Page 8 of Ravenous

Interesting? Could anything dent Thane’s ennui? He pulled the covers down. “Who am I meeting?” Maybe the fey game warden to talk about increasing stock across the highlands of Craigdúr. Or a demon king to co-plan a tournament for their people.

“New leader of the House of Witches. Rumors reached us through the nymphs that she’s a demon-witch.” The nymphs carried all manner of Skein gossip, sung so prettily.

“Pass.” Though a shower wouldn’t go amiss right now. He reeked of perfume.

After Thane’s last night of debauchery, even his beast—the inner wolf spirit that each Lykae possessed—seemed disgusted with him. It all but growled,Thehells was that, son?

Thane relied more and more on liquor and vice to fill the gnawing emptiness that grew inside him.Always hungry; never sated.

Lowell went on, undeterred: “She hails from the ghostly hills of Akelarre. Word says she slew the last leader.”

Thane was fifteen hundred years old. Leaders tended to come and go, yet he endured. “The last? Lazara?” Even-keeled, for a witch.

“Aye, Lazara the Worthy. No one knows how—she just vanished.”

Odd. Just like Thane’s last seneschal had vanished decades ago.

Damn Lowell for provoking his Lykae curiosity. If this glass-half-full warlaird got his way, Thane would climb the Mount of No Swords to have it out with a demonic witch.

Gods deliver him from bloody Wiccae. Their Red Riders constantly aggressed against the Lykae.

“I ken the script.” Thane sat up, biting back nausea. “I command, she refuses, and we all bleed through the Accession.”

The witches were formidable, the Riders particularly so. He still couldn’t wrap his head around how wee women could take on Lykae, the strongest of the sentient beings in the Lore, but their magic beams—those diabolical hexshots—were a nice little taste of hell.

Unnatural females. The worst of the worst.

He should bind tighter to the Berserkers and break the Riders’ momentum. Yet Queen Yrsa hesitated to war, which made no sense. Her people starved for kills.

“Likely that’s how the meeting will go,” Lowell said. “But you still will attend.”

“And if I doona?”

“That would be a problem.”

Thane shook his head. “At my age, there are no problems, only fewer boring stretches of eternity.”

“Are you no’ dying of curiosity?Ibloody am.”

“Or mayhap you want another gander at Lazara’s buxom assistant. Think she kept her post?”

Lowell waggled his eyebrows. “A wolf can hope.”

Thane scowled at Lowell’s never-ending optimism. He didn’t believe the glass was half full; he believed it was broken, forever leaking from a fracture noone could locate.

I am broken. Fractured.Only one thing could fix him. His mate. She had her godsdamned work cut out for her.

“A gander at dark-eyed Meera is worth any effort.” Lowell sighed. “Even rousing you. So get up and greet the night.”

Thane rose from the bed with a grimace. Though he was immortal and could never change his form, he still felt his years. Weariness weighed on him like a meal of spoiled meat. “I’ll go. I want to see this ungodsly halfling.” By degrees, Thane washed, dressed, and forced down food.

His stomach rebelled. Thane the Hungry? Not usually. At least not for food.

Hungry forher.

All Lykae dreamed of matehood; he hunted its shadow in debauchery and woke emptier.

As a boy, he’d heard mated males trying to explain what such a connection was like. Each one’s eyes had flickered Lykae blue, his body vibrating like a struck tuning fork. No one had had the words.