she arched upward, stretching her pleasantly sore muscles.
He glanced down, his gaze dropping from her face to the tips of her breasts as her nipples brushed against his chest and hardened. Lazarus pressed his lips together, as if to keep himself from licking them, as she was certain he wanted to.
“I asked you a question, Quinn.”
“I was deciding how to answer, Your Highness,” she replied in an equally terse tone of voice.
“Let’s start with the truth,” he prompted.
Quinn disintegrated as she stepped out of the living realm and into death’s. Her body reformed as flesh, several feet away. She strolled over toward the wingback chairs, taking note of the furnishings.
“No spirits?” she asked, noting the distinct lack of a crystalline decanter.
“You’re avoiding,” Lazarus said in a hard breath.
“I’m curious,” she shot back. “Since when did you stop drinking?”
He rolled over, then sat up, and she felt his eyes on her back as she looked at the roaring fire instead.
“Since you died,” he said, as if it were so simple. “I have enough demons of my own plaguing me, and I couldn’t face any more.”
Quinn wasn’t sure how to respond to that. So she didn’t.
“You were the last to know because you care the most,” Quinn said softly. “If you knew I was alive, you would have followed me to the ends of this world. I couldn’t have that. You couldn’t have that. I needed you here, making war.”
The bed creaked under his weight as he shifted.
“If I knew you were alive—” He started then stopped. She was right, they both knew it. “Why does it matter if I chase you or our enemies?”
It was a better question. A smarter one. One that Quinn had to handle . . . carefully.
“One doesn’t simply walk out of the dark realm, not without Mazzulah’s permission. I am no different in that,” Quinn said.
“What did you promise the dark god?” Lazarus asked. His madness must be clearing if he was falling back into their old rhythm.
It pleased Quinn because he was going to need that edge about him. He couldn’t fall into grief and lose himself. There was too much to be done.
“I only made one promise. Risk made the other. She is half-raksasa. It allowed her to enter the door and ascend the steps. She wanted to bring me back. Mazzulah said that if she stayed there until her ascension that I could return . . .”
“And?” Lazarus prompted. The mattress creaked once more. His footsteps padded across the stone floors.
Quinn stared at the red flickering flames as he sat in the wingback chair beside her. He leaned back, placing his arms on the wooden rests, and steepled his fingers together.
“We are to go to war and win,” she said. “The gods have been playing games since the beginning of time, and their favorite is when they play with us. They choose heirs and guide them through this world. Invisible hands that we call destiny moving things aside or putting them in the way.”
“To what end?”
“Why do we play games?” she asked.
Lazarus inclined his head. “They toy with us for amusement.”
“Partially,” she said, her voice turning distant. “The gods are in a never-ending power struggle, and the games they play using us decide the winner. We go to war because that’s how Mazzulah wins—and us by extension.”
“And if we don’t?”
Quinn looked away. This one small aspect was what made her . . . uncomfortable. And she was loathed to admit it.
“If we lose, Mazzulah takes me back and kills you all.”
She didn’t want to look at him, but she sensed his mood darkening.
“Why not kill you as well?”
“Well, I’m not exactly alive as it is,” Quinn mused, trying to steer the conversation into clearer waters. Ones she felt sure she could navigate. “I walked out, or more accurately, was carried out. I now exist in all realms at once. If I die again, that’s it.”
“From what the legends say, soul eaters are the same,” Lazarus said, his voice deceptively quiet. Controlled.
“They’re true,” she mused. “You and I are the same in that now.”
“Then why are we killed, and you returned?”
“Because that’s Mazzulah’s price,” she said, avoiding the answer still. The truth that the dark god had taken a liking toward her. More than a liking. They were obsessed with her. A fascination, similar to his own.
And while Quinn never acted on it . . . she didn’t exactly shy away either.
Her body was her own. Her mind her own. She was dead, and