A tidal wave of contagious, vicious killers flooded toward them, their watery yellow eyes burning with rage. They climbed the walls, scrabbling over each other to reach their prey.
The ghouls were fifty feet away. Forty.
Thronos’s wings rippled, as if with eagerness. Lanthe’s last sight on earth might be a Vrekener’s wings. Not a big surprise.
Thirty feet away. Twenty . . . then . . . striking distance.
One of his wings flashed out, then the other.
Beheaded ghouls dropped in place. More than a dozen gaping necks pumped their blood, a syrupy green goo.
Her lips parted. “What the hell?” The silver talons of Thronos’s wings dripped green; they’d sliced through throats like a razor blade.
Like his father’s fire scythe.
Eyes wide, she sidled along the wall to get a better look at him. She hadn’t known Thronos was that fast—or that his wings were so deadly.
The scent of ghoul blood fouled the air and made the next line of them hesitate. Never ceasing their wails, they stared down at the twitching bodies of their kind, then up at Thronos, confusion on their faces.
When another wave decided to shoot forward, he used his wings again. Goo splashed the walls, striping the fallen bodies. A pool of green seeped toward her and Thronos.
His wings moved so fast she could barely see them, could only feel their backdrafts over her face. Headless bodies piled up, and Lanthe felt . . . hope.
Back when she’d allied with the Pravus Army, Lanthe had observed soldiers sparring—vampires, centaurs, fire demons, and more. They’d always grunted and yelled when they struck. Thronos was eerily silent. One male against a horde of baying monsters.
Gods, he was strong.
Technically he was a demon angel—though Vrekeners vehemently denied any demon blood in their line. Right now, he looked seriously demonic. Watching him like this, she realized that in their confrontations over the last few centuries, Thronos had been pulling his punches.
He might not have wanted to kill his mate, but he could’ve taken out Lanthe’s protector, her sister Sabine. Yet he hadn’t. Earlier, Thronos could’ve killed Carrow without a thought. Instead, he’d spared her life. Why?
As the bodies accumulated and poisonous blood crept toward her boots, Lanthe grew queasy. A quake sent her stumbling against the rock wall. The force shuffled the mound of ghouls, sifting corpses. The sheer number of slain was mind-boggling.
When his next strike felled yet another line of them, no more advanced around the corner. They sounded as if they lay in wait outside the tunnel.
Thronos turned to her, broad chest heaving, his grave face covered in grit and sweat. His collar-length hair was damp, whipping over his cheeks.
She grudgingly admitted that he looked . . . magnificent. For so long, she’d focused on his scars, his weaknesses. She’d underestimated this male.
He grated one word: “Come.”
One of Lanthe’s favorite mottos was the simplest—when in trouble, leave.
Seeing no other choice, she crossed to him. He lifted her into his arms, one looping around her waist, the other coiling around her neck.
Unbidden, memories of her childhood arose, when his expressions had been open, his words kind to her. When he’d nicknamed her and taught her to swim.
He’d been a fascinating mix of cocky and vulnerable; one minute he’d be flashing a teasing grin, the next his cheeks would heat with a blush. . . .
“Hold on to me, Melanthe.”
She could only nod and comply.
He booted bodies away, then took off in a limping sprint. She knew what he planned. To evade the ghouls just outside the mine, Thronos would run to the very edge, then leap into flight.
He’d taken her into the sky before—when she’d been a girl who’d trusted him utterly. Years later, she’d witnessed a Vrekener fly Sabine to a great height, just for the pleasure of dropping her to a cobblestone street below.
Sabine’s head had cracked open like an egg, but somehow Lanthe’s sorcery had wrenched her from the jaws of death.