Lord of the Abyss. Nalini Singh

cold of the Abyss, but some were able to claw themselves to a stop in the badlands.

      They had to be caught and sent through the doorway, for he would not take the chance that they might turn in the other direction, and seek to possess one of the villagers. However, sometimes, he allowed them to run—because waiting out here were creatures who could catch even shadows, crunching them up with sharp teeth before spitting out screaming, mangled tears of black.

      It was a lesson no one had ever wanted to repeat.

      Sweeping down on wings designed for deathly silence, he clamped his hands over the figure’s arms. It thrashed, panicked that anyone could restrain it—for it was little more than smoke—but the lord of this place had always been able to hold those destined for the Abyss.

      After all, that was the reason for his creation.

      Crying, scared, a small child in a dark, dark place.

      Guessing the alien images and emotions were the result of an attack by the creature in his grasp, he entrapped the shadow using thick black ropes infused with his blood, ensuring there’d be no more attempts at coercion. Then he flew through the cold, moonless and starless night, impatient to capture the others and return to the Black Castle. To get rid of his burden, nothing more.

      But after he landed, the shadows locked up in the cages from which nothing could escape, he strode not to his room, but to the kitchen. The lock on the door was no impediment. Everything in the Black Castle obeyed its lord, flesh or ether or metal. Everything except the woman fast asleep on the floor near the hot belly of the stove.

      Stepping closer, he stared down at her. She wasn’t beautiful, this Liliana with the potent magic in her blood that he knew and yet could not name, this storyteller who told him outlandish tales as if she thought them true. Her nose was too big, her eyes too close together, her hair so much black straw.

      But …

      He watched her until she sighed and turned toward him, as if in welcome.

      Crouching, he reached for her—and saw the gauntlet around his forearm, the spiderweb crawling across the back of his hand to turn into sharp claws above his nails, indestructible armor that kept him safe from evil, and shut him away from the world. He rose, his hand clenched into a fist, and left the room, closing the door behind him.

      He stared at the lock for a long, long time.

      If he left the door unlocked, she might decide to leave.

      He snapped the lock shut.

      It had nothing to do with Liliana. He just wanted to hear the rest of her ridiculous tale.

       Chapter 6

      Liliana woke to the sound of small feet moving around the kitchen. “Jissa?”

      “Yes, it’s me. I’m making sweet, sweet chocolate.”

      Liliana jerked into a sitting position at once. “Where did you get it?”

      Jissa smiled, showing a row of pointed white teeth. “He brought some once. Nowhere, where, I don’t know.”

      Astonished at the idea that the beautiful monster with eyes of winter-green enjoyed chocolate, Liliana rose to her feet, reaching back to twist her hair off her neck. “He must like it very much to have searched it out,” she said, heading to the washing bowl in the corner.

      “I made him some the first time he brought it, yes, I did. One sip he took and said it tasted not right. Not right.” Jissa poured the liquid into two small cups. “Is right!”

      Face washed and dried, Liliana came to take a sip of the rich, sweet liquid that made her toes curl. The only reason she knew and adored the taste was because the cook had had a weakness for it, and the kind man had shared his store of it with her on the days when her father had brutalized her to silence. Violence and chocolate were indelibly linked in her mind, but she refused to let that diminish her pleasure in the treat. “You’re right. This is perfect.” Licking a droplet off her lips, she remembered the cook reaching for something to sprinkle on top. “Unless … “

      Jissa, having started to pull together the ingredients for a loaf of bread, wasn’t paying attention. “Shall we make fruit porridge this morning, Liliana?”

      “Perhaps we can put the fruit in the bread,” Liliana muttered, putting down her chocolate to rummage through the cupboards. “It will taste lovely toasted.”

      “What do you search for?”

      “Cinnamon.”

      A mournful shake of her head. “No, don’t know. Don’t know at all.”

      “I’m sure it must be here.” If the youngest son of Elden had found chocolate and brought it home, then he may well have hunted out the spice that was so very common in his homeland that it was put in everything from casseroles to sweets … to a little boy’s chocolate.

      A squeak met her when she opened a lower cupboard.

      “Mouse? A mouse!” Jissa turned with rolling pin held high, her face scrunched up into a scowl. “Nasty creatures! Show me, show Jissa.”

      Liliana closed the door. “It was only a squeaking hinge. Don’t forget the sugar syrup or the bread won’t taste as sweet.”

      “Oh, dear!” Distracted, Jissa dropped the rolling pin onto the table and ran to get the syrup.

      Soon as she was far enough away, Liliana opened the door a crack, put her finger to her lips and whispered, “Have you seen the cinnamon?”

      Small black eyes gleamed at her in the dark before her little friend darted out and along the edge of the cupboards to the very corner of the kitchen, where it slipped under a set of tall shelves just as Jissa returned. “Oh, you must help me, Liliana,” the brownie wailed. “He won’t, won’t like what I make. I don’t want you thrown back in the cold, so cold dungeon.”

      “I’ll help, don’t worry. Just give me a moment.” Having reached the shelves under which the mouse had disappeared, she looked at the rows upon rows of identical dark brown jars, not a label in sight. “Well,” she muttered, then glimpsed a flash of sleek gray run up along the side of the shelving. An instant later, one particular jar was nudged forward a bare millimeter.

      Grabbing it, she twisted the lid open to find several long sticks of cinnamon. A bit old, but they had held their scent. “Thank you,” she mouthed.

      The mouse twitched its nose at her before disappearing behind the jars.

      Turning, she walked over to put the jar next to the small tin of chocolate. Then she helped Jissa finish preparing the fruit bread, made a few crisp pastries covered with jam and churned some fresh butter.

      “Oh, but there is no meat.” Jissa twisted her hands. “He will growl and snarl and my bones will clatter, clatter against one another, they will.”

      Liliana had heard the Guardian of the Abyss growl, and while terrifying, it had also haunted her sleep in a startlingly different fashion—she’d dreamed of him making the same feral sound against a woman’s … against her skin. And now that she’d allowed herself to recall it, she couldn’t stop the sinful cascade of a lush fantasy that surely meant she was mad—for what kind of a woman would want the dark lord in her bed?

      “Snarling and growling.” Jissa continued to fuss. “Meat, he will demand. Meat!”

      “We’ll see,” she said through a throat gone dry, and began to grind the cinnamon until it was a pile of dust that she scooped back into the jar. “Now, where’s the milk?”

      The Guardian of the Abyss hadn’t slept. He never slept. When the Black Castle went quiet for the night, he walked the halls in the company of ghosts. Sometimes, he went back out to hunt, for that was his reason for being, and sometimes, he went searching beyond the village and to the twilight lands, for those like Jissa and Bard.

      He