Lord of the Abyss - By Nalini Singh Page 0,19

started to pull together the ingredients for a loaf of bread, wasn't paying attention. "Shall we make fruit porridge this morning, Liliana?"

"Perhaps we can put the fruit in the bread," Liliana muttered, putting down her chocolate to rummage through the cupboards. "It will taste lovely toasted."

"What do you search for?"

"Cinnamon."

A mournful shake of her head. "No, don't know. Don't know at all."

"I'm sure it must be here." If the youngest son of Elden had found chocolate and brought it home, then he may well have hunted out the spice that was so very common in his homeland that it was put in everything from casseroles to sweets...to a little boy's chocolate.

A squeak met her when she opened a lower cupboard.

"Mouse? A mouse!" Jissa turned with rolling pin held high, her face scrunched up into a scowl. "Nasty creatures! Show me, show Jissa."

Liliana closed the door. "It was only a squeaking hinge. Don't forget the sugar syrup or the bread won't taste as sweet."

"Oh, dear!" Distracted, Jissa dropped the rolling pin onto the table and ran to get the syrup.

Soon as she was far enough away, Liliana opened the door a crack, put her finger to her lips and whispered, "Have you seen the cinnamon?"

Small black eyes gleamed at her in the dark before her little friend darted out and along the edge of the cupboards to the very corner of the kitchen, where it slipped under a set of tall shelves just as Jissa returned. "Oh, you must help me, Liliana," the brownie wailed. "He won't, won't like what I make. I don't want you thrown back in the cold, so cold dungeon."

"I'll help, don't worry. Just give me a moment." Having reached the shelves under which the mouse had disappeared, she looked at the rows upon rows of identical dark brown jars, not a label in sight. "Well," she muttered, then glimpsed a flash of sleek gray run up along the side of the shelving. An instant later, one particular jar was nudged forward a bare millimeter.

Grabbing it, she twisted the lid open to find several long sticks of cinnamon. A bit old, but they had held their scent. "Thank you," she mouthed.

The mouse twitched its nose at her before disappearing behind the jars.

Turning, she walked over to put the jar next to the small tin of chocolate. Then she helped Jissa finish preparing the fruit bread, made a few crisp pastries covered with jam and churned some fresh butter.

"Oh, but there is no meat." Jissa twisted her hands. "He will growl and snarl and my bones will clatter, clatter against one another, they will."

Liliana had heard the Guardian of the Abyss growl, and while terrifying, it had also haunted her sleep in a startlingly different fashion - she'd dreamed of him making the same feral sound against a woman's...against her skin. And now that she'd allowed herself to recall it, she couldn't stop the sinful cascade of a lush fantasy that surely meant she was mad - for what kind of a woman would want the dark lord in her bed?

"Snarling and growling." Jissa continued to fuss. "Meat, he will demand. Meat!"

"We'll see," she said through a throat gone dry, and began to grind the cinnamon until it was a pile of dust that she scooped back into the jar. "Now, where's the milk?"

The Guardian of the Abyss hadn't slept. He never slept. When the Black Castle went quiet for the night, he walked the halls in the company of ghosts. Sometimes, he went back out to hunt, for that was his reason for being, and sometimes, he went searching beyond the village and to the twilight lands, for those like Jissa and Bard.

He didn't know why he'd saved the brownie and the big lug. No one had ever asked him, but perhaps his strange storyteller would. If she did ask such an impertinent question, he'd tell her it was because he needed servants. A lie. He wondered if she would know, if she would challenge him. Hmm...

Striding into the great hall with that intriguing thought in mind, he halted.

The table was set with toast and pastry and fruit. But that wasn't what stopped him. It was the scent in the air, sweet and spicy at the same time. Aware of Liliana standing with suspicious meekness by the table, he crossed the black stone of the castle to take his seat, picking up the cup of steaming liquid at his elbow.

Rich and dark, he recognized it as chocolate.