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“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 frohed 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!”
“No reason?” she sputtered “Do you knohat it’s like to feel panic whenever a cloud passes over the sun? To hunch down, gasping for breath, pulse racing? You and your scarred face are the star of every nightmare I’ve ever had!”
Melanthe’s eyes blazed with hostility He stared into the reflected across those blue depths
He was his
She was his bane
Melanthe isthe weird ache in his horns, preventing hiain He could barely reason, his thoughts a snarl in his mind
Control If he couldn’t maintain it, then she would wind up dead Which would end his plans for continuing his line
Without that, and without the chase, what reason would he have to live?
Lose control, lose yourher alive didn’tSo why had he experienced the impulse to shelter her with his body? He needed to reony
He’d iether In fact, he recalled every , crystal clarity Earlier, when she’d stroked his ith her eyes full of wonder, it’d brought hiht back to the first ti her botto a pulseline His wings had flared uncontrollably, e the back of his neck heat
“There,” she rin “You’re not so scary, then What’s it like to fly?”
He took her hand “I could show you”
And Thronos reht not to succu, “Don’t you understand what she’s done to you?” Hefor Melanthe “What her kind have taken froone” Then, lower: “And so too will I be”
He res had been unable to support him The hunored the whispers when his people had dubbed hiic prince,” forever cursed to desire the wicked sorceress who’d nearly murdered him
He’d told hiain