Ember yelled, “Portia!”

—You are exhausted, must sleep NOW.—

Ember fell unconscious beside her lover’s slumbering form.

All the Pravus were out.

The sorcery expenditure and continued blood loss had debilitated Lanthe, but she was in no way safe. Because for some inexplicable reason, she’d excluded Thronos from her commands.

Without Portia’s force against the stone cage, he was able to lift the top slab. His scars and limp had always made Lanthe discount his strength. When he tossed the slab away like a piece of tile, she promised herself she never would again.

If he captured her once more, she’d be right back where she started from, minus a tongue. Just because she hadn’t necessarily wanted him to be a Sorceri plaything didn’t mean she wanted to be his!

So dizzy. Need a portal. She could crawl through it—away from him, from this treacherous island. She had a moment’s worry for Carrow and Ruby, but they had been in the care of that lethal vemon. Surely, he’d protect them.

Lanthe spat more blood. Did she have the power to open a rift? She had just used her persuasion, and so many things could go wrong with a portal opening.

The last one she’d created had been to Oblivion, one of the demon hell planes. But she’d only had to reopen a portal that was already in place.

Easy as easy pie.

Now, in her exhaustion and haste, she might point a door back there. Or what if she portaled herself to somewhere even deadlier? Like a plane with mustard gas instead of oxygen, or a completely aquatic bubble realm?

Even worse than instant death, some planes could change a person forever.

Thronos limped toward her, his gray eyes intent, his expression determined. Behind him more centaurs galloped into the clearing, taking in their fallen comrades.

Double threat—no choice but to portal! Swallowing back blood, she began to open a rift, a small scalpel cut in this reality. She tried to concentrate on her home of Rothkalina, yet fears of all that could go wrong tangled in her thoughts.

Opening, opening. With a yell, Thronos started sprinting, snagging a sword from a sleeping demon on his way.

Opening . . .

When the centaurs charged behind him, Lanthe scuttled backward toward the threshold.

As he ran, Thronos kept his gaze locked on her, even as he made a sweeping downward cut with that sword. Why would he . . . ?

The blade came back bloody; Felix’s head was rolling from his body.

Her jaw slackened, blood pouring from her mouth. The Vrekener’s crazed. She twisted over to her hands and knees, now scrambling through the portal.

Night. Fog and murk. Definitely not Rothkalina.

The overcast day of the prison island flickered into this rainy world like a flashlight’s beam. Before her eyes could adjust, she heard Thronos bellowing for her.

She commanded the portal to seal itself. Just as the seams were about to meet, he dove through them, crashing beside her.

As soon as the rift was no more, territorial growls and hisses sounded from all around them.

In the gloomy dark, Thronos grated, “Have you taken us to hell, sorceress?”

ELEVEN

Thronos struggled to get his bearings—while biting back his rage over what he’d just seen.

His female, maimed. By her own kind. He wished he’d had time to liberate all of their heads from their bodies.

Focus, Talos. He scented the air, surveying his new surroundings. They were on a small island of rock encircled by water that looked like mercury. Mist cloaked the night. Some kind of preternatural swamp?

Though he’d traveled to foreign planes in pursuit of his mate, he didn’t recognize this one. She could’ve taken them anywhere. Thronos despised her portals; every time he’d seen one in the past had meant he was about to lose her yet again.

A massive red sea serpent crested above the water to their right, a razor-sharp fin slicing through waves. “Yes. We’ve gone to hell,” he said, just as a green serpent surfaced to the left.

Melanthe would be creating another portal directly. But not to the Skye—he would never give her the directions to his hidden home, in case she somehow escaped him and decided to portal an enemy army there.

“Make another threshold back to the mortal realm,” he ordered her. “Somewhere in Europe.” He knew she couldn’t talk—blood still spilled from her lips. Yet all she had to do was nod, then get to work.

Once they were away from here, he would question her.

How did you make the Pravus sleep, and why not me? For what purpose would you ensorcel Omort? Do you grieve that sorcerer I beheaded?

“Be about it,” he snapped, unused to repeating his orders. When Thronos led troops of his knights on Pravus raids, no one dared disobey him.

She shook her head, her braids bouncing over her slim shoulders.

Denying him? He crouched in front of her, baring his fangs. “Do—it—now.”

—It’ll take me five or six days to renew my threshold ability. I’m in a lag till then.—

He jerked away, grimacing from the feel of her words laid directly into his mind. So that was how she’d commanded them to sleep! Telepathy.

Now that he thought back, he could tell she’d had to feign hesitation under the threat of that blade. She’d had a plan, and she’d been desperate to get that torque removed.

He hated telepathy—a glaring reminder of what she was. But at least she could communicate with him until she regenerated. He knew he could reply the same way, thinking his words rather than uttering them, and she could pick them up with her mind-reading ability. But he refused to allow her entry into his thoughts, had developed mental shields specifically to block her. “How many other abilities do you possess?”