Page 122 of Brimstone

I’m going to get you out of here in two minutes, he told me.But I need you to be here a little longer first. Is that okay? Can you do that?

I nodded.

Good girl. Come here, then. Stand with me.

I went to him.

Orious had no magic of his own. I felt the hungry void in him, pulsing with jealousy. Fisher’s shadows cinched tighter, closing around the male’s throat, chest, hips, ankles, wrists. He squirmed fruitlessly, hissing up at us. “You’ll die . . . for what you’ve . . . just done,” he wheezed.

“Really?” I was too hot. I felt strange. “’Cause you said I was about to die just now, and . . .” I swallowed breathlessly. “Thatdidn’t seem to go the way you thought it would.”

“Stupid bitch! You have no idea—” He gurgled, his airway shutting off.

Fisher dropped down, crouching next to the male. “Torture isn’t in my nature normally.” Oh so calm. Oh so dangerous. Gods alive, he was going to kill him. “But foryou, Orious? For what you’ve done here today? I think I’ll make the exception.”

“Fisher, no.”

My mate looked up at me, his dark hair wavy and wild. The quicksilver in his eye wasrioting. His expression was blank, but I knew him now: He was going out of his mind with anger and worry. The bridge of his nose was red. There were grains of sand buried into the seams of his leathers. He smelled of mint and pine as he always did, but also of the desert, and of the reckoning heat, and of a place I never thought for one moment I could ever miss.

He was so fucking beautiful, it destroyed me. I cupped his cheek with my hand, his stubble rough against my palm.

“We need to send him back,” I whispered. “Belikon needs to know what I’m now capable of. That he will never bend us to his will. All of this and more.”

Fisher didn’t blink. “Does he need hisfingersto impart that message?”

I laughed shakily, rubbing my thumb along his jawline. “Send him back. We aren’t like them.”

He looked like he wanted to argue, but then his shoulders sagged. Reluctantly, he got to his feet. “You are theonlything that keeps my moral compass pointing north, Little Osha,” he rumbled.

His fingers brushed mine, the tip of his index finger hooking around my own, as he walked around Orious’s pinned body. “You should be grateful. I wouldn’t have shown such strength of character,” he said to the seneschal. “But Saeris—”

“She is weak!” Orious’s eyes rolled to find me. He would have spat, I think, but Fisher’s shadows still had him by the throat. “You are all weak,” he wheezed. “That is why you won’t win this fight. You will crawl on your hands and knees, begging for mercy before my king, and I shall watch and revel in the indignity you suffer before you die.”

I could prevent Fisher from severing the bastard’s fingers, but I couldn’t stem his anger in the shadow of this proclamation. He grabbed Orious by the front of his loose-fitting robe and yanked him up, spinning him around and throwing him back down again so that he landed on his front. “You are the only one who’ll be crawling, worm. Drag yourself. On your stomach. Go on. Go back to Belikon and tell him what happened here. And tell him what will happen if he dares try to come here again uninvited, won’t you.”

“You might as well . . . kill me. I won’t—”

“There are tens of thousands of vampires on the other side of the door to this tomb. I wouldn’t even have to ask nicely to convince one of them to drain you. Do you want to be a feeder, Orious? A mindless, ravening monster, incapable of thought or self-control?” A slow, cruel smile spread across Fisher’s face. “You already know a fair bit about that, though, don’t you? You don’t have two brain cells of your own to rub together. Regardless, you have two choices, and one of them is a lot lesspainful than the other. You crawl, or I toss you into a pit of hungry leeches.”

“Fine! Fine.” Orious’s eyes flickered with hate as, grumbling, he got to his knees. He crawled up the steps to the pool, his shoulders hunched up around his ears. There was something rodent-like about him. The way he moved across the cold stone made me think of a rat. Casting a look over his shoulder at me, he said, “Remember what I said, child. Oath bou—”

Fisher lifted his foot and booted the seneschal in the ass, shoving him forward. Orious let out a yelp and tumbled face-first into the quicksilver.

“Close it quickly, before any more unwelcome visitors decide to come through,” he said under his breath. The quicksilver moved differently when I reached out with my magic and closed it now. It solidified from the center outward, easily, smooth as you like. It didn’t whisper a single curse word as it stilled. Fisher watched the molten metal return to its solid state with one eyebrow arched, clearly amused by what he was seeing.

The moment the gate was closed, I threw myself at him. “Don’t leave without me again.” I spoke into his hair, inhaling him in as I clung to him. He folded me into his arms, locking me against his chest and pressing a kiss against my temple as he did so.

“Don’t worry,” he whispered. “Rabid mountain trolls couldn’t drag me away from you now.”

“Ahem. Hello? Could you . . . just, uh, save this part for . . .”

I waited. Any second now, Fisher was going to round on Carrion and threaten to skin him or something. But the threat never came. My mate didn’t even grumble as he loosened his hold on me and turned to face him.

“Come on, then,” he said. “Show her what we did.”

Carrion’s hair seemed redder than it had been when he’d left somehow. There were angry welts all over his neck, and a coupleon his cheeks, too. It was impossible to miss the unconscious body he was carrying over his shoulder.

“Hey, Saeris.” He shot me a roguish wink. “I think this belongs to you.”