They dropped to their knees, if they still had them. All except one.
I watched the demon ghost—who was missing his heart—scoop up my favorite yellow. “He is my great-great-grandson,” the ghost told me.
The dead demon strode to the checkpoint and deposited the yellow within.
My shoulders shook as snorts erupted from me.Shit,that guy really was the luckiest demon in existence.I didn’t want to kill him, but part of me wondered if he’d killmeagainst all odds. The dead, whom I’d filled with murderous intent, had let him live.
I said to the ghost, “I am glad you helped him, though he won’t live much longer.”
“Perhaps,” replied the dead demon. “Perhaps not.”
The demon tipped his head to the sky, then faded along with the others. Back to death beneath the surface and beyond the curtain that shrouded the living.
I scanned the carnage left behind. So much blood. So many body parts.
All in a day’s work.
I turned and entered the checkpoint at last.
Third round, complete.
And this week I’d come closest to losing everything. I couldn’t contemplate the nearness of my near-death while still surrounded by others. Those players who’d lived were leaving through the exit passage I’d never walked through. Back to the Pinnacle.
My power levels were fine, so lust shouldn’t be an issue. I’d portal to the fortress.
“Tiers is complete,” Carmine announced.
His voice froze me to the spot, though he was addressing the crowd. My breath started to come fast.
Carmine spoke again. “In one week, my mate will prove her strength and cunning by winning Tiers, and she will prove her worthiness of becoming your queen. Once Tiers is complete, my mate-intended will join with me to continue our mating ritual.”
The crowd was screaming and clapping, andnone of it mattered.
Because fire had swept through me at the sound of his voice. I moaned, sweeping my body with my hands as all my reservations unraveled and dropped to the floor.
I was going to ravage him.
Nothing mattered but the lust consuming me.
The crowd’s laughter jerked me from lust. Just enough.
Just enough for some panic to edge in. The lust was back. Even though my power levels were fine.No.
I abandoned the portal to the fortress. I couldn’t go back there.
“What the fuck is going on?” I whimpered, clenching my legs together.Fuck.I was sweating. Panting. Moaning.
I had to get out of here. And not to my desert shack either.
That left one place.
Nearly bent in half, I staggered down the passageway, back to the Pinnacle.
21
The lust, or unfinished mating, or whatever it was, dissipated the further from Carmine I staggered. If only he’d stop fucking talking to his minions.
I gasped against a fresh surge, then couldn’t take it any longer. I portaled to my old room in the Pinnacle that I’d never used.
