drinking from a flask, gazing down at an orgy, his customary war ax sheathed at his side.
By way of greeting, Rune said, “How did you find this place? And trace past my ward?” He shouldered his bow once more.
Sian cleared his throat. “You concealed your knowledge of this location, but when I read your mind, I uncovered enough.” The demon’s striking face was stamped with fatigue, his intense green eyes bloodshot.
How long did he have before his appearance started changing? With his twin’s death, Sian had become the King of Pandemonia and all Hells—which meant he would transform from one of the most physically faultless males in the worlds into his own most monstrous state.
Sian offered his flask. “Brew?” The favored libation of demons.
Rune found the taste harsh, but as a lad, he’d drunk it just to have more in common with demons. The habit had stuck. From his pocket, he retrieved his own flask.
He raised it and took a generous swig. “What are you doing here?” Would Sian scent Josephine on him? How would Rune explain that he smelled of only one female? “You could have contacted me.” His wrist tattoo was dark. “Now is not a good time.”
“You must have a thousand nymphs in need.”
Rune corrected him: “A thousand and one.” Soon. He’d gone two nights without release, holding vigil for a female who didn’t want him. Two nights abstaining! That was why he was conflicted. Rune wasn’t the only one. “You look like hell, demon.”
“Soon to be literally,” Sian said in a bitter tone. “I’m now the king of it and must fit the part.”
Rune had nothing but sympathy for Sian. He loathed change, had been altered so many times during his life, he refused to be ever again. “How long do you have?”
Sian didn’t respond to that, his focus on a racy scene below—a demoness with three males inside her. “Gods, I will miss the attentions of desirable females. They flock to me now. Anon, they will gaze upon me with horror.”
There was only one cure for a demon like him, and it was so implausible, Rune had little hope for his friend. “Will you resemble Goürlav?” Sian’s twin had been a giant with green skin and slitted yellow eyes, considered repulsive by most.
Curt shake of his head. “Already I sense different changes. I’ll be my own brand of monster.” He drank again. “I asked around about my brother, couldn’t understand why he would enter a contest for a kingdom. He already had the demonarchy of Pandemonia.”
The source world of all demons. “Then why’d he do it?”
“Also up for grabs was a queen, a sorceress who’d volunteered to be won.” Sian met Rune’s gaze. “Don’t you see? He craved a willing wife and could see no other way to get one.” Sian took a long swig from his flask, then stared down at it. “The spectators of that contest considered him a monster, when all he wanted was a companion. Soon, I’ll be the one who’s hideous and yearning. How amused she would be about this.”
“The fey girl? With different colored eyes.”
Sian glanced up. “We have so few mysteries among all of us.”
“Was she your mate?”
“I never attempted her, so I can’t know for certain,” he answered. “But I had a strong sense she was mine.”
“You once said she was treacherous.”
“As duplicitous as she was lovely.” Sian rubbed his head, a gesture he often did—a telling one. A full-blood hell demon like him should sport sleek black horns, but his had been shorn when he was too young to regenerate them. Even after so long, he felt their absence. Like phantom limbs.
A predatory and defensive feature, horns were also sexual organs, sensitive to the touch. Amputation would be a nightmare.
“I would give anything for vengeance.” Sian turned up his flask, draining it, then swiped his sleeve over his mouth. “Let’s think not on the past. I’ve come to call you to battle.”
Even better than a covey visit! “Against?”
“The Ice Demonarchy. They’ve been making sacrifices to old deities, attempting to wake them.”
Idiots. They had no idea what they were doing. The Møriør ran into this sometimes, were old enough to have personally encountered most of those gods before they’d slept. The ice demons played with powers more evil than the Møriør could dream of being.
Was Nïx steering that faction as part of her Vertas army? If so, she was steering them straight into an apocalypse. Yet she would blame the Møriør and Orion?
Few knew a fundamental truth about the Møriør: The Bringers of Doom didn’t cause the apocalypse; they heralded it.
Sian pocketed his empty flask and stood. “I traveled to that realm ages ago. I know our meeting place.”
“Then let’s be off.” Rune grabbed one of his brawny shoulders, and the King of Hells transported them to the frozen reaches of the ice demons, landing atop a snow-covered shelf.