wide, and the Thorn Maiden spilled through to manifest in physical reality.
Two armored guards dragged Nelle back to the pillared hall where the broken tree lay across a deeply cracked floor. The doors gaped much wider than the small opening Nelle had made when she bade it open. These were twelve feet tall or more, and she could easily see beyond them into the hall itself.
Kyriakos stood before the ruins of the pillar-tree, flanked by shadow-beings. Skull-dogs milled around his feet, snarling and salivating as the armored guards dragged Nelle up the flight of steps and through the doorway. The guards raised their lances in salute, then brought them down in a sharp synchronized crack against the stone. Nelle hung suspended between them, her feet barely touching the floor.
The lord of Ninthalor wore a long open vest-robe of brilliant red. Funny how she could see the color even in this darkness. Though the nymph’s spell had opened her eyes, the world had remained primarily colorless throughout her escape. But that red was unmistakable. It flowed like living heat from the fae lord’s powerful shoulders.
He took a step toward her but stumbled. One of the shadow-beings hastily moved forward to offer an arm, but he waved it away. Nelle dared to sneak a glance up through her tangled hair and saw that the left side of his face sagged as though still paralyzed. The Sweet Dreams had worn off sooner than it did on mortals, but it wasn’t completely gone from his system, not yet.
“Little wife,” Kyriakos said. Although the words slurred badly, his voice was no less sinister. “It would seem you are a woman of more than one secret. Rishva . . . ha!” He lifted one hand and rubbed his numb face, pulled at his sagging lip. “Never thought I’d see the day when I’d be taken down by a vila whore’s trick. And from mortal lips, no less!”
Nelle met his gaze. Her breath came in hard, panting gusts, not entirely due to her recent exertions. She wanted to quiver, to fold up on herself, to hide. But that wasn’t the way Mother had taught her.
Instead, she smiled. “La, my lord!” Her voice came out in a bright trill. “Tell these goons of yours to unhand me, and I’ll show you another trick or two.”
The half of Kyriakos’s mouth that still worked twisted into a snarl. He stepped toward her, leaning heavily on an assisting shadow-being and pushing skull-dogs out of his way. Catching her chin in his hand, he ruthlessly yanked her face up to his. She fixed her smile in place, refusing to look away even as he ran his thumb across her lips, smearing whatever traces remained of the Sweet Dreams. The sharp edge of his nail trailed over her skin.
“I told you,” he said, spitting the words out, “I prefer my wives willing. But that doesn’t mean I won’t take them however they come.”
With those words, he pressed his sagging, numb lips to hers while a doglike growl rumbled in his throat. There was nothing seductive about that kiss, none of the lethal fae subtlety. It was not a promise but a threat. A threat he fully intended to see through to completion.
The moment his lips left hers, Nelle spat in his face. Her spittle slid unheeded down his senseless cheek. His grip on her chin tightened, fingernails digging in, ready to draw blood.
But then, with a groan, he heaved himself upright, gripping the shadow-being’s arm. “Back to the tower with her,” he barked, gesturing to the guards. “Strip her down and bind her to the bed. See that she has no more such tricks hidden about her person. I’ll be along . . . presently.”
“Bastard!” Nelle cried. Whatever remained of her mother’s bravado melted away, replaced by pure fury and fear. “Are you so afraid to fight me that you gotta tie me down like an animal? Coward, bullspitting coward!”
The guards picked her off her feet and carried her between them back along the pillared hall. Nelle writhed in their viselike hands, hurling insults and expletives back over her shoulder. Before they’d carried her more than twenty paces, however, they froze in place. Voices erupted in the courtyard behind them. Terrified voices.
“Khilseith yesphyra! Yesphyra, yesphyra!
The strange words echoed off the courtyard buildings and walls, magnified as others took up the cry.
Then came a word Nelle recognized: “Noswraith!”
Her eyes widened.
The shouts turned to screams. Kyriakos, standing at the head of the hall, recoiled from