Wicked Abyss (Immortals After Dark #17) - Kresley Cole Page 0,98
to her?” Josephine said. “I hated all of you freaks at first, but now I tolerate you. And if I can, anybody can.”
Lila kind of liked this girl.
“She wouldn’t want to meet anyone connected to a M?ri?r.” Abyssian traced to take a seat on the dais steps—instead of commanding Rune to vacate his throne. A testament to their friendship. “Not yet at least. It will take time.”
“Good news, brother,” Rune said, “we’ve got nothing but time.”
Uthyr’s tail twitched, and he growled in sleep.
Josephine murmured to Rune, “Hey, sport, watch this.” She waved her hand in the dragon’s direction.
Uthyr immediately scratched his earflap.
“Worth the trip to hell, right there.” Was the female using telekinesis to screw with the M?ri?r’s almighty dragon?
Abyssian raised his brows. “Surely you’ve heard the saying: Never wake a sleeping dragon.”
Rune apparently hadn’t. “Do it again, Josie.”
She did. When Uthyr scratched and smacked his chops, Lila found herself almost grinning. They all seemed so deceptively normal. Too bad one of them has vowed to murder me.
Another wave of Josephine’s hand.
Uthyr scratched so hard that scales popped off, pinwheeling in the air.
The halfling and Rune cracked up. Even Abyssian laughed.
Rune turned to him. “I haven’t heard you laugh since you took the throne.” Tracing to sit beside Abyssian, Rune clamped his shoulder, the two demonstrating such an easy camaraderie. “Like I said, your female is already affecting you.”
Lila thought back to some of the first times she’d heard the demon laugh. He’d definitely seemed rusty at it. No longer.
“Didn’t I tell you? There’s nothing better than matehood.” Rune’s contentedness surprised her. Abyssian had confided more of what Magh had done to the archer, and it’d been horrific. Did Rune deserve revenge? Gods, yes.
Just not against me.
When Josephine joined Rune on the steps, he wrapped an arm around her, pressing a kiss into her hair. So clearly in love.
Lila gazed from them to Abyssian. Though the demon continued to reveal those hints of vulnerability to her, something was weighing on him. Did he have a secret of his own?
Abyssian asked the two, “Have you ever heard of the seven dwarves?”
Josephine grinned. “Yeah, they sound a jot familiar. Why do you ask?”
Frowning, he said, “My mate named a pack of hellhounds after them, but I’m baffled why those seven are significant among all other dwarves in the Lore. If she admires them, I would like to understand better.”
Lila sighed. That demon.
Josephine said, “They’re a band of miners who aided and abetted an endangered royal named Snow White. They’re basically revolutionaries.”
Hey, I’m the only one who gets to fuck with him over mortal-realm references.
“I see,” Abyssian said, no doubt thinking the dwarves had gone by code names. “That makes sense.”
“Is your mate really a reincarnate?” Josephine asked.
Nod. “She lived ten millennia ago.”
“How weird.” No kidding. “Does she have memories from her past life?”
“No. Nor does she want them.”
Lila had told Abyssian as much a few days before. . . .
He asked her, “Have you accepted you are a reincarnate?”
“I . . . have. I’ve also accepted that I probably won’t ever remember my previous existence.”
“I could use magic to help you.”
She exhaled. “Why would I want to, Abyssian? And more, why would you want me to remember my own death?” As well as the death of her child. Considering she would never be pregnant in this life, that memory would be all the more devastating. “I don’t even want to think about it.”
“How did she die?” Josephine asked, seeming absorbed with the subject of reincarnation.
His expression darkened. “Childbirth. She . . . she wed another.”
In one of Lila’s late-night talks with the demon, he’d told her about her first husband. . . .
“That fuck couldn’t wait a few months for her—you—to transition? I . . . it never made sense to me. How could he risk you?” The demon’s thought hit her. —When I would’ve done anything for you!— “I was supposed to protect my mate, but that sealed portal kept me from reaching you. He as good as killed you, and there was nothing I could do to save you.”
“Did you confront him?”
“I did. His assassination was my first act as a M?ri?r.” Gaze gone distant, Abyssian said, “They never found all the pieces of him.”
So much rage. How could he not always resent the past—and therefore her? Already he would hate her for her very blood.
Rune told him, “I’m glad you’ve forgiven your female for the past.” When no response came, he said, “You have forgiven her, right?”