He swung his head around, baring his fangs. “Silence, creature!” His old familiar wrath blistered him inside—the wrath that sometimes made him wonder if he mightn’t just kill her and spare himself this misery.

Melanthe is misery. He knew this well.

“All my life, I’ve just wanted to be left alone,” she continued. “But you keep hunting me . . .” She trailed off when an eerie green light began to illuminate the shaft. The glow of the ghouls’ skin as they neared.

From behind him, she said, “I wish to the gods that I’d never met you.”

With all his heart, he told her, “Mutual.”

There was no way she and Thronos could get past this throng without a single contagious injury.

Though he was now a battle-tested warlord, attacking hotbeds of Pravus in between his searches for her, he was weaponless, about to fight in his least advantageous surroundings. Lanthe’s powers were neutralized; she didn’t even have her sword. She splayed her fingers out of habit—to wield sorcery she couldn’t tap—and awaited an unstoppable attack.

In these seconds, she swept her gaze over Thronos, as she hadn’t been able to do for years.

He had on dark boots and broken-in black leather pants that molded to his muscular legs. His white linen shirt had cutouts in the back—they buttoned above and below the roots of his wings. The humans must have taken his customary trench coat.

She glanced up at his silvery horns. Though many demons had two, Vrekeners usually sported four. But two of Thronos’s had been removed—probably because of how damaged they’d been in his “fall.” The remaining pair were larger than normal, curving around the sides of his head like those of a Volar demon.

He lowered his hands, his black claws curling past his fingertips. As all the muscles in his body tensed for combat, he brought his wings close to his sides. The top joints were so gnarled, she could almost hear their movements catching and grinding.

When he was young, he’d been able to pin his wings down along his back, until they were undetectable under a coat. Now, because of his injuries, those flares jutted by his sides.

His formerly black wing talons had been “silvered” once he’d become a knight—honed, smoothed, and sharpened until they’d turned color.

Few of her kind ever got close enough to a Vrekener to know what those wings truly looked like; well, at least not the Sorceri who’d lived to tell about it. She remembered how startled she’d been to discover what covered the backs—

One bloodcurdling howl sounded from ahead. A ghoul battle charge?

A tidal wave of contagious, vicious killers flooded toward them, their watery yellow eyes burning with rage. They climbed the walls, scrabbling over each other to reach their prey.

The ghouls were fifty feet away. Forty.

Thronos’s wings rippled, as if with eagerness. Lanthe’s last sight on earth might be a Vrekener’s wings. Not a big surprise.

Thirty feet away. Twenty . . . then . . . striking distance.

One of his wings flashed out, then the other.

Beheaded ghouls dropped in place. More than a dozen gaping necks pumped their blood, a syrupy green goo.

Her lips parted. “What the hell?” The silver talons of Thronos’s wings dripped green; they’d sliced through throats like a razor blade.

Like his father’s fire scythe.

Eyes wide, she sidled along the wall to get a better look at him. She hadn’t known Thronos was that fast—or that his wings were so deadly.

The scent of ghoul blood fouled the air and made the next line of them hesitate. Never ceasing their wails, they stared down at the twitching bodies of their kind, then up at Thronos, confusion on their faces.

When another wave decided to shoot forward, he used his wings again. Goo splashed the walls, striping the fallen bodies. A pool of green seeped toward her and Thronos.

His wings moved so fast she could barely see them, could only feel their backdrafts over her face. Headless bodies piled up, and Lanthe felt . . . hope.

Back when she’d allied with the Pravus Army, Lanthe had observed soldiers sparring—vampires, centaurs, fire demons, and more. They’d always grunted and yelled when they struck. Thronos was eerily silent. One male against a horde of baying monsters.

Gods, he was strong.

Technically he was a demon angel—though Vrekeners vehemently denied any demon blood in their line. Right now, he looked seriously demonic. Watching him like this, she realized that in their confrontations over the last few centuries, Thronos had been pulling his punches.

He might not have wanted to kill his mate, but he could’ve taken out Lanthe’s protector, her sister Sabine. Yet he hadn’t. Earlier, Thronos could’ve killed Carrow without a thought. Instead, he’d spared her life. Why?

As the bodies accumulated and poisonous blood crept toward her boots, Lanthe grew queasy. A quake sent her stumbling against the rock wall. The force shuffled the mound of ghouls, sifting corpses. The sheer number of slain was mind-boggling.

When his next strike felled yet another line of them, no more advanced around the corner. They sounded as if they lay in wait outside the tunnel.

Thronos turned to her, broad chest heaving, his grave face covered in grit and sweat. His collar-length hair was damp, whipping over his cheeks.

She grudgingly admitted that he looked . . . magnificent. For so long, she’d focused on his scars, his weaknesses. She’d underestimated this male.

He grated one word: “Come.”