"You will dine with me each eve."
"I'd rather eat dirt."
"That can be arranged," he grated. "Again, this isn't an invitation. You've received a command from your king."
She bit out: "Not--my--king."
He inhaled for calm, reminding himself of the illusion he'd seen in the fire.
In hell, mystics read flames. Sian's own mother had been a pyromancer.
He didn't know if the castle had spoken, declaring Calliope its mistress, or if Sian's subconscious had supplied the vision, but either way, he knew better than to ignore it.
Tomorrow night at dinner, he would harness his temper. He would treat her as if she were made of glass.
He gazed down at his long, sharp claws. In those first days, he'd been crazed with the fragile fey. How many times had he hurt her?
There had to be a way to retract his claws fully. He'd been in this form for so short a time, he still didn't understand all the facets of his evolving--devolving--body.
He pictured his claws retracting even more--and they did! He was about to call her attention to it, but she appeared to be reaching her limit with him.
"Now that you've put away your doll, you can leave."
He exhaled. Even if he'd treated her like his queen, Calliope could never accept a life in hell. Much less his monstrous appearance. She would attempt to escape him again and again, for the rest of her life.
The odds of her return had been hundreds of billions to one. Right now the odds of any kind of understanding between them seemed far less likely.
Even if he could discover a way around all their obstacles, she would never forgive his upcoming invasion of her home. Still he said, "Calliope, I don't want to fight with you anymore."
"No, I'm well aware of what you'd rather be doing with me." Hands balled into fists, she snapped, "You've imprisoned, starved, and abused me. As you told me less than an hour ago, you're the Morior who poses the greatest threat to me. Why in the gods' names would I ever kiss you?" She was shaking even more.
Any female who'd trembled near him in the past had quivered from desire--all females save the one linked to him by fate. She'd hated and feared him since she was young.
Picturing Calliope as a little girl afraid of monsters, he scrubbed his palm over his face. His repulsive face.
Wait . . . His brows drew together as he recalled her words: Why in the gods' names would I ever kiss you?
Among all the reasons for not kissing him . . .
She'd never mentioned his appearance. Could they get past it? As he gazed down at her, he felt as if some constriction around his throat was loosening.
She turned from him, all but dismissing him, then headed to her new room.
Biting back commands, insults, questions, he traced away. In his quarters, he stared at the hand mirror lying on his bed as an opium addict would a pipe.
Was the mirror a new lifeline? With a curse, he surrendered to his compulsive need to watch her. She paced at the end of the bed.
He winced at the lewd writing surrounding her. She was an innocent, yet he'd put the female in a former sex den, his idea of a joke.
She glared at her ring, then made her way to the balcony railing. She stretched her right hand past it. When she tried to do the same with her left hand, the ring wouldn't pass the invisible barrier.
She muttered, "Sneaky fucking Abyssian." Her eyes shimmered as her tricky mind plotted retaliation. He welcomed it, enjoyed the games they played.
As long as she couldn't escape.
In the past, Sian had felt as if he'd stared at that miserly hourglass, willing a single grain of sand to drop. The hours he'd just spent with her had sped by faster than any before them. His loneliness ebbed whenever he was simply near her. Even when they fought.
I want her.
He wasn't ready to release his lifeline and let himself free-fall--how could he ever bring himself to trust her?--but he knew beyond a doubt that he couldn't live without her passion.
He would possess her for his own; he could try.
Just as Gourlav had done, Sian would bravely enter the godsdamned ring.
He would investigate possibilities, pouring his energy into a potential future with his mate--which meant he needed to clean up his life so he could focus on her.
Right now he had twelve too many concubines and a debt to the Sorceri hanging over his head. Picturing the ordeal to come, he ripped off his shirt, then stretched out on his bed.
Damn. This is going to hurt.
TWENTY-FIVE
Lila ran through the Sylvan forest, darting in and out of dense fog banks. A shadowy form stalked her.
The fey-slayer.
No escaping him; even with her speed, she could never run fast enough.
An owl swooped down in front of her, making her scream and stumble. Nooo! Her ears twitched at the twang of the bowstring. The arrow's feathers whistled as it zoomed toward her. She whirled around.
The arrowhead pierced her chest. Unbearable pain radiated out from her heart.
She collapsed to the ground. The fawn from her dreams peeked out from behind a nearby fern. They met eyes until her vision left her. . . .
Lila shot upright in bed, choking back a cry. She heard the spiders milling about in the walls, the dragon calls and hellhound howls. The lava from the closest volcano cast a soft glow inside. Just a nightmare. Nothing to fear.
Yet.
She lay back, relishing her pillow. She'd barely gotten to sleep earlier--because of serious overstimulation.
After Abyssian had left, she'd discovered new bedding in her room and also a negligee and robe of white silk. She'd eagerly changed out of her dinner dress into the nightgown. The silk had glided over her body, stiffening her nipples.
She'd hopped atop her bed, moaning at the softness. She'd gone from frayed underwear and a stone floor to lavish sleepwear and a feather-tick mattress. The life!
Under the covers, her sex drive had ramped up yet again as she'd replayed what the demon had done to her earlier.
Kissing her neck. Nuzzling her sensitive ears. Stroking her nipples.
Part of her had regretted making him stop. Lying there, she'd considered taking the edge off with a quick orgasm, but she'd again had that sense of being watched.
Eventually, she'd passed out. Until now.
The skittering from the walls intensified. A warning? She shot upright again. One of her ears twitched, then the other.
Something was wrong in hell.
Static electricity made her hair stand on end, and the entire dimension started to quake. Dust rained from the ceiling.
Even over all these sounds she heard a faint clickety-cla
ck on the stone floor.
She turned and found the fawn from her dreams! It was standing in her room, mere feet from the bed.
Am I losing my mind??? As she'd done in Sylvan, she held out her palm. The shy creature sidled closer along the side of the bed . . . until she could feel its warm breath on her hand.
The fawn vanished just as Lila's bespelled ring slipped off her finger.
Deep in a trance, Sian envisioned the mountain the Vrekeners had settled upon. Then he pictured the terrain between that peak and his castle expanding.
Body straining on his bed, he enlarged New Skye one league at a time. He built up land until he'd re-created mountains. He duplicated ravines and rivers.
One for them, one for me.
He drained his magic, his very life force. Sweat beaded his skin, nearly rousing him from his trance, but he held on until the territory was as vast as he'd promised the sorceress--and his own was the same size as before.
But New Skye was like a scourge in his realm, in his mind. His trickster nature urged him to test the boundaries of his vow to the sorceress, to punish her extortion. But how . . . ?
Test the boundaries.
Of course.
He could cut New Skye free of Pandemonia, leaving the new dimension whole, but unanchored. He'd re-create hell's borders--without New Skye inside.
The Vrekener inhabitants wouldn't know anything was amiss until someone tried to trace there and couldn't find the moving dimension.
He who laughs last, Melanthe.
But gods, the process would deplete him, would be like severing a part of himself.
Bracing himself, he envisioned ripping away the new realm. He dug into his consciousness to mentally tear at New Skye.
His breaths heaved, his muscles knotting . . . finally he perceived the total excision of the Vrekener realm. Using the last of his strength, he sealed both planes.
When he managed to open his eyes, the room tilted. I've erred. Spent too much magic.
Over these months, as his appearance transformed, his sense of self had grown unstable, his identity eroded. Tonight, in the midst of this upheaval, he'd reached deep into himself and altered something that equaled his very being.
Like a snapped rubber band, his mind still resounded. Pandemonia was left weakened.
Just like the king of hell.
TWENTY-SIX
Lila didn't know if the fawn was a waking dream, a hallucination, or magic.
She didn't know why her ring had loosened right when hell was acting wonky.