“I did remain with him,” Lanthe admitted. “For ages.”

“Then what evils do you think Vrekeners have perpetrated to measure up to that fiend’s?”

“Torture, murder, thievery. Even you know your kind steals Sorceri powers.” The fire scythe his father had wielded wasn’t good only for parent beheadings; it also drained powers from its victims, a process Sorceri derisively termed neutering.

It was rumored that some “benevolent” Vrekener had ordered the knights to siphon sorcery, instead of taking lives. Yet in the last century, the knights had begun doing both—so that those abilities could never be reincarnated. . . .

“We harvest and store them, preventing them from being used for evil.”

“To us, a root power is like a soul. You’re stealing souls!”

“Sorceri steal each other’s powers, like cannibals feeding! How many have you stolen?”

She didn’t answer, was guilty as charged. She’d had no choice, since hers kept getting poached by smooth-talking Sorceri males. How many times had she fallen for one’s seduction, only to discover he’d used sex to lower her guard?

But she never stole from decent-minded Sorceri, the ones who only wanted to be left alone to drink, fornicate, gamble, and worship any gold they’d swindled, swiped, or conjured.

“Yet you had to steal, didn’t you?” Thronos bit out. Fat drops of rain pummeled them, batting against his wings. “Since yours were continually robbed?”

She hadn’t known he was aware of that. No one would want her worst enemy to know she’d been a dupe.

“Was that how you got caught by the mortals?” He canted his head in that foreboding way. “Were you away from Rothkalina seeking another power?”

“I don’t think you really want to know the answer to that question.”

“Tell me, or I’ll toss you down the mountain myself.” He reached forward, his fingers making a cage over her throat, his expression promising pain.

He was a monster, a world away from the boy he’d been when he fed her and held her—and she’d sighed words she could never take back.

Oh, well, he’d asked for it. “I was seeking something else entirely. After losing a wager with my sister, I had to go without sex for a year. I was on the hunt for a new lover when I got nabbed.”

He gave a curt yell, lifting her by her jaw. She dug her gauntlets into his forearms, but he didn’t seem to feel them. “Wh-what are you doing?”

In the bobbing tree, he held her body aloft, so her gaze was level with his.

Mother of gold, he was going to toss her! She couldn’t stifle a whimper of fear.

His head rushed toward her body. She braced for a vicious strike of his horns. Instead of hitting her, he rubbed the base of one over her shoulder and neck, marking her with his scent.

As if by doing so, he could pry her out of some faceless male’s arms.

The behavior was blatantly demonic.

When he finally pulled back, his eyes gleamed with rage. “You crippled me. For centuries, you cuckolded me over and over again. The pain you gave me in the past wasn’t enough for you? You wish to deliver more?”

Right now? Desperately! She wanted to claw his eyes out, to rake her gauntlets down his scarred face! “Because you deserve it!”

He flung her back down to the limb. “Look what you wrought, Melanthe!”

As she scrambled toward the trunk, he ripped open the front of his shirt, revealing scars she hadn’t seen before, marks jagging along his rigid torso. He pounded a fist over the center of his chest, over the raised scar there. “Does this one look like it was deep? Half an inch closer, and it would have pierced my heart!”

She blinked against the rain, against tears that seemed determined to fall. But not out of pity, out of impotent fury.

“Every second I fly is hellish! Because of you!”

“I’d do it all over again!”

He threw back his head and gave a roar up to the lightning-strewn sky. When he leveled his gaze on her, she shrank under the savagery she saw there. “Gods damn you, sorceress! You have no reason to hate me as I do you!”

“No reason?” she sputtered. “Do you know what it’s like to feel panic whenever a cloud passes over the sun? To hunch down, gasping for breath, pulse racing? You and your scarred face are the star of every nightmare I’ve ever had!”

Melanthe’s eyes blazed with hostility. He stared into them as lightning reflected across those blue depths.

He was his mate’s bogeyman? Fitting.

She was his bane.

Melanthe is misery. He shook his head hard, ignoring the weird ache in his horns, preventing himself from rubbing them over her again. He could barely reason, his thoughts a snarl in his mind.

Control. If he couldn’t maintain it, then she would wind up dead. Which would end his plans for continuing his line.

Without that, and without the chase, what reason would he have to live?

Lose control, lose your mate.

Yet keeping her alive didn’t mean he had to prevent her suffering. So why had he experienced the impulse to shelter her with his body? He needed to remind himself of all he’d lost. Of all his agony.

He’d implied to her that he didn’t remember their childhood time together. In fact, he recalled every moment with a blistering, crystal clarity. Earlier, when she’d stroked his wing with her eyes full of wonder, it’d brought him right back to the first time she’d touched him. . . .