Dark Skye (Immortals After Dark #15)(12)

After that rocky start, they’d grown to be best friends, just as he’d promised.

Later on, he’d asked her why her parents didn’t buy food. She couldn’t make him understand that her mother and father worshipped gold more than anything it could purchase. Not to mention that they’d deemed Lanthe old enough to begin stealing her own way through life—

Thronos’s grip was loosening in midair! “Wait!” she cried.

But he’d only repositioned her in the cradle of his arms. Apparently he was adjusting her for the duration—and wasn’t about to dump her like an armful of firewood. After a moment she relaxed slightly.

Though she had recurring nightmares about Vrekeners sweeping down on her, she was now trapped directly under a pair of wings. Talk about immersion therapy.

She stared up at them, spread in flight, wind whistling through his healing sword wound. As a girl, she’d been obsessed with his wings, touching them all the time.

She’d been fascinated to discover the backs were covered with scales like those of a dragon. As if in a mosaic, Thronos’s black and silver scales had made slashing designs that resembled sharp feathers.

During the day, the undersides were dark gray. At night, they turned black, stark against the electrical pathways that forked out along the bones. Each of those pulselines shone as bright as phosphorescence.

One night when they’d secretly met, he’d spread his wings, showing her how the pulselines moved. It’d looked like he’d been surrounded by lightning wings. He’d demonstrated how he could use tricks of light to camouflage his wings so they’d be invisible in the dark.

When he’d grown embarrassed by her wide-eyed stare, those pulselines had quickened, like a blush.

“I never knew these were scales instead of feathers,” she told him. “I guess none of my kind have gotten a good look at the backs of Vrekener wings.”

He appeared troubled. “That’s because no Vrekeners ever retreat from Sorceri.”

Now Thronos’s wings were contorted in places. She’d always imagined the bones had been set badly, but up close, she could see that they’d mended true, in strong straight lines. Maybe the muscles had bunched, growing off-kilter?

Biting her bottom lip, she dared to reach up and touch a pulseline. Its beat accelerated, and his grip tightened on her.

The first time she’d ever voluntarily touched him as an adult.

When he cast her a killing glance, he again resembled a reaper, every inch a “righteous reckoning.” His silvered talons glinted, as ominous as a sword blade. “Why did you do that?” he demanded.

“You used to like me to touch them.”

Voice brusque, he said, “You assume I remember that far back?”

What if he didn’t? His mind might have been injured. For some reason, the idea of that made her chest ache. She remembered every second of those four months. Regardless of their history, she found herself thinking of them—of him—far too often.

As they gained altitude to crest another mountain, her ears popped. Rain fell even harder, drops pelting her, winds buffeting them. She heard crashing waves. They’d reached the far coastline? She blinked against the rain, saw he was following the shore north. Or south. Who knew with her wretched directional skills?

He looked as if he were trying to scent something. He flew them to a point, hovered, then returned down the coast, flying farther in the opposite direction. Again he repeated his pattern, clearly growing more frustrated.

“Even if your senses are as keen as a Lykae’s, you can’t scent through pouring rain.”

“Silence.” He dove to circle a tree at the very edge of the storm-tossed peak.

The tree swayed in the winds, the top like the deck of a pitching ship. Yet the bastard tossed her onto a thrashing limb! She clawed her gauntlets across the wood, scrabbling for a hold.

If she fell, she’d tumble down the mountain, her body dashed to pieces. Apparently he’d forgotten how susceptible to injury Sorceri were!

Or maybe he hadn’t forgotten.

Once she’d steadied herself, she eased around to crawl along the limb, the wood slick beneath her hands and knees. Kneeling before the trunk, she stabbed her gauntlet claws into it, then peered up, blinking against the downpour. No leaves screened her from the gale. Above, bare limbs spread out like veins, as if they were stretching for the sky’s arteries of lightning.

Thronos stood at the very top, easily balanced, rising to his full height to ride the movement. A hand shielded his gaze from the horizontal rain.

As she put out a prayer to the gods that he got struck up there, her teeth began chattering. She soon shook until her head bobbed, and not just because of her fear of heights. She hadn’t had more than an hour or two of sleep at a time for three weeks, and had rarely eaten the gruel they’d been served.

Right now, she should be tucked in bed in her warm tower at Tornin, watching DVDs on her solar-powered TV and enjoying sumptuous foods and sweet Sorceri wine—while waited on hand and foot. Instead, she was trapped with her worst nightmare, strangling with the need to kill him.

A burst of hysterical laughter left her lips. Lanthe and Thronos, sitting in a tree, k-i-l-l-i-n-g. . . .

Damn it, why the hell hadn’t Sabine found her? Maybe the double-dealing N?x had steered her wrong—while giving Thronos detailed directions to find Lanthe.