Immortals After Dark 07 - Kiss of a Demon King

tried to remember what he knew about the Sor-ceri in general. He recalled that they were greedy for wealth, merry hedonists who lived their lives in pursuit of pleasure-and gold. But they were also secretive and paranoid, suspicious of strangers who arrived at their doorstep. Most tended to live in the farthest reaches of the earth.
    Yet they weren't an inherently evil race. You're just thinking this way because you want her.
    Maybe, but the fact remained that it was a possibility. Right now, it was the only one that seemed viable.
    He was still in disbelief that she possibly was his. The Accession often brought pairs together, seeding families. He'd secretly entertained the faintest hope that maybe he could find his other half during this one. Over the years, he'd fantasized about his female constantly, wondering if she'd have a throaty laugh. Smooth skin. A body he could lose himself in.
    Rydstrom struggled to recall a single thing he'd change about Sabine physically. Her skin was glowing, her cheeks rosy. Her glossy hair had shone in the firelight. Not a single mark marred her skin.

    When her eyes had shimmered a bright metallic blue with her desire ... she couldn't feign that.
    Nor her
    body's reaction. Her sex had been wet, the soft lips bare. His claws sank into his palms.
    After the last few weeks, this was just fuel on a blaze. There were too many conflicts within him. His mind simply didn't work like this. Usually potential decisions unfurled in precise tree diagrams, with clear choices and predicted outcomes. Normally, he was rational, and liked things straightforward, needed them to be so.
    Yet now little was as it seemed, or if it was, it was utterly wrong. He had returned home but as a prisoner. He might have found his fated queen, but she was conniving, cutthroat, and amoral.
    Until he could escape, his fate and the fate of his people rested in Cadeon's hands-and that was a tenuous position to be in.
    Especially now, when Cadeon had with him the woman he'd once drunkenly called "the highlight of my existence."
    Rydstrom had been there the first time Cadeon had seen Holly Ashwin, and he had sensed an energy between them. Yet Cadeon had been unable to attempt her because he'd thought she was a human.
    Now Cadeon had learned Holly was actually a Valkyrie. So nothing stood in Cadeon's way of having her.
    How could Rydstrom expect his brother to not only deny himself his female but also to turn her over to Groot, a psychotic murderer who only wanted to breed with her?
    The last time the kingdom had needed him, Cadeon had turned his back on Rydstrom and their family. Why would this time be any different?
    Thinking of Cadeon and Holly made another suspicion creep over him. The two of them were complete opposites. Cadeon, a slob and a cold-hearted mercenary, had found his woman in a glasses-wearing, genius mathematician with a fixation on cleaning.
    The obsessive-compulsive scholar and the rolling-stone soldier of fortune. A completely unexpected and absurd pairing.
    Rydstrom was known as upstanding and good, Sabine as treacherous and evil. It didn't seem to matter. He couldn't ignore how his body had reacted to the sorceress. Instinctively he knew that should he sink into her, the seal would be broken. He would at last know the feeling of releasing his seed, and would be able to forever after.
    Recently, he'd consulted the soothsayer Nix about his future. She'd replied with a grin, "It's a doozy." She'd seemed secretly amused, as if from some kind of irony.
    Nothing could be more ironic than Sabine being Rydstrom's queen. This situation was precisely what Nix would find amusing. The Valkyrie worshipped fate like a religion.
    And they were the first to admit that fate was a fickle bitch.
    I can deny it. . . .
    The cell door groaned open and servants entered. "We're to get you ready for this eve." Again powder stung his eyes.
    m 8 m

    W
    hen Sabine shot awake, she found her bed was sitting in the pouring rain and muddy field she'd been buried alive in all those years ago.
    She blinked her eyes, realizing this was a chimera scene from a dream. She'd always cast illusions when dreaming or in the grip of a nightmare. As she absently ran her fingers over the scar at her neck, the illusion faded, her bedroom revealed again. . ..
    This tower room was once supposed to have been the private chambers of Rydstrom. It was in the west tower, the one closest to the water, and had wall-size windows that she kept open to the