Dark Skye (Immortals After Dark #15)(24)

Opening, opening. With a yell, Thronos started sprinting, snagging a sword from a sleeping demon on his way.

Opening . . .

When the centaurs charged behind him, Lanthe scuttled backward toward the threshold.

As he ran, Thronos kept his gaze locked on her, even as he made a sweeping downward cut with that sword. Why would he . . . ?

The blade came back bloody; Felix’s head was rolling from his body.

Her jaw slackened, blood pouring from her mouth. The Vrekener’s crazed. She twisted over to her hands and knees, now scrambling through the portal.

Night. Fog and murk. Definitely not Rothkalina.

The overcast day of the prison island flickered into this rainy world like a flashlight’s beam. Before her eyes could adjust, she heard Thronos bellowing for her.

She commanded the portal to seal itself. Just as the seams were about to meet, he dove through them, crashing beside her.

As soon as the rift was no more, territorial growls and hisses sounded from all around them.

In the gloomy dark, Thronos grated, “Have you taken us to hell, sorceress?”





ELEVEN


Thronos struggled to get his bearings—while biting back his rage over what he’d just seen.

His female, maimed. By her own kind. He wished he’d had time to liberate all of their heads from their bodies.

Focus, Talos. He scented the air, surveying his new surroundings. They were on a small island of rock encircled by water that looked like mercury. Mist cloaked the night. Some kind of preternatural swamp?

Though he’d traveled to foreign planes in pursuit of his mate, he didn’t recognize this one. She could’ve taken them anywhere. Thronos despised her portals; every time he’d seen one in the past had meant he was about to lose her yet again.

A massive red sea serpent crested above the water to their right, a razor-sharp fin slicing through waves. “Yes. We’ve gone to hell,” he said, just as a green serpent surfaced to the left.

Melanthe would be creating another portal directly. But not to the Skye—he would never give her the directions to his hidden home, in case she somehow escaped him and decided to portal an enemy army there.

“Make another threshold back to the mortal realm,” he ordered her. “Somewhere in Europe.” He knew she couldn’t talk—blood still spilled from her lips. Yet all she had to do was nod, then get to work.

Once they were away from here, he would question her.

How did you make the Pravus sleep, and why not me? For what purpose would you ensorcel Omort? Do you grieve that sorcerer I beheaded?

“Be about it,” he snapped, unused to repeating his orders. When Thronos led troops of his knights on Pravus raids, no one dared disobey him.

She shook her head, her braids bouncing over her slim shoulders.

Denying him? He crouched in front of her, baring his fangs. “Do—it—now.”

—It’ll take me five or six days to renew my threshold ability. I’m in a lag till then.—

He jerked away, grimacing from the feel of her words laid directly into his mind. So that was how she’d commanded them to sleep! Telepathy.

Now that he thought back, he could tell she’d had to feign hesitation under the threat of that blade. She’d had a plan, and she’d been desperate to get that torque removed.

He hated telepathy—a glaring reminder of what she was. But at least she could communicate with him until she regenerated. He knew he could reply the same way, thinking his words rather than uttering them, and she could pick them up with her mind-reading ability. But he refused to allow her entry into his thoughts, had developed mental shields specifically to block her. “How many other abilities do you possess?”

—Alas, only three.— Was she lying?

“If you have power enough for telepathy, then why can’t you open a portal?”

—Just because I’ve walked for miles doesn’t mean one of my eyelids is fatigued.—

“Your powers empty and regenerate independently?”

She shrugged. —Telepathy is second nature. Cutting a rift into reality . . . not so much.—

She’d said nothing about her most devastating ability. “And your persuasion?” Could she use it only every few days as well? Once she was strong enough for a threshold, she might be able to command him. A double-edged sword. He was in the same position as those Sorceri, could trust her just as little.

The loss of her collar was a grave one.

—Persuasion is unpredictable.— In the rain, she rubbed her chin over one pale shoulder, smearing blood there. Crimson ran down her arm, dripping from her elbow into a rivulet of runoff. —It tends to come online when I’m in jeopardy, so you probably shouldn’t frighten me again.—

He shuddered to think of all the things she could persuade him to do. Could she truly make him forget her? Even as his rational mind thought, Maybe that’s exactly what should happen, his instincts rebelled.

His body rebelled. Would it remember that Thronos was never to take another?

“There must be some way for you to shave days off your . . . lag.” They couldn’t be trapped here. Something about this realm put him even more on edge. Of course he perceived danger all around, yet his main sense was of expectancy.

Because he was with her?

—I have to wait several days, for me to create myself a threshold for me to use. You’re s.o.l.—