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He nibbed his face against hers, inhaling her scent "I've never felt things like this, and I want rowled at her ear "You are my obsession, Sabine I've heard every male has one in his life And you are ritted teeth, she said, "If you don't let ed her down to the pallet "Ah, but my beautiful captive doesn't keep her vows"

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Would you care for any child of ours?" he asked her when he had her clasped in his arht His hand slipped under the tunic and inside her skirt to rest on her flat belly "Demon or no?"

She drowsily murmured, "Unless he was a miserable tool like you" Then she drifted off

Miserable tool What if he were killing so irrevo-cable And yet tonight she'd screa hours that he'd teased her, keeping her on the brink of release, she'd never surrendered to hi in a frenzy She'd rolled her hips, enticing hilistening to be fillednothing had ever excited hiet her to surrender coet control of hiued with uncertainties, he finally fell asleep

Toward dawn, Rydstrom blinked open his eyes and found hi chimeras in her sleep Were these her drearow it Rub it, twist it, love and kiss it," a woainst her cheek This was the feht before-now he could see her

She wore a silk mask around harried blue eyes Her headdress stretched out behind her head a foot on each side, the extensions like wings, each craled beneath it

"Gold is life It is perfection The element exists solely for us" Once she dropped the chains into a laden chest on her dresser, she dug her hands down into piles of coins, letting theers

When she turned to the irls in the reflection, one with red hair, and one with black They were Sabine and Melanthe, both so young, watching her in wide-eyed fascination This woman was their mother And she was clearly mad

"Band it in armor over thy heart, and never will thy life's blood part Gild your hair and face and skin, and no man breathes that you can't win Never too much can a sorceress steal, those who defend"-her face went cold-"she duly kills"

The Sorceri worship gold, Sabine had told hireed, but she believed it washer look when he'd

thrown her headdress into the water, he ran a hand over

his mouth

I will buy her new ones, buy her thousands of them

When Sabine's eyes darted behind her lids, and she made faint cries, Rydstrom reached for her shoulder to wake her, but drew back his hand as a new scene appeared

A night at the edge of a pit, omen lined up on each side of her She looked to be merely fourteen or fifteen

A male in black robes stood before her, flanked by folloith pitchforks He asked her in Latin to recant her evil ways

Donning the smirk Rydstrom kneell, she spit in his face The rave

My gods The followers stabbed the other women with pitchforks until each one had fallen atop her Shovelfuls of earth began to build, the weight crushing her She couldn't get enough air