Silence.

Ghostly fingers across her face, cold and skeletal. She sat still, let the spirit read her. And breathed a sigh of relief when the shimmer beside the bed began to fade.

He is ours. We will protect him.

A violent pulse of magic, one that made every hair on her body stand up in alarm...and then, silence. Peace. The gateway to the Abyss was closed once again. Letting out a sigh of relief, she got off the bed and unlocked the door. But when she looked out into the corridor, she saw only absolute darkness, all the lamps having been extinguished by the waves of battering power.

She could have easily relit them, but suddenly she was tired. Tired of being her father's daughter, tired of being ugly, tired of finding herself aching for a wonderful, powerful man who would never, could never, be hers. Turning from the door, she crawled into bed.

Evil found her in her dreams, the Blood Sorcerer's spidery fingers clawing at her until she bled. "You think to escape me? You are my daughter, my possession!"

Shaking, she held up her hands, backed away. "No. You have no claim on me!"

His laugh made her bones tremble, her throat lock. "I own every part of you."

Her back hit a wall, and she looked around in panic, searching for a way out. There was nothing. She was trapped within a gleaming black box, her father's form a cadaverous shadow that melded with the darkness.

"Now you will tell me where you are." It was a sinister command, his nails knives that dug into her throat. "You'll tell me or you'll die."

That was when she realized this was no dream. It was a spell for which her father had spilled not only innocent blood, but his own. For blood would call to blood, and his ran in her veins. If she died in this nightmare prison, she wouldn't wake in the real world.

Calling her own magic, she tried to shove him away. But he was protected, had spilled enough blood to armor himself in it. Her power skated off the malice of him with a shrill shriek that sounded like a woman's scream. Choking as he tightened his hold, she clawed at his wrist. Her hands came away bloody, her nails snapped off.

Darkness began to squeeze the edges of her vision, his breath noxious on her face. "Where are you, dearest daughter?" Lips almost against her own, a terrible kiss. "Where do you hide?"

No. She couldn't die. She hadn't brought Micah home.

But her father was squeezing the life out of her, her heart a scrabbling rabbit in her chest. Lifting hands weak and trembling, she tried to pull him off once more, but her fingers slipped, slick with her own blood. No! She refused to give up, refused to surrender. Not to him, never to him. Even if -

A massive surge of power - clean, pure, potent - slammed through her veins.

Drawing it to the surface as her lungs released a final breath, she threw it at her father in a hail of razor-sharp daggers. His scream shattered the black box, sent her tumbling into the dreamscape, shards of obsidian falling around her, cutting and stabbing. Gasping, choking, she used the intoxicating power in her veins to break the final threads of his spell, falling back into reality with a jerk that had her bolting into a sitting position.

To look into the face of the Lord of the Black Castle.

His eyes burned with black, and when he shoved back her hair to bare her face to the lamp that flickered on the nightstand, she didn't resist. "You bleed." It was a harsh statement.

Leaving her to stride into the bathing chamber, he returned with a soft towel in hand. She raised her fingers to her throat, felt the welts, the stickiness of blood. Shocked and shaky, she didn't protest when he put the towel to her throat with his right hand, his left tightly fisted.

Her eyes locked on that fist.

Tugging at his fingers, she felt a dark wetness. "What did you do?" She stared at the massive gash across his palm. "What did you do?"

The hand holding the towel to her neck flexed, pressed again. "You do blood sorcery."

Shuddering, she understood. He'd seen her trapped in the nightmare, given her the surge of magic she'd needed to get herself out, his blood heady. Her own was paltry in comparison. Elden itself ran in his veins. "Thank you," she murmured, even as she took a second towel he'd dropped on the nightstand and pressed it to his cut. "You shouldn't waste your blood. It holds incredible power."

The Guardian of the Abyss gave her a look filled with such fury that she froze. "So I should've let you die, Liliana? Is that what you would will of me?"

She'd insulted him. "No," she said at once. "But you're far more important than me." Far more. "If you die, what will become of the Abyss?"

"There will be a new lord." Anger continued to glitter in the eyes become winter-green once more. "There will never be another Liliana."

Her heart kicked, stopped, and when it started again, it belonged to him, this Prince of Elden become Lord of the Black Castle. She couldn't stop the trembling of her lower lip, couldn't stop the tear that rolled down her cheek. For the second time, she was crying in front of him when she tried never, ever to betray such vulnerability.

The Guardian of the Abyss made a rough sound in the back of his throat, and then she was being scooped up and settled on his lap, against the cool chill of his armor. When he ordered her to continue keeping pressure on her wounds, she obeyed, even as she refused to let go of the hold she had around his palm.

"You're still bleeding," she managed to say through the tears. "I can taste the power." It was rich and dark and tempting. So tempting. The sorcery she could do with his blood... No. She threw aside his hand and the towel at her throat to huddle into herself, horrified. "Let me go. I'm evil." The Blood Sorcerer's daughter, after all.

Strong fingers against her face, his arm holding her tightly in place. "The blood you taste is freely given," he murmured in her ear. "It intoxicates."

She shuddered, because he was right. The exquisite beauty of it ran through her veins, curled around her senses, threatening to make her a slave. "Please."

"Have you smelled blood that is not freely given?"

She thought of her father's tower room, of her horror as she sat bound, unable to help his victims...and then later, when he'd stolen her will, forced her to assist. "Yes." A low, quiet word. "I was a child," she whispered, wondering if he would believe her. "I've never spilled innocent blood of my own free will."

"I know." Fingers in her hair, massaging her skull. "What did it taste like?"

"Putrid, vile, spoiled." She'd thrown up the first time, had had her face pushed into her own vomit as punishment. "Nothing like your blood."

"That was because it was stolen. Do you see, Liliana?"

Oh. "Then you must not give your blood to me freely," she admonished. "I'm apt to become drunk on it and murder you in your bed."

A rumble against her cheek, vibrations that... He was laughing. The Lord of the Black Castle was laughing, as if she'd said the most absurd thing. So when he lowered his head and kissed her, she was too startled to do anything but part her lips under the bold thrust of his tongue.

Chapter 12

The shock of sensation made her whimper.

He raised his head. "Do you not like that?"

It took time to find the wit to speak. "I've never tried it before." Ives had attempted to kiss her, his breath foul. She'd managed to avoid that indignity, though it had cost her a broken cheekbone.

"Neither have I," came the startling answer.

"There are women in the village who are not maidens." And who would surely have attempted to seduce him, this sensual, dangerous creature who held her in his lap.

"They stink of fear," was the unforgiving answer before he clamped strong fingers on her jaw. "Let's try it again."

The second time was just as big a shock, but she didn't want him to stop. So she dared touch her tongue to his. He groaned, his fingers tightening on her jaw. "Again." Licks against the roof of her mouth, his tongue stroking against hers with a sexual intensity that was utterly without restraint.

She was drowning in him, in the storm of erotic rain after a lifetime of drought. "Stop."

"Are you sure?" That hand on her jaw turning her toward his mouth.

"No." It felt good, his kiss, so good.

When he claimed her mouth again with that same raw energy, she shuddered, bracing her hand against the black armor that kept them from being skin to skin. It was warm now, almost like skin - and it was one sensation too many.

Breaking the intimate contact, she buried her face against his neck. Even that threatened to overwhelm her, his skin hot, his scent different. Male. Pushing against the solid wall of his chest, she scrambled out of his lap, landing in an ungainly heap on the bed, her skirts rucked up over her knees.

His eyes lingered on the exposed length of her legs.

Face filling with heat, she struggled into a sitting position to push down the fabric. "You mustn't."

"Why not?" A big hand closing around her ankle, tugging her forward.

She tried to pull it back. He held on. "Micah, stop."

Time froze.

No, no, no, she thought. She couldn't have made such an elemental error after all her hard work. "I - "

"Micah," he murmured as if he was tasting the name. "Yes, you may call me that."

She let out a sigh of relief. It wasn't quite an acceptance of the identity he'd once had, but at least he hadn't rejected it out of hand. "Will you let go of my ankle?"

He moved his fingers on her skin, just enough to send a shiver up her body. "I want another kiss."

"You can't simply ask for a kiss."

"Why not?"

That stopped her. She had no answer to his question. All she knew of courtship - from what she'd seen of it among the courtiers - was that it was an intricate dance. Nobody ever said what they meant, everything being communicated through coy glances and delicate touches.

It had always seemed a horribly painful thing to her, she who had none of the feminine graces and couldn't effect a coy smile on her best day. "I suppose," she said, "it's better to be direct."