Silken Rapture: Princes of the Underground, Book 2 Read Free

teeth into his shoulder as David fought a canid with a scimitar. Blaise slashed with his heartluster in a sideways motion, never pausing to see the effect of his action because he knew he’d just decapitated the bloodboar as sure as he knew the foul scent of revenant blood and decaying flesh in his nose.
    “Thanks,” David called before he slashed with his scimitar and the canid howled in fury and pain.
    “Don’t thank me. Fight,” Blaise shouted, not looking back. He broke through the crumbling revenant defenses and strode onto the tube platform. What he saw there confused him. A crystal protruded between the rails of the unused train track, the pointed end of it thrusting up next to the concrete platform. It was enormous, the exposed portion sixteen feet long and three feet wide at the bottom.
    What truly shocked him was the vision of the woman touching the crystal. She glowed like a captured star. He had a fleeting image of another woman, this one naked. She gave him a quick glance—both haughty and curious at once—before she disappeared. Had she been a ghost? For a split second she’d looked so real.
    Morshiel sprang up from the platform, his fangs protruding between a snarl. He grasped for his pants, which had been shoved halfway down his thighs, and extracted his heartluster in one fluid motion.
    Blaise roared and flew at his clone. They crashed together like two opposing tidal waves, rebounding backward before they sprang again, teeth bared in bloodlust. They thrust and parried so rapidly that the sound their heartlusters made blended into a seamless metallic hiss, a sinister background noise for the vicious cacophony of growls and shrieks that bounced off the tunnel walls. Morshiel fought with uncommon strength and fervor tonight, shocking Blaise.
    What had made his clone so strong?
    Morshiel forced him back against the edge of the platform, a manic, wild expression on his face. The concrete beneath Blaise’s boots crumbled and he lost his balance. Morshiel pushed his heartluster with so much strength that Blaise tottered at the edge of the platform. Blaise halted the blade a mere inch away from his chest, but it took all his strength to hold the block. He was falling…falling. His heart pounded against his breastbone frantically, as if it suspected it was on its last beats.
    He’d dreamed of a moment just like this countless times over the centuries. What would it be like to die beneath Morshiel’s blade? It was the only thing that could end Blaise’s life, after all. The mandate to control Morshiel had been set into his very blood—a biological order he could not ignore—but his clone was the only one who could grant Blaise relief from this endless, pointless, soulless existence.
    He met his clone’s eyes in that stretched second and saw not his murderer, but the beneficent angel of death. He longed to embrace him, to be comforted in turn. His gaze flickered ever so briefly to the vision of the luminous woman. Although she stood completely still, her body vibrated with energy.
    “She’s mine, you freak of nature,” Morshiel grated out between clenched jaws.
    A white-hot fury erupted in Blaise’s brain. He roared like a cornered lion, the sound drowning out the noise of battle that surrounded them. He let his body move with the momentum of his fall, pushing mightily off the platform away from Morshiel. His feet flew over his head in a somersault, only to strike the far side of the tunnel. He vaulted back toward the platform like a missile, causing Morshiel to retreat, a surprised expression on his face. He struck a hammering downward blow on Morshiel’s raised sword hand and plunged his heartluster toward Morshiel’s chest. He grunted at the sensation of the metal tip sinking into flesh.
    As a Sevliss prince—one of the surviving six—it had been predetermined by forces greater than Blaise that he could not kill his clone, but he could weaken him.
    Morshiel let out an unearthly shriek.