Page 36 (1/2)

Her skirt had only a few leather strands left For Thronos’s sake, she shifted the garave her an ass-less skirt

He flicked his gaze over her torso “You’re burned worse than I thought You need to rest and regenerate”

“Where? We have no idea what dangers surround us”

“Then we need to get to higher ground whileheals” He surveyed the horizon

She saw only flat terrain, a sheet of slate-gray stone that round” But he could see farther than she could

“Coh the rock had countless craters—just ideal for her acid-eaten stiletto boots—she said, “I can walk on my own”

“I know you can” He kept her hand After that Pandemonian hell zone, he see so would take her away from him?

Whatever he’d seen had changed this man So ould happen to him once they ultimately separated?

For now, hand in hand, they set off, wending around larger holes

“What if this is another dream?” she asked “That hallucination was so realistic” You know, Thro, the one where ere having hot interspecies action

He nodded “I feel as if I’ve known you Almost”

“We’re lucky that none of it happened You didn’t conant”

“If eren’t bespelled, then why did we feel such frenzy for each other?”

She didn’t have to read his asiven her to, well, count “Placebo effect es nothing”

“I think I’m your mate just as much as you are mine” Cocky Thronos was back

She repeated her standard reply “Sorceri don’t have ue, she held up her free hand “I’m too tired for this, Thronos At least wait until all enerates before you hassle me”

With a scowl, he started forward once ness

Nïx had told her to set worlds aflame What could Lanthe possibly affect in a place like this? And she hadn’t exactly been a torch in that belly

Lanthe had thought she could at least learn from this experience, from her travels All she’d learned from faux Feveris was that Thronos could be sexy as sin, and that he had a very talented—pointed—tongue

Oh, and that being inti

For her

When they’d lain in each other’s ar had ever torn the, he took her arone through the roof She could not, could not, could not be falling for Thronos

Dooether with him

If she told Sabine, “I want to be with a Vrekener,” her sister would have no doubt that Lanthe had been brainwashed Which would make Sabine and Rydstro Thronos? Oh, wait—she couldn’t

A briny gust of wind howled over the flats, chilling her bare skin To escape her current dishts of her sister and their new extended fa for homesickness She missed Sabine to the point of pain She urgling nieces with their downy blond hair and wide violet eyes

The elder by seconds was called Brianna, Bri for short, and the younger was Alyson, or Aly Cadeon and Holly had wanted to nairls after loved ones, but in the end, the appeal of three-syllable names that could be shortened to three-letter nickna for threes, thwarted in itself by twins)

Aly and Bri were little badasses Everyone had been worried about the Pravusattempts on their lives—as the vessel of this Accession, Holly had certainly been besieged by them—but there’d been no cause for alarm

Lanthe’s nieces were super brilliant, could already trace If they sensed danger—or bath time—they would siry, they traced right to their mother’s breast, which still freaked out the rather staid Holly Cadeon thought it was uproarious, would croon praise to them The twins and the boobs

Rydstrom’s ne’er-do-wellhis soldier-of-fortune past to build a life and start a family with his mate Like Rydstrom and Sabine, Cadeon and Holly were as opposite as they could be

Maybe the differences kept things interesting Lanthe’s gaze was helplessly drawn to Thronos

But none of their factions were at war None of their siblings would want toover the future Because she couldn’t have Thronos? She wished she didn’t knoarm his chest hen he held her close—or what it would be like to make love to him

Lanthe was a sorceress anted what she wanted when she wanted it

Not to be

Despair promptly turned to resentment Thronos had done this to her

Made her wonder Made her iine more

After severalabout Feveris”

She yanked her hand frolared at her surroundings and kicked a stone “This whole ordeal is likeTime Bandits, and I’m over it!”

“Don’t knoho those bandits are, Lanthe”

“Of course you don’t” Because he’d never watched ain common, except for soasms