Sweet Ruin (Immortals After Dark 16)

Worse, what if she didn’t sink? What if she floated? The stars seemed to beckon her. . . .

Finally Jo relaxed enough to drift off, and the strangest dream arose. She was in a boggy field, toiling under a scorching sun. She wiped her gritty forearm over her sweat-drenched face.

No, not her arm. Not her face.

Rune’s? Somehow she was seeing a scene from his point of view.

The castle’s bells tolled. His head whipped toward the sound. My father is dead. The mortality curse that had befallen Sylvan’s leader had ended even a regent’s immortal existence.

Serves you right for trying to colonize the Wiccae realm, old king. Rune felt no sympathy for the distant sire who’d spared his life but had never graced his bastard with a spoken word.

The demon slaves who worked these fens shoulder to shoulder with Rune turned away. To them, a baneblood like him was already dead, and good riddance. They feared his poison. They wondered why he hadn’t been stoned to death as an infant like all the other dark fey halflings.

Perhaps that would have been a mercy.

Because with the king’s death comes mine.

For all his fifteen years, he’d known his days were numbered. But when the king had fallen in battle, bespelled by a warlock general, Rune had thought he’d have at least a few weeks more to plan.

Now panic filled him. How to escape? The queen’s demon guards would soon come for him.

For his head.

His eyes darted. Crossing the fens with no food or fresh water would be suicide. He bared a claw, drawing blood to ink an invisibility spell on his forearm. His powers were undeveloped. Maybe this time the combinations of runes would work.

As his black blood spilled, laborers swooped up their young and fled, cursing him to the hells.

Frustration boiled inside him, and he yelled, “I never wanted to be like this!”

Concentrate. Another carefully crafted symbol. Just as his dam had taught him. Only one more left—

Royal guards traced into the fields, seizing him.

He fought wildly, but the guards’ armor repelled his claws and fangs. The demons had already transitioned into full immortality, were massive brutes. They bound his hands to prevent his clawing. They muzzled him to prevent his bites.

Taking me to the executioner.

Yet once they’d beaten him down into the mud, they made no journey to the block. They hauled him to a bathhouse, stripping him and scrubbing his skin like an animal’s.

As he’d thought daily since he could remember: Gods give me the power to destroy Sylvan’s royal house. His colonizing, slaving, rapist father had succumbed, but what of the rest of his execrable line? The now-widowed queen and her spawn, Rune’s half siblings.

The guards dressed him in fine breeches, a billowing shirt, and shoes that pinched his feet. Leaving his hand bindings, they removed the muzzle, then traced him into an echoing chamber.

Unused to teleporting, Rune wobbled on his feet. Was this . . . the royal court? They must’ve taken him to the capital, to the Forest of Three Bridges. He gawked at the riches around him.

A single female awaited him: Magh the Canny, the queen who loathed him, begrudged his very life.

A mere scratch across her neck would bring her to her knees. But he could do nothing with his hands bound. The guards would block him before he could get his fangs into her.

She was seated upon her elaborate throne, her cutting blue eyes studying him. “You refuse to bow before your regent?” Her crown was a circlet of polished gold, and it rested far too comfortably atop her regal blond head.

Seething, Rune forced himself to bow.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“I’ve survived the fens for fifteen years.” He was strong and hardened, could do the work of two adult demons.

“Such bravado, cur.”

“My name is Rune.”

Her eyes gleamed at his challenge. “Your face isn’t handsome. And yet I understand you’ve made many conquests among the highborn females of this kingdom.”

Reminded of his success, he drew on the patience he’d learned when seducing empty-headed, thrill-seeking féodals. “Yes, my queen, they have honored me so.” Rune had slept with all those highborns to uncover his dam’s fate after she’d been taken from him. But none had been able to help him.

“Ah, you can be glib of tongue. You must be to convince them to risk your toxins.” She canted her head. “I suppose you must abstain from certain acts.”

Kissing and kissing below. If only he could find a female dark fey to enjoy. Another halfling who’d been spared.

The queen continued, “But what of your leavings? Are you demonic in that manner? Have you a demon’s mystical seal over your member?”

He scarcely believed he was discussing his seed with the queen. “I do.” A demon could know the pleasure of a climax but couldn’t spill semen. Not until he was inside his destined female and his seal disappeared.

In other words, never for me.

“I doubt abominations like you get a mate, especially since we’ve exterminated your ilk in Sylvan.”

His claws ached to rend her flesh. But Rune had feared the same. How many times had he heard that dark fey were creations never meant to be, outcasts from the reach of destiny?

“I wanted my husband to obey convention and dispose of you as well. To allow such a lethal being to remain alive, even enslaved, seemed a tremendous folly.”

Gods give me the power . . .

“But now I see more in you, and I can almost comprehend why those idiotic females risk your poison. You have the smoldering sensuality of the fey and the sexual intensity of a demon.” She gazed past him. “It appears I have a use for you after all.”