Is she the Remnant of Earth we saved from his dungeons? I find a shred of solace in the knowledge that she, at least, is free of this monster’s clutches.
“A shame you and your friends managed to infiltrate my favorite place to play.” He rises to his feet, soles sliding on the ebony dune. “No matter. We have a new sandbox, you and I. This one is a bit less accessible than the isle, should my stepbrother get any ideas about heroic rescues. We shall break it in together. How does that sound?”
I glare at him. I cannot speak. The iron pierced through my right lung is agony, scraping my insides with each breath. The one by my heart sends waves of poisonous pain rippling through me each time it beats.
“Dark Emperor,” a new voice, hushed with reverence, offers as a scarlet-clad soldier steps into view. He does not appear quite as distorted as some of the others I saw at the prison. He could almost pass as any mortal soldier in the Midlands. “Excuse my intrusion, but—”
The sentence cuts off on a gasp as Efnysien’s hand flies out and seizes the soldier by the throat.
“Did I or did I not say,” he asks, voice utterly level, “that I was not to be disturbed with any unnecessary interruptions while greeting our new guest?”
The soldier makes a choking sound. His face is turning pale from lack of air.
“I’m relatively certain I did.” In a decidedly serpentine move, Efnysien tilts his head to the side, evaluating the man in his grip.
I brace for the strike—the snap of a neck, the slash of a blade.Still, I am unprepared for it. A cloud of black maegic amasses in the air, billowing like living smoke. It does not feel like my wind, or Penn’s fire, or Soren’s water. This is not Remnant power. Not natural. Not elemental.
It is something else.
Something evil.
I watch the snake of black slither down Efnysien’s taut arm, then join his fingers in a deadly cuff around the soldier’s windpipe. The man begins to convulse as it seeps into his skin. Already pale, he goes fully bloodless as the dark power suffuses his veins, hijacks his senses. His gasping mouth goes slack, his terror-widened eyes go empty. In the span of a breath, all semblance of life has been drained from his body.
And siphoned straight into Efnysien’s.
The sorcerer’s strange tattoos shift across his skin,withinit, the patterns moving like shadows on a sundial as he absorbs the man’s essence. His shoulders shudder, his chin tips back to the sky on a low groan. Sating his dark thirst. Not stopping until he’s pumped every last shred of vitality. Until all that remains is a man-shaped shell.
It is enough to make my blood run cold.
An abomination.
An atrocity.
Without another word spoken, Efnysien releases his grip. The emperor does not even bother to watch as his loyal subject falls, dead, to the desert sand. His crimson eyes are already turning back to find mine.
I hope my face does not betray my fright.
He can kill by contact alone.
His very touch is death.
“It’s going to be such fun, having you here,” he says, as though we were never interrupted. “You’ll see.” He jerks hischin toward someone out of my sight line. “Isn’t that right, my sea goddess?”
Melité’s svelte form presses into his side. Her arms wind around his waist as she lays a kiss against his marbled neck, then angles her head down to stare at me. Her eyes are pure ink, her smile is coy. At her waist, my golden whip is coiled neatly on a braided sash.
“Rhya, Rhya. You know, now that we’re being honest, I never did understand the fuss everyone made over your appearance in our lives. What’s so special aboutyou? Hmm?” Her eyes narrow a shade, gills flaring. “But the second you arrived, it was like Arwen all over again. Everyone fawning over your presence. My brother especially.Pathetic, the lot of them.”
Efnysien’s eyes flare victoriously. “Oh, Soren will be so upset at this turn of events. He never did enjoy it when I broke his favorite toys as a boy…”
My head is swimming from the pain and the terror. I must black out again for a moment because when I come to, Melité is crouched over me, holding a dagger—mydagger—to my face. Before I can react, she digs the tip into the flesh of my cheek and scores a slow line down toward my jaw, grinning as the blood spills into the sand. It hurts, but not half so much as my other injuries.
“Those stormy eyes of yours are so pretty,” she says, her exquisite features contorted into an ugly grimace. “Always casting little looks across rooms at my brother when you think no one is watching. Always blazing with such defiance. Even now, when you’re at my mercy. You can’t help yourself, can you?” Her lips curve in anticipation as the blade inches closer to my eye socket.
I still, not even daring to draw breath.
“Should I pluck them out for you?” she asks. “It would save you the trouble of glaring at me…No more haughty looks…”
“Come now, Melité,” Efnysien interjects. “There will be plenty of time to maim in the years to come. We want to savor it, do we not?”