with alarming sentience, blinking and twitching and alive.
Alive. And the lips . . .
He understood with alarming clarity where the language came from.
Just as some rational part of him knew that it was too late.
Whatever dark curse the animated head was chanting had already been unleashed.
Stolas was the first to react. Talons out, he lunged for Haven so fast that by the time his snarl made it to Bell’s ears, Stolas was already wrapping himself around Haven, using his powerful body, his massive wings, and roiling strands of his magick to form an impenetrable wall. Bell joined the others as they rushed to protect Haven.
But there was nothing to protect. A roar so loud it fractured some of the crystals above erupted from Stolas as he uncurled his wings and retracted his magick, blinking at the empty space before him.
The shattered look in his eyes could only mean—oh, Goddess, this couldn’t be happening, but it was.
It was.
She was gone.
8
Wrapped in the complete darkness of Stolas’s protection, Haven didn’t notice at first when she shifted from that space to another. But the loss of Stolas’s dark magick was almost painful, like being ripped from a deep, comforting sleep and tossed into a frigid sea. Wave after wave of foul magick washed over her. Her own powers drowned out beneath its contaminated ick.
Fighting for breath, gasping and clutching her chest, she sifted through the shadows to gather her bearings. She was in some sort of chamber. Oily fog layered the room, so dense she imagined she could peel it back with her fingers, but it was receding. Slipping away like the tide to reveal . . . windows?
Her eyes flicked desperately from the mosaic of tiles created into suns to the thick vines along the walls. This place was familiar but not. Nothing made sense. She was somewhere else, somewhere she’d been before, but behind a veil of a crude, horrible magick.
Everything felt empty. Sick. Wrong. Like the Ruinlands had before they broke the Curse. But worse. So, so much worse.
Because she finally recognized the three thrones. The male dominating the middle throne was clad in the finery of a god. Emeralds formed a runic pattern over his ash-dark waistcoat, his expensive knee-high leather boots decorated in silver and gold. A golden crown glittered from the shadows.
He watched her quietly, but her soul knew him even before he uncoiled to his feet and stalked toward her. It recognized her brother-in-arms before she found that comforting familiarity in his arrogant, prowling gait. Before her gaze shifted to his gorgeous face, once renowned for its rare beauty.
Not anymore.
The fabric of shadows seemed to part around Archeron as he halted in front of her, just close enough to touch her—or plunge a dagger through her heart. “Little Mortal.”
His grin was a thing of nightmares, only it was half a grin. The other side of his visage was cloaked beneath a golden mask fitted so tightly, it could have been poured on. Emeralds and rubies decorated the adornment, but they couldn’t hide the dark greenish blots blooming over the mask, as if the corruption within was bubbling to the surface.
“My advisers thought the jewels would make the mask more . . . palatable,” he said conversationally. “What do you think? Does it do the trick?”
Her gaze was drawn to the eye watching her from the deep recesses of the mask. All-black, it seemed to come from a completely separate entity than the other eye, which was a brackish green similar to the corruption marring his mask.
She focused on that eye. That Archeron. “Did you receive my message of peace?”
“The Asgardian male delivered to my doorstep? He managed to relay your message, yes, along with a few other details my Gold Shadows pulled out of him.”
She shivered as he drew closer. The shadows writhed around him like slippery eels. She searched for her powers, scrambling to draw upon them, to find a shred of something—
“Your magick doesn’t work here.”
Right. “And where is . . . here?”
“You are trapped in the Nether, while I am still in our realm.”
Runes. That explained the oily strips of shadow floating around them and her inability to use magick. She should have picked up on that sooner.
“My mother hoarded wondrous treasures from all the Realms of Other,” he continued. “I always thought her obsession with collecting rare powerrunes and dark spells was a vain preoccupation, but I’m finding certain things have their uses.”
Despite his conversational tone, her heart ratcheted into a thundering