That curse had warped Goürlav all the way up to his recent defeat in a death match. Each year for eons, his appearance had deteriorated.
So too will mine. Though Sian’s transformation differed from his fraternal twin’s—each becoming a separate brand of monster—he could feel himself worsening. A low, constant hum reverberated along his spine, as if some engine powered his decline.
He ran harder. He’d bloody liked his former face. It’d stared back at him from the mirror for ten thousand years, was part of his identity.
Take away my face, what happens to my sense of self?
When he dreamed, he looked as he once had. When he fantasized about taking his mate, his body wasn’t hulking and monstrous.
If I could just find the hellfire . . .
He remembered the last time he’d seen his dam, darkness personified. After hundreds of millennia, her life force had run its course. An outline of a faded shadow by then, she’d wanted to pass on advice to her sons. . . .
“Your sire won’t survive long once I return to the ether.” Speaking over her sons’ pleas for her to stay, she told Goürlav, “Like King Devel, you shall inherit the crown and be cursed with the hell-change.”
Taking that bit of news better than Sian would have, Goürlav asked, “Will you finally tell us how he halted his curse?” Their sire was handsome.
She’d brushed Goürlav’s golden hair from his brow. “Find the fire, and your appearance will be pleasing.”
Sian frowned. “The hellfire?” Legend held that their ancestor had spied a colored flame across the black vastness of space. It’d lured him to this dimension, but proved elusive forever after. Sian and Goürlav had hunted for the fire, digging up clues, determined to solve the puzzle. “We cannot locate it.”
She gave him a weak smile. “If your sire could, then anyone can.”
Goürlav quietly said, “Why will he not tell us where it is?” His expression was wounded.
“Because the search prepares you for what is found. . . .”
To this day, despite countless desperate attempts, no one ever had uncovered the hellfire. Searching for it was futile, hopes of it ridiculous. Before Goürlav had left this dimension, he’d scoured it, draining himself of magic—only to become even more disillusioned.
Sian had searched no less. He could see every inch of hell in his mind, could picture everything from a crooked step in the castle to a dragon separated from its pack, but he couldn’t spy the source of that flame.
It’d probably faded to an ember, or extinguished entirely. Desperate. Futile. Ridiculous. Sian knew that.
So why had he been out here looking even now?
He burst into a clearing, startling a pack of hellhounds. They cowered before the king of hell. All creatures in Pandemonia—including demons—recognized Sian’s horns. But not all creatures recognized his dominion.
Like the mysterious L?tān, now extinct.
Sian pushed on. He passed traps intended to snare trespassers. Apparently the Vrekener queen and her king had escaped two of them during their Pandemonian exploration.
Sian would devise new ones. That would help settle his mind.
He wondered what traps his mate would come up with. He couldn’t decide what was more aggravating: that she’d gotten the better of him, or his continued arousal over the memory.
As he headed into the great moonraker forest, uneasiness warred with his frustration. Maybe he shouldn’t have left her alone. After so long without her, he half-expected her to disappear again.
Or die. He’d been unable to prevent her first death—from childbirth.
Sian had never understood why her . . . husband hadn’t waited a few months or even a year for Kari to become invulnerable before getting her pregnant. Those two had had all the time in the worlds to start a family.
Why the urgency? Why hadn’t Kari insisted on waiting?
When he’d been sixteen, her needless death had leveled him. Unrelenting rage, jealousy, and grief had overwhelmed his young mind.
All these years later, he roared to the sky, unable to handle it better.
Even so, the pull to return to her was intense. He fought it. He’d told Uthyr he would be out in the wilds for a couple of months.
She was safe in her tower. Food automatically appeared for her. As long as she was within the bounds of Graven, she was protected from all the dangers of hell.
But she also seemed to be a magnet for trouble. And she wasn’t yet immortal.
Once Sian eventually returned, he would give her a ring bespelled to accelerate her healing until her immortality took over. With that in place, he could relax away from her.
He slowed his steps. Then shouldn’t he return and do it now?
No, until he’d wrested more control in this form, he might be the biggest danger to her.
Damn it, he didn’t trust his own judgment! He rammed his horns into a massive moonraker tree, toppling it.
Before he acted, he would confer with the dragon. His ally was here for just this purpose.
Sian closed his eyes to sense Uthyr’s location. . . . Got you, dragon. Though Uthyr usually hunted far afield, he’d been sticking close to the castle, was just behind the nearest mountain.
If Sian traced that close to home, he’d be foolish not to check on his prisoner at the same time. Telling himself he was not rushing back to his mate, Sian appeared at Uthyr’s location.
The dragon was nowhere to be seen.
Sian detected his ally’s invisible presence. Uthyr was crouched behind a boulder to pounce on his unsuspecting prey—a large reptile the size of a hellhound.
Uthyr said, —Do not spook my meal, demon, or you’ll be my meal.—
Clenching his jaw, Sian waited.
The dragon’s camouflaged tail swished side to side. Like a shot, he vaulted forward, snaring his quarry between his forepaws.
Shaking off his invisibility, Uthyr snapped the creature’s neck, then tossed the carcass above his head. He seared it with fire until it landed, roasted, in his mouth.
GULP. —Ahh. Medium well.— He stifled a belch with his bloody forepaw.