Dark Skye (Immortals After Dark #15)(9)

“Look at your glittering eyes. Sensitive about this, creature?”

She reminded herself that she had managed a few spurts of persuasion in emergency situations. On one night, the stars had aligned, and she’d rendered Omort—a nearly omnipotent sorcerer—temporarily powerless.

Long enough for the demon King Rydstrom the Good to fight and kill him. Without Lanthe’s help, Rydstrom never could have freed all the rage demons of Rothkalina from Omort’s oppression.

How badly she wished for everyone in the Lore to know about that! Then they’d respect her.

She narrowed her eyes, recalling another time she’d conjured persuasion. “I used my sorcery on you the last time we met.”

Thronos clearly didn’t like to be reminded of that. A year ago, he’d set a trap around one of her portals, lying in wait for her to return. When she’d come upon him and his knights, she’d eked out some sorcery—enough for her to get through the portal.

“If you recall, I resisted your commands!”

Just as she’d been sealing it, he’d managed to shove his boot through the door. Alas, the portal closure had severed his foot.

Because of him she’d failed to rescue her sister from a perilous situation, so naturally Lanthe had kicked his foot around her room, screaming at it.

She slitted her eyes up at him. “I vow to you I’ll get this collar off me, and when I do, I’ll demonstrate how powerful I’ve gotten!” The rain continued to pour; ghouls howled below. But Lanthe was too pissed to pay them any mind; she had eons of pain to vent. “I’ll command you to forget I ever lived!”

A muscle ticked in his clenched jaw, and those slashing scars on his cheeks whitened. “Never!”

“Why not, demon? Every day I wish I’d never been in that meadow when you flew over.”

He unfurled his wings to their terrifying full length, a span of over fifteen feet. “I’m no demon.”

“Uh-huh.” You keep telling yourself that. He looked to say more, so she cut him off. “Even if you manage to get me off this island, you can’t just keep me. I have friends who will come for me.” King Rydstrom—now Lanthe’s brother-in-law—was ferocious about Sabine’s and Lanthe’s protection, vowing to slay anyone who thought to harm either sister.

He understood that without Lanthe, his beloved wife Sabine wouldn’t have survived all those years, and he felt indebted to her. But Rydstrom and Sabine didn’t know the truth: Lanthe had caused the Vrekeners to descend on them in the first place—because she’d stupidly befriended Thronos, a fact that she’d never revealed to her sister.

“And what friends would those be?” Thronos grated.

“Perhaps you’ve heard of my brother-in-law Rydstrom, the ruler of Rothkalina, master of Castle Tornin?”

Rydstrom had alerted the king of the Air Territories—Thronos’s brother—of his protection. Any plot to harm either of the sisters would be considered an act of war against all rage demons. “Rydstrom is my protector.”

“I have no fear of him. Just as I had no fear of your previous protector. Omort the Deathless.”

She could only imagine what Thronos had heard about Omort. Once he’d stolen Rydstrom’s crown, Omort had instituted a reign of terror in Rothkalina. Though she and Sabine had resided with their brother—half brother—in the seized Castle Tornin, that didn’t mean they’d shared Omort’s sickening behavior.

They would’ve escaped, but he’d had lethal controls in place, forever forcing them to return to him.

She remembered telling Sabine, “I’ll scream if he beheads another oracle.” He’d butchered hundreds of them, peeling their heads from their necks with his bare hands.

“What can we do?” Sabine had said, sounding as blasé as ever. “Take it up with management?”

Anyone who contradicted Omort was slaughtered. Or worse.

Lanthe had a brief impulse to explain to Thronos what things had really been like with Omort. To explain that she’d lived in Castle Tornin under two kings—and now thanked gold for her new life under Rydstrom’s reign. But then she recalled that she wouldn’t be around Thronos long enough to waste the effort. Not that the Vrekener would believe her anyway.

So she returned to intimidation. “If you don’t fear Rydstrom, then maybe you’ll fear N?x the Ever-Knowing.” The three-thousand-year-old Valkyrie was a soothsayer, rumored to be on her way toward full-blown goddesshood. Though N?x was insane—seeing the future and past more clearly than the present—she was steering the entire freaking Accession, that great immortal killing time.

“N?x, then?” he scoffed.

Okay, so maybe she and Lanthe weren’t tight, per se (they’d scarcely spoken). But N?x had been in on the plot to kill Omort, had aided Sabine, Lanthe, and Rydstrom. Rydstrom considered her a good friend. “Yes, the Valkyrie is one of my best friends.”

“With so much practice, sorceress, I thought you’d be more skilled at deception.” He drew his lips back from his fangs. “Who do you think told me how to find you?”

Lanthe rocked on her feet—either from shock or because the ground was moving again. “She wouldn’t.” Lanthe should’ve known better than to trust a Valkyrie!

“She would and she did. Along with some advice concerning you.”