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I rub the back of my neck in a guilty gesture. “I’ll deal with it. But Ice is tough, and he has plenty of reason to want Mathias gone forever.”
“Will he welcome your overture?”
“He’s a powerful wizard. If I know one thing about him, he’ll do anything to crush Mathias. And he won’t wait for the Council’s permission. Those facts alone make asking him imperative.”
With a nod, Sabelle concedes my point. “Who else?”
No one speaks for long moments. The clink of Anka setting down her fragile white teacup mingles with the sound of Lucan’s sigh. Sabelle twirls a golden curl around her finger and looks at the carpet. I know what everyone is thinking. It’s unavoidable.
“If matters grow as grim as I fear, there’s no help for it. We must approach Shock Denzell.”
Though I’m sure Anka expected that name, she still gasps and faces me like a tigress, her amber eyes morphing from sweet to confrontational. “No! He’ll do everything possible to kill Lucan.”
Her mate reels her back against his side. “Because I won the hot woman, love. He wound up alone.”
“A fact you taunt him with every time we see him. I feel terrible! Shock will spend the rest of his life without love because I rejected his Call.”
“Don’t feel sorry for the sod. He had to know you would never agree to be his mate. He’s tainted.”
“No. His bloodline isn’t the best, but his background is a matter of birth. It’s hardly his fault.”
“His temper and reputation are.” Steel underscores Lucan’s voice. “Denzells have always been a dark family, and he’s their black sheep.”
Sabelle leans forward and squeezes Anka’s hand, then faces Lucan. “Perhaps, but Bram is right. Unless we can wrest the Doomsday Diary from Marrok, we’ll be relying on every witch and wizard—friend and foe alike—to come together as one to defeat Mathias.”
The enormity of that task isn’t lost on anyone.
I nod grimly. “Our nightmare has begun.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Marrok
As daylight fades, ominous shadows lengthen through my bedroom window, falling across Olivia’s deathly still form.
Everything I have done to save her has been for naught.
In the hours past, I attempted to cool her overheated skin with a cold bath. She thrashed like a wild thing, screaming and writhing until I worried she would harm herself. The moment I settled her back in bed, she scratched four jagged, bloody paths along each of her thighs.
To stop her, I restrained her wrists to my headboard.
Not giving into her anguished protests and squeals of helpless agony is utter hell.
I have mere hours left to figure out how to save her.
She whimpers as she rolls to her side and tries to curl into a fetal position. The gesture does not merely pull at my heartstrings; it wrenches them. Worry consumes me. If I could, I would take this pain for her.
“Olivia?” I croon in her ear.
Clearly, she is not Morgana. Bram’s aunt assured me of such, but more compelling are facts. Eons ago, the sorceress failed to grasp that I left her bed not merely because I owed Arthur my fealty, but because I felt naught for her, save fleeting lust. She cared only that I scorned her first. So why would she expend the magic necessary to become virginal again, then surrender herself to me?
She would not.
Besides, Morgana cackled gleefully whenever she used others as her pawns. Never would she allow herself to be vulnerable before any man for any reason at any time. Olivia has spent the hours since Bram’s departure begging me for mercy. For my touch. For my cock.
They cannot be the same woman.
My other clue? The first moment I laid eyes on Olivia, she awakened an ability I thought long dead—the capacity to care, something I have not done in centuries. Something I never did for Morgana.
