“Perhaps you will even enjoy it.” Votan smiled down at me sinisterly as he took a fistful of my hair in his hand. With a rough tug, he turned my face up toward his instead. “I am more than certain that we will.”
6
Apex
Specters, as a rule, did not usually dream. Nonetheless, she was in mine.
I was stirred from a delicious image of Atlanta gyrating her hips before me, eyes hooded, lips slightly parted with desire, by a sound at the door. At first, I imagined it was the servants, come to stoke the fire, but when I rolled to wake Atlanta so she could move to the foot of the bed as we had agreed, she was not there.
Blood. I was out of bed and into my boots in an instant.
I had hoped that Atlanta would understand and appreciate the importance of what I had asked of her, but of course she had not. Of course, she had run away. In the dark, my vision was twice as good as a normal Lunarian’s, and a quick scan of our ember-lit room told me as much.
She was gone, and I would have to catch her before her flight turned into a fatality. Moons be damned. Somehow, I was not surprised that this was the path her defiant attitude had chosen, but I was annoyed just the same.
If Atlanta wanted to survive Nightmoor, that defiance would have to be broken. Immediately, if possible. Before she got hurt, or worse.
When I stepped out into the hall, clad only in my underclothes and boots, I quickly discovered I was already too late.
“Come on then, lovely. Give us a little kiss,” one of Lieja’s harem members was purring down to Atlanta. He took her cheeks between his fingers and squeezed, forcing his mouth into a pucker.
“If you are nice, perhaps we will go easy on you,” a second harem member, the pink-haired one who was Lieja’s favorite of late, said with a dark chuckle as he held Atlanta’s wrists behind her back. He leered over her shoulder, burying his nose in the thick, vibrant hair she had tucked behind her ear. “Or perhaps, we will not.”
Even if the mere thought of Atlanta did not turn my heart in circles and set my body ablaze, I would have wanted to kill them then. Seeing them hold her flooded my stomach with a cold, black rage. The way they were touching her made my blood boil in my veins.
No female deserved to be treated like that. No male, no matter their species, should have behaved in such a way.
But Atlanta was mine. Both in Queen Lieja’s own words, and in my accursed fool of a heart, too.
As such, when I was done with them, Lieja would be lucky if there was enough of them left to even recognize. As my fingers curled into fists, I imagined them both as nothing more than dark, bloody marks on the floor.
I moved silently, so fast that even if they had been expecting me, they would have only seen a blur. I took the gray-skinned one, Votan, by the wrist before the pink-haired one, Razael, even had time to register what was happening. It barely required any exertion at all on my part to bend Votan’s arm until it snapped in two. He let out a high-pitched scream, like a cub throwing a tantrum, as I dropped his arm back to his side. The broken bit swung back and forth in ways no arm should have bent for a moment, then Votan’s eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed to the floor from the pain.
In that, he was lucky. Tonight, his well-timed fainting spell would save his life.
Razael was not so lucky. He could have run. It would have been cleverer of him to do so. But instead, he held Atlanta tighter. His arm wrapped around her neck, squeezing against her windpipe hard enough to make her choke.
There was panic in the greens of Atlanta’s eyes, but in Razael’s eyes, I could see something even better: fear.
“Back away now, Lunarian,” Razael warned me. “Or else.”
I cocked my head to the side and listened closely for a moment. My heightened senses were one of the many benefits of the way my training as a specter had changed me. If I focused, I could hear a dagger unsheathed from across a crowded room. I could track a heartbeat. Atlanta’s pulse was racing, but Razael’s was racing faster. Even with a human shield before him, he was more afraid than she was.
Good.
He was right to be afraid.
“Or else what?” I took a step closer to them. A rogue grin found my lips as Razael flinched at my approach.
He would not go through with whatever he was threatening. He knew better than that, and so did I.
When I raised my fist to him, he shoved Atlanta at me hard enough to make her cling to my shirt for balance when she hit my chest. To Razael’s credit, he stooped to sling Votan’s arm around his shoulder before he rushed away. He stumbled and limped beneath his friend’s weight like wounded prey, moving as fast as he could as though he worried I might go after them.
Perhaps I would, some other night. But for tonight…
I looked down at Atlanta and saw tears in her eyes. It struck me what a strange thing that was as I helped her find her feet once more, her hands held tight in mine. Even when she’d been kept in the dungeons, desperate for escape, I had not yet seen her cry.
She squeezed my fingers and stared back up at me with gratefulness in her eyes for a moment before she remembered herself and drew back. She braced her
