Kiss of a Demon King Read Free

way down. Eyes wild with confusion, he obeyed, the thick glass slashing over his skin. He never yelled as he plummeted to the valley floor.
    When all were killed, Lanthe knelt beside Abie again.
    "Live, Abie! Heal!" Gods, Lanthe was pushing, trying to command her. But it was too late. Sabine's heart no longer beat. Her eyes were blank with death.
    "Don't leave me!" Lanthe screamed, pushing harder, harder . . . The furniture began to shake, their parents' bed rattling... More shifting ... a thud as a head rolled to the floor. Then a second one.
    The power was unimaginable. And somehow, Sabine felt her body restoring itself. She blinked open her eyes, alive and even stronger than before.
    "They ran from that place, out into the world, and never looked back," she told her enthralled audience. "All that Sabine would have from that night was the scar around her neck, a tale to tell, and the blood vendetta of a Vrekener boy who'd somehow survived his fall...."
    Lost in thought, Sabine absently realized that the guard had awakened and was squirming under her boot heels.
    She reached down and snapped his neck before she got so caught up with the story that she forgot to do it.
    One woman clapped her hands in glee. Another breathed, "God bless 'n keep you, miss."
    Sabine might as well be an agent of fate for these people on this eve. Not an agent for good, nor for bad. Just serving fate-which could be either.
    After all, the next guard hired might be worse to them.
    "What about the second time she died?" a brazen female asked. Her head was shaved bald.
    "She was fighting to defend Melanthe and herself from yet another Vrekener attack. They captured Sabine, then flew her to a height, dropping her to a cobblestone street. Yet her sister was there once more to heal her broken body, to snatch her from the arms of death."
    As if it had happened yesterday, Sabine could still recall the sound of her skull cracking. That one had been so close. . . .
    "The third time, they chased her into a raging river. The poor girl couldn't swim, and she drowned-"
    "Then take it, you bitch!" a woman shrieked from downstairs, interrupting the flow of the story once more. Ah, the Queen of Silent Tongues was yielding to
    Lanthe.
    Sabine's skin prickled as the air began to sizzle with power. The sorceress jailed downstairs was surrendering her root ability. Lanthe would be able to talk telepathically to whomever she addressed, within a certain distance.
    "No, don't fret," Sabine told her antsy humans. "Have you read any of the halfpenny novels, the ones with bank robberies? That's all my accomplice is doing now. Except she's stealing something equivalent"-she made her voice dramatic-"to your soul!"
    At that one woman began crying, which pleased Sabine because it reminded her why she so rarely took humans as pets.
    "Who killed her the next time?" Brazen Mortal asked. "Vrekeners?"
    "No. It was other Sorceri bent on stealing her goddess like power. They poisoned her." The Sorceri so adore their poisons, she thought bitterly. But then she frowned at the memories. "It did things to the young girl's mind, this repeated dying. Like an arrowhead forged in fire, she was made sharp and deadly from constant pressure and blows. And she began to covet life as no other before her. Whenever she felt hers was in danger, a mindless fury swept through her, the need to lash out undeniable."
    When some of their eyes widened, Sabine realized her pensiveness had made the cell appear to be choked with mist. She often unwittingly displayed illusions that mirrored her thoughts and emotions, even when dreaming.
    As she swiftly cleared the air, another patient said, "Good miss, wh-what happened after the poisoning?"
    "The sisters just wanted to survive, to be left alone, to amass a fortune in gold through just a bit of sorcery. Was that too much to ask?" She gave them an "honestly ?' look.
    "But the Vrekeners were unrelenting, tracking them by the girls' sorcery. Especially the boy.