hunger, she knew she would have no problem putting the blade through his heart.
But first she had to convince him to choose her. Acting on instinct, she widened her eyes with feigned fear, letting her gaze flick from the Demon Lord to the door, like a trapped rabbit. Her chest rose and fell in rapid bursts, the diamonds clinging to her plunging neckline throwing sparkles over her cheeks and arms.
It was easy to act petrified when true fear curdled in her marrow. Runes, she would probably have nightmares about this horrifying realm for years to come.
On some silent signal, a portly mortal servant came and took all but Haven and three of the others away. Haven didn’t have to fake the rapid beat of her heart as the lights dimmed. She should have been triumphant that she was still on stage, but her survival instincts had taken over, her body primed and ready to flee at the slightest noise.
Strange, enthralling music slithered through the air, unlike anything she had ever heard before. The slow, haunting tune seemed to surround her. Stroking her skin, warming her flesh, easing her panic as it slowly penetrated deeper and deeper inside her.
She struggled against the magick, especially as her inhibitions began melting away. A restless, pent-up energy spread through her chest, her legs, the pressure growing. Every muscle in her body begged to align with the beat.
The others had already started to dance, rocking in lazy circles, moving in a suggestive way Haven had never seen before.
Despite the pull of the music, a part of her still couldn’t bear to dance for the Demon Lord. Her pride refused.
This is what you’re here for. But she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t dance for a bastard like Lord Malik. And it was going to cost her the painting.
Remembering Stolas’s words to find him, she swept her gaze over the crowd of demonai, searching for that familiar teasing grin. She found him near the front of the circle, so close she could leap down and touch him.
But he wasn’t grinning. Not even close. His features could have been cut from marble as he watched her. Perhaps it was the spelled music affecting him, or the dress, but there was no mistaking the desire burning inside his eyes.
Molten heat blasted down her core. Something jerked taut between them, and the others faded into muffled darkness.
Her world shrank to the music, her body, and Stolas. No one else existed.
Before she knew what was happening, her hips began to sway. Then her arms. Lifting and floating above her as she rocked and drifted with the melody. She took a strange fascination in the way Stolas’s focus riveted to her every movement. The way his full lips parted slightly and his pupils swelled as her hips traced little circles over the dais. The hunger in his eyes was like last night as he watched her, but different.
Almost . . . bittersweet.
As if every twist of her body drove a sharp blade of agony and pleasure deeper into his heart.
Their eyes were still locked when the enchanted instruments stopped playing. A rush of cold reality broke through the spell, and Haven froze in place. Stolas’s head whipped to the mezzanine, lips peeled in a silent snarl.
She followed his stare, knowing what she would see. But that didn’t prepare her for the icy fear that slithered down her spine as Lord Malik pointed at her. The gesture was flippant, as if he was deciding which dessert to have sent to his room.
In a way, she mused darkly, he was.
An icy trickle of horror dripped down her spine, and she met Stolas’s eyes. His expression was hard, jaw set, but she caught the near-imperceptible nod meant only for her.
Behind him, a flash of silver and turquoise cloak and ice-blue skin drew her attention. Why was the same odd figure standing so close to Stol—
Cold, bony fingers wrapped around her bicep, the talons indenting her goose-pebbled skin.
She jerked around to find a demonai with patches of dark green skin and limp, skeletal wings clutching her arm.
“Aren’t you the lucky one?” he said in guttural, broken Solissian.
Accent or not, his sarcasm was perfectly clear.
She was not lucky. In fact, given the way the demonai looked at her, odds were good that most of Malik’s blood slaves never survived the night.
The demonai halted in front of an iron door carved to look like a nest of intertwined snakes. Moving snakes. A few of the diamond-shaped heads turned their