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“I don’t know.” He stroked his thumb into her indentation. “How greedy are you?”
Rub... “The greediest,” she rasped. “I like things. Crave them.”
He almost dropped the weapon and palmed her backside to rock into her. His shaftneededpressure.
Desperate to end this conversation before he did something he couldn’t take back, Rathbone snapped, “Very well. The vampire may live. For now.” He tossed the stake and flashed the oracle to the throne room. If she must connect with his love story to spark a vision, so be it. Anything to return his focus where it belonged.
“Get comfortable,” he snapped. “We aren’t leaving this room until you learn the location of a bone or die trying.”
6
Azar the Memory Keeper opened his eyes, severing his connection to the vampire. Different thoughts and emotions piled on top of each other. Too many to sort now. Or ever. The pile was one of countless others, a collection amassed over eons. They didn’t matter for the time being. He must speak with his Commander.
Able to telepathically communicate with all Astra, he requested a face-to-face. —There’s been a development.—
Roc responded immediately. —Conference room in five.—
Azar strode into his bathroom and stood at the sink. He examined his reflection. Tension pulled his skin taut. His lips remained set in a grim line. He was a man wrecked by torment, and it showed.
“Forget,” he commanded as the foulest of his recollections vied for attention, relentless. “Do not carry your regrets to the meeting with the Commander.”
Roc’s position deserved Azar’s full attention and respect. But he didn’t forget. He couldn’t. At least he succeeded in pushing the secret into a dark corridor of his mind.
At the four-minute-and-fifty-eight-second mark, he flashed to the conference room.
The open space provided a long table with ten oversized chairs. The Commander sat at the end, reading over a stack of papers. Even sedentary, he was a tower of strength with cropped dark hair, eyes of gold and gray, and skin heavily marked byalevala—moving soul stains that mimicked tattoos and trapped onlookers inside the memories responsible for their application.
Azar was surprised to find the male alone. Since his twenty-first wedding—a long, weird story—he’d rarely left his wife’s side.
Roc didn’t glance up as he stated, “Speak.”
“The oracle, Neeka, has betrayed us.” Azar had never met the female, but he’d seen her hanging around the General, Roc’s beloved wife. The two were supposedly best friends.
The studying ceased, the Commander going as still as a statue. He flipped up a blazing gaze, locking on Azar. “Explain.”
Roc was a male of few words. Like all Astra, he was a child of a war god, bought, raised, and trained by Chaos, Ruler of the Abyss. Each warlord possessed the ability to create—and destroy—entire worlds.
But Azar wielded an ability his brothers-by-circumstance did not. Total recall. No detail escaped his notice.
“She aids Rathbone, King of Agonies.” Someone Azar had never met but knew all about. “I’m confident he’s the warrior Erebus will pit against us next. Me, specifically.”
Every five hundred years, Erebus the Deathless, father of phantoms, issued a challenge the Astra could not refuse. A single impossible task for each warlord. If even one warlord lost or forfeited, the entire army received a catastrophic curse: defeat with no hope of triumph.
The newest round of challenges had kicked off three months, two weeks and six days ago. Three Astra had passed their tasks, with a fourth set to begin anytime. They used to go in order of rank. But things were different now. They weren’t just fighting to circumvent a curse; they labored to ascend. A supernatural process that would instantly download more power and new abilities into them. Enough to make them equals with a being like Chaos.
For the first time, Erebus got to choose the order and plot the tasks. No one knew what fresh horrors loomed. And the god would inflict horrors. The worst of the worst. He owned the Blade of Destiny, a mysterious weapon able to mystically open doors into the many variations of the future.
Seeing the end from the beginning provided a distinct advantage. But. Despite the alteration in procedure, the Astra had still won those three battles. The Blade had failed to show Erebus what their gravitas did to help them achieve victory. A fatal flaw. Unless the Deathless had lost on purpose. Always a possibility. A male who enjoyed doling out misery upon misery wouldn’t want the war to end until he’d wrung out the last drop of happiness from his opponents.
“Hmm.” Roc compressed his lips into a thin line. He leaned back in his chair and linked his fingers over his middle, deep in thought.
Azar had begun to suspect Rathbone’s involvement after Erebus delivered a message via phantoms. Mindless beings able to assume a ghostly or tangible form. Bound to the will of their creator, they did as Erebus instructed without deviation.
Before Azar had slain them, they’d repeated a riddle over and over again.She is heartless, he is blinded, and you are screwed.
Azar had guessed they spoke of Lore the Incomparable. A thorn in his side lacking a heart both emotionally and physically.
Beads of sweat trickled from his brow.Don’t go down that path. Not now. Hopefully not ever.Forget, forget, forget.
