Which had forced Lanthe and her friends to hit the tunnels. . . .
“If you help me get this collar off,” she told Thronos, “I could create a portal to wherever you want.” Or she could command him to repeatedly stab himself in the dick. Then she’d run away as fast as she could manage—seeing as she would be laughing really hard.
This was assuming her sporadic persuasion worked, but she was hopeful; after all, she’d been storing up a lot of it over the last three weeks.
Thronos pinned her gaze with his own frenzied one. “You’ll wear that collar for the rest of your immortal life. That you retain it is a stroke of fortune.”
She knew he was serious. Which meant she had to get away from him and find that hand. “You always wanted me biddable, didn’t you? Like Vrekener females?” Lanthe had heard they never laughed, drank, danced, or sang, and always wore drab, full-coverage clothing.
A world away from merry, hedonistic Sorceri females with their racy metal garments, brightly colored masks, and bold makeup.
And, horror of horrors—Vrekeners disdained the wearing of gold. For a gold-worshipping sorceress like Lanthe, this was blasphemy. “You always wished I’d been born meek and powerless.”
“You might as well have been powerless. Over these centuries, you could hardly use your abilities—even without the collar.”
Burn. Worse, he was right. Though persuasion was her root power—the one she’d been born with, akin to her soul—she’d almost extinguished it by healing her sister from repeated Vrekener attacks.
Each time the winged menace found them, Sabine would charge into danger. Each time, Lanthe would clean up the damage, commanding Sabine’s body to mend itself.
Lanthe’s ruined power was well-known. While Sorceri had stolen other abilities from her, there’d been no takers on her defective soul.
“Look at your glittering eyes. Sensitive about this, creature?”
She reminded herself that she had managed a few spurts of persuasion in emergency situations. On one night, the stars had aligned, and she’d rendered Omort—a nearly omnipotent sorcerer—temporarily powerless.
Long enough for the demon King Rydstrom the Good to fight and kill him. Without Lanthe’s help, Rydstrom never could have freed all the rage demons of Rothkalina from Omort’s oppression.
How badly she wished for everyone in the Lore to know about that! Then they’d respect her.
She narrowed her eyes, recalling another time she’d conjured persuasion. “I used my sorcery on you the last time we met.”
Thronos clearly didn’t like to be reminded of that. A year ago, he’d set a trap around one of her portals, lying in wait for her to return. When she’d come upon him and his knights, she’d eked out some sorcery—enough for her to get through the portal.
“If you recall, I resisted your commands!”
Just as she’d been sealing it, he’d managed to shove his boot through the door. Alas, the portal closure had severed his foot.
Because of him she’d failed to rescue her sister from a perilous situation, so naturally Lanthe had kicked his foot around her room, screaming at it.
She slitted her eyes up at him. “I vow to you I’ll get this collar off me, and when I do, I’ll demonstrate how powerful I’ve gotten!” The rain continued to pour; ghouls howled below. But Lanthe was too pissed to pay them any mind; she had eons of pain to vent. “I’ll command you to forget I ever lived!”
A muscle ticked in his clenched jaw, and those slashing scars on his cheeks whitened. “Never!”
“Why not, demon? Every day I wish I’d never been in that meadow when you flew over.”
He unfurled his wings to their terrifying full length, a span of over fifteen feet. “I’m no demon.”
“Uh-huh.” You keep telling yourself that. He looked to say more, so she cut him off. “Even if you manage to get me off this island, you can’t just keep me. I have friends who will come for me.” King Rydstrom—now Lanthe’s brother-in-law—was ferocious about Sabine’s and Lanthe’s protection, vowing to slay anyone who thought to harm either sister.
He understood that without Lanthe, his beloved wife Sabine wouldn’t have survived all those years, and he felt indebted to her. But Rydstrom and Sabine didn’t know the truth: Lanthe had caused the Vrekeners to descend on them in the first place—because she’d stupidly befriended Thronos, a fact that she’d never revealed to her sister.
“And what friends would those be?” Thronos grated.
“Perhaps you’ve heard of my brother-in-law Rydstrom, the ruler of Rothkalina, master of Castle Tornin?”
Rydstrom had alerted the king of the Air Territories—Thronos’s brother—of his protection. Any plot to harm either of the sisters would be considered an act of war against all rage demons. “Rydstrom is my protector.”
“I have no fear of him. Just as I had no fear of your previous protector. Omort the Deathless.”