Page 11 of This Vicious Dream

I lean over, almost losing my balance. But I manage to grab the soldier’s sword and sheath, along with his coin purse. This will at least help me get to the next town.

Thorns lash through the air, rearing up and slicing into my tower. Strangled screams ring out as the soldiers are yanked through the window, impaled on vines as thick as my arm. One gurgles on his own blood while the other convulses in his death throes.

My power has drained to little more than the barest trickle. I can no longer sense Kyldare and the stranger. My thorns open a path for me, and I creep through them, around the side of the tower. The full moon provides just enough light for me to watch as Kyldare stares up at the ruin of the tower and his dead soldiers. His mouth thins, and he sprints from the tower, out of the path of my thorns.

No.

The stranger watches Kyldare mount his horse. With a sigh, he turns, taking in the tower. From here, I can see his profile—brutal lines, a wide jaw, and the kind of sensual beauty that must have women begging for a night in his bed.

His gaze lingers once more on the bodies.

“I know you’re here,” he says, and I freeze.

“Interesting design choice.” He calls, waving his hands at a collection of skulls high in the thicket of thorns. His eyes linger on one of my roses, nestled next to a long femur. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

For some inexplicable reason, I feel my cheeks heat.

“Still hiding?” he muses. “For someone who has just been rescued, you’re not being very polite.”

My thorns part so swiftly, the man jolts back. Dark, unfathomable eyes meet mine, and something flickers across his face. Something that looks almost like…recognition.

“Rescued?”I hiss. “You think yourescuedme?”

Calysian

This woman.

Long, wine-red hair curls around her delicate face. Her features seem to have been arranged by the gods themselves—high cheekbones, a sharp chin, flawless skin, and those eyes…

As bright as sapphires, and currently burning with rage.

Iknowher.

Madinia Farrow.

The last time I saw her, she was boarding a ship, and I had the strangest urge to sprint after her.

I’d given into that urge, desperate forsomething.

And I’d been too late.

Fury surges through me, until I’m shuddering with it, hands fisted. Did she do this to me? Is she the reason I am…deficient?

No. That can’t be right. She doesn’tfeelageless.

I stare at her some more, forcing myself to focus on logic.

Not a glimmer of recognition lights her eyes, even though we met several times on another continent, just a few years ago when she was readying for war.

So how did she end uphere?

I take a step forward and she narrows those startlingly blue eyes.

“Don’t come any closer.”

“Well now, beautiful woman, what kind of welcome is that? And after I saved you from the attentions of that soldier too.”

Her head barely reaches my chest, yet she somehow still manages to stare down her nose at me. If I were a lesser male, that look would make me feel about three inches tall.

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