Page 36 of Court of Wolves

The bodies from the Dead Lands are good enough vessels for my army, but my loyal generals deserve much stronger bodies.

No. The corpses on the beach were just bodies with a spark of death magic that allowed them to walk and fight. They weren’t Samlyn’sarmy.Az couldn’t be responsible for raising a fuckingarmyfor the dark saints. Killing for them was abhorrent but he could bear it, butthis?

He whipped around to stare at the beach, struggling for air. For a split second, he thought the corpses were an army that had been in the ground, waiting for Samlyn all this time, but no. It wasn’t the bodies that had followed Samlyn. It was the dark trails that slid from the circle on the hill and thrust into the corpses, one after another, until the beach was shrouded in a dense fog of that poison. Magic so dark it had no name, like the saint within Azrail had no name.

This wasn’t death magic. Death was natural and inevitable. This was corrupted, warped against the nature of things. This was what Maia had felt in that room in the Delakore Palace. This was what had hung in the air around the broken circle in Venhaus.

Samlyn had used Azrail to gather vessels for his army, like he’d used Vassal’s army to gather beastkind and fae to make those scaled monsters.

A howl began inside Azrail’s head, and it did not stop.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Vawn wished his mind was empty, but he’d just been with Ark and Kheir so he was horrifically coherent when Karmen sauntered into his room. He’d been testing this strange magic between them since the first time the ripple hit him and gave him back control of his mind. For weeks he’d been blank, utterly compliant with whatever the saints needed. He couldn’t explain the ripple or the control it returned to him, except maybe it was saint magic? Every time he returned to Kheir and Ark, the freedom lasted longer, the ripple more powerful.

How long until it returned control to him permanently?

As much as he craved it,neededit, he wished his mind was blank right now. It would have been preferable to feel nothing. His stomach turned, coiling and coiling, making him glad he hadn’t eaten today as the Eversky, saint of the storm, sashayed towards him with her hips swinging.

She loved this, got a sick sense out of it. Vawn had been blank the other times she’d come to visit him, but he remembered every moment of hervisitswhen that ripple worked through his mind. He’d nearly thrown up the first time his memories returned. He might vomit now.

“Hello, pretty pet,” Karmen purred, stroking a hand over his chest as he stood in the middle of his room, a silk-dominated bed sitting to his left, a fireplace roaring to his right. “Did you miss me?”

She didn’t expect him to reply, so he didn’t. He had to be careful, couldn’t give her any clue that he wasn’t under her steely control. He didn’t know what she’d do if she discovered his temporary freedom.

Today, Karmen was draped in transparent gold fabric and beads, every part of her on display, her appearance designed to tempt and seduce. Vawn wanted to shift to his beastkind form and shred her to pieces but he forced himself to stay still, to breathe, to think of anything except the woman stroking his chest, admiring the black shirt he’d worn today.

It’s like any other client,he told himself, and pretended he was back in the pillow room where he’d worked for years. He pretended she was an ordinary fae, not the saint who had used him and allowed him to forget every minute of it.

It had been a blessing, the forgetting. But it was cruel, too, and so fucking screwed up. She could use him any way she liked, and not only was he powerless to fight her advances, there were no repercussions because he didn’t evenrememberthe violation.

“Come here, arrange yourself against the pillows,” she said in that low, bedroom voice.

Vawn ignored the clattering of his heart and climbed onto the bed, keeping his expression neutral even as his skin crawled. He wanted to kill her, wanted to shift and use his claws to rip her heart out of her chest. If she even possessed one. Most people who’d used his services in the pillow room hadn’t. Kind, considerate clients were as rare as drakes.

His throat jumped with a hard swallow when Karmen climbed onto the bed and straddled him.

“Would you like to know what your little dove has been up to?

He flinched, but either Karmen didn’t realise he was free of her compulsion or she assumed his reaction was severe enough to break through the control. Her response was a little smile and glittering eyes. She stroked a lock of wavy brown hair from his forehead and said, “She’s beenverybusy. Enryr’s keeping her preoccupied. He’s a very demanding man, so you can imagine she’s constantly exhausted.”

The suggestiveness in what she said made Vawn want to vomit. He tasted acid, tasted bile, and swallowed hard. He didn’t speak, couldn’t afford to let a single word slip or she’d realise he was free. And he knew there’d never be any more ripples, any more freedom.

“I heard they had a little fun in Eosantha,” Karmen said with a grin, sliding her hands over his shoulders and finding the laces of his shirt, making quick work of unfastening them. He remembered all at once Kheir calling him the saint’s’ bitch. He was right. Vawn was their pet, their whore. And for weeks he hadn’t even known, not since that first time he walked into Ark and Kheir’s room. “They made so much magic, it caused a cataclysm and wiped out the whole town.”

Her chuckle grated his skin until he shivered.

“Put your hands on me, pretty pet,” Karmen softly commanded, and Vawn had to comply. His palms burned where they fell on her hips, her skin hot against his cold, clammy hands.

“Enryr hassomany wicked plans for her,” she chuckled, her hair brushing his shoulders as she leaned down to capture his stare, forcing him to look her in the eye. “But if you treat me nicely, I might be able to convince him to… tone them down.” Her hands slid down his chest. “Why don’t you start by kissing me?”

He had no option but to fuse his mouth to hers. If he refused, not only would she know he was temporarily free, but she’d take out her rage on Maia. And everything he’d endured to this point would be for nothing.

For Maia, he could endure it.

For his mate.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

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