Cayden stared at him a long moment. The two men were of an equal height. Jacob was aware the man had a backup knife at his belt and his hand was on the hilt. It wouldn't kil him, but Cayden could temporarily incapacitate him, if he didn't move away fast enough, and Cayden was more than capable of moving faster than a vampire.

Cayden let out a sigh, lip curling in frustration. He dropped his hand from the knife hilt. “Go.”

“Do you want me to knock you out so it looks less guilty?”

Cayden raised a brow. “I will not lie to my queen, vampire. I take the consequences of my actions.”

“Are you sure? I'd be happy to punch you in the face until you're unconscious.”

Cayden showed his teeth. “Go, before I change my mind about stabbing you in the chest.” Jacob was already moving. However, when he paused at the dividing wal between main and lower bailey, he looked back. Cayden was staring into space, his face a picture of abject misery. Damn, damn, fuck.

Muttering a curse, Jacob took two swift strides back toward him, gaining his attention. “Your queen lost her father,” he said quietly. “A thousand years ago or not, in her mind, he abandoned her, turned his back on her mother, though he never promised her anything, except love for the child they'd made.

But Magwel rejected that, made that choice for Rhoswen. So in your lady's mind, he turned his back on her for another daughter, another woman. She's afraid of trusting any man, which means you have to teach her to trust. You have to stop playing the game all her way. Instead of fol owing, take the fucking lead.”

That was the best he could do for the guy, but something in his gut had said it needed saying, just in case. He took off at a swift jog, headed for the stables. Once he turned the corner, though, the urgency gripped him even harder, such that he accelerated his pace.

He arrived with a gust of wind from his passage, leaving skid marks in the soil near the open double doors. Keldwyn control ed the startled reactions of the horses he held. Taking the reins of the nearest one, Jacob swung up onto the bare back in one lithe move. “I can't touch her mind, but she's in trouble, I can feel it. We need to hurry.”

18

LYSSA crouched on the sand, getting her breath back. Despite her chest being slick with sweat and blood, the rose stil pulsed against it, tel ing her she was getting closer. If anyone was fol owing her, she'd left an interesting trail of bread crumbs. She'd turned the first three Fae into cacti, and the next group into a smal handful of scorpions. They'd chased her until she outran them. After that, she went for inanimate earth forms. Rocks, dried sticks. The flow of earth magic here was stingy at best, most of it wrapped up into holding the protections and forms of the prison.

As her energy and that shifting supply of magic dwindled, like a well spring drying up, the ways she could fight the inhabitants became more and more macabre.

She stared at the last set of cacti, which were not fully cacti at all. They were half Fae, half plant, and the Fae were stil hideously, torturously alive, their screams of agony now down to rasping pants, and moans. She was sorry for that. Under normal circmstances, she would have tried to end their pain with a quick throat slitting.

However, the cold and ruthless truth was that the terrifying image of those mangled, half alive bodies, cactus spikes protruding from their bloody torn skin, was keeping the next wave of pursuers at a wary distance. Even so, the newest group had swel ed from five to ten members, the largest contingent yet.

She'd wondered how any of them had survived to become these desperate packs, if they were so quick to attack newcomers. When she'd fought in close quarters with them, their damaged bodies and dead eyes told her why. Newcomers weren't kil ed, not outright. Everything of value was taken from the weak . . . repeatedly. From their crawling, avaricious gazes, she also knew why she'd not seen any women. A woman wouldn't survive here long because her primary value was quickly used up by males starved for sexual contact. They were wild, savage beasts with no reason or logic, all of that long ago burned away by the sun.

She was having a hard time believing Rhoswen had ever come here and tried the quest she was attempting now. The fact this place existed was a blight of shame on both monarchs. While the most brutal crime might deserve this kind of judgment, it would taint the judges' souls to give it. A quick execution would be better.

She thought of what Tabor had intimated, that the Fae had experienced a dark period when there was little trust among them, as well as between themselves and humans. Conflict, war between factions. It sounded much like the vampires' Territory Wars and the brutality that had happened then. For all that she was being constantly pursued, there was not a large populace. How long had it been since anyone was sentenced to this? Did those in the Fae world realize any of the condemned stil survived?

Though survival was a loose term. Any immortal who figured out how to exist here sentenced themselves to unimaginable hell .

She wished she could tel how far she was from her goal. While the rose's pulse was getting stronger, she had no measure for what that meant.

She'd gone through most of Jacob's blood in the pouch Keldwyn had provided, but her body was quivering with exhaustion, because her opponents had gotten in their strikes as well. During one harrowing moment when they'd pinned her, she'd cracked open the earth, a minor quake that threw all of them, including her, fifty feet into the air. When she landed, she'd been fortunate to be the only one not momentarily disoriented, expecting the effect. That had been her first set of mutant cacti, her body too depleted to do the ful job, the supply of magical energy too thin.

Those ten were starting to move forward. They'd noticed the trembling, her blood forming a larger stain under her feet. She started moving again.

Perhaps they'd trail her for a while before finding the courage to attack her once more. Every step was a possibility she might reach her father's soul before her own departed the world.

Then she realized the shuddering beneath her was not coming from her own body. Whirling, braced for a charge, she saw the ten retreating at a ful , stumbling run, dispersing like rats scrabbling on a flat table surface. Realizing the shudder was from the ground beneath her, she started to fol ow them, to get beyond the point where the desert was violently shifting, the sand rol ing away and ground heaving much like it had done when she cal ed up the percussion force. Only this time, an actual something was coming up from beneath the earth.

It blasted forth with a loud noise somewhere between a hawk's cry, an enraged lion's roar and a dragon's screech. The explosion knocked her on her ass, but she stopped moving, letting the sand shower over her as a long serpentine neck reared up above. The head that topped it was skeletal looking, with six red eyes and three rows of teeth. This was not a prisoner. This being was indigenous to this place, one of the things put here to ensure nothing survived long. Perhaps the judges' ironic form of mercy.

Her explosion had likely drawn its attention, which meant that movement attracted it. Since its multiple gazes were on the fleeing men, she stayed stil , not breathing, not moving. She was close to it, such that it would have to tuck in its chin and look directly down to see her.

Letting out another shril scream, it took several running steps and launched itself on wings that seemed merely a frame of bones connected by a thin membrane run through by blood vessels. The wings were too thin for this sun, but that might be why it could burrow and travel underground. It might even be immune to the sun.

Unfortunately, those three running steps took him directly over her. She couldn't risk moving, but there was also no time to move away. It pushed into flight off her thigh. The give of the sand beneath her saved the bone from breaking, but the barbed talon tore open her thigh, a long gash that went to the bone.

Biting down on a scream, she rol ed face-first, pressing her thigh and the resulting geyser of blood into the sand. Hopeful y by the time the creature reached and mangled the other victims, it would assume the blood on the talon belonged to them. But she was sure it would be back.

Tearing another strip off the hem of her tunic, she tied it around her thigh to staunch the blood flow. Her neck and ears, any part of her not under the hat or her clothes, was already blistered. She tasted smal rivulets of blood from her cracked lips. She'd taken her hair down despite the heat, because it provided some covering for her neck and face.

As she staggered to her feet, moved forward once again, she thought of Mason. When she'd visited him in the desert years ago, he'd worn the elegant tunic and robe of a Bedouin, a romantic figure. It said something that what her memory lingered on was not how devastatingly handsome the male vampire was in such garments, but the garments themselves. If Mason was here, he'd strip them off without hesitation to give them to her, no matter that he'd turn to ash before he even got to her. Her life was ful of foolish, noble and chivalrous males.

The sand serpent unfortunately hadn't left a tunnel in its wake. The sand was too soft. When it emerged, the sand had closed in behind it, so fol owing the path it had taken underground was not possible. It was too risky anyhow, not knowing where the next surface break would appear.

She'd held on to one of the Fae she'd turned into a stick and now used it to hobble forward, ignoring the fact she was dizzy and her breath was labored.

She'd fought through much worse pain than this to achieve her goals. This would be no different. Of course, when she'd had more vampire strength than Fae, she'd been more certain of what could or couldn't kil her. The wound in her leg, combined with the sun's heat and however many other battles she faced, might end her.

She made it another hundred yards before she heard the serpent's shrieking cry again. It had reversed course. She made a dive for the gul y its tail had created and burrowed deep, though she suspected it had already seen her.

As it swooped, she knew that was the case. Even if not, at this range, there was no way it couldn't smel the blood, coating her leg with slick grit. Giving a snarl of pure frustration and exhaustion, she shoved herself out of the gul y and took a defensive position.