Lord of the Abyss & Desert Warrior Read Online Free PDF Page A

don’t cook.”
    Snapping back to the present, Liliana nodded and chose an assortment of fruit vibrant with color and fragrance. “Will you chop these, Jissa?”
    The brownie picked up a knife as Liliana hunted out the flour, butter and milk, and began to roll out a pastry on one corner of the massive bench. “The village,” she said as they worked, “do you live there?” It would make sense if Jissa did—the Black Castle was a gloomy place full of watchful ghosts and shimmering darkness.
    “I cannot.” Jissa’s sadness lingered in the air, settled on Liliana’s skin, permeated her very bones. “I tried when I first came, and I…died, was all dead, after two days. The lord brought me back here and I lived again.”
    Liliana’s heart caught, for she understood now. No matter her memories, Jissa hadn’t survived the massacre in her village. The Blood Sorcerer had a spell he called Slumber. Such an innocuous name for such an evil thing. He used it on those magical creatures who were pure of blood and yet rare. Rather than murdering them when he might already be swollen with power, he broke their necks but whispered a spell at the moment of death that kept them breathing and slumbering.
    Liliana had been locked in a room with her father’s victims once, but it hadn’t horrified her as he’d intended. She’d been grateful, her magic telling her the beings no longer possessed their souls. They had escaped. But not Jissa. Whatever her father had done to her, it had trapped her in this borderland between life and death. “I’m sorry.”
    “Why?” Confusion. “You aren’t the Blood Sorcerer. No, you’re not.”
    Knives in Liliana’s chest, the lies of omission choking her up.
    Jissa spoke again. “There are meats in the cold box. I can—”
    “ No. No meat on the table.” Her own blood would be the only blood she would ever spill. Her father had delighted in forcing her to watch as he took his time torturing and mutilating creature after magical creature. It was when she was six that he’d begun to whisper spells that forced her to do the same vile acts even as she screamed and screamed and screamed.
    Four more years it had taken until she’d grown strong enough to block his spells with her own. That was when he’d started to hurt the servants who dared to speak with her, to offer her any small kindness—all except the cook. So she had learned to remain silent.
    “Oh.” Jissa’s brow furrowed, her sharp little teeth biting into her lower lip. “Meat, he always eats the meat,” she whispered. “Even I, bad cook I, can’t make it taste that terrible.”
    “Never fear, Jissa,” Liliana said, kneading the dough with determined hands, her mind on eyes of winter-green, so very beautiful, so very deadly. “He’ll never notice the lack.”
     
    T HE DINNER BELL RANG LOUD and sonorous. Seated alone at the head of a massive table of polished wood so dark it was near black, the Guardian of the Abyss raised his cup and took a sip of red wine. “Where is my meal, Bard?” he asked, though he wasn’t looking forward to the food that didn’t deserve the name.
    If Jissa weren’t already dead, he was sure he would have executed her long ago for attempting to starve him. Of course today it was his new prisoner who would facehis wrath. He wondered if she would look him in the eye when he sentenced her to another night in the dungeon.
    “I will see, my lord.” The big man turned to open the door…to reveal the prisoner, Liliana, and Jissa standing there with huge trays in their arms.
    “Thank you,” Liliana said with a smile that was much too wide. “We couldn’t open the door.” And then she was walking into the great hall with that halting stride of hers, her face brutally exposed given that she’d pulled her hair back.
    Again, he found himself fascinated by his strange prisoner.
    Placing her tray on the table and waiting for Jissa to do the same, she whipped off the covers from the dishes and