Lord of the Abyss - By Nalini Singh Page 0,39

do you hide?"

No. She couldn't die. She hadn't brought Micah home.

But her father was squeezing the life out of her, her heart a scrabbling rabbit in her chest. Lifting hands weak and trembling, she tried to pull him off once more, but her fingers slipped, slick with her own blood. No! She refused to give up, refused to surrender. Not to him, never to him. Even if -

A massive surge of power - clean, pure, potent - slammed through her veins.

Drawing it to the surface as her lungs released a final breath, she threw it at her father in a hail of razor-sharp daggers. His scream shattered the black box, sent her tumbling into the dreamscape, shards of obsidian falling around her, cutting and stabbing. Gasping, choking, she used the intoxicating power in her veins to break the final threads of his spell, falling back into reality with a jerk that had her bolting into a sitting position.

To look into the face of the Lord of the Black Castle.

His eyes burned with black, and when he shoved back her hair to bare her face to the lamp that flickered on the nightstand, she didn't resist. "You bleed." It was a harsh statement.

Leaving her to stride into the bathing chamber, he returned with a soft towel in hand. She raised her fingers to her throat, felt the welts, the stickiness of blood. Shocked and shaky, she didn't protest when he put the towel to her throat with his right hand, his left tightly fisted.

Her eyes locked on that fist.

Tugging at his fingers, she felt a dark wetness. "What did you do?" She stared at the massive gash across his palm. "What did you do?"

The hand holding the towel to her neck flexed, pressed again. "You do blood sorcery."

Shuddering, she understood. He'd seen her trapped in the nightmare, given her the surge of magic she'd needed to get herself out, his blood heady. Her own was paltry in comparison. Elden itself ran in his veins. "Thank you," she murmured, even as she took a second towel he'd dropped on the nightstand and pressed it to his cut. "You shouldn't waste your blood. It holds incredible power."

The Guardian of the Abyss gave her a look filled with such fury that she froze. "So I should've let you die, Liliana? Is that what you would will of me?"

She'd insulted him. "No," she said at once. "But you're far more important than me." Far more. "If you die, what will become of the Abyss?"

"There will be a new lord." Anger continued to glitter in the eyes become winter-green once more. "There will never be another Liliana."

Her heart kicked, stopped, and when it started again, it belonged to him, this Prince of Elden become Lord of the Black Castle. She couldn't stop the trembling of her lower lip, couldn't stop the tear that rolled down her cheek. For the second time, she was crying in front of him when she tried never, ever to betray such vulnerability.

The Guardian of the Abyss made a rough sound in the back of his throat, and then she was being scooped up and settled on his lap, against the cool chill of his armor. When he ordered her to continue keeping pressure on her wounds, she obeyed, even as she refused to let go of the hold she had around his palm.

"You're still bleeding," she managed to say through the tears. "I can taste the power." It was rich and dark and tempting. So tempting. The sorcery she could do with his blood... No. She threw aside his hand and the towel at her throat to huddle into herself, horrified. "Let me go. I'm evil." The Blood Sorcerer's daughter, after all.

Strong fingers against her face, his arm holding her tightly in place. "The blood you taste is freely given," he murmured in her ear. "It intoxicates."

She shuddered, because he was right. The exquisite beauty of it ran through her veins, curled around her senses, threatening to make her a slave. "Please."

"Have you smelled blood that is not freely given?"

She thought of her father's tower room, of her horror as she sat bound, unable to help his victims...and then later, when he'd stolen her will, forced her to assist. "Yes." A low, quiet word. "I was a child," she whispered, wondering if he would believe her. "I've never spilled innocent blood of my own free will."

"I know." Fingers in her hair, massaging her skull. "What did it taste like?"

"Putrid, vile, spoiled."