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"I could have killed you so easily, so many ti the threat hang between thehts to do it!"
"These lies again?"
Did Lanthe ever lie? Of course In the noble pursuit of gold, she pulled out all the stops She also lied to avoid trouble Those outside her new fas irritated herthe truth
"You foul Sorceri pride yourselves on falsehoods!"
Foul SorceriSomeone like you "I’m so sick of you! You’d think after five hundred years that you could take a hint I will never want you like you want me!"
"WANT?" His claw-tipped hand slashed the tree, his fury bubbling over--as if she’d hit an exposed nerve "Do not ever mistakein all ways!" His voice continued rising with every word "Instinct compels me to pursue you, to protect you Otherwise I’d take your head myself! I want you like a man with a badly set limb wants his bone rebroken It’s a bitter necessity You are the bitterest necessity"
His words didn’t hurt Lanthe She’d been scorned by men before Why would she care what a scarred, ht of her?
She didn’t care at all He mattered not at all
When she just blinked up at him, he seemed to rein in his fury "What either of us wants is immaterial I’ve taken you because that’s what fate decreed You’re mine by the laws of the Lore, the laws I uphold"
"And you always follow the laws? You act like Vrekeners are so righteous? I’ve seen more evil in your kind than in most Sorceri I’ve met"
"Now I know you lie! You resided with Oood, or ultimate evil, was born Lanthe’s half brother had been that warrior a few Accessions ago, bringing evil to the Lore for centuries After her iven birth to him, she’d been cast out in shame by the noble family of Deie Sorceri By the time Lanthe and Sabine’s father had come into the picture, Elisabet had beentroubled
This Accession, twin girls had been born for ultihters of Rydstrom’s brother, Cadeon, and Cadeon’s Valkyrie wife, Holly Lanthe was a doting auntie to the his reign of child sacrifices, orgies, and incest"
O concubine of his half sister Hettiah, who’d died the san, when O!"
Until that one fantastical day when Lanthe had challenged Omort, she’d been helpless to stop his she’d seen hiees"
"Then what evils do you think Vrekeners have perpetrated to measure up to that fiend’s?"
"Torture, murder, thievery Even you know your kind steals Sorceri powers" The fire scythe his father had wielded wasn’t good only for parent beheadings; it also drained powers fro
It was ruhts to siphon sorcery, instead of taking lives Yet in the last century, the knights had begun doing both--so that those abilities could never be reincarnated
"We harvest and store the used for evil"
"To us, a root power is like a soul You’re stealing souls!"
"Sorceri steal each other’s powers, like cannibals feeding! How uilty as charged She’d had no choice, since hers kept getting poached by s Sorceri males How many times had she fallen for one’s seduction, only to discover he’d used sex to lower her guard?
But she never stole from decent-minded Sorceri, the ones who only wanted to be left alone to drink, fornicate, gaold they’d swindled, swiped, or conjured
"Yet you had to steal, didn’t you?" Thronos bit out Fat drops of rain pus "Since yours were continually robbed?"
She hadn’t known he are of that No one would want her worst eneht by theway "Were you away fro another power?"
"I don’t think you really want to know the answer to that question"
"Tell me, or I’ll toss you down the e over her throat, his expression pro pain
He was a monster, a world away from the boy he’d been when he fed her and held her--and she’d sighed words she could never take back
Oh, well, he’d asked for it "I was seeking soer with o without sex for a year I was on the hunt for a new lover when I got nabbed"
He gave a curt yell, lifting her by her jaw She dug her gauntlets into his forear?"
In the bobbing tree, he held her body aloft, so her gaze was level with his
Mother of gold, he was going to toss her! She couldn’t stifle a whimper of fear
His head rushed toward her body She braced for a vicious strike of his horns Instead of hitting her, he rubbed the base of one over her shoulder and neck,so, he could pry her out of some faceless male’s arms
The behavior was blatantly deleae "You crippled ain The pain you gave h for you? You wish to deliver ht now? Desperately! She wanted to claw his eyes out, to rake her gauntlets down his scarred face! "Because you deserve it!"
He flung her back down to the liht, Melanthe!"
As she scrambled toward the trunk, he ripped open the front of his shirt, revealing scars she hadn’t seen before, id torso He pounded a fist over the center of his chest, over the raised scar there "Does this one look like it was deep? Half an inch closer, and it would have pierced ainst tears that seemed determined to fall But not out of pity, out of impotent fury
"Every second I fly is hellish! Because of you!"
"I’d do it all over again!"
He threw back his head and gave a roar up to the lightning-strewn sky When he leveled his gaze on her, she shrank under the savagery she saw there "Gods damn you, sorceress! You have no reason to hate me as I do you!"