Dark Skye (Immortals After Dark #15)(19)

The room was thick with whorls of sorcery, and the abbey quaked all around them, the ancient rock walls groaning. A fracture forked along one of the stained-glass windows. In an earsplitting rush, it shattered.

She turned to her betrayer, the boy she’d thought she loved. The boy who’d led these fiends straight to her home.

He was wending his way around bodies to reach her, now that the adult who’d guarded him was dead.

Voice breaking, she sobbed, “I trusted you. Sabine was everything to me.” Then, louder, she commanded him: “Jump through the window”—the one hundreds of feet above the valley floor—“and do not use your wings on the way down!”

His silver eyes pleaded for her not to do this thing, so she turned back to her sister’s body, refusing to watch.

He never made a sound all the way down.

“Live, Ai-bee!” Lanthe screamed, but Sabine’s glassy gaze was sightless, her chest still of breath. “HEAL!” she commanded, using all the power she possessed. The room quaked harder, jostling furniture. Mother’s head hit the floor and rolled, Father’s right behind hers. “Don’t leave me! LIVE!”

More sorcery, more, more, MORE . . .

Sabine’s eyes fluttered open—they were bright, lucid. “Wh-what happened?”

While Lanthe was utterly emptied of sorcery, Sabine bounded to her feet, appearing rested.

I brought her back. She’s all I have now.

They fled from the abbey into the night. Yet in the valley, Lanthe trailed behind Sabine. She looked back over her shoulder, saw Thronos on the ground, clinging to life.

His body lay broken, limbs and wings twisted, skin flayed.

Somehow he raised his hand off the ground to reach for her with yearning in his eyes. . . .

Now, hundreds of years later, Thronos raised his hand off the ground to reach for her once more.

Just as she’d done that night, Lanthe turned from him and ran.





EIGHT


Hoping to find Carrow and her crew, Lanthe headed for low ground. In the steady rain, she sprinted over uneven terrain. Though her lungs began to burn, she kept up a punishing pace, slowing only to hide when she sensed other immortals.

All the while, she tried not to think about Thronos. So why did she keep seeing his scars, his misery?

She refused to feel guilt about leaving him behind earlier, much less for making him jump as a boy.

If Thronos hadn’t betrayed her, then that Vrekener leader—who was his father, the king—wouldn’t have murdered her parents. Over the years, Sabine wouldn’t have needed so much of Lanthe’s sorcery to repeatedly cheat death.

Lanthe could be one of the most feared Sorceri alive—instead of a power-on-the-fritz punch line. Hell, even Thronos had ridiculed her!

To be the Queen of Persuasion was to be the queen of nothing.

And in the Lore, perceived weakness was considered an invitation for enemy species to attack.

Sabine had recently voiced a new theory about Lanthe’s persuasion: since Vrekeners tracked Sorceri by their power outlays, perhaps she feared drawing them down on her, and her fear was causing performance issues. Maybe her ability was intact, but her anxiety over the winged menace undermined it—even in Rothkalina, where they were sure no Vrekeners would ever come.

Lanthe didn’t figure her Vrekener PTSD was helping things.

At least her portal ability still worked. If she could lose this collar, she could walk straight into Castle Tornin’s court.

The only problem? If conditions weren’t ideal—such as not having adequate time to concentrate—she had little control over where her threshold opened. And most other planes were not quite so welcoming as this one. Worse, she could only create a portal every five or six days. So if she screwed up with a destination, she couldn’t do a quick fix.

A huge risk. Yet so was staying on this island.

Damn it, what had Thronos been thinking to try to capture her? If he’d succeeded, Rydstrom would have traced an army of rage demons to the Air Territories. Well, Rydstrom would if someone could finally find that domain in the heavens, one that was mystically concealed and moved throughout the year.

The only reason the Sorceri had never struck back against Vrekener aggression was because they couldn’t find the Skye, or capture any of its inhabitants.

Maybe that was what made Thronos so daring—he knew there’d never be recourse against his kind.

Lanthe was so caught up with thoughts of him, she heard the log whooshing toward her face too late.

Her last thought before she blacked out: One more thing to blame him for. . . .



Lanthe dreamed of a voice. Only a voice. It belonged to a female, pleasantly cadenced.

“You’ll move through worlds,” the female murmured, as if imparting a secret to Lanthe. “In one realm, hurt. In one realm, leave. In one realm, cleave. In one realm, shine.”

“I don’t understand,” Lanthe said in her dream. The voice sounded familiar, but after an immortal’s lifetime of acquaintances, she couldn’t place it.

“Just think of your upcoming journey as the Four Realms of Samhain Past.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.” Lanthe’s frustration level was rising. “What are you talking about?”

“Whisper, whisper, whisper.”

“Oh, come on! Now you’re just whispering whisper!”