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No She didn’t She rarely encountered anyone besides her family If Sabine complimented her, she’d remark on Lanthe’s ability, not her looks And sometimes her parents didn’t seem to see her at all—

The boy started striding toward her

“Wait, hat are you doing?” She tripped back until she met a tree

“Just ” He leaned his face in close to her hair, and then hehe scented her! When he drew back, he wore a cocky grin, as if he’d just won a prize or discovered a new realm

For sorin made her feel as if she’d run all the way up the mountain Her heart pounded, and she couldn’t seem to catch her breath

“You snificant—a weighty and undeniable truth

“What does that mean?” Gods, this boy confused her

“To me, you smell like no one else in the world ever has, or ever will” His gray irises glowed silver with emotion A breeze ruffled his sandy brown hair “It row up, we’ll bemore”

She focused on the words best friends, and ached with yearning She’d alanted a friend! She loved Sabine, but her sister elve and usually had grown-up stuff on herwinter, or enough food to feed four

Lanthe supposed sos—since their parents were always preoccupied When Lanthe had been a baby, she’d called for Ai-bee over their own mother

But Lanthe could never be best friends with a Vrekener, despite how intriguing she found hio, Thronos Talos,” she said, just as her sto his amusement

“You reat and terrible sorceress, but you can’t eat sorcery, can you?” He spread those spellbinding wings “Will you stay here if I go find food for you?”

“Why would you do that?”

His shoulders went back, his silvery eyes alight—as if with pride “That’s my job now, lamb”

She sighed “I don’t understand We’re enemies We’re not supposed to be like”—she waved from herself to him—“this”

He winked at her “I won’t tell if you don’t”

Four months later

Thronostold

And then Lanthe made him pay for it

“Sorceri are licentious, ga and carousing is ht in thievery For Sorceri powers to go unchecked would be disastrous”

—THRONOS TALOS, KNIGHT OF RECKONING, HEIR TO THE SKYE

“Meaningless sex is like eating the worm at the botto you’d want to repeat over and over”

—MELANTHE OF THE DEIE SORCERI, QUEEN OF PERSUASION

ONE

An island, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean

MODERN TIMES

As Lanthe sprinted down a shaking, smoky tunnel, she focused on her friends ahead: Carroitch, and Carrow’s newly adopted daughter, Ruby The witch was holding the seven-year-old girl in her arodsforsaken maze

Lanthe followed, gripping her sith a gauntleted hand, herinto the handle She tried to s back at her

Carrow—or Crow, as Ruby called her—and Lanthe had attempted to turn their dire escape into a fun-filled adventure for her Snarky and adorable Ruby clearly wasn’t sold

Charging into the tunnels had seeood idea at the time, a way out of the Order prison they’d all been jailed in—and an escape froht’s cataclys for prey Carrow’s estranged husband, who ht not be evil, hunted for her

Another quake rocked the tunnel, grit raining down over Lanthe’s black braids Unfortunately, Lanthe had her own stalker—Thronos, a crazed, winged warlord who’d been obsessed with capturing her for the last five hundred years

But Vrekeners feared enclosed spaces; anything underground was a forbidding landscape,tunnel He’d never follow her into this subterranean maze

Explosions sounded somewhere in the distance, and the tunnel ruazed up, saw the i supports bowed fro from the earth all over this prison island, courtesy of Lanthe’s fellow Sorceri

A boulder dropped in her path, slowing her progress Rock dust wafted over her like a grainy curtain, spattering her face and Sorceri rew indistinct in the haze The two turned a corner, out of sight

As Lanthe increased her speed, she gave a frustrated yank on her torque, a treat from the humans for all their immortal captives The indestructible collar prevented theth, endurance, and healing

Some of the prisoners—all of the ht Lanthe still wore one, which wasn’t fair, since feould consider her “good”

Without that torque, she would have been able to cos to protect her and her friends She would have been able to read an opponent’s mind, run with supernatural speed, or create a portal to step through—away frohtmare forever

Away from Thronos

Lanthe hiked up herfor one’s life Nor were her h stiletto boots Still she sped forward, wishing her thoughts would stop returning to her age-old foe

During their captivity, she’d had the shock of her life when guards had dragged Thronos by their cell He’d let himself be seized by the Order and taken to her prison—Lanthe knew it With rated to her, “Soon”

When Carrow had asked about that, Lanthe had been sparing of the details: “Would you believe that Thronos and I were childhood friends?”

Later, Carrow had pressed, so Lanthe had admitted, “He’s broken because of ht And not to use his wings” Most of his skin had been slashed and scarred, the bones of his wings and limbs fractured—before his ienerate

What more could Lanthe say? How to explain the bond she and Thronos had shared? Until he’d betrayed her fragile trust

Well, Carrow, Thronos led his clan to ht His father killed ht off with a Vrekener fire scythe My fierce sister Sabine retaliated, taking the father’s life When she was nearly ave Thronos wounds that would last an eternal lifetime, then left him to die