When I returned to the clearing, Adriel and Sorsha were lying beside the fire an arm’s width apart, their heads oriented near one another as though they’d been talking in the dark.
Settling onto the cold, hard ground, I lay back and stared up at the sky. With the thick canopy of the forest, I’d scarcely been able to see the stars. But in the clearing, a few silver pinpricks winked against the velvety night sky.
Perhaps I’d been searching for some sense of comfort — of normalcy — but the sight only made my eyes sting with loneliness and regret. We weresoclose to the Dark Palace. Staying away when Kaden needed me had to be the cruelest form of torture.
Closing my eyes, I searched for that golden thread that signified our bond. It seemed duller than it had in the past and lighter somehow, as though Kaden’s essence no longer flowed through it.
I hadn’t dared call down the mental pathway since he’d been captured. Semphrys didn’t know about the bond, and Kaden had said that demons were sensitive to such mental connections. I was terrified the Dark King would somehow sense that I was contacting Kaden and realize that we were mates.
But my exhaustion had weakened my resolve. Afterseeing Kaden in the in-between, I had to know that he was all right. I wanted to hear his dark chuckle down the bond and feel the warmth of his presence.
I gave the thread an experimental tug, willing him to appear to me as he had on the beach when I’d been half-delirious from blood loss.
A foreboding silence stretched down the bond, and I released my grip. A desperate sense of loneliness swamped me, and tears trailed down my cheeks.
As I drifted off to sleep, they invaded my mind — dream feeders that gorged on fear and suffering.
The image of Kaden wavered in and out of focus, but his eyes didn’t glimmer with the promise of pleasure, and he didn’t laugh. His face was a mask of pain, twisting in agony as he screamed my name.
Chapter
Nine
KADEN
“Pitiful,” came Fleshtalker’s oily voice.
Slowly, reluctantly, I peeled my eyelids open. The stone walls of the chamber loomed around me, and I silently cursed him for waking me.
I’d been dreaming of Lyra. TherealLyra. A dangerous indulgence, to be sure, but it was the only thing that made the pain bearable.
The stab wound in my gut ached ferociously, though I knew it had begun to heal.Slowly. Brownish blood oozed from the hole in my flesh. I burned with fever, and my filthy shirt was soaked with sweat.
Judging by the throbbing pain in my wrists, I was still chained to the wall with those infernal spiked manacles. My shoulders ached, as did my bruised jaw, but even the pain could not keep me anchored in reality.
I drifted in and out of consciousness, and even when I was awake, I wasn’t completely lucid. My delirium brought both joy and suffering. Joy whenever I was withher. Suffering when my torturer invaded my fever dreams disguised as my mate.
It was getting difficult to tell the difference, with my mind as muddled as it was. Fleshtalker had ripped apart my memories of Lyra, twisting them for his own sick amusement so that I’d let my guard down and allow him to invade my thoughts.
It was rare that I dreamt about anything pleasant, but the real Lyra had a few subtle tells. The sly curve of her mouth. An irreverent eye roll. Occasionally, the Lyra in my dreams would put a dagger to my throat, and I’d know it was my huntress.
“Your little whore has ruined you,” Fleshtalker drawled from somewhere nearby. “She must be quite an enticing receptacle for your cock if you would endure all this for her.”
Rage, hot and grounding, surged within me. My fury at least told me this was real.
“I would have thought you were beyond such mortal temptations, but clearly I was wrong.” Though the chamber was too dim to make out his expression, I could practically hear his smirk. “It must be your whore mother’s dark fae blood.”
“Insulting my mother, are you, Amalgamott?” I rasped. “How original.”
Fleshtalker’s nostrils flared at my use of his true name. “No matter. Velisara will surely have more . . .creativemethods to entice you.”
A jolt of horrible familiarity clanged through me, but my thoughts were too muddy to recall where I’d heard that name before.
Right on cue, the door to my torture chamber creakedopened. Torchlight from the corridor spilled into the room, illuminating a tall, lithe figure silhouetted in the doorway.
It took my eyes a few moments to adjust, but when they did, I felt the burn of acid in my throat.
Velisara was a raven-haired female with a long face, huge eyes, and sensuous pink lips. Gossamer black fabric clung to her form, revealing every dip and curve. She was temptation made flesh, and yet everything inside me recoiled at the sight.
