LITMIR.BIZ

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brought you through the lake gate, even though it is locked.” The Queen had crafted the portal with a volatile new compound, which had no doubt exacerbated the already erratic qualities of a doorway woven from algae spores.

      Yelena pursed her lips—her wide mouth was the same dusky-rose-red as the tips of her breasts had been; would her tender, inner flesh be as lush?—and he almost fumbled on the last stair.

      “You started to say the phaedrealii couldn’t change either,” she mused. “Why not?”

      Unbalanced by his misstep—and by his distraction at a simple pout—he spoke without thinking. “Because it would mean the end of us.”

      To his relief, she was sidetracked when, triggered by his presence, light bloomed in his lair. Swirls of ammolite phosphorescence spiraled up the fluted columns of flowstone that supported the rough cavern rock far overhead. The glowing traceries branched out across the ceiling like spreading limbs and leaves, a tree of light.

      Yelena’s dark pupils constricted in the sudden shine, revealing the wide pools of tigress-gold that shimmered with the iridescence around her. She turned in a slow circle, and in her wondering gaze, he saw anew the beauty of the quartz-studded walls only barely softened by the long falls of silky curtains. The lacy edges drifted on an imperceptible breeze that carried the faint mineral scent of wet stone.

      A sudden wish to show her more—to point out the tiny spiderling phae constantly spinning the silk or to guide her deeper into the caverns to reveal the hot springs where he soaked away the agony of his scars—welled in him, a desire even more corrosive to his discipline than the blatant delights of her naked body.

      He slammed a halt to the thought, as hard and jagged as the quartz. What in the deepest hells was he thinking? Sharing their magic had almost destroyed the phae. He couldn’t forget that, not even for one, impossible moment with a woman who reminded him of the world he’d lost.

      He would have pulled his cloak more tightly around himself, but she was wearing it. He’d coax the spiderlings into weaving him another. Otherwise the tigress’s earthy perfume would haunt him forever.

      “Come,” he said again. And this time he did not try to keep the harshness from his voice.

      Her upper lip—ah, those lips would not be so easily purged from his memory either—curled at his brusque tone, but she followed him toward a small alcove carved with many sills and ledges holding boxes, bowls, bottles and bric-a-brac.

      “A pack rat,” she muttered. “But a tidy one. You’d love my sisters’ matryoshki nesting dolls.”

      That was the second time she’d mentioned her relatives. “You are close to your family?”

      She watched while he chose a shallow obsidian bowl and various other items from the wall. “Very. Will that make it easier for me to get home?”

      He shook his head as he mixed ingredients into a thin paste. “It doesn’t matter either way.” He scraped some of the ammolite from the wall. The dust shimmered like dragon scales as it fluttered into the black glass basin.

      Her jaw thrust forward so furiously he could almost see her tigress whiskers bristling. “It matters to me.”

      “I meant such connections won’t save you.”

      “Oh.” Her face blanked like a mask. “I know that.”

      Her bleak tone—a familiar echo to the emptiness inside him—made him pause as he studied her. She might try, but she could not rival him in detachment.

      After all, he intended to sever the phaedrealii from the emotional enticements of the sunlit realm forever.

      “Give me your hand,” he said.

      She eyed him warily. “Are you going to kiss me again?”

      He wanted to object that he hadn’t truly kissed her. But the surge of interest in his groin to correct that oversight told him more clearly than the court’s growing agitation that it was past time to lock down the geasa. “I will not kiss you.” He emphasized the words with the strength of a promise.

      Even as he spoke, though, he knew all phae promises were lies.

      Chapter Four

      Slowly, Yelena raised her hand to his outstretched palm. Her hand looked small enclosed in his calloused fingers as he rotated her arm to slide back her sleeve and expose her inner wrist. He brushed the pad of his thumb over the paler skin, making her pulse leap. The rough cloak chafed at her sensitized skin—she imagined his big hands skimming over her—making her nipples peak.

      His eyes narrowed and he withdrew his knife.

      She stiffened, the sensual lull severed by the glint of steel, but his grip was too strong. “What are you doing?”

      “I’m going to mark you with a geas. The symbol will power a spell to reveal what traps you.”

      She strained away, unease ramping up her heartbeat another notch at the thought of what the spell might reveal. Phae weren’t the only ones with secrets. “Werelings don’t do magic.”

      “You are magic.”

      “No, we just are.” She balled her hand into a fist.

      His gray gaze turned harder than the stone around them as he reeled her closer, so close the scorching heat of his body surrounded her. “If you want to flee, then change. Right here in my arms. Slash me to ribbons and go.”

      She froze again, though his nearness threatened to melt her. “You know I can’t.” She couldn’t find the verita luna and couldn’t leave until she found how he had uncovered it.

      “Then let me do this.”

      She noted he did not say “Trust me.” Just as well. Fear made her voice prickly even if she didn’t have her claws. “Will you ruin my skin like yours?”

      His thumb danced over her pulse point again. “Never. That would be a sin not even the phae would condone. The mark will fade. But—” He glanced up and she caught a glimmer in his eye, like there-and-gone-again heat lightning high in a storm cloud. “Something tells me your heart is as scarred as my flesh.”

      If he’d threatened to plunge his knife through her breastbone right then, she was too shocked to have stopped him. He thought he could see inside her? In comparison, the touch of the blade parting her skin was less invasive.

      He traced an X so shallow she scarcely felt the sting before he set the knife aside. The X spiraled, as if stirred by an invisible force to leave a mark hardly larger than a thumbprint and nearly as elaborate. Raze scooped a fingerful of goop from the bowl and smoothed the ointment over the small wound.

      She sucked in a breath at the sudden cold, but just as quickly, it mellowed into a pleasant warmth. Too pleasant. The sensation spread until her fingertips tingled. All those whiskeys she’d been downing at Beck’s bar hadn’t had this effect.

      She clenched her fist until her nails—bitten shorter than her tigress would have approved—nipped at her palms. “Did you drug me?”

      “That would seem unwise. An intoxicated tigress might be too much even for me to handle.”

      From the amused gleam in his gray eyes, she thought he probably thought he was lying when he said he wasn’t sure he could handle her. She also guessed he had drugged her, or whatever the fairy equivalent was. The sparkling dust he’d scraped off the rock and spread into the wound made the geas seem to shift in her skin.... No, it was shifting. Her heartbeat soared for a moment as she hoped the change was the first sign of the verita luna, and she held her breath. But nothing else happened.

      Raze tugged her closer to frown at the marking. “The spell reveals hidden barriers. It should show me what is blocking...” He angled his face to scowl into hers. “You.”

      Distracted as she was by the simmering power in his grip—perhaps he would indeed

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