Lord of the Abyss - By Nalini Singh Page 0,57

laughed at the idea of these pieces of "Bitterness" eating their way through potatoes with relish. "What does Micah do with them?"

"He brings them back home," came a familiar male voice from the doorway.

Turning, she found Micah standing there, fully armored again - and surrounded by a small sea of furry little creatures who were making the oddest chittering sounds. Before she could say a word, Jissa put her hands on her hips. "No, no! Pests! No pests in my kitchen!" the brownie said in an unexpected show of temper.

"They've promised to behave." Micah smiled, slow and coaxing, and Liliana all but saw Jissa melt. "They'll only be here for a while. Something scared them and so they've come to hide until the badness is gone."

Liliana felt a chill in her heart. "What is this badness?"

"Bad magic," Micah said. "The Bitterness were created to sense bad magic, and eat it up. But they are too small, and can only eat small bad magics."

And the Blood Sorcerer's magic, Liliana thought, was huge and ever growing. Had she needed one, this was the final sign that there was no more time - she would tell Micah the truth tomorrow, hope he would remember...hope he wouldn't hate her.

That night, while Micah was gone hunting the souls destined for the Abyss, Liliana dreamed of huge spiders as big as horse carts. Their eyes were a malignant red that burned, until she couldn't look at them without tears of blood streaking down her cheeks. And yet she knew she couldn't look away, for their legs were lined with razors, their mouths with knives.

Then she fell, and they were on her, cutting and tearing and ripping.

It was her own scream that wrenched her out of the nightmare.

Sitting up in the huge black bed in the room that belonged to the Lord of the Black Castle, his shirt - the one she had borrowed from his closet, though he had ordered her to sleep naked - stuck to the sweaty film on her skin, she bit the inside of her cheek, creating enough blood magic to open her palm on a ball of light. It floated to the ceiling, bathing everything in a soft glow. There were no spiders in the corners, or if there were, the small creatures were too shy to bother her.

But it wasn't those insects that worried her. "They are coming," she said to the mouse who watched her from the windowsill, his tail twitching as if he sensed it, too. "The Arachdem are coming."

Micah returned to the castle with many shadows this night, all of them so full of evil that he felt drenched in it. Not going to Liliana until he'd washed off their stench, he was most displeased to find his bed empty - though the hunt had been long and dawn touched the sky in a luminous cascade of color. "Where is she?" he snarled at the mouse who had the bad fortune to be sleeping curled up on the bedside table beside the unicorn timepiece he'd shown Lily last night.

The mouse squeaked, stood up on two paws for a second, before dashing down and behind the table and under the bed. Leaving the creature because it was a denizen of the Black Castle, though its magic was very, very small, Micah slammed his way down to the kitchen. Jissa jumped when she saw him, then shook a wooden spoon.

"Look! Look at this!"

Bemused by the sudden aggression from this most sweet and timid of brownies, he walked around the counter to see what had her so upset. By and around her feet rippled a sea of furry black. The Bitterness. Micah scowled. "You promised to behave."

A chittering, squealing response.

"Oh." Raising his head, he said to Jissa. "Have they eaten any of your potatoes or rice?"

Jissa frowned, put down the spoon and went to check the stores, the Bitterness at her heels. They made a mournful hungry kind of sound when she opened the bins, but didn't swarm. Instead, they followed her back when she returned to stand in front of Micah. "No, they did not." Shocked words. "Not at all."

"Then I believe they must like you, Jissa." Kissing her on the cheek - and enjoying her "eek" of surprise - he left her surrounded by the squealing happiness of the Bitterness.

"Hush, silly, silly," he heard her mutter, but there was no ill will in it. Then, "Very hungry you are?"

Smiling because the Bitterness would not be harmed here and