As Xhex thought about the future, her grip on the dagger hilt tightened.

And got stronger as she brought the weapon downward onto her skin.

With her mouth screwed down tight to keep her pain inside, Xhex shed her own blood instead of tears.

Although what was the difference, really. Symphaths cried red, in the manner of the vein anyway.

SIXTY-ONE

Rehv’s brain came back online in a slow wave of flickering consciousness. Awareness flared and faded and returned, spreading from the base of his skull up into his front lobe.

His shoulders were on fire. Both of them. Head was killing him from when that symphath had sweet-dreamed him with the sword hilt. And the rest of him felt curiously weightless.

On the other side of his closed lids, light twinkled around him and registered deep red. Which meant the dopamine was fully out of his system and he was now who he would forever be.

Breathing in through his nose, he smelled…earth. Clean, damp earth.

It was a while before he was ready to do a look-see, but eventually he needed some other reference point than the pain in his shoulders. Opening his eyes, he blinked. Candles as long as his legs were set up at the far reaches of what appeared to be some kind of cave, the tremulous flames atop each one bloodred and reflecting over walls that seemed fluid.

Not fluid. There were things crawling on the black stone…crawling all over-

His eyes shot down to his body, and he was relieved to see that his feet were not touching the moving floor. A glance up and…chains held him aloft from the undulating ceiling, chains that were anchored by…bars inserted through his torso under his shoulders.

He was suspended in the midst of the cave, his naked body hovering above and below the shimmering, pulsating confines of rock.

Spiders. Scorpions. His prison was teeming with venomous guards.

Closing his eyes, he reached out with his symphath side, trying to find others of his kind, determined to get through the place where he was, to minds and emotions he could manipulate to get himself free: He might be in the colony to stay, but that didn’t mean he had to keep hanging around like a chandelier.

Except all he could sense was a web of static.

The cast of hundreds of thousands that surrounded him formed an impenetrable psychic blanket, castrating his symphath side, allowing nothing into or out of the cave.

Anger rather than fear fisted in his chest, and he reached over to one of the chains and pulled on it using his massive pectoral muscles. Pain made him tremble head to foot as his body shifted in midair, but there was no budging his tether or dislodging the bolting mechanism that went through his flesh.

As he swung back to straight vertical, he heard a shifting sound, as if a door had opened behind him.

Someone came in, and he knew who, given how strong the psychic block they were putting up was.

“Uncle,” he said.

“Indeed.”

The king of the symphaths came shuffling around with his cane, the spiders on the floor breaking their quilt of bodies briefly to make way for him before swallowing up his path. Beneath those blood-colored imperial robes his uncle’s body was weak, but the brain on top of that curved spine was incredibly strong.

Proof positive that physical strength wasn’t a symphath’s best weapon.

“How fare thee in thy floating repose?” the king asked, his royal headdress of rubies catching the candlelight.

“Complimented.”

The king’s brows lifted above his glowing red eyes. “How so?”

Rehv glanced around. “Hell of a lock and key you’ve got me under. Which means I’m more powerful than you’re comfortable with or you’re weaker than you wish you were.”

The king smiled with the serenity of someone utterly unthreatened. “Do you know that your sister wished to be king?”

“Half sister. And it doesn’t surprise me.”

“For a time, I gave her what she wanted in my will, but I realized that I was inappropriately swayed and I changed everything. That was what your tithes were for. She was using them to transact business with humans, of all things.” The king’s expression suggested this was akin to inviting rats into one’s kitchen. “That alone indicates she is utterly unworthy to rule. Fear is far more useful to motivate subjects-money being comparatively irrelevant if one is looking to gain power. And killing me? She presumed she could best my succession plan that way, which vastly overestimates her capabilities.”

“What did you do with her?”

More of that serene smile. “What was fitting.”

“How long are you going to keep me here like this?”

“Until she is dead. Her knowledge that I have you and that you are alive is part of her punishment.” The king looked around at the spiders, something close to true affection flaring in his white Kabuki face. “My friends will guard you well, worry not.”

“I’m not.”

“You will be. I promise you.” The king’s eyes returned to Rehv’s, his androgynous features shifting into something demonic. “I didn’t like your father and was quite pleased that you killed him. That being said, you are not getting that chance with me. You live solely as long as your sister does, and then I shall follow your fine example and reduce the number of my kin.”

“Half. Sister.”

“So intent you are on distancing the ties between yourself and the princess. No wonder she adores you as much as she does. For her, that which is unattainable will always hold the most fascination. Which, again, is the only reason you live.”

The king leaned on his cane and began to slowly creep back the way he had come. Just before he got out of Rehv’s sight, he paused. “Have you ever been to your father’s grave?”

“No.”

“It is my favorite place in all the world. To stand upon the ground where his funeral pyre burned his flesh to ash…lovely.” The king smiled with cold joy. “That he was murdered by your hand makes it all even sweeter, as he’d always thought you were weak and worthless. Must have stung him rather badly to be bested by the inferior. Do rest well, Rehvenge.”

Rehv didn’t respond. He was too busy poking at his uncle’s mental walls, seeking a way in.

The king smiled, as if he approved of the attempts, and headed on his way. “I always liked you. Even though you are but a half-breed.”

There was a click, as if a door had closed.

All the candles went out.

Disorientation squeezed Rehvenge’s throat shut. Left alone, floating in the darkness, with nothing to ground him, terror seized him hard. To be without sight was the worst-

The bolts through his upper body began to tremble slightly, as if a breeze were blowing through the chains and vibrating them.

Oh…God, no.

The tickling started on his shoulders and intensified in a rush, flowing down his stomach and over his thighs, streaming out to the tips of his fingers, covering his back, blooming up his neck to his face. He used his hands to the extent he was able, trying to brush off the horde, but as many as he cast down to the floor, more overcame him. They were on him, moving over him, coating him with a constantly shifting straitjacket of tiny touches.

The fluttering at his nostrils and around his ears was his undoing.

He would have screamed. But then he would have swallowed them.

Back in Caldwell, in the brownstone he was damn well going to move into, Lash showered with lazy precision, taking his time with the washcloth, going in between his toes and behind his ears, paying special attention to his shoulders and lower back. There was no need to rush.

The longer he waited the better.

Plus, what a bathroom to hang out in. Top-drawer everything, from the Carrera marble on the floors and walls to the gold fixtures to the awesome stretch of etched mirror over the sunken sinks.