“What are you?”

“Ah, insight. I knew I’d chosen well. I am what was before your weak and rutting gods were belched out of the heavens.”

She ran again, a scream locked in her throat. But he was there, blocking her way. Her fear had jumped to terror. “It’s death to touch a temple priestess.”

“And death is such a fascinating beginning. I seek a companion, a lover, a woman, a student. You are she. I have a gift for you, Lilia.”

This time when she ran, he laughed. Laughed still when he plucked her off her feet, tossed her sobbing to the ground.

She fought, scratching, biting, begging, but he was too strong. Now it was his mouth on her breast, and she wept with the shame of it even as she raked her nails down his cheek.

“Yes. Yes. It’s better when they fight. You’ll learn. Their fear is perfume; their screams music.” He caught her face in his hand, forced her to look at him.

“Now, into my eyes. Into them.”

He drove himself into her. Her body shuddered, quaked, bucked, from the shock. And the unspeakable thrill.

“Did he take you so high?”

“No. No.” The tears began to dry on her cheeks. Instead of clawing, beating, her hands dug into the sand searching for purchase. Trapped in his eyes, her body began to move with his.

“Take more. You want more,” he said. “Pain is so... arousing.”

He plunged harder, so deep she feared she might rend in two. But still her body matched his pace, still her eyes were trapped by his.

When his went red, her heart leaped with fresh fear, and yet that fear was squeezed in a fist of terrible excitement. He was so beautiful. Her human lover pale beside this dark, damning beauty.

“I give you the instrument of your revenge. I give you your beginning. You have only to ask me for it. Ask me for my gift.”

“Yes. Give me your gift. Give me revenge. Give me—”

Her body convulsed when his fangs struck. And every pleasure she had known or imagined diminished beside what rushed into her. Here, here was the glory she’d never found in the temple, the burgeoning black power she’d always known stretched just beyond her fingertips.

Here was the forbidden she’d longed for.

It was she, writhing in that pleasure and power, that brought him to climax. And she, without being told, reared up to drink the blood she’d scored from his cheek.

Smiling through bloody lips, she died.

And woke in her bed two thousand years after the dream.

Her body felt bruised, tender, her mind muddled. Where was the sea? Where was the temple?

“Cirio?”

“A romantic? Who would have guessed.” Cian stepped out of the shadows. “To call out for the lover who spurned and betrayed you.”

“Jarl?” It was the name she’d called her maker. But as dream separated from reality, she saw it was Cian. “So, you’ve come after all. My offer... ” But it wasn’t quite clear.

“What became of the boy?” As if settling in for a cozy chat, Cian sat on the side of the bed.

“What boy? Davey?”

“No, no, not the whelp you made. Your lover, the one you had in life.”

Her lips trembled as she understood. “So you toy with my dreams? What does that matter to me?” But she was shaken, down to the pit of her. “He was called Cirio. What do you think became of him?”

“I think your master arranged for him to be your first kill.”

She smiled with one of her sweetest memories. “He pissed himself as Jarl held him out to me, and he sniveled like a child as he begged for his life. I was new, and still had the control to keep him alive for hours—long after he begged for his death. I’ll do better with you. I’ll give you years of pain.”

She swiped out, cursed when her raking nails passed through him.

“Entertaining, isn’t it? And Jarl? How long before you did for him.”

She sat back, sulking a little. Then shrugged. “Nearly three hundred years. I had a lot to learn from him. He began to fear me because my power grew and grew. I could smell his fear of me. He would have ended me, if I hadn’t ended him first.”

“You were called Lilia—Lily.”

“The pitiful human I was, yes. He named me Lilith when I woke.” She twirled a lock of her hair around her finger as she studied Cian. “Do you have some foolish hope that by learning my beginning you’ll find my end?”

She tossed the covers aside, rose to walk naked to a silver pitcher.

When she poured the blood into a cup, her hands trembled again.

“Let’s speak frankly here,” Cian suggested. “It’s only you and I—which is odd. You don’t sleep with Lora or the boy, or some other choice today?”

“Even I, occasionally, seek solitude.”

“All right. So, to be frank. It’s strange, isn’t it, disorienting, to go back even in dreams to human? To see your own end, own beginning as if it just happened. To feel human again, or as best we can remember it feels to be human.”

Almost as an afterthought, she shrugged into a robe. “I would go back to being human.”

His brows lifted. “You? Now you surprise me.”

“To have that moment of death and rebirth. The wonderful, staggering thrill of it. I’d go back to being weak and blind, just to experience the gift again.”

“Of course. You remain predictable.” He got to his feet. “Know this. If you and your wizard steer my dreams again, I’ll return the favor, threefold. You’ll have no rest from me, or from yourself.”

He faded away, but he didn’t go back. Though he could feel the tugs from Moira’s mind, from Glenna’s will, he lingered.

He wanted to see what Lilith would do next.

She heaved the cup and what was left of the blood in it against the wall. She smashed a trinket box, pounded holes into the wall with her fists until they bled.

Then she screamed for a guard.

“Bring that worthless wizard to me. Bring him in chains. Bring him—No, wait. Wait.” She turned away in an obvious fight for control. “I’ll kill him if he crosses paths with me now, then what good will he be to me? Bring me someone to eat.”

She whirled back. “A male. Young. Twenty or so. Blond if we have one. Go!”

Alone, she rubbed her temple. “I’ll kill him again,” she murmured. “I’ll feel better then. I’ll call him Cirio, and kill him again.”