Novels by sultrysiren666

The vase hit the wall like a gunshot.It was Murano glass — one of the few pieces Valkin had brought from the old world, carried across realms in a velvet-lined case while kingdoms burned behind him. It shattered against the stone in a spray of cobalt and gold, and the sound of it breaking was the sound of a man who had waited centuries watching his patience run out."What do you mean she's gone?"Cassius stood very still. He had served Lord Valkin for over a thousand years, and in that time he had learned two things about his master's rages: they were rare, and they were not survivable for anyone who moved during them."She must have fled while we slept, my lord."Valkin turned from the wall. His chambers were dark even by vampire standards — stone draped in black silk, candles guttering in iron sconce

"She's more than just your fated mate. She's Raven. Or at least a part of Raven."The corridor was stone and torchlight and shadow, and in it Declan Thorne stood very still. The kind of still that only a man who has lived for two thousand years can achieve — the stillness of someone whose body has learned to stop moving when the mind needs all available resources.He nodded.The moment I touched her, I felt something more than just her."Nyima looked at him with those amethyst eyes, and in them was something that might have been compassion, or might have been the particular sadness of a woman who has lived long enough to watch the same tragedies repeat themselves in new skins."It's not surprising that whatever vision she had happened as she was demanding escape," Nyima said. "That piece of Raven doesn't want to leave you."Viktor leaned against the corridor wall. His arms were crossed. His face was the face of a man doing calculations he didn't like the answers to."So we're talking

She kept her eyes closed and her breathing even, because that was how you survived.Not here — not in this impossible room with its impossible bed and its impossible softness — but everywhere. In every group home. In every shelter. On every park bench and bus station floor where sleep was a gamble and waking up meant knowing, before you opened your eyes, whether the person standing over you was a threat.Wren had learned to listen before she looked. She had been doing it since she was twelve.Three voices. Two male, one female. The female — Nyima, the one with the amethyst eyes and the hands that had taken the pain away — was speaking with the particular patience of someone who had already answered the same question several times."For the umpteenth time, I'm positive she's your mate, Declan. What I'm not sure about is how she's here. No new humans from the human realm should be here."A chair creaked. Close. To her left, close enough that she could feel the warmth of a body near the

Two thousand years of peace had made the marketplace loud.Declan Thorne sat across from Viktor at a table near the eastern edge of the square, where the stone gave way to packed earth and the smell of roasting meat drifted from the human vendors' stalls. A plate of cured venison sat between them, half-eaten. Viktor was telling a story about a territorial dispute in the northern peaks — two younger dragons who had decided the same cave belonged to both of them — and Declan was listening the way he always listened to Viktor, which was with one ear and most of his patience."So I told them," Viktor said, leaning back, "that if they couldn't settle it by sundown, I'd collapse the cave and neither of them would have it.""And?""They settled it. Took them four minutes.""You're a diplomat.""I'm fifteen thousand years old. Diplomacy is just being too tired to argue."Declan smiled. It was a small thing, barely a shift at the corners of his mouth, but Viktor had known him long enough to co