Page 19

However, her attractiveness did not titillate or excite him. On the contrary, it enraged him. After all of these years, after centuries of being apart, she still resembled her mother.

His eyes narrowed as he gazed about the forest, once more checking that he was alone. She might look like her mother, but she was no replacement for Lilias. She was merely a fee, taken as punishment for her mother’s despicable deceit. But now, the girl had her own personal debt to pay.

Oh, what he planned to do to her once he had her…

Adriel…he taunted, reaching for her mind.Girl…you can run, but I’ll still find you…

He closed his eyes again, recalling the years of pain he’d suffered underground because of her. For decades, his flesh hung loosely from the bone, and his muscles withered away while she escaped him.

His limbs still twitched with a phantom burn. The memory of dirt corroding every abscess, driving his mind to madness as he waited for his body to heal and his limbs to regenerate, still haunted him.

Those recollections were now seared into his soul far more profound than any bond they once shared. His desire to find her existed only to serve his need for vengeance.

The years of waiting, entombed underground without proper food or water, were excruciating. The tightness, the pull, the itch, and that unreachable, phantom ache that existed where his limbs had been ripped away…

She indeed had a debt to pay.

He’d spent lifetimes plotting his revenge. When the putrid stench of his decomposing body became the only thing he knew, he calculated a million ways to punish her.

She left him to rot and starve, buried underground for centuries. The girl knew nothing of pain compared to the hell he survived—a hell of her making—but he would gladly teach her all that she did not know.

He could still feel the prickling throb of his limbs regenerating at a glacial pace. Ten, twenty, fifty, more than one hundred years of starvation and suffering as he waited for his body to heal. He spent an eternity inventing endless ways to make her suffer.

Marbleized by time, he existed as a wasted bag of cold, blue flesh, condemned to anunknown sentence of suffering that he feared would never end. His lungs repetitively seized, and his heart continually ruptured, shutting down his mind for the briefest moment of peace only to awaken in agony once more in that encapsulating hell.

The ungodly pressure of the settling earth built with time and modernization, forcing his capillaries to harden and his organs to fail without access to proper nutrition, killing him over and over again. But as adraugr, a skull warrior, a Viking of the undead, he could not die.

Dragging his hand over the roped muscle of his arm, he recalled the fury that built inside him during that time. There was no space to open his mouth and scream. No clean air to blink his eyes in the compressing blackness. Only the deafening silence and the struggle to breathe.

Even now, recalling the lunacy of confinement that mingled with such physical agony caused him to inhale deeply, assuring himself that there was plenty of air to breathe.

His eyes darted over the rushing cars weaving through traffic as he rested in the trees. She was out there—living. He had no desire to kill her. No, he had other plans, lessons he longed to teach her.

Did she know how the lungs burned like fire and popped when no air was left to breathe? She would soon learn. She would know all the pain he’d suffered and more.

The foolish girl assumed having himstretched and quartered and buried alive would defeat his rage, but it had only delayed and fueled it. Now, she was marked. And once marked, her life was as good as over. But he was cruel enough to ensure her life never ended—there would be no amusement in that.

Once he had her, reclaimed her as his, punished her for defying him, tortured her beyond her wildest fears, he would destroy all that she loved, torment her with endless terror and suffering, but never grant her the privilege or mercy of death.

His mouth curled in a slow, maniacal grin as the promise of such long-awaited satisfaction stretched within reach. Soon, he would reclaim what belonged to him, and, this time, she’d learn the full extent of his savage nature.

He’d show her true pain, the sort that went beyond the physical and lived in the purgatory of a dark mind with no escape. No hope. He’d use her up every way a female could be used, and then he’d carve open her chest, keeping her alive to watch as he slowly ate her ever-regenerating heart.

I’m coming for you, girl…

Let her run. He would eventually see to her misery. Fear had already shadowed her ephemeral happiness in this world, and he was far from finished with her. She would suffer the totality of her betrayal repeatedly until the debt was paid.

CHAPTER 6

Juniper followed signs for upstate New York. Exhaustion radiated from her as her grime-coated knuckles clenched the steering wheel.

Occasionally, she’d stretch and pop a muscle in her neck, exposing dark creases of dust marking her skin. Dirt caked under her fingernails, and her dark hair appeared as if it hadn’t been brushed in months. Such signs of neglect angered Adriel. The Council had a duty to see to her needs, yet it was very clear they had not.

“Did they bathe you?”

Juniper’s sharp glance cut from the road to Adriel’s face, a cold laugh puffing past her lips. “They gave me a pitcher of fresh water every day. I could drink it or wash with it.” Her eyes narrowed on the road ahead. “Some days, I was too weak to do either. I’m sorry if I reek.”

“There’s no need to apologize. Immortalsscent emotion more than any superficial perfume or residue. While sweat might have an odor to you, I can only smell the compounds of the diaphoresis—the cause.”