He peered down at her in his arms. How could he wed her after everything he’d heard about her? When he didn’t know the extent of her involvement in the atrocities under Omort’s reign?

He remembered Aristo telling him centuries ago, “Your mate and her sister have allied with their brother Omort the Deathless, leader of the Pravus. Reports filter out from their hold. Thronos, what their family is doing . . . it’s beyond appalling.”

Incest, blood orgies, child sacrifices.

Melanthe—the sister of Omort and possibly his concubine—mother to my offspring?

WRATH. He felt like he was drowning in it. Engulfed in it.

“You’re hurting me!”

He found his claws digging into her. He didn’t loosen his grip.

“What are you thinking of to make you so enraged?”

He clenched his jaw, unable even to speak. He listened to her heartbeat, focusing on it. Get control, Talos. Early in his life he’d seen the tragedies even a brief loss of control could wreak.

Glass shards like fangs flaying my skin. He gave his head a hard shake, increasing his speed.

In a softer voice, Melanthe said, “Nïx wouldn’t have sold me out if she’d known you were going to hurt me.”

Debatable. He’d met the Valkyrie a year ago in the mortal city of New Orleans, when he was still regenerating the foot he’d lost because of Melanthe. Nïx hadn’t seemed to be tracking reality when she’d told Thronos where to be to get captured—and when to be there, just a week ago. All those months spent waiting since then had been punishing.

“What did that Valkyrie tell you about me?” Melanthe asked. “What was her advice?”

It’d been one cryptic sentence: Before Melanthe became this, she was that. . . .

The female would say nothing more, no matter how much he’d pressed. “She mentioned nothing about my treatment of you,” he grated as the pain in his wings intensified steadily.

With the pain came equal parts wrath.

Because of the creature in his arms, he’d had lifetimes of both.

FIVE

Numbed to the drizzle and cold, Lanthe was lulled into a kind of exhausted stupor as the flight went on and on and on. When they’d crossed over an expansive forest, the noises of the battles grew dimmer.

She dared a glance back, could still see bursts of spectral light. Soon that melee would spread outward all over the entire island. Thronos had to know that.

His face was tensely set—as if he were concentrating on blocking out his pain. There’d be no talking. Think about something else, Lanthe. Anything else.

Yet now that she was his captive (temporarily), she found her mind mired in thoughts of him. A memory arose of their first day together, when he’d tried to feed her—his idea of courting.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t known she was a vegetarian.

“For you.” Thronos proudly dropped a carcass of bloody meat at her feet.

She burst into tears.

“Why do you cry?” Despite all his confidence, he looked confounded—and pained, as if her tears tormented him. “You don’t like my gift?”

“Th-that was my bunny!” One of the woodland creatures that she called friend.

“It’s decent meat. And you’re starving.”

Her face heated. “I am not!”

“Are too. You were scrounging for twigs, lamb.”

“They’re b-berries! I like to eat berries.”

The next morning, when curiosity had driven her back to the meadow, she’d found it littered with piles of berries. Thronos had been standing among them, with his fingers stained, his chin up, and that cocky look back on his face. Delighted, she’d leaned up and pecked his lips. His wings had snapped open, a reaction that had seemed to embarrass him.

After that rocky start, they’d grown to be best friends, just as he’d promised.

Later on, he’d asked her why her parents didn’t buy food. She couldn’t make him understand that her mother and father worshipped gold more than anything it could purchase. Not to mention that they’d deemed Lanthe old enough to begin stealing her own way through life—

Thronos’s grip was loosening in midair! “Wait!” she cried.

But he’d only repositioned her in the cradle of his arms. Apparently he was adjusting her for the duration—and wasn’t about to dump her like an armful of firewood. After a moment she relaxed slightly.

Though she had recurring nightmares about Vrekeners sweeping down on her, she was now trapped directly under a pair of wings. Talk about immersion therapy.

She stared up at them, spread in flight, wind whistling through his healing sword wound. As a girl, she’d been obsessed with his wings, touching them all the time.

She’d been fascinated to discover the backs were covered with scales like those of a dragon. As if in a mosaic, Thronos’s black and silver scales had made slashing designs that resembled sharp feathers.

During the day, the undersides were dark gray. At night, they turned black, stark against the electrical pathways that forked out along the bones. Each of those pulselines shone as bright as phosphorescence.

One night when they’d secretly met, he’d spread his wings, showing her how the pulselines moved. It’d looked like he’d been surrounded by lightning wings. He’d demonstrated how he could use tricks of light to camouflage his wings so they’d be invisible in the dark.

When he’d grown embarrassed by her wide-eyed stare, those pulselines had quickened, like a blush.