30
LEASH
SAERIS
“SIRE! SIRE, COME quick. Te Léna needs your help!”
Archer’s call outside the bedroom door woke us. Fisher was on his feet and moving before I’d fully opened my eyes. He kicked his way into a pair of pants and hurtled out of the door, barefoot and shirtless. It took me ten seconds longer to dress. I followed behind, a million anxious questions streaking through my mind like meteors across the night sky.
I nearly crashed into Archer, who was still standing in the hallway outside
the room.
“Mistress! Wait, mistress! You’re—”
I ran.
What’s happened? Hayden was fine when we left him last night. Did traveling through the quicksilver do something to him?
Did his relic not work? Oh—oh, gods, did I fuck up his relic somehow?
Is he awake?
Is he sick?
Is . . .
I stumbled to a halt in the open doorway. Evening light spilled through the window of the bedroom, falling in rectangles across the rumpled duvet that was still drawn up to my brother’s chin. His head was tipped back, his mouth open, and he was snoring loudly.
Besides my brother, the room was empty.
“Mistress! Miss . . . tress!” Archer thudded into the room, fighting for breath and struggling to speak. “You went . . . the wrong . . . way. It isn’t your . . . brother. It’s . . . the master’s sister.”
Everlayne.
I took off again, sidling past the fire sprite and bolting for the stairs. I could smell him now—my mate had come this way and had left a trail of his scent thick in the air behind him. I raced down the hallway and turned right, vaulting up the stairs four at a time. There was a commotion up ahead; Everlayne’s room was fit to bursting, too many people packed inside the small space.
Te Léna. Her husband, Maynir. Danya. Fisher. Carrion—gods, everyone was here.
“Hold her still!” Te Léna cried. “She’s going to bite through her tongue!”
On the bed, Everlayne was in the grips of a seizure. Her body was bowed so badly that the only part of her touching the sweat-soaked sheets was the crown of her head and the heels of her feet. She shook, eyes rolled back into her head, jaw wrenched to one side, her fingers bent at odd angles and spasming. Fisher had his sister by the head. He was trying to work a piece of leather between her teeth. “I’m going to break her fucking jaw if I pull any harder,” he hissed.
“Everlayne? Layne, can you hear me?” Te Léna called. The healer’s eyes were wild with worry.
I took in the scene—the noise, and scents, the panic. “What the hell’s going on?”
Carrion was trying to hold Layne’s hand, but the female was thrashing so hard that maintaining his grip looked to be proving difficult. “I was up in the bedroom across the way, absolutely minding my own business, and I heard screaming. I had to kick the door down to get in. She was strangling Te Léna.”
“Who was?”
“Who do you think? Layne,” Danya barked. “It took both of us to pry her fingers from Te Léna’s throat.”
“Why were you up here?” Fisher had climbed down from the bed; he had
managed to slip the leather between his sister’s teeth and was now trying to gather her hair out of her face.
Danya didn’t look at him. “I was also minding my own business,” she snapped.
“Gods a-fucking-live.” Fisher shook his head. “Go find Lorreth, Danya. Tell him he’s needed up here.”
The warrior wiped her nose with the back of her hand, smearing blood across her cheek—she must have caught a stray fist from Layne. Her eyes flitted to Carrion and lingered there. “I’m on it.”
“Stay. . . . back!” Layne yelled. She had already spat out the leather. “Just leave me! Leave me alone!” Fear echoed off the walls. It hung thick in the air. This was nothing like what had happened when I’d been alone with Layne. It wasn’t Edina’s voice that rushed past Layne’s lips. It was Layne’s herself. “Please! Please, please nooooo!” she begged.
“What the fuck is wrong with her?” Fisher demanded, eyes sharp on Te Léna.
The healer rubbed her neck, but she was still there beside the bed, peering down at Layne, holding her other hand over the female’s chest. “I don’t know. I can feel. . . .” She shook her head. “Something. It doesn’t “What the hell does that mean?”
“Easy.” Maynir stepped forward, placing a hand on his mate’s shoulder.
“She’s doing her best. The girl nearly snapped her neck just now.” His tone was testimony to how much he cared for Te Léna. In the face of how terrifying Fisher looked right now, most males would have quailed in his presence rather than dared to reprimand him. The air thrummed with Fisher’s mounting power. He was clearly drawing his magic to him, though the act was futile; there was nowhere for him to direct it. No enemy for him to strike down.
“Noooo, no, no, no, no. Please!” Layne suddenly dropped back down onto the bed, her head bouncing off the mattress. Her eyes snapped wide open.
“Don’t! Please, don’t. Don’t . . . don’t . . .” A figure lurked in her pale green eyes
—the dark outline of a looming figure. It seemed to grow, getting closer . . .
“Please . . .” Layne sobbed. Her voice had lost all power. It was a whisper now, desperate and resigned.
Fisher was pale as a ghost. It was freezing in the bedroom despite the fire that roared on the other side of the room. The ink on Fisher’s chest writhed, scattered to jagged lines. “Is she awake?” Fisher asked. “Who is she talking to?”
Te Léna shook her head. “No. Yes, I—She isn’t here. I—I can feel her mind, as if she is awake, but her consciousness feels like it’s behind a wall or
something.”
“Can you break through it?”
“No.” Te Léna’s eyes had adopted a strange, vacant look. “It’s so thick. So
high. There’s no way to bring it down.”
“Try! Please! Just try!”
“Oh, gods, no. Stop! Plea—” Layne’s shriek cut off dead. Her back arched again, her heels hammering like pistons against the bed as she convulsed.
“Something’s hurting her!” Fisher stepped back from the bedside, dragging his hands through his hair, pulling on fists of it. His eyes found mine, and all was hopelessness and panic there. Fisher could wield a sword. Could cut down his foes. He could form shadow gates and fly to his friends’ sides when they needed him. But there was no enemy to face here. No destination he could fathom.
He could do nothing to help, and that knowledge was killing him.
I was in no better position. My throat was burning so badly that it felt scorched. I reached out with the strange magic that roiled beneath my skin and found only the quicksilver, whispering softly, calm as a slow-flowing river.
Run. Run. Run. Run . . .
Dread crept along my bones like hoarfrost. I went to Layne, placing my hand on the top of her head. Her blond hair was tangled, wet with sweat. Her breathing faltered for a second, but then resumed its rapid pace, sawing in and out of her, her shaking growing even faster.
I felt what Te Léna had felt: a dark hand hovering over my friend, pressing
her down into the wet soils of hell. And she was not alone in that place.
Layne’s eyelids flew open again, her pupils the size of pinpricks. Her tongue protruded awkwardly from her mouth, wet with saliva. Her teeth were stained red. The gate is open, a dread voice said, speaking from her mouth. It cannot be closed. The gate is open. The gate is open. The gate is— I snatched back my hand like her skin had burned me.
The voice stopped.
Layne gave a terrible shudder, her eyes rolling back into her head, and then she fell motionless, the tension fleeing her body.
The air in the room was oppressively still, thick with a horror-laden silence.
No one moved.
No one said a word.
Fisher let go of his sister’s hand. His eyes were hollow as he padded stiffly, barefoot, from the room.
“Could it be connected to the rot?” Lorreth paced up and down, the thud of his boots pounding like a second pulse in my temples. We had all migrated to the dining room, one by one, not sure where else to go. Before the fireplace, Fisher’s hands were planted high over his head against the stone lintel of the hearth, the muscles in his back bunched into knots. He was lost in the flames.
“It’s possible,” Maynir said. His hand rested on top of Te Léna’s, his fingers intertwined with hers. “I’ve never read of anything like this happening in Yvelia before. But my research has revolved mostly around court politics. My own personal interest in varying magics has given me some insight into elemental magics, shadow magics, blood magics and the like . . . but this?” He puffed out his cheeks. “This infection stems from no vein of magic that I’ve heard of before.
It is either very old or very new. Either way, we currently have no way of stopping it, and we have no clue how it might be affecting the realm. The presence of some magics have been known to cause seizures in the very young.
It could be that, as this rot approached Cahlish, it affects Everlayne somehow?”
Conjecture. That’s all this was.
Maynir was grasping at straws, but he couldn’t be faulted for it. No one else had any idea what was going on.
Lorreth scratched at his stubble. “We need to find Ren—”
“No.” Fisher took a deep breath, speaking for the first time since we’d relocated. “Not yet. He needs to warn as many of the villages and the small holdings along the coast and into the forests as he can. There’s nothing he can do for Layne here, and the people need to know what’s happening.”
Uncertainty flickered in Lorreth’s eyes, but he nodded. “You’re right.
There’s nothing he can do. So what are we going to do?”
“We’ll go back to the river and see how far the rot has spread since yesterday.” Fisher turned away from the hearth, wearing a look of weary determination. Back in Zilvaren, there had been days when the odds had felt stacked against us and then some. No water. No food. No way out of the ward for one reason or another. Every time I’d managed to solve one problem, another seemed to stand between me and a moment’s rest. I’d had no other choice but to figure out a solution to the obstacle that blocked my path in the knowledge that more would only follow after it. But the alternative would have been to give up and die, and I wasn’t the give-up-and-die type.
Neither was my mate.
He drew in a deep breath. When he exhaled, smoke rippled from his shoulders downward, leaving a full set of leathers in its wake. At his throat: a silver, shining gorget stamped with the wolf’s head of the Lupo Proelia.
Nimerelle’s hilt was visible over his shoulder, her black hilt snapping with energy and drawing in the light. A moment ago, Fisher had looked like he had come undone. The Fisher standing before me was ready to go to war.
“Saeris and I will go back to Ammontraíeth. There are more books we should retrieve from the library. Algat can complain all she wants, but we need them. Danya, you go back to the temporary rally point and check in with the
warriors there. Tell them to pack up and make ready. I’ll be coming to bring them back to Cahlish tomorrow.”
The female’s stoic expression wavered. “We’re abandoning the border?”
Fisher nodded once. “We’re abandoning it.”
“But—”
“Stop.”
Danya worked her jaw, but she held her tongue.
“The border doesn’t matter anymore. Infected feeders will cross no matter what. The land on the other side of the Darn is dead. There’s nothing there to defend. Our new line will be formed here. Lorreth, I need you to get Iseabail.
We don’t need access to the catacombs at Nevercross anymore. Not now that we have the books at the Blood Court. We do need a witch with us to help with Everlayne, though. Maybe there’s something we’re overlooking. A way Te Léna and Iseabail can help bring her out of this fugue state.”
Lorreth’s response to the command was visceral; he spun around and marched toward Fisher, mouth open and ready to start hollering, but he saw the stony look on Fisher’s face, the way the rest of us did, and he threw up his hands and turned right back around again. “You’re right,” he said. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll go. Never mind.”
Fisher’s expression softened a little. “Te Léna, you stay with Layne and Hayden. The boy will be waking soon, I’m sure, and he’s going to have questions. Answer them as best you can, and do not let him out of your sight.
He has a tendency to wander.”
I almost laughed. Fisher had spent only a few hours with my brother, but he was already speaking as if he knew him and had claimed reluctant ownership of him.
“And what about me?” Carrion asked. He was sitting in Fisher’s seat, picking at his nails. He affected an air of boredom, but he was sitting a little straighter than usual. He hadn’t even kicked his feet up onto the table. “I should stay here and make sure no birds land on the trees outside, right? Or should I melt the
snow from the front lawn instead? I’m sure there’s something sufficiently inane you can busy me with while everyone else is off doing their important tasks.”
Let him come to Ammontraíeth.
That was the thought I was going to send to Fisher . . . but I didn’t get the chance.
“Shut up, Carrion,” Fisher said. “You’re coming with us.”
The heavy door to the tomb was barred from the outside. No order had been left to lock it once we had traveled through the quicksilver back to Cahlish, which meant that the high bloods had taken matters into their own hands. They must have known that a barred door wouldn’t keep us at bay for long, but the message was clear all the same: You aren’t welcome here. We don’t want you.
The door exploded outward, reduced to splinters by the heel of Fisher’s boot. Two high bloods stood in the hallway, by the window, armed with iron rapiers. I didn’t recognize them immediately, but then I saw the ridiculously small right hand that belonged to the vampire who hovered closest and I remembered them from the Fool’s Paradise. I’d assumed Lorreth had been joking when he’d made that quip about the high blood’s hand growing back small at first, but it seemed that he had not.
Both males—Anterrin? Khol? Gods only knew why I remembered their names—dropped their rapiers and retreated across the hall until their backs hit the wall behind them. “Don’t! Wait!” Khol gasped. The bastard’s eyes flashed, his expression quickly morphing into hunger when they landed on the cargo in my arms. I always carried Onyx through the quicksilver. Even with my edicts in place, it seemed like the best policy. I didn’t like how the high bloods eyed him, as if they were dead set on finding a loophole and making a meal out of him.
Onyx rumbled in my arms, sensing danger, and bared his teeth.
“You have one second to look away from that fox,” Fisher said flatly.
Khol did exactly that, his attention snapping to my mate. Fisher had
Nimerelle in his hand, and the blade was issuing sinister black smoke. “We’re sorry, okay! We didn’t do it to keep you out. He told us to watch for Belikon’s men.” Khol closed his eyes as Fisher held the tip of the sword beneath the
vampire’s chin. “He—he—he—”
“He?” Fisher parroted.
“He told us to let you out the moment you came through! We would have!
We—”
“Go.” The word resonated in the air, a single command that threatened violence if it was not obeyed. Anterrin, who hadn’t said a word, took off first, running down the hall. His brother didn’t waste time chasing after him.
Carrion squinted at Fisher, hand in the air. “Is it weird, knowing that people’s balls retract up into their bodies whenever you’re around?” He made a cupping motion of something being sucked upward.
Fisher crooked an eyebrow at him, but only for a moment. He sheathed Nimerelle, turning to me as he did so. “I’m going to find Foley. I’ll take Onyx back to your chambers first, though. Perhaps you should go check in with the male who posted those idiots outside the tomb. See what he has to report?”
“Sounds like a good idea.” I surrendered Onyx reluctantly, kissing the fox on his head before handing him off to my mate.
“Don’t worry. I’ll keep this one safe,” Carrion said, giving my mate a wink.
The comment was probably supposed to rankle Fisher, but the dig only earned him an amused snort.
“Please. Saeris could have half of the Blood Court in their eternal graves before you even drew your blade. Even the fox would stand a better chance of seeing off a threat.” Something seemed to occur to him out of nowhere. “Wait.
Speaking of your blade, where is Simon, by the way?”
Over the years, I’d seen Carrion successfully hide an array of emotions. He was too slow to hide the color that leaped to his cheeks today. “Don’t you concern yourself with Simon,” he said. “I know exactly where my god sword is, thank you very much.”
Ammontraíeth was a hive of activity as we moved through its halls. High bloods hurried about, carrying stunning bolts of damask, stacks of gold-leafed plates, and all manner of serving tureens. They smelled Carrion before they saw me. A few of them hissed at the scent of fresh, living blood in such close proximity, but the moment they saw Carrion’s auburn hair, they drew back, my edict hobbling their hunger. When they saw me, they sank down in supplication, bowing their heads, only rising after I’d passed and was out of view. Carrion watched them drop to their knees, shaking his head. “You’ve spent your whole life hiding, hoping no one recognizes you, and now whenever anyone sees you, they kneel. You must be fucking hating this.”
My hard-edged laughter echoed around the corridor as we walked. “Oh no. I don’t hate it, Carrion. I loathe it.”
“Then why make them do it? You didn’t need to make that demand when you passed those edicts.”
I had a feeling that he already knew the answer to that question. He wanted to hear me say it out loud, maybe. To remind myself of the necessity. “They have to fear me. Or at least be reminded that I have power over them.”
“I wonder if they have any idea how close they came to being wiped out?”
Swift said a little too loudly, as a female in a purple gossamer gown scowled up at us. “You could have ended their lives with a simple command once that crown was placed on your head.”
Indeed, that avenue had been discussed at length before my coronation.
Lorreth had voted for Ammontraíeth to be destroyed. Renfis had too, casting his vote from Irrín. Danya had voted for public dismemberment and the kind of torture that smacked of revenge, not justice. Only I had begged for the opportunity to see if the members of the Blood Court could be redeemed. Fisher had hesitantly agreed to wait and see how things turned out, aaaand yeah. So far, things weren’t looking too great.
“We’re going to see Tal, then?” Carrion said, abruptly changing the subject.
He spun around, walking backward to keep pace as he returned the beautiful
female high blood’s scowl.
“Yes. We’re going to see Tal,” I confirmed.
“How the hell are we supposed to find him in this hellscape of a palace?”
I cleared my throat, not meeting his gaze. “I know exactly where he is.”
Carrion’s eyes burned into my cheek, but still, I refused to look at him. “And how do you know that exactly?”
“Because he’s my sire. I can sense him, the way he can sense me. I always know where he is. Come on, keep up.”
“Wow. That must get confusing when the three of you are all in the same place. Half of you is on alert, sensing Tal, and the other half is being drawn toward Fisher.”
“My connection with Fisher doesn’t work like that.”
“What?” Carrion came to a theatrical dead stop. “You can sense Tal, but you
can’t sense Fisher?”
I kept walking.
“Hey! Hey, wait!” He ran to catch up. “Sorry if I’m a little confused, but aren’t you two supposed to share a love that puts all other love to shame?”
I took a left and jogged down a set of stairs. “I do have a connection with Fisher, yes. And yes, I can sense where he is. It . . . just isn’t the same. The connection I share with him feels like a deep well. Calm and peaceful.”
“And what does the connection with Tal feel like?”
I gritted my teeth, reaching the bottom of the stairs. I turned right. “A leash.”
I’d never been to Tal’s rooms before. There had never been any need for me to go there. As Carrion and I drew up outside the arched doorway with the golden scrolled door handles, I was struck with a wave of déjà vu. I knew the shape of the doorknob in my hand. I knew that the door would squeak a little as I pushed it open. I knew what the air would smell like when I entered the
chambers beyond.
Borrowed memories.
Echoes in the blood.
I knew these things because they were so familiar to Tal, and I was a product of his line. I raised my hand to knock on the door and hesitated. A strange sensation tickled at the back of my mind. There were people with Tal on the other side of this door. Lots of people. There was a tension in the rooms beyond that made the air bristle with electricity.
An argument, maybe? But who would he be arguing with?
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
I wheeled around, fist still poised to knock. Zovena strolled along the hallway toward us, her bright blond hair scraped back into a severe braid that looked so tight it must have been giving her a headache. The rope of hair fell over her shoulder and dangled almost to her waist. Her black, high-collared dress clung to her curves, accentuating her hips and cleavage, which was almost spilling over the lace cups. I hadn’t seen her since the coronation; I could have lived with never seeing her again and been perfectly happy, but no.
Ammontraíeth was vast—a person could get lost in the windowless, dark corridors of this place—but it was still just one building. It had only been a matter of time before I crossed paths with her again.
She smiled smugly as she knelt and sat back on her heels, making herself comfortable.
I lowered my hand, looking down at the female, crossing my arms over my chest. I didn’t know precisely what had gone on between her and Tal, but I knew enough. She was the reason he had come here and given himself over to Malcolm. He had loved her, and she had abandoned him somehow. Now it seemed as though she wanted nothing more than to see the Keeper of Secrets dead and buried in the ground.
“Your Majesty.” The greeting was sweet as rotten fruit. When she spoke, a gust of something sensual and exotic rose from her and hit the back of my nose.
The scent was intoxicating. It made my head spin a little.
“I have a bone to pick with you,” I said.
“Me?” Zovena laughed prettily, tossing her braid back over her shoulder.
“What have I done to offend the queen of the Blood Court? Tell me, and I’ll be sure to make reparations immediately.” I’d met women like her back in Zilvaren. Women who would have traded their own family members to the guardians in exchange for the smallest of luxuries. The kind of woman who would sell her soul to the devil if it guaranteed her power, temporary or otherwise. Zovena was far more dangerous than those women had been, though. She was Fae turned vampire. If she played her cards right, she’d live to see this empire crumble to dust—and a part of me knew she would have
something to do with its fall.
“You’re a Lord of Midnight,” I said.
Malice shone from her eyes. “Oh! My, my. I really thought you’d forgotten that.” The sound of her laughter made my skin crawl. “I am a Lord of Midnight, yes. My beloved maker bestowed the title upon me seven hundred and eighty- three years ago. May I rise?”
“Your beloved maker.” I nodded, huffing down my nose. “Malcolm?”
The metallic tang of anger marred the air, and yet Zovena’s face showed nothing of it. “You would have crawled to speak his name in another life, King Killer,” she said.
Oh ho ho, boy. She wanted to play. “I suppose I have you to thank for that honorific, Zovena. Is the name supposed to upset me? Because, personally, I’m rather proud of that accomplishment. Tell me,” I said, before she could reply.
“In Ammontraíeth, is it considered incest if you sleep with your maker? ’Cause it sounds to me like someone was fucking Daddy.”
“Bitch!” Zovena’s serene façade disintegrated, revealing the depths of her hatred at last. Her features warped, her mouth suddenly too large, pulling up at the corners. She lunged, but her body immediately recoiled, held in place by the fact that she was prohibited from hurting me and I hadn’t given her leave to stand.
Carrion grabbed hold of the doorframe, clutching hold of it as he pretended to stagger sideways. “Gods and martyrs! What’s wrong with your face?”
Zovena hissed like a hellcat. “Be mindful of that tongue, sheascah. I’m no fool. I know who you are. There are those who would pay handsomely for delivery of your head on a pike.”
I stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the smuggler. “You won’t touch him. You won’t look sideways at him again. You won’t tell anyone anything about Carrion, do you understand me? You’ll rip your own tongue out trying.”
The Lord flinched under the weight of the command. She saw me as a little girl, wandering blind and scared in a dark forest. She had forgotten who she was talking to—impressive, given she was the one on her knees.
“Say it. Tell me that you understand.” I could have spoken with anger or a hatred that would easily have matched hers, but I served the order up in a bland, disinterested tone instead.
“I . . . understand.” Zovena tried to trap the words behind her teeth, but even she had to obey a direct command from the queen. “Anterrian goaneth tiel ran lir—”
“Stop.” The air vibrated, and Zovena rocked back as if I’d struck her across the face. I tilted my head to one side, frowning down at her. “You are the
Keeper of Missives, are you not?”
“Yes.”
“What exactly does the Keeper of Missives do? Tell me.”
“It’s an important role,” Zovena blurted out. “The Keeper of Missives is in charge of all communication in and out of Ammontraíeth. Battle orders, news, secrets. All must go through me.”
“Sounds like a glorified message runner. We have those back in Zilvaren, y’know. But the job is considered pretty lowly there.”
The female had almost regained her composure; her facial features had returned to normal, but her eyes flashed like knives at this. “May . . . I . . . rise?”
she gritted out.
“No.”
“You have no idea how difficult it is to deliver messages to the spies we have
sequestered abroad—”
“How hard is it to deliver a letter to a high blood, right here in this court?”
She blinked, taken aback. “A letter? Here?”
“Mm-hmm. A piece of paper, in an envelope. Sealed, I assume.” I looked at Carrion. “Letters are usually sealed, aren’t they?”
“Usually,” he agreed.
I faced the female again. “A letter like that would be relatively easy to deliver here, in the palace, no?”
“Obviously. Of course.” She considered this line of questioning not worthy of her time, it seemed.
“So, explain something to me, then. My mate and my friends have written a number of letters to someone here at the Blood Court over the years. Did those letters not reach Ammontraíeth?”
Zovena bared her fangs, brow creasing with unnaturally deep furrows.
“That male is not a member of this court. He is shunned. The shunned do not receive missives. And the enemies of my home do not get to address their allies
here!”
“So they did arrive.”
Zovena said nothing.
“I could make you tell me.”
“Yes, they arrived. But—”
“Do you still have them in your lair, wherever that might be?” It wasn’t wise to provoke her. I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that this dynamic would exist between us for long. The high bloods of Sanasroth would find a way to oust me sooner or later, and then I wouldn’t be able to bend Zovena to my will with words alone. It would take violence, but I was okay with that. If it was violence these monsters understood, then I would give it to them. I could be violent if I had to be. I could be cruel.
I let Zovena see the promise of that when she met my steady gaze. “Yes,” she said tartly. “I do still have them.”
“Then you’ll give them to their intended recipient. Today.”
The female set her jaw. “He can come down to my chambers and fetch them like the dog that he—”
“You will deliver them to the library. Personally.” I spoke slowly, enunciating every single word. “Or I will come and find you. And when I’m done with you, there will be nothing left of you but your fucking teeth. Are we clear?”
She looked like she wanted to spit in my face; it was killing her not to. “As a winter’s morn,” she said.
My desires back in the Third had never been grand or grasping. Clean water. A decent meal. Clothes that wouldn’t fall apart on me. I hadn’t dreamed of much. I certainly hadn’t dreamed of power. I wasn’t enjoying any of this, but it had to be done. It was as I’d told Carrion just now: Zovena needed to know that, no matter how badly she wished otherwise, I was her better and I was not to be fucked with. I was about to dismiss her from my presence like a scolded child when the door to Tal’s chambers swung open, and my maker appeared in the open doorway.
He was naked and spattered with blood . . . and his cock jutted outrageously hard from between his thighs. “If you’re not coming in to join the fun, then please move this along. You’re making me look like a bad host.”