Lord of the Abyss - By Nalini Singh Page 0,63

was time. But he'd been too young when he arrived, had spent years in sleep, rising only when he could take on the mantle. Of the old lord, he knew only what the ghosts had told him - that he had chosen to return to the place from whence he'd come, to spend the rest of his years far from the Abyss.

But none of that mattered. What mattered were those eyes of dirty ice.

Retracting the spikes formed of the earth's elements once he was certain the spiders wouldn't regain their courage and return, he held up his exhausted body through sheer strength of will as he turned to face the woman who scrambled up to her feet, unhidden concern in her expression. However, he halted her with a palm held flat out when she would've touched him. Those eyes...those eyes looked at him with a dawning comprehension that turned them dull and distant. "You know."

"You lied to me, Liliana." He'd seen storm skies in those changeable eyes, and yet all this time, they had been filled with lies.

She flinched, stayed silent.

"You didn't tell me your father is the sorcerer who stole my parents' lives." He couldn't bring himself to ask about Nicolai, Dayn and Breena.

Swallowing, she fisted her hands. "I needed you to trust me, to remember."

"Why?" Something niggled at him, a half-remembered dream.

"The twentieth anniversary of Elden's fall is almost upon us," Liliana said, hugging herself. "You must be at the castle before midnight on that day."

Micah gripped her upper arms. "Why? Tell me."

"At midnight, Elden will die...and so will your siblings." Instead of attempting to break his rough hold, she touched hesitant fingers to his chest. "After today, there are only two more days left and the road to Elden is long and filled with many dangers. I may be able to take you halfway using the spell that brought me here, but it'll drain me - and I must fight beside you, for my father is an evil man bloated with power."

Letting her go, he stepped away from her touch. Hurt filled her eyes and it made him want to rage, but he was so angry at her, the wildness of it leaving him near wordless.

"I know," she whispered in a broken kind of a voice. "I know what I stole from you. I don't expect you to feel the same toward me now that you know whose blood runs in my veins, but please, Micah, you must believe me. You must or your family will be forever lost."

"It's not your blood," he said, rising into the air, rejuvenated by the powerful magic of the Abyss. "It's the fact that you lied to me."

Liliana watched Micah disappear into the clouds on those strange leathery wings that had formed from the ether, aware he was chasing the last of the Arachdem to ensure they wouldn't return. But he was also getting away from her - a woman who had lied to him. However, regardless of what he'd said, she knew that couldn't be the sole reason for his fury.

How could he bear to touch her when her visage was an ugly feminine echo of her father's? When her eyes were those of the Blood Sorcerer? When her hooked beak of a nose was a replica of the man who had murdered his parents? There was nothing of her mother in her beyond the color of her skin, as if he'd stolen that, too, when he locked Irina in a spell of haunting blindness to the child she'd borne.

The sky above her began to fill once again with blue, the purity of it mocking her pathetic attempt at escaping the truth of her murderous lineage.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry."

But Micah wasn't there to hear her, and when the sun blazed dark orange as it sank toward the mountains, the kitchari having cleaned up the Arachdem corpses and returned to the earth, he wasn't there to hold her...never would be again. Forcing herself not to think of that lest she become paralyzed by the pain, she spent the last half hour before sunset working with Jissa to pack enough supplies for the journey to Elden, though she didn't yet know how they would cross the border between realms, or navigate her father's vicious traps to reach the castle. "We'll find a way," she said. "We will."

"What?" Jissa asked. The brownie was more than a little confused over Liliana's sudden desire to pack supplies, but she was doing everything