Page 156 of Red Ruin

“Guide.” Hoarse and confused, he grabs my wrist and yanks it to his lips. “Mine.”

Please not this right now. “You know my name.”

“Mine,” he insists, roughly licking my pulse.

Godsfuckingdamnit.

“Remy. Who was that man—that thing—in your memory?”

He traces my vein with a fang. “Supreme.”

“The other one,” I sing-song as I twist our silks, trying to coax his mind back from the dark. “The one you buried.”

His nails sharpen. We’re back to communicating in scratches and one-word grunts.

I stroke his silks, trying to keep us both calm while my theories clack off their own rails.

We have the fuckingtrifectaof bad news:

- Ceremonial urns of suspicious fluids.

- Casual massacre to hide the secret of a shady tomb.

- Aaaaaand the menace that can’t be killed butcanlaugh across space and time at the idea that I’m the last thing standing between him and the graveyard empire of his undying dreams.

“Remy.” I swallow chalk. “What kind of monster was that?”

It was hard to tell behind the chains.

The shape was bloated and suppressed by so many arrays.

This time, I don’t really want an answer.

If I don’t know for sure, I can pretend we have a chance.

Remy doesn’t respond.

I keep working at his soul, waiting for him to come back online. Vhex rolls against my side. Still passed out, he hugs my waist, but his smoky heat can’t stop the chill icing my spine.

“Lich,” Remy finally murmurs. Then, half-drunk, barely lucid, he drags out a second word that rattles my soul. “King.”

CHAPTER39

IRIS

Kevan can callhimself a lich king because Kyorgos was sired from that bloodline.

THE Lich King—the original, the ancient—exists on an entirely different power level than a petty, modern duke.

I don’t doubt they’re related.

I just don’t want this to be happening.

“The monster we’re facing,” I say numbly. “This is the same lich king that sired the Kyorgos bloodline?”

Remy’s,“Mmmm,”could mean anything, but I’ve picked up enough breadcrumbs to paste together a truth that sours my stomach.

History tells us how the Sentinels were created. Monsters were captured alive and made into magic experiments.

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