Immortals After Dark 09 - Pleasure of a Dark Prince

all the world
! Look how hard Tera the Fey trains, and I still outshoot her.”
    “Maybe you got the talent genetically? Your mom could’ve been Robina Hood for all we know, you impish wittle mutt.”
    “Robina Hood?”
    “Or it could be—hey, here’s an idea—the fact thatyour other two parents are gods. Hello? You’re a
Valkyrie
, the daughter of Freya and Wóden. The last I checked, we don’t suck at anything.”
    “This ability is all mine?”
    “It wasn’t in the beginning. But it is now. The pain Skathi ‘gifted’ you with to make you remember was actually
teaching
you. Teaching you
all
of her tricks.”
    Just as everyone had always assumed. “I can’t believe this. Are you sure?”
    “Skathi didn’t teach you to track or give you that ability, yet you’re an expert at that as well.”
    I am. I learned to be.
“And Skathi couldn’t have told me this would happen?” Lucia felt as if she’d been slapped.
    “Oh, she didn’t know what an apt pupil you’d be. Had no idea you could grow to be as good as she is.”
    “No idea?” Yes, slapped—bitchslapped by the goddess of the hunt. “Then she believed I was going on a quest with no defense?”
    “What a whore!” Nïx agreed. “She’s one of the gods who thought you should offer yourself up to Cruach to appease him, rather than uncover the dieumort.”
    Appease Cruach.
Despite the fact that Skathi had witnessed how Lucia had suffered at his hands. “I’m going to kill her.”
    “Now, Lucia, you can’t go offing gods willy-nilly. Unless you find some more dieumorts!” she cried. “Regrettably each one only has a single shot before the power is extinguished.”
    “Skathi had to know I would never abuse the weapon, would never harm anyone but Cruach with it.”
    “Yes, but to find the dieumort, you have to open a tomb, and there’s an evil deep inside it.”
    Exactly what Damiãno had said. “I think I’ve already found the tomb.”
    “Within it is a being so powerful that if loosed, it would change the world forever. Even the gods fear its awakening.”
    “What evil being?”
    “The Gilded One,” Nïx breathed.
    El Dorado.
“Can I get the dieumort without waking the evil?”
    “There’re house rules at the tomb door. You break them, and you’ll have to leave the party.”
    “Damn it, what do you mean? This is no time to withhold… Wait!
You
couldn’t have told me all this earlier, Nïx?” she asked, her aggravation spiking. “You advised me to
restrain myself
for nothing!”
    “I’d totally forgotten about this until I found a Post-it note to myself stuck to the underside of Annika’s bed.”
    “What were you doing under her— Never mind, I don’t want to know.” Yet her irritation with Nïx soon dwindled when Lucia comprehended all that had happened.
    Lucia was no longer a Skathian, a slave to the goddess’s whims. No longer a celibate in plainclothes.
    No longer a victim.
I broke an altar with my werewolf lover.
How fitting, how utterly empowering.
    Broke that bitch!
    Lucia swallowed as a sudden thought struck her. She could even have…
children
.
    She cast a smile down at MacRieve, but it quickly faded. He was leaving her! Had made up his mind.
    One of these days, Lucia…
    When Garreth coughed, waking, Lucia was right beside him, gazing down, her eyes swollen from tears. “Nice nap?” she asked.
    “What… what happened?” His body was a mass of aches, his head and wounds throbbing.
    “Big snake got peckish?”
    “You killed it?” When she nodded, he frowned, recalling more with each second, his ire toward her returning. “You told me you couldn’t shoot anymore.”
    “I believed that. But clearly I was mistaken.”
    “Aye, clearly. You must’ve shot it from down below.” He tried to rise, then coughed, flinching as pain radiated through every inch of him. All his goddamned ribs were cracked.
    “Is the pain bad?” she asked.
    “What do you bluidy think?”
    Her eyes narrowed. “I think that’ll teach you to leave me!”
    “I was coming back.”
    Her expression unreadable, she asked, “For me?” Before he could answer, she added, “Probably to convince me to continue on the mission.”
    “I was coming back
for you
! Though you dinna deserve me to, stubborn Valkyrie.”
    She didn’t deny that. “Why? I thought you were done.”
    “I’ll
never
be done!” he snapped, wincing again as hisribs screamed in protest. “You’re my woman, Lousha. Damn you, I’ll never want