She lifted her chin to pierce him with a malicious glare. "You insulted me first."
Kerrigan felt something he hadn't felt in centuries. Humor. He actually laughed at her audacity. It amazed him. Anyone else who dared insult him would now be lying dead at his feet. But this woman…
She amused him.
"You are a brave woman."
"Not especially. I'm merely a frank one."
"Well, I find your frankness refreshing."
Seren returned to eating, but she was still uneasy with the way Kerrigan stared at her as if he were a starving man and she his feast.
As she finished her food, she started to rise. Kerrigan vanished from his seat to appear directly behind her chair so that he could pull it back from the table.
She jumped at his sudden appearance.
"Forgive me for startling you."
"How do you do that?"
He shrugged as he moved the chair back for her. "I think it and it happens."
She crossed herself. "You are a devil, aren't you?"
"Aye, my lady souris . Damned and cursed."
And yet there was something about him that reminded her of a lost soul that wanted to find itself again. It was a stupid thing to think. She had no idea why she even thought it when he seemed to take such pleasure in being evil.
He leaned toward her ever so slightly, his presence overwhelming as he seemed to smell the air around her. The corners of his mouth lifted. It softened the harshness of his features and the chill in his gaze. "You had best return to your room now."
"Why?"
"I am a man of very finite patience, my Seren. I am not used to denying myself what small pleasures I can have. And you…you test the limits of what little self-control I possess." He reached out one cold hand to lightly brush against her cheek.
Seren could feel the warmth leave her skin at his touch. As she stood before him, her gaze dropped down to his neck, and there she saw the star amulet Magda had mentioned.
Her heart hammering, she reached to touch it.
Kerrigan immediately captured her hand. "What is it you do?"
"It…it is lovely."
He moved her hand away from it and stepped back. "Go, Seren. Before it's too late for you."
One moment she was before him, in the next she was back in her room. Only now it no longer had a door in it.
She swallowed as true fear took root inside her. Whatever was she going to do? Kerrigan was so powerful, so dark. How could she ever escape someone like him?
You have no choice.
Nay, she didn't. Somehow, someway she must find her way out of this land of the damned, back to her own home.
Chapter 4
Kerrigan reclined against the cushioned seat of his large,black throne as he watched Morgen "entertain" the other members of hercercle du damné .
Like him, most of the other one hundred and forty-nine men and women of their brotherhood had once been human. Some of them had even sat at the Round Table with Arthur and pledged their swords to goodness.
But there was no goodness or humanity left here in Camelot. Much like its famed king, it was long gone and would most likely never be seen again.
With one hand resting on the dragon head carved into the arm of his throne, Kerrigan tipped his goblet back to drink deep of a wine that could never nourish him.
Nor could it make him drunk.
"Come, my king," a beautiful Adoni female begged as she approached his dais. Her long black gown plunged all the way past her navel, baring to his gaze most of her abdomen and breasts—the tips of which had been painted a vivid red to stand out as they puckered invitingly against the sheer material of her dress. She was an amply endowed woman who would most likely please him for a moment or two. "Will you not join us for a dance?"
Kerrigan slid his black gaze to the gathering where his demon knights danced with the fey. Some of them were already sprawling half naked in corners, uncaring of who watched them as they sought to sate their bodies. The loud dance music that played through the room came from CDs that Morgen had brought back from her journeys into the future—like many of the residents here, she loved the grace and style of the medieval, but preferred the conveniences and toys of future societies. And one of her penchants was for a style of early twenty-first-century music