Death's Lover Read Online Free

tokens of all her conquests. The leering bones meant nothing to death. He knew all these bones by name and who’d they’d been in a former life—farmer or great hero, it didn’t matter. Now, be they humble or famous, they were resigned to an eternity of being little more than decoration.
    He took a deep breath, inhaling the delicious aromas of roasting meats and baking breads. Warriors sat at gnarled oak benches, heads bowed over their chipped bowls of stew. They whispered amongst themselves; hundreds of voices buzzed in his ears. He could only make out snatches of conversation.
    “Live…”
    “…death…”
    “Foolish boy…”
    He ground his jaw, knowing they spoke of him. Rumor traveled fast and The Morrigan’s rage could be sensed like a living entity within every crevice of the castle. It was a choking sensation, stealing the breath and lying heavy on the lungs.
    The gray, dank stone echoed with the sound of his footsteps. He turned a corner and then there was nothing. This portion of the castle was unnaturally empty. Cian glanced down the shifting maze of hallways and doorways, keen to pick up the sound or scent of something. But it was like walking through a mausoleum. Desolate and foreboding.
    He glanced up, studying the flight of The Morrigan’s crows. The red-and-black banners of the royal court affixed to wooden beams on the ceiling fluttered at the birds passing. The Morrigan rarely sent her crows, preferring instead to use other methods of contact. A clap of thunder, a whisper in the wind. She saved her crows only for the direst of circumstances.
    Polished doors of silver grew from a mere speck in the distance to large arches the closer he drew to the royals’ private chambers. The ground beneath his feet shifted, a vibration traveled up his soles as if from the pounding of several trampling feet.
    Had she sent her guard? Why? She had to know he was coming of his own free will.
    Then he saw them, twenty of her most experienced and lethal, marching to block off the entrance to her room. Their steps were unified and absurdly beautiful in their precision. The lead guard, dressed in a tunic of burnished bronze and buffed brown leather, halted the procession by lifting his fist into the air, and as one the group turned on their heels, all done in absolute silence.
    They extended their spears and, like a coordinated ballet, slammed the ends onto the floor. The sound of metal slapping stone reverberated through the room like gunfire. Austere faces gazed at him.
    The Morrigan’s pretentious show of force and power nauseated him. It wasn’t enough for her that she command the most lethal, and loyal, battalion in all of faedom, but she couldn’t resist trying to prove her superiority even to death.
    He stopped, eyeing them. Each had hair tied back at the nape in a severe queue. Their delicate features made them look weak, effeminate. But they were deadly thanks to the swords attached to their dun-colored scabbards. Resting within the hilt of each sword was a red stone. Mereth en draugrim : feast of the wolves.
    One nick from the blade and the victim went instantly mad, beginning to crave such things as bloody meat, marrow from bones. It was a sickness that only overcame the sufferers when the moon grew pregnant with light. The truth of the weres was that they were the original creation of fae.
    “Grim reaper,” Cahal, the lead guard, intoned in a deep barrel-chested voice.
    Cian’s nostrils flared. Heat snapped down his spine, turned his blood to molten lava. A tightness centered in his chest, and the dread and hatred he’d harbored in his soul awoke from their slumber.
    “Let me pass, Cahal. I only wish to speak with the queen,” he said, his words edged in steel.
    Cahal lifted a snow-white brow and shook his head, a glitter of antipathy gleaming in his ice-blue eyes.
    “No.”
    In fury, Cian roared, knowing the queen would hear him and wanting her to. There would be no escaping the beating, and with