They were only a few hundred feet in the air. Yet her vow to gold gave him pause. She would consider it as sacred as a vow made to the Lore.

“Oh, gods.” A second later, she heaved, throwing up a concoction of gruel, water, and dirt on his shirt.

A growl sounded from his chest; hers heaved once more.

If his arms hadn’t been full, Thronos would have pinched his brow in disbelief. Not only did his fated, eternal mate have no wings, she now suffered from a fear of heights.

Yet another way the wicked sorceress was all wrong for him. In addition to the fact that she despised him as much as he despised her, Melanthe was a light-skirted liar and thief who’d proved malicious to the bone.

But she hadn’t always been that way. He remembered her as a sensitive girl—though already mischievous.

He spotted a grassy plateau, high above the ocean. No creatures in sight. He descended, landing without particular care.

When he released Melanthe, her right leg stepped left, then her left leg stepped right. He predicted her fall and readily allowed it. When she landed on her knees, she heaved again.

Exhaling with impatience, he used the time to wipe away her sick from his shirt and check himself for ghoul wounds.

No marks.

From her spot on the ground, Melanthe said, “I thought Vrekeners were supposed to keep the Lore hush-hush from humans. If so, bang-up job you’re doing!”

Since memory, Vrekeners had been tasked with stamping out evil in the Lore—and with hiding its existence, punishing anyone who threatened the immortals’ secret.

Yet all the while, this human enclave had kept its acquisitive gaze on Loreans.

Getting captured by them had been as easy as Thronos had expected.

Melanthe eyed him. “If all the good immortals still have their collars, why don’t you?”

“The better question: How could you possibly have retained yours?”

FOUR

Lanthe swiped the back of her forearm over her mouth. “I wondered that myself.”

Earlier, Lanthe, Carrow, Ruby, and two other Sorceri had been whiling away time in their cell, awaiting their turn at vivisection, when suddenly they’d felt a presence; a sorceress of colossal power had descended on this island, La Dorada the Queen of Evil.

That female had liberated all the evil beings, popping their collars off—members of the Pravus like Lanthe’s cellmate, Portia the Queen of Stone.

Portia had used her goddesslike control over rock of any kind to raise mountains up through the center of the prison. The force had crushed the thick metal cell walls like tin cans.

Her accomplice, Emberine the Queen of Flames, had lit the place up like an inferno. Immortals had flooded out, overpowering the Order’s various defenses.

Then . . . pande-fucking-monium.

Humans—and collared Loreans—had been gutted, drained of blood, infected by ghouls or Wendigos, raped to death by succubae, or eaten by any number of creatures.

The Queen of Evil, a freaking fellow Sorceri, had left Lanthe helpless in the midst of that chaos. Real solidarity there, Dorada. And yet she’d freed Thronos, a Vrekener? He was a “knight of reckoning,” the equivalent of a Lore sheriff.

Lanthe raised her face to the rain, collecting a mouthful to rinse. Then she turned to him. “Maybe you lost your collar because you’ve become evil over all these centuries.”

“Or maybe my mind was filled with evil imaginings.” Another flash of his fangs. “You have that effect on me.”

Lanthe worked her way to her feet, swaying dizzily. He’d dropped them onto a sliver of land, hundreds of feet above the ground. From this unsettling vantage, she scanned the night. Though a Sorceri’s night vision wasn’t as acute as most immortals’, she could see a good deal of the island, even in the darkness.

Skirmishes were breaking out all over, and the Pravus were dominating. The island teemed with them. She didn’t remember this many Pravus in the cells. She’d bet that alliance was teleporting reinforcements here to pick off the helpless, collared Vertas.

Like me. A year ago, she and Sabine had switched sides, helping King Rydstrom the Good reclaim his kingdom of Rothkalina.

Prior to that, the sisters had been all Pravus, all the time. Once Lanthe got free of Thronos, maybe she could try to slide back to her former alliance, at least until Sabine came and saved her.

Her big sister must be worried sick over her weeks-long disappearance. Before leaving their home to hunt for a new boyfriend, Lanthe had left her a note that merely read: Out getting some strange, XOXO.

In fact, Lanthe was surprised Sabine hadn’t found her by now. She always had in the past. They’d never been separated for this long—

Her eyes widened. From this height, she’d spied Carrow, Ruby, and Carrow’s new vemon husband, Malkom Slaine. Though that vampire/demon was one of the deadliest, most fearsome beings in the Lore, he appeared to be shepherding them to safety.

Guess he decided against killing Carrow.

Lanthe’s heart leapt to see them safe, and she drew a breath to call for them, but Thronos slapped his calloused hand over her mouth.

She kicked back with her boots, struggling against him; he held her with minimal effort. He waited until Carrow was out of earshot before releasing Lanthe.

“They’re going to worry about me!” She strained to keep them in sight.

“Good. If the witch is foolish enough to care about someone like you, she deserves woe.”

Someone like me. “Speaking from experience?” She whirled around on him, eye level with his chest. The wet linen of his shirt clung to his muscles, draping over his pecs, showing hints of the scars beneath.