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  “The delight is mine,” he said carefully. “I was pleasantly surprised to receive your invitation.”

  “Ah, yes,” Dubheasa nodded. “I do hope you enjoyed the picture?”

  Desire flooded his veins as the picture the queen referred to leapt into his mind. The photograph had depicted Saule in her human form, glaring into the camera from her position in the center of a darkened room. All he’d been able to make out were the silver chains holding her arms above her head and her naked breasts bared to the camera, framed by the golden waterfall of her hair. The anger burning in her gaze had excited him more than her nudity. Such spirit always made the surrender all the sweeter. She would open to him just as her daughter had.

  “I shall take that as a ‘yes,’” the queen murmured.

  Aldric didn’t have to look down to know that his body had revealed his arousal. He didn’t care. He felt no shame for his reaction and the pisky had been quite graphic in his descriptions of the queen’s “perversions.” There was little fear that she would be taken aback by his reaction. Especially since it had been her wish that he arrive nude.

  “I am most flattered that you thought to invite me,” Aldric spoke up, tentatively taking advantage of the Queen’s distraction to prod for more information.

  “Well your reputation does precede you, Aldric. A vampire who goes around killing entire villages, all over a vendetta against a sun goddess . . . why it’s almost poetic.”

  A sinking feeling weighed in Aldric’s stomach. “If any of my victims were under your protection—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” the Queen waved him off. “I’m not the slightest bit put off with you for the bloodshed. If anything, it marks you as a practical man.” She raised her eyebrows. “I assume the villages in question were the homes of the Russian soldiers who invaded your little village?”

  The almost condescending tone in her voice tightened his skin until he had to put considerable effort into maintaining his composure. He had not made a secret of his motives, or his killings, but he hadn’t expected the Queen to be interested enough in him to find out the particulars. Before he could think of anything to say, the Queen continued.

  “Tell me, Aldric,” she said conversationally. “Since I am being so terribly generous, what with offering up your fondest dream on a silver platter and whatnot, would you mind offering a little something in return?”

  Alarm bells went off in his head and tension sang through his muscles. The desire in his veins ebbed as he turned his attention to the playful tilt of the Unseelie monarch’s head. The gesture made her long black hair swing forward like a thick black snake, a dramatic contrast to the smooth ghostly pallor of her skin. She watched him like a crow watches an injured warrior crawling on a battlefield. Amused, patient, and hungry.

  “I am not sure what I could offer one who has as much as your majesty,” Aldric said carefully. “What would you ask of me?”

  “Oh, do not look so paranoid,” the queen chastised him, her eyes shining with merriment. “I simply want to inquire into a hobby we both share.” She sidled up closer to him, the bloody tentacle still dangling from her hand. “Tell me, what method of torture have you found most effective?”

  Unbidden, a memory of a story he’d heard as a child leapt into his mind. The story of a wicked woman who was asked what punishment should be inflicted on the person accused of a crime she herself had committed. Not knowing that her culpability was known, she gave a horrendous punishment and was then put through it herself, suffering her own sentence. He couldn’t think of the story’s title, but the lesson was plain.

  A false answer may save him the wicked woman’s fate, but if the queen had heard of his reputation, a false answer could turn her favor against him. A non-creative answer could lead to demonstrations of alternatives. Aldric’s spine ached with tension as his mind pieced out his options.

  “Am I asking too much of you, Aldric?” the queen asked softly. A dangerous tone crept into her voice as she began to circle him, dropping the tentacle to the floor. “Is the entertainment I am offering you for tonight not worth such a small piece of information?”

  “Forgive me, your majesty.” Aldric bowed, a small gesture of apology. “I was merely thinking on your question.”

  “And?’

  “Humiliation,” he answered, hoping that his decision to tell the truth had been the correct one. “Humiliation is the most effective form of torture.”

  The queen’s eyebrows rose. “Humiliation?”

  Now that he’d made his decision he thought on the matter as calmly as if he were discussing the weather. “A great deal of my enemies are immortal, or very near. Physical pain is motivating for some, but there are those who manage to withstand it.” His emotions stirred as the conversation brought to mind the woman waiting for him in the belly of the sithen.

  His mind drifted, floating on the anger and hatred he usually kept under tight rein. This was a subject he had thought long and hard on. The men who had invaded his village had died by his own hands. One by one he’d killed them and their descendants, staining his hands with his vengeance. But for his vengeance to be complete, they were not the only ones who needed to pay. No, the goddess who had turned her back on him—she was the one who needed to suffer.

  Unfortunately, it was nearly impossible to get revenge on a deity. Even if she did come down to earth, she was the goddess of the sun, the one thing he could not face in his new, more powerful, vampiric form. No, he’d had to think long and hard about how to get revenge on Her.

  “Pain can be recovered from,” he continued, carefully riding the swell of his emotions. “With the right spell, it can even be forgotten. But humiliation is not just in the mind of the victim. It is in the minds of everyone who witnesses it—everyone who hears of it.” He stared into Dubheasa’s eyes. “As long as the memory lives on, so does the torment. A veritable eternity of suffering,” he whispered.

  “You are almost poetic in your machinations, my dear Aldric.” Her eyes traveled down his body, lingering on his faded erection. “Had I known what depths lay beneath your macabre reputation, I would have arranged our meeting sooner.”

  The pisky’s voice echoed in his head, responding to Aldric’s announcement that the queen had insisted he arrive nude. The pisky had warned him of Dubheasa’s pride, telling horrible stories of men whose bodies had insulted her with their disinterest. Fortunately, Aldric had no problem performing under pressure. The prize waiting for him in the depths of the Unseelie Court was worth a few moments of ego-stroking.

  Queen Dubheasa stepped forward until her breasts brushed his chest. Aldric straightened to his full six-foot six frame, bowing his head so that he hovered over the sidhe’s slender form. The puckered flesh of her nipples tickled his chest as she turned her body ever so slowly against him. The sensation sent tiny sparks of pleasure over his skin and he smiled his approval. Her dress was not just decorated in shadows—it was made of them.

  He let his gaze travel down her body as his hands danced just over the illusion of her gown. He wondered what it would be like to plunge his hands into the queen’s dress, to feel her slender naked body under his palms even as her voluminous skirt of shadows billowed around him. It had been so long since he’d had a woman climb willingly into his lap, had a female give herself over to him without any domination, any breaking of her will. Dubheasa seemed so willing . . .

  Desire curled in his belly, awakening his flesh until he stood hard and firm against her belly. He fed the rush of pleasure with images of the beautiful queen of the Unseelie writhing in his lap, her pale hands dragging blood tipped nails down his chest as he warmed the chill of his body deep in the wet depths of her pussy. If not for the image of his true goal burning like a branding iron in his mind, he may have turned his efforts to the monarch before him.

  “Oh, my,” the queen murmured. She lowered one hand to caress the stiff length of him, reaching up with the other to stroke his cheek. The friction of her nails grating
against his cock sent sparks of pleasure along his flesh. He allowed the heat in his eyes to shine as he looked at her, letting her see the effect she had on him without making a verbal offer. Dubheasa smiled.

  “Such a gleam in your eyes, Aldric. You tempt me to take what is offered in that look.”

  She stepped back, her skirt swaying around her and drawing his eyes over her body again. “Enough play. Let us proceed to your true goal.”

  The abrupt shift in her thinking nearly took him off guard. The pisky had warned him that the Queen of the Unseelie was known for following whatever urge took her mind from moment to moment, but he had expected a monarch to have an attention span slightly longer than a gnat’s. Aldric kept his face blank as he beckoned his men to follow him as he trailed after the queen. Every sense sharpened as they moved, wary of any other surprises that may leap from behind a blood red curtain.

  “When you finish here, do not forget your promise to the poor little pisky,” the queen spoke up suddenly. She continued walking without pause. “No matter what excitement may follow your visit, you must keep your word.”

  Aldric’s steps faltered as cold shock cracked over his spine. His men halted behind him as he stopped and stared at the queen. She didn’t glance back, didn’t continue to speak. She didn’t give him a single clue as to how she’d known of his prisoner.

  Alarm bells went off in his head and his hand swept behind him to his long braid of hair. It would take him only seconds to rip the iron bar from it’s plaited prison, though he had no idea how he and his men would escape even if he could subdue the queen. Cold resolve stiffened his muscles and he forced a calm over his body. He returned his hand to his side. Rash behavior was never rewarded.

  “Your majesty?” he asked calmly. “To what pisky do you refer?”

  The queen spun around, a smile splitting her face like a demented jack o’ lantern. “Why the one you’ve got buried in your little iron cage, of course.” She frowned. “I don’t recall his name. He’s not one of my subjects after all, the piskies belong to Tatania’s horde.”

  Behind him, he could feel the currents of air shifting as his men fanned out ever so slightly. It took all his self control not to reach behind him again for the iron bar.

  “Oh, Aldric, calm yourself. I could care less if you imprison a pisky. And it doesn’t bother me in the slightest that you inquired so vigorously about me and my court. Why, I should have done the very same thing in your position.”

  “It seems I was not as vigorous in my inquisition as I believed,” Aldric said slowly.

  “Oh, no, you were quite enthusiastic,” the queen assured him. “He just assumed you knew my title. I’m sure it never occurred to him to spell it out for you.”

  “The Queen of Air and Darkness? Is that the title to which you refer?” As much as he hated admitting ignorance, playing it cool would only put off the inevitable. He needed to know right now what it was he had missed. Before he went any further into the belly of the Unseelie sithen.

  “That is the one,” the queen nodded. She smiled. “Poor Aldric. How were you to know that every word spoken into the soft embrace of the darkness is mine to hear as I will it?” She chuckled. “Even if you had known, what are you to do about it? You’re a vampire, your options are dreadfully limited in that area.” She scowled. “Not like Tatania.”

  The circle of her thoughts led him in a dizzying dance. Aldric couldn’t be certain, but it seemed as if Dubheasa was toying with him for amusement’s sake. There didn’t seem to be much threat in her at all.

  “Tatania, the queen of Light and Illusion?” he asked politely, gauging the queen’s reaction.

  “Light and Illusion,” the queen echoed, rolling her eyes. “Yes, yes. Everything around her is full of light. Not a single shadow to carry a whisper.” Yearning filled her eyes for a moment. “Oh, what I would have given to see her face when Oberon turned his attentions to Saule. It was delicious enough to see her expression when she called to offer Saule to me for punishment. She looked so delightfully enraged!”

  Her laughter bounced off the walls and Aldric stepped back toward his men. He had always hated monarchs, and now he remembered why. Bloody insanity.

  “She is beautiful, I’ll give her that,” the queen continued. “Of course what do you expect? She is a sun goddess after all. Even in human form one wouldn’t expect less than radiant beauty from a sun goddess, yes?”

  Cold hatred sent painful splinters of ice prickling through his veins. “One wouldn’t expect much more than beauty from a sun goddess.”

  Queen Dubheasa raised her eyebrows. “Such venom in your voice. What did the goddess do to earn such poison?”

  “Nothing,” Aldric said bitterly, not bothering to hide the truth from the inquisitive queen. “She did nothing when it mattered most.”

  “Is that why you raped her daughter?”

  Aldric hissed. “I raped no one. Valkyrine submitted to me willingly.”

  “After you kidnapped her and held her against her will for several full moons,” the queen pointed out. “I dare say anyone’s will could have been broken under the . . . attentions you lavished on her. Incidentally, what made you turn your vengeance to seduction? That’s quite an unusual punishment, I’m curious as to what made you think of it?”

  Aldric brushed off the pang of regret that stabbed at his heart. The past rose like a ghost in his mind, reminding him ever so briefly of who he used to be. “As a human, I was a loyal follower of Saule. I held myself back from the pleasures of the flesh, dedicating myself completely to her service.” Cold anger swirled through his veins, chilling the pain that threatened to close his throat. “My years of complete dedication meant nothing to her. My self-denial meant nothing.” He turned his head to face the queen, only half seeing her through the shade of the past. “What better revenge than to compensate for those years of lying alone in a cold bed than to warm my sheets with the warmth of her daughter’s golden body?”

  A brush of fingertips on his erection startled him out of his daze. He stared at the queen as she caressed his hardening manhood. He had allowed himself to get too wrapped up in thoughts of sweet revenge. The queen had startled him with a caress, but it could just as easily have been a stake to his chest. Such mistakes were unforgivable—his emotions would get him killed if he continued to let them run roughshod over him.

  Steeling himself all over again, Aldric refocused his attention on the queen. Just because the female he wanted waited for him in the bowels of the sithen, didn’t mean he could afford to take his focus off the female currently running a fingernail over his erection.

  “It seems answering my little question has left you in the perfect mood to meet your fair lady.” She whirled around. “Come. This is a show I must see.”

  Before Aldric could process her most recent change in direction, the queen walked up to yet another red curtain a mere ten yards away.

  “Don’t be shy, Aldric.” She gestured toward the curtained alcove. “Pull aside the curtain and meet the entertainment that you have been so eager to find.”

  A soft clink of metal from behind the curtain rang in his ears, drawing his attention to the thick red material. The picture he’d received with the queen’s invitation floated back into his mind. Saule. In chains. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Half the work was done for him. Moving with all the severity of the grave, he stepped forward and pulled it aside.

  Saule raised her head as he stepped inside. If he’d had breath in his body, it would have left him at the sight of her. Long hair fell in golden waves nearly to her ankles, the light from the wall torches glistening like tiny fires in the twisted curls of her locks. Her pale yellow flesh was bared to the room, without a scrap of clothing to hide her delicately curved form. Her arms stretched over her head, held in place by silver chains that sparkled like starlight. Her legs were spread, chained to the floor to keep her that way. Open, vulnerable . . . inviting.

  Anton, Kurt, Vincentas, and Bron file
d into the room behind him, spreading out like proper body guards. Despite their dedication to his protection, he could sense their gazes being pulled toward the woman on display in the center of the room. He couldn’t fault them for their distraction. Her beauty was rapturous, even in her human form. She had a face that inspired love, inspired faith. It was a face to be worshipped. And now it was his to do with as he pleased.

  “Did you wait all these years just to have it over in an instant? If you kill her here, her mortal form will die, but her spirit will merely return to the heavens where it belongs.”

  The queen’s voice pricked at his ears, distracting him like the buzzing of a particularly annoying insect. Aldric startled as he realized he was standing before Saule, the sun goddess’ throat caught in his hands. He didn’t even remember moving. His eyes widened as she struggled to swallow past the death grip he had around her neck. Her crystal blue eyes sparkled as she stared at him, a strange combination of surprise and dismay in their icy depths. Tremors ran through his fingers as he ever so gently released her.