“Melanthe will never be what you need her to be. You can’t break my daughter, and that’s the only way she’d love you.”

Thronos sputtered, “I-I don’t want to break her!” Melanthe was perfect as she was!

“Then you’ll have to break yourself, hawkling.”

Perfect, if only? Melanthe would be perfect.

If only she were alive.

As blood poured into his eyes, he closed them. Please, gods, give me just one more chance.

“Something’s behind me, isn’t it?”

Thronos’s eyes shot open. Melanthe was before him, heartbreakingly beautiful, not a mark upon her. The sun was starting to rise, purple clouds in the background like a halo over her black hair.

The hound’s howl marked the beginning.

Hell conspired.

Minutes later, the boulder was poised to fall above Lanthe.

Thronos was missing a wing and a leg. Slashes and puncture wounds covered him. The reptilian predators in the brush that had snatched the first hellhound had come for him this time.

Shouldn’t have ignored that direction. Won’t next time.

What if he didn’t get a next time? What if three was the limit?

He prayed to any gods listening: I will do this until I get it right. I will do this for eternity if I have to, but I will save her. . . .

THIRTY-THREE

Lanthe toed Thronos’s convulsing body, then hopped back. Her gaze darted from one marble marker to the other, looking for the threat.

One minute, she and Thronos had been arguing. The next, his eyes had rolled back in his head and he’d dropped like a rock. He was now unconscious, seizing on the ground as if afflicted by a supernatural malady.

What zone had he crossed into? The nightmare sector? The noxious-air belt? The markers were inscribed with those weird glyphs, and her translator was currently writhing, out cold on the path.

Lowering clouds closed in, darkening the morning. A soft rain began to fall; lightning streaking above. What to do? Despite his dickitry, she couldn’t just leave him like this.

It was almost as if she felt the same kind of loyalty to Thronos that she did to Sabine. But Sabine had never hurt her the way Thronos continued to do.

Even so, Lanthe would drag him out of the zone. All seven feet of him.

“Thronos, you are such a pain in my ass,” she snapped at his unconscious form. “Here I am—saving yours yet again! I want this noted.”

Careful not to cross the markers herself, she reached for his feet, lugging him toward her. The instant she’d pulled his head out of the zone, his eyes shot open, locking on her. “Melanthe?”

She dropped his feet; he scrambled to stand. With his irises fully silver, he jerked his gaze around, as if danger was on the horizon. He scented the air.

Under his breath, he grated, “Not real?” The crazed look on his face had her backing away from him.

Then he turned to her. “Not real.” He eased closer.

“Um, what’s happening, Thronos?”

“You’re here.” In the light rain, he reached for her, cupping her face with hands that shook. His thumbs brushed along her cheekbones. His brows were drawn together, lips thinned.

She’d seen this yearning expression before—after that three-day absence when she’d called him a demon. So long ago, when he’d finally returned to their meadow, his eyes had told her, I’ve been pretty much lost without you.

“I want your future, Melanthe,” he rasped now. “I don’t care about the past. We’ll work out the f**king details.”

Where was this coming from? Why had he changed—

His lips descended on hers. As in her dream, his pained groan rumbled against her mouth. He sounded like he’d die if she didn’t return his kiss.

A claiming kiss. A no-going-back kiss.

Despite her issues with him, she found herself parting her lips beneath his. He groaned again, as if she’d conceded far more than a kiss. When his tongue dipped, her eyes slid shut in bliss.

His lips slowly slanted, his tongue sensuously tangling with hers. For someone with so little practice, he was turning into a devastating kisser. Her hands twined around his neck, her toes curling as they began sharing breaths.

When he drew back, he left her dazed, blinking up at him. “Thronos, I think that’s the best conversation we’ve ever had.”

He didn’t release Melanthe, just kept his quaking hands on her cheeks.

She was brimming with vitality, sorcery, life. He savored the beating of her heart, the coursing of her lifeblood.

Each wondrous breath she took.

Though she’d initially looked stunned—and pleased—her brows were drawing together. “What’s going on with you?” She dropped her hands, ducking from his grip. “You have a seizure, and now you’re thinking clearly? You’ve suddenly realized how stupid it is to obsess about my past?”

“I almost lost you.” He bit out the words, unable to process what had just happened—what he’d seen and felt.

“What are you talking about?”

“You . . . you dragged me out of it.” He opened and closed his fists, needing his hands on her. “Delivered me from it.”

“From what?”

“Hell. I was in my personal version of hell.”

“Hell changed your mind about my past?”

He nodded. “You talked about traps when we first arrived, about repeated labors. I believe I was in a loop of some kind. In each repetition, no matter what I did, I couldn’t save you. You . . . died. You were crushed by stone.”