Lord of the Abyss

Chapter 27

The blades dropped.

The Blood Sorcerer’s rage made his eyes protrude, his veins bulge. “I should’ve strangled that whelp in her crib!” Overturning a table of magical potions in front of Micah, he backed away. “She’ll be dead soon enough, anyway. Then I’ll lick up her blood.”

The taunt had the opposite effect from the one intended—it told Micah Liliana was alive. All he wanted to do was to finish this so he could return to her. But in one thing, the Blood Sorcerer was right—bloated as he was by his most recent sacrifice, his sorcery was too strong for Micah to defeat.

Not alone, Micah. They are here.

Liliana’s voice again, showing him things he’d forgotten, reminding him that the land, the animals, weren’t the only things he knew here. Reaching out with something inside him that had no name, no form, he searched for the blood that called to his own.

Nicolai.

Dayn.

Breena.

The ties of his lineage soared through him, filling him to the brim with power, and it didn’t matter that the Blood Sorcerer called in an army of tiny insects that acted like sandpaper across his skin, peeling the flesh from his arms, his face. Shoving through the virulent swarm and then the sorcerer’s blood shield as if it didn’t exist, he gripped the monster’s neck, and dragged him to the window. “Look,” he said, forcing the man’s eyes to the forest that was a blazing conflagration. “By the time we are done, there’ll be nothing left of your legacy.”

A laugh bitter with evil. “Then you will have to kill Liliana.”

Micah slammed the Blood Sorcerer’s head against the stone, cracking his skull. “She is not your legacy,” he whispered in the man’s ear before he snapped his neck. “She is her own.”

The insects disappeared with the Blood Sorcerer’s death, but Micah wanted to make sure the evil wouldn’t rise again. Picking up the sword he’d dropped by the door, he hacked off the man’s head and gripped it by the hair as he ran back to Liliana. She lay with her chin slumped on her chest.

“No!”

Her chin lifted, her eyes struggling to stay open—but she saw his trophy. “He’s dead.” A red smile.

Throwing the head at the snapdragon, who caught it in an eager mouth—crunching it down with greedy glee before waddling past for the rest of the body— Micah wiped off his palms on his thighs and cupped Liliana’s face. “You must not die, Lily.” He tried and tried to close her wounds with the deep magic within him, but his power it became clear, was not one that was of healing.

“…all right.” A whisper.

“No, no.” Feeling wet down his cheeks, he realized he was crying. “You’ve made me cry, Lily. I will throw you in the dungeon for many days.”

When her lashes fluttered shut, he growled at her. “Help me! Tell me what to do!”

The earth, Micah. I read about…

The thought seemed to hold the last of her strength, because her head dropped forward and then was motionless. Refusing to believe that she was dead, he began to wrench the spikes from her body. When another man thundered up the steps, past the dead centipede, Micah turned only long enough to see—to recognize—silver eyes streaked with gold before returning to his frantic task. “She can’t die.”

Nicolai began to pull out the spikes with him, both of their hands drenched in blood within seconds. Grabbing Lily from the wall the instant they’d removed the last spike, Micah ran down the steps, past a startled woman with soft brown hair, and outside into the twisted gardens. This earth was too broken, too polluted, to heal as it had once done for the royal family, long ago. But he had to try. Laying Liliana on the ground, he cut his palms, pressed them to the land.

The earth began to green under his palms, but too slow, too slow. Then another pair of bloodstained hands appeared on Lily’s other side. A third pair—that of a green-eyed man with dark hair. A fourth, feminine and delicate as the blond hair that haloed his sister’s face. And the land grew green around Liliana. “Save her,” he whispered to the earth. “Save the one who helped save you.”

The earth tried, but it was too damaged and Liliana was not of Elden blood.

“No, no!”

“Micah, I’m sorry.”

Ignoring his sister’s voice, so full of sorrow, he gathered Liliana’s limp body into his arms, refusing to let go. “Help me, Lily,” he whispered again, burying his face in her hair. It ignited a memory, of another time when he’d held her in his lap, her hair brushing his chin…blood perfuming the air.

“Slit my wrist.” He shoved it at his sister’s face, and he would always love her for the fact that she didn’t hesitate. “Take, Lily,” he said, pressing his wrist to her mouth, the wounds on her body, every part of her he could reach. “You have no need to murder me in my bed. I give you this freely.”

An endless pause before her body jerked, the sorcery within her taking control. Because Liliana, sweet, gentle Liliana, who kissed him so soft and touched him as if he would break, was a far greater sorceress than her father had ever been. That was why the evil man had hated her so—even using only her own blood, she had traveled to the Abyss itself, a feat beyond extraordinary.

To repair her body, all she’d needed was the fuel to ignite her power.

Liliana’s blood stopped flowing, her hand spasmed…and finally, she opened her eyes. He wanted to yell at her, but he waited until he was certain every one of the holes in her body had been repaired before dragging her to his chest and telling her all the terrible things he was going to do to her.

Arms wrapped around him, she kissed him, halting the flow of his words. He decided he would allow the kiss, but since he couldn’t make her naked here, he had to stop it. “Why did you change your face, Lily?”

Liliana lifted her hands to her face at that quizzical question, terrified her father had cast a final vengeful spell. “Is it very bad?” she whispered to the man who held her in arms of steel.

“I suppose I’ll get used to it,” he muttered, then kissed her again using his tongue and squeezing her bottom—as if his brothers and sister, and other people, weren’t standing right there.

An instant later, she decided she didn’t care.