Bind the Soul (Steel & Stone, #2)

by Annette Marie

possession. You will be his ultimate weapon. You can wield the Sahar, the only one who can. If he can’t use it, then he will train you to use it. He will torment and torture and abuse you until you are as obedient a slave as ...

“You will be the one slaughtering hundreds of innocents at Samael’s command. With you, he will finally realize his ambitions. Samael is not satisfied with ruling one territory. He intends to rule the world. Maybe all three worlds. With the power of the Sahar at his disposal, through you, he will make his move. There will be war like you can’t even imagine.”

His eyes opened, black as night. “I almost killed you,” he whispered. “As soon as I saw what you’d done, I almost ended your life. Despite the effort I’ve invested in your survival, neither of our lives outweighs the promise of future death if Samael is allowed to use you to channel the Sahar’s destructive force.”

No way could she live with the knowledge of her cowardice—no matter how many lives she might be dooming in the process.

The Sahar was expanding its repertoire, adding fire to its blasts of power.

When his mouth touched her neck again, his teeth grazed across her skin. His hands moved lower, over her hips and around, sliding over her backside before curling around the backs of her thighs. He was clearly unconcerned by the guards, his one-track daemon mind now focused on her. His fingers tightened and he boosted her up until her toes only brushed the floor. Her breath hitched at the sudden movement. He pinned her in place with his body, radiating heat.

She grabbed at his shoulders but froze again when he used his improved angle to push his face under her chin, forcing her head back. His lips brushed down her throat before finding the leaping pulse in her neck. His mouth closed over the spot, teeth grazing as he tasted her skin.

His mouth was shockingly gentle in comparison the strength of his hands on her thighs, the hardn...

But his mouth was hot and soft against her neck, his teeth lightly grazing even as he pinned her with ruthless strength. She could barely breathe, but it didn’t matter. For some reason, she found herself tilting her head back to offer him better access. He traced his mouth up to the soft skin under her chin. Her legs trembled.

“Samael counts on draconian soldiers to pull off his most dangerous, suicidal missions, and for the politically sensitive assignments where he can wiggle out of the blame if a draconian is caught instead of a reaper. There used to be a lot more of us here, but Samael has fought too many wars in the past few decades. He can’t breed us fast enough to keep up with the death rate.”

“He was the last wild draconian Samael caught. Part of the Hades army stumbled on a colony of draconians living in a secluded valley. While the rest of them fled, Ash’s father faced the entire army alone to buy them time to escape. I think he intended to die fighting, but the sheer number of soldiers wore him down and they took him alive.” She smiled faintly. “Ash’s father was a menace. He killed guards and jailors left and right. He broke every collar they put on him; Ash inherited that ability.”

Five hundred years ago, the Taroth family had rivaled the Hades family in power until the Hades family had wiped them out. It was common knowledge that the Taroth bloodline had been extinct for several generations.

He was always so strong. Well, she was the strong one now. She lifted her hand again, Sahar glowing like a miniature sun in her fist.

She knew exactly what was happening to him: the Sahar was flooding power through his body, lifting him on its addictive high as it poisoned his mind with an unquenchable lust for violence and blood.

She knew it was manufactured terror. Miysis had explained Ash’s Nightmare Effect. It was a sort of aura that draconians threw off, solely to frighten the wits out of their enemies. They couldn’t direct the effect any more than they could suppress it. It was an unalterable part of what they were.

Flowing across Earth, the Underworld, and the Overworld were invisible rivers of power called ley lines. These currents were like the lifeblood of the planet, undetectable by most humans, but easy to find with magic. Ley lines were also the doorways between worlds.

Somehow, the ley lines on both the Underworld and Overworld were connected to Earth’s ley lines—but not each other’s. If you went into a ley line on Earth, you could go to either daemon world. Crossing worlds, however, wasn’t like stepping through a doorway. Inside the ley lines, between the worlds, was the Void, the result of whatever spatial glitch had connected the worlds.

Crossing the Void was harrowing and only one in three daemons could do it. Even fewer actually tried. It took a certain amount of magic and an extreme degree of mental fortitude to make it through. The Void tried to pull your mind apart. Only magic...

Glamour and illusion were two completely different things. Illusion tricked the eye. Glamour tricked reality.

Once in the Void, her survival depended entirely on Ash’s ability to hold both of them together. He would have to weave a huge amount of magic around her to tether her to him during the brief journey.

His lips curved in an answering smile and her stomach swooped at the lightness in his eyes, a flash of a serene kind of humor she’d never seen in him before.

“The Nyrtaroth? As in the last warlord of the draconians?”

“Maahes and Nyrtaroth created the Sahar together. They were both extremely skilled in magic, but neither could have done it alone.”

“Nyrtaroth used the Sahar to level an entire town in a single attack, killing five hundred people.”

“Overworld and Underworld daemons can’t work closely together. Maahes and Nyrtaroth knew what a rare thing it was for them to collaborate in concord. So they made that the Sahar’s safeguard.”

“The Sahar can be used by anyone, but it can only be triggered by two daemons working in harmony: an Overworld daemon and an Underworld daemon. Unless it’s first triggered, no one can commune with it.”

“No.” Miysis regarded Ash with disdain. “The two daemons must have a harmonious relationship. That’s why the safeguard is so effective. Even if you know the secret, the chances of creating the proper circumstances are extremely slim.”

So when she and Ash had both been touching the Sahar, the power had shifted to him because he was the dominant one. Made sense. But the question was whether the power had transferred to Ash because she was “in harmony” with him, or because she, not being two physically separate daemons, could transfer the power to anyone who touched the Stone while she was communing with it.

“Both my parents are haemons,” she explained. “I inherited magic genes from both of them. I should have died but a healer sealed away my magic when I was a child.” Comprehension lit his eyes. “So you must have an Underworld bloodline and an Overworld one.” She nodded. “Seems like it.”

“You’ll sleep better if you do. I’d make you shower too but you’d probably pass out on me like Ash, and then you’d punch me if I got in the shower with you.” “How would I punch you if I was passed out?” “Ash managed it. Not even sure what his problem was.”

“He got pissy because Blood Kiss is the poison Samael’s assassins used to take out those daemons at the gala.”

Heat swept through her. She arched into him. Her hands tightened in his hair, pulling his mouth harder into hers. He responded in kind, pushing her into the floor until all she could feel was him, his heat, his strength. His teeth nipped her lower lip, the gentle bite a dizzying contrast to the aggressive way he pinned her. She pulled on the back of his neck, demanding more. He fit his mouth over hers, his kiss fierce and ruthless. She slid her hands to his shoulders, fingers urgently digging into his flesh.

He sat up abruptly, pulling her with him without breaking the kiss. She found herself straddling him, hands still clutching his shoulders. One of his hands held the back of her head, keeping her lips tight to his, not giving her the option of pulling away—an option she didn’t want. She sucked in air as he tilted her head back, mouth unrelenting and insistent, tongue teasing hers.

Eyes closed, she traced the silky skin and hard muscle under her hands, lost in the heat burning inside her, in the sensations of him, of his hands on her, his mouth on hers, those sinfully talented lips and tongue, his body under hers, arms holding her, crushing her as if he couldn’t get enough of her, couldn’t breathe without her.

Natania’s bitterness over her lovers’ betrayal would explain the seething hatred and violence that filled the Sahar. Five hundred years of imprisonment in a bit of rock could have only exacerbated her hate.

The voice that drifted from behind Seiya’s wings was the softest murmur, beautiful as music. A subtle, impossible layering of harmonics transformed his words into sounds more like an instrument than anything a human throat could produce. His name suddenly made a lot more sense.

Piper shook her head and turned to Ash. “That was a nice thing to do,” she told him. “Don’t say that. You’ll ruin my reputation.” “Your reputation sucks anyway.”

“After I tried to escape with Seiya and we were caught, Samael decided to keep us separated. As his soldiers dragged us apart for the last time, I grabbed a handful of her dress and that piece tore free.” He touched a hand to the braid along the side of his head. “I started wearing that piece of silk so she would see it and know I hadn’t given up. It was my promise to her that someday we would be free. She started wearing her own so I would see she was still fighting too.”

He unbuckled a narrow leather belt that secured three throwing knives to his upper arm. Detaching the sheaths, he took her hand and wrapped the belt twice around her wrist over her armguard before buckling it. His eyes darkened. “I promise to keep you safe from Samael. You will never be in his power again.”

She extended her hand to Ash. “Since you’re going into hiding anyway, you can hide it with you. It’s no danger to you without me around to trigger it.” His gaze darted to Miysis then back again. He surprised her by huffing in amusement. “Fine. But only because Miysis will lose his shit over it.”

She walked on, leaving Miysis to his futile search. It was fitting she should leave the battlefield alone when she had arrived alone. All her battles would now be fought alone. Ash, gone. Lyre, gone. Her father, a virtual stranger to her. She would attend the human school, safe until she finished the year. After that, who knew? She would figure it out.