Did she want to relive more of these memories? Would they come each time she took Rune’s blood?
Her preferences didn’t matter. Though she fought against sleep, she drifted off, lulled by the steady drumbeat of his heart.
Another dream began to play out. She was in the Sylvan court. She could hear water fountains, could smell the rose arrangements and candle wax. Magh sat upon her throne, gazing at Rune, now a grown man.
She’d summoned him because she’d come to a conclusion: his utility had reached its end. . . .
“You’ve done your job so admirably, I have few enemies left. The remaining ones know of you, are on their guard against a silver-tongued fey who disappears into shadows.”
“And spying? Interrogation?”
“The same problem. Who will you target?”
“Then I’ve kept my end of our bargain,” Rune told her, excitement building inside him. “You vowed to reunite me with my mother.”
“So I did, cur,” she agreed.
Too easy. He’d spent enough time in fey company to pick up some of their ever-rational ways, so he knew his hope was illogical. He should expect trickery from Magh. Ultimately, she would make him suffer.
If Rune’s mother was in a slave camp, Magh would dispatch him there, enslaving him as well, but he didn’t care. He pictured his mother’s affectionate blue eyes, and the smile she always had waiting for him.
Together he and his dam would escape. They would start their lives over. All the killing, all the disgust, all the hatred over these years could finally come to an end.
Magh snapped her fingers for a guard. “Take us to the cur’s mother.”
A reunion is truly happening? At long last? Rune’s heart thundered as they traced to a realm wrapped in night and buffeted by winds. He squinted against the gusts, seeing nothing but a towering mound of dirt.
“There she is.” Magh pointed to the mound.
“Wh-what are you saying?”
Her demon guards traced in front of Magh. “She’s buried there, with hundreds of others. Has been for centuries.”
Shock engulfed him.
“She was a favorite of my husband’s, enjoying his protection, but your position was precarious.” Magh’s voice sounded distant. “Your mother knew I had you in my sights, would soon strike. She begged me to spare your life. I vowed that I would, but only if she agreed to quietly abandon you for a life as a pleasure slave in a faraway brothel. Anything to save you! Alas, the poor dear hadn’t been frozen into her immortality yet—which she must have known.” Magh sighed. “Ah, the sacrifices we mothers make. Don’t worry, she wasn’t long in that hellish place. After a bit of rough bedsport, she was . . . broken.” Magh examined the end of one of her flaxen braids. “Her life was short, her death brutal, and now her bones are naught but dust.”
Buried.
Brutal.
Dust.
His lungs constricted. His legs buckled. As he knelt in front of the mass grave, Magh’s guards collared him and bound his wrists.
“On to the next stage of your life,” she said in a mirthful tone. “I have a new occupation for you, cur.”
“Gods give me the power,” he bit out. The collar prevented him from tracing, the bindings from fighting. “I will destroy you and all your spawn.”
“Oh, I think your next employment will keep you far too busy for that. . . .”
TWENTY-FOUR
Josephine’s breaths were light against Rune’s chest. He sifted his fingers through her hair, trying out this “afterplay.” He’d never stuck around after he’d used a female sexually. Certainly not after an interrogation.
As he stroked her silken locks, he smelled meadowberries anew, calling to mind recollections from his boyhood. He remembered the times he had briefly escaped to the high meadows, to a glen filled with berries. Their taste had been even sweeter than their irresistible scent.
With sugar on his lips and breezes rustling the leaves, he’d lain among them in bliss, never wanting to return to the sweltering fens.
The taste of Josephine had been sweeter than anything he could’ve imagined. . . .
Though he’d lost his wager against her, he was surprisingly relaxed. She hadn’t won per se; he’d been defeated by his own loss of control. But how could he blame himself?
Her bite gave her an unfair advantage.
When her fangs had entered his flesh so slowly and her tongue had flicked in readiness, he’d nigh lost his mind. Even now he shuddered.
After she’d fed, he’d been dazed, wanting only to explore her. For hours as they’d pleasured each other, he’d listened for every hitch in her breath. He’d awaited the telltale flush across her breasts that signaled her approaching orgasm. He’d watched for her irises to flicker.