Lord of the Abyss - By Nalini Singh Page 0,4
father had ever done for her.
"I can see that." He smiled again, but those eyes, they were wrong in a way that made her stomach hurt. "Come with me, Liliana. No," he said when she would have bent to place Bitty on the floor, "bring your pet. I have a use for him."
The words scared her, but she was only five. Cuddling Bitty close to her chest, she toddled along after her father, and then up...and up...and up.
"How thoughtless of me," he said when they were halfway. "It must be difficult for you, all these stairs. Let me take the creature."
Certain she felt the rabbit flinch, Liliana tightened her hold on Bitty. "No, I'm okay," she said, trying not to huff.
Eyes of dirty ice stared at her for a long moment before her father turned, continued to climb the twisting, winding staircase to the tower room. The magic room. Where she was never, ever supposed to go.
However, today he opened the door and said, "It's time you learned about your heritage."
There was nowhere else to go, nowhere he wouldn't find her. So she walked into that room full of strange scents and books. It wasn't as gloomy as she'd expected, and there was no blood. Relief had her smiling in tremulous hope. Everyone always said her father was a blood sorcerer, but there was no blood here, so they had to be wrong.
Looking up, she met his gaze as he loomed over to take Bitty from her protesting arms. Her smile died, fear a metallic taste on her tongue.
"Such a healthy creature," he murmured, carrying the rabbit over to something that looked like a stone birdbath set in the middle of the circular room. Switching his hold, he suspended Bitty by his silky ears.
"No!" Liliana said, able to hear Bitty squeaking in distress. "That hurts him."
"It won't be for long." And then her father pulled a long, sharp knife from his cloak.
Bitty's blood turned the silver of the blade a dark, dark crimson before it flowed down to fill the shallow bowl of the horrible thing that wasn't a birdbath.
"Come here, Liliana."
Shaking her head, sobbing, she backed away.
"Come here," he said again in that same calm voice.
Her feet began to move forward in spite of her terror, in spite of her will, until she was close enough for her father to pick her up by the ruff of her neck and push her face close to the fading warmth of Bitty's blood, her blinding fear reflected in red. "See," he said. "See who you are."
Chapter 2
Liliana jerked awake on a soundless scream, her mouth stuffed with cotton wool and her head full of the cold finality of death. It took her long moments to realize that the door to her cell stood open; Bard watched her with those large eyes of liquid black.
"Hello," she said, voice strained with the echoes of nightmare.
He waved her forward.
She got to her feet, ready to fight dizziness, but her body held her up. Relieved, she stepped out, following Bard's ponderous steps through the dimly lit passageway until he stopped at another narrow door. When he did nothing else, she pushed through and felt her cheeks color. "I'll be but a moment."
Taking care of her private business, she used the mirror of black glass to tidy herself up as much as possible - there wasn't anything she could do about her beak of a nose, or the eyes of dirty ice so wrong against her mother's honey-dark skin, or the strawlike consistency of her matted black hair, much less the slashing gape of her mouth, but she was able to sleek that hair back off her face at least and tuck it behind her ears, wash off the blood that still streaked her wrists.
"Well," she said to herself, "you're here now. You must do what you came to do." Though she had no idea how.
She'd grown up hearing the people her father had enslaved whispering of the four royal children, the true heirs to the jewel that was once Elden. The hope in their furtive voices had nurtured her own, fostering dreams of a future in which fear, sharp and acrid, wasn't her constant companion.
Then, a month ago, driven by a steadily strengthening belief that something was very, very wrong, she'd stolen away into the putrid stench and clawing branches of the Dead Forest to call a vision as her father could not, his blood too tainted - and seen the tomorrow that was to