Dark Skye (Immortals After Dark #15)(86)

“Anyone who followed is probably dead. No one could break free of that current.” She frowned. “How did you?”

“I’m not as weak as you think me.” As if to prove his point, he lumbered to his feet. His shirt had been either eaten away or torn free; most of his leather pants had disintegrated from acid. “I’m an immortal male in my prime.”

“And that was the equivalent of an immortal current. Our bodies should have been dashed to pieces.”

“Well, they’re not.” He reached a hand down, helping her stand.

As he steadied her, she asked, “Do you think we had supernatural assistance?”

“Is it so difficult to believe I did that on my own?” He stared down into her eyes as he said, “Maybe you make me strong.”

He looked so earnest about this, she decided not to argue the point. “In any case, thanks for getting me to safety. We keep saving each other’s asses, don’t we?”

“That’s the way it should be, no?” He seemed to be asking more than just that simple question, so she changed the subject.

“Where do you think we are?”

“I have no idea.”

She turned her attention to herself. Though her necklace was unharmed, her breastplate was beyond salvage, the irregular edges cutting into her already damaged skin. She unfastened the last stubborn clip, then dumped it. Not that she cared, but her hair was long enough to cover most of her breasts. In the back, her locks had been eaten away, an involuntary bob cut. Her boots looked like acid had been drizzled over them, but at least the soles covered most of her feet.

Her skirt had only a few leather strands left. For Thronos’s sake, she shifted the garment to cover her front, which gave 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 while my wing heals.” He surveyed the horizon.

She saw only flat terrain, a sheet of slate-gray stone that matched the dismal sky. “If there is higher ground.” But he could see farther than she could.

“Come on.” He took her hand in his.

Though 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 seemed to have a constant need to touch her.

Still fearing something would take her away from him?

Whatever he’d seen had changed this man. So what would 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 we were 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 commit any offendments. I didn’t almost get pregnant.”

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

She didn’t have to read his mind to know that the guy in Thronos wanted the two orgasms he’d given her to, well, count. “Placebo effect maybe? All I know is that Feveris—or faux Feveris—changes 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 mates.”

When he opened his mouth to argue, she held up her free hand. “I’m too tired for this, Thronos. At least wait until all my skin regenerates before you hassle me.”

With a scowl, he started forward once more, toward a horizon of nothingness.

N?x 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 intimate with him had been life altering.

For her.

When they’d lain in each other’s arms . . . as if nothing had ever torn them apart . . .

As the terrain grew even more challenging, he took her arm, helping her along. Gods, her awareness of him had gone through the roof. She could not, could not, could not be falling for Thronos.

Doomed did not even begin to describe a future together 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 Rydstrom murderous.

How could Lanthe keep them from killing Thronos? Oh, wait—she couldn’t.

A briny gust of wind howled over the flats, chilling her bare skin. To escape her current dismal reality, she lost herself in thoughts of her sister and their new extended family, bracing for homesickness. She missed Sabine to the point of pain. She missed Rydstrom, their bedrock of stability. She missed her gurgling 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 name their girls after loved ones, but in the end, the appeal of three-syllable names that could be shortened to three-letter nicknames was too overwhelming for Holly (she had an OCD thing for threes, thwarted in itself by twins).