Wicked Abyss (Immortals After Dark #17) - Kresley Cole Page 0,16

If Abyssian came in the night as her reaper, would he behead her the way Saetth had her parents? One clean swipe? Maybe she’d go to sleep and never wake up.

Lila would fight to get free, but right now she needed to focus on her immediate task. She did fear spiders—didn’t most people?—but more than that she feared a challenge stumping her. It’d be a first.

Her life motto was FITFO. Because as far as a problem went, she always figured it the fuck out.

She gazed up at the sky, trying to determine how long till sunrise. The lengths of days and nights varied from world to world, and she’d read that hell’s stretched longer than most. But if dawn arrived sooner than she expected—

A gust of ash-laden wind rushed over her. As she hurried inside, she went into another coughing fit, brushing against a fire vine. Damn it!

Eyes watering, she crossed to the wheel that he’d conjured with a wave of his hand. Having been away from the Lore for so long, she wasn’t used to real displays of magic.

Was spinning a cobweb even possible? It sounded so fairy tale–esque. But then, she was a fairy princess.

She sat and replayed the earlier demonstration. Tamping the floor pedal would make the wheel spin. A measure of thread had already been started. Apparently, she was to attach sections of thick cobweb to the end of that length, pulling it straight as the wheel dragged it in.

She hesitated to touch the pile of cobwebs. But she had to, else meet the web’s spinners.

When she reached for the webbing, it stuck to her fingers. “Ugh!” With clumsy movements, she began to work, coughing all the while.

A couple of false starts slowed her down, but she learned from her mistakes and found a rhythm. The tensile thread was surprisingly strong.

Her monotonous task gave her too much time to think. Sooner or later the demon would discover her real identity, and without warm and fuzzy feelings toward his mate, he’d turn her over to the M?ri?r archer for assassination—if Abyssian didn’t do it himself.

Rumor held that Rune Darklight, A.K.A. Rune the Baneblood, had once been a slave in the broiling fens of Sylvan, horribly abused by the ruler during his time: Queen Magh, who was both Saetth’s mother and an ancestress of Lila.

Rune had sworn to stamp out Magh’s entire line. Which meant Lila as well. If she didn’t escape this place before she was found out . . .

I now have a deadline, emphasis on dead.

She recalled the grueling tension at court whenever the archer assassinated another royal. With each execution, the noose tightened, the odds of survival growing slimmer. For months after, everyone would appear haunted and hollow-eyed.

She’d been too young to grasp all the ramifications, but she’d known one thing for certain: The bogeyman is real. . . .

In her lifetime, Rune had murdered four of her cousins, all of them caught outside the fortified safety of Sylvan Castle, all of them despicable.

But I’m not.

The tips of her pointed ears began to twitch. Foot paused on the pedal, she rubbed the back of her neck and gazed around the dim area.

She heard the scurrying of . . . things in every dark place, but she never caught sight of them. Probably for the best.

Yet she was certain she was being watched.

TEN

Reclining on the bed in his lavish chambers, Sian held a looking-glass—not to see his own reflection, never his own—but to spy on Kari. In hell, he could use mirrors to view any scene in the present.

He’d observed her as she’d first investigated her surroundings. She’d appeared to be freezing in her flimsy lingerie.

And Sian cared not at all.

She’d crossed to the balcony and surveyed his lands, her eyes growing stark at the sight.

He didn’t care.

Ashy wind had gusted into the tower; as she coughed, she’d brushed up against another fire vine.

But he could not care less.

When she’d sat at the wheel, she’d looked shell-shocked. Good.

Though his instincts screamed at him to protect her, warm her, clothe and feed her, he refused. He’d once followed his instincts with her, and look where that had left him.

With the help of his hell-change aggression, he buried those impulses deep, deeper—until a filter seemed to cover his gaze, red from his hatred.

Crimson haze in place, he didn’t even see her as his mate. She was simply a desirable prisoner.

Once she’d spun all of the webbing he’d provided, she rose and warily approached another large cobweb. Dark