Blood Flows Deep in the Empire (29 page)

Nythi whistled under her breath. “I was mad at her. But now I fucking like her. I do.” Her voice was awe-filled and
happy
as Dyletri continued being attacked by the tiny demon on his back.

“I always liked her,” Nylicia commented, a proud smile on her face.

Vedlyl stood with his arms crossed, trying to hide his smile.

Dimithinia tightened the arm around Dy’s neck and pulled back. “Someone get me a cutting utensil! I am going to castrate him!”

“What?” Dyletri screamed, weak as fuck but still trying to scramble off the bed.

Nythi fell into a laughing fit so hard she ended up losing her footing and hitting the wall. “I love her, I do! Get her the knife. I have to see this!”

Dyletri would fucking heal, but the fact that Nythi wanted to see him go through something like that had him growling and wanting to wring her neck.

“Okay,” Vedlyl said, finally stepping forward and showing some solidarity. “I don’t need to see my fellow male, or any male for that matter,
be put through that while he’s sick.” He gently grabbed Dimithinia and lifted her off Dyletri.

“Thank you,” Dyletri grumbled.

Dimithinia tore her arms out of Vedlyl’s grasp and turned to point her finger in his face, facing the much taller being like it was nothing. “You are next if you do not step back. This bastard deserves to hurt for setting up that sacrifice. She was, and is, an innocent!”

“I was doing it to save you!” Dyletri didn’t understand where this was coming from. He’d thought she’d want to be saved. That she’d be
grateful.
“This was destined . . . isn’t that what you said, Nylicia?”

Nylicia scoffed and stared at her nails. “Sure, blame me.”

Dyletri was going to fucking kill her.

Dimithinia shoved her face back in Dyletri’s. “You ripped me away from Crius! And let me tell you this, Salicyar. I had a chance to glimpse into her soul, and she is amazing. Kind, generous and a million other things that many would kill to be. I would kill to be like her.”

“I know!” Dyletri yelled. “Why do you think I fell in love with her? Besides, Nylicia said this was all meant t—” He did a double take, not sure he heard right. “Whoa . . . wait . . .
Crius
?”

Dimithinia ignored Dyletri’s question and stormed back toward the bed. Dyletri wasn’t going to lie. He actually cringed and moved back.

“You love her? Good. Then you are going to get off your pathetic ass and go get her, because Nylicia says we must.” She launched herself at him and pulled on his ear, hard.

“Fuck!” Dyletri was amazed by her strength. He realized for the first time that she hadn’t come back human. He saw that her dark blue, deep purple, and silver-toned aura whirling around her with the strength of her frustrations.

“Wait,” Dyletri gasped, forgetting that he was being dragged off the bed by the ear like some child. “Get her back? We can get them back?” He looked at Nylicia for confirmation as his body seemed to reanimate with sheer hope.

Dimithinia continued pulling on his ear.

Zen appeared, slamming his fist against the wall. “Yes, we can get them back. You heard the woman, get your ass off that bed. Their souls haven’t left the Earthen sphere yet. I have a plane ready, so get up!”

Dimithinia heaved, almost yanking Dy’s ear off. “Yes. Get up, ass!”

Dyletri pushed her hand away, torn between hugging the fuck out of her for caring about Ismini or choking her because she was still as impossible as she’d always been. Seeing her in the flesh was a relief, but at the same time, looking at her proved what he’d already known. He cared for her. He did. But that was it. She did nothing to him compared to what Ismini caused inside him.

How had he ever thought he was in love with her? How had he been able to confuse the emotion he felt for her and think it was love when what he felt for Ismini was so all-consuming and violent?

Dyletri was off the bed so fast even Vedlyl laughed.

“The Vortex. We need to go back there,” Dimithinia said, storming past him.

“Even if we can get their souls back, what happens then?” he asked.

“Let me worry about that,” Nylicia said, stepping forward.

Dyletri rushed after them. “You said something about a plane?”

“It’s waiting for us in Arizona,” Zen said.

“Their souls are being held at thirty thousand feet. At the most dangerous point of the vortex. You fly toward it, energies high, and it will . . . what is the word . . . overload. It will overload and shoot out its own energy, causing a nice catastrophe. So the flying metal contraption it is. You can fling out all your powers once inside it. With any luck, the vortex will tear your head off
after
you get Ismini’s soul, and then I will not have to finish the job.” Dimithinia stared up at him with eyes that were innocently wide.

“Will this work? Can I get her back?” Dyletri turned to ask Nylicia. He saw Zen freeze out of the corner of his eye. Dyletri knew Zen needed to hear the answer as much as he did.

“I told you. I saw Dimithinia, Ismini, Evesse, and others as part of this war. Now can both of you go get your women? We need them back here!”

“She’s not mine,” Zen mumbled as they started walking out of Dyletri’s room.

Nylicia walked up to Zen and smacked the back of his head. “Not yet, but you’re going to remedy that, aren’t you? Besides, you already walked through the portal last night in your dream, just like the God of Horniness, here. There’s no going back, you fool.”

She managed to hurt him although she wasn’t really flesh and blood. Zen grumbled, rubbing the spot. He got hit again by Dimithinia as she, too, walked by. “What the fuck, woman? I haven’t even been introduced to you!”

Dimithinia shrugged and continued walking. “Apparently, you are another fool who is hesitating to claim what is his. I tend to have issues with males of the sort. So I know all I need to know.”

Nylicia’s laugh echoed down the hallway.

Dyletri ignored them, his thoughts filled with the idea of having Ismini with him again.

We haven’t gotten her back yet.

Yes, but even if Dyletri ended up having his head torn off, as Dimithinia so nicely put it, he was going to find a way to make this work. He was a fucking God, damn it. No way he couldn’t find a way to bring her back, the Fates be damned.

Chapter 26

Altitude: 28,527 feet and climbing.

-Sedona, AZ. (USA)

“Dimithinia . . .”

Dyletri watched her pace back and forth inside the empty cargo plane. She’d been restless the whole flight, ever since she’d emerged from one of the rooms in the compound. She’d changed into jeans, leather ankle boots, and a black shirt. An outfit that was mind-boggling considering Dyletri knew when she’d last been on Earth.

“Dimithinia,” he said a little louder.

“What?”

He rolled his eyes, got up, and grabbed her arm. “Chill out and tell me what’s up.”

“Chill? What is up? Give me a moment. I do believe I heard those terms in the television Crius would put in front of . . .” Her voice stalled, and her eyes grew troubled at his name.

It worried Dyletri. She’d been ripped into the world as a higher being with powers and a vague understanding of what this new modern world entailed. Yes, she was doing remarkably well on the plane considering all that, but Dyletri knew it was something else.

“This is about him, isn’t it?”

He wasn’t jealous. He had been at one time, but then again, he now recognized that it been more of an annoyance. Dyletri had always felt responsible for Dimithinia, and it had been aggravating to see Crius usurping his role.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized one very important fact. If any man ever felt toward Ismini the way Dyletri knew Crius felt for Dimithinia, he didn’t give a damn who he was, Dyletri was tearing out his brain right fucking there. There would be no holding back.

“I . . .” Dimithinia trailed off, seemingly unable to continue.

Zen was sitting away from them in deep meditation. Every few seconds his eyes flashed red and black, and Dyletri knew he was having a hard time keeping Mavrak locked inside. Which was a problem, considering that everyone present had a less than pure past. Dimithinia’s was especially shady.

Dyletri led Dimithinia by the arm and sat down on the floor of the plane, patting the spot next to him. “Come. Talk to me.” She seemed hesitant, so he smiled and put on his best “please” face. “I might die in a few minutes when we arrive to our destination.”

She glared at him playfully. “One would be so lucky.”

He watched as she slid into the spot next to him. “Aw, come on. You’ve been verbally abusing me from day one. Can’t you be nice to me in my last moments of my life?”

It was true. Even during their brief relationship, if one could call it that, the woman had always had something smart to say about him. About everyone, for that matter.

She looked up at him with a bullheaded expression. “You are not going to die. You and Ismini will be happy forever if I have anything to say about it.”

His rib cage tightened around his lungs, cutting off his breath as he thought of his
R’ma.
“You know . . . when I first met Ismini, that’s one of the things that hit me the hardest. How much she wanted that for you and me despite the fact that it would cost her life.”

Dimithinia stared at the ground, her brow furrowed. “I am nothing like that girl. Nothing. I . . . I am a monster,” she whispered. “I am a horrid abomination, and I have to live with that every second. In whatever form I exist, I have to live with my crimes. Not just the lives I took . . . the lives that were taken because of me. An entire empire.
Thousands
of people.”

He couldn’t help but feel bad. He’d always known that her actions were incongruous with who she was. “I pushed you—”

“You did no such thing. It was my fault. I was jealous, possessive, and already so close to madness by the time I met you. I thought I loved you but I . . .” She shook her head. “I was young and desperate. Miserable. You were the first to show me kindness outside of my one friend. And we both know he was killed months before the rest of us were. It was just you after that, and in my madness, I did not want to share that.”

The sunlight glinted off her odd eyes, bringing out the blue and black tones in them. She’d always had a thick, black outline around her irises, but now that she had powers and her eyes glowed more, those outlines stood out starkly.

“I hope what I said does not offend you. I care for you, Sal—Dyletri. I always will. But I was just desperate for someone who did not treat me as a queen or as a punching bag, I believe the term is, yes?”

“Yes, that is it the term. And, no, I’m not offended. So Crius put your
Aristi
in front of a television so you could see the modern world?” he asked, steering the conversation in the direction he wanted it to go.

“Oh, yes. He would carry my
Aristi
with him. He would take me out into the modern world. The movie theaters, I think they are called, are amazing with their huge screens!” Dimithinia spoke with all the excitement of a child.

The image of Crius sitting in a dark movie theater with her orb was almost too odd to process. Dyletri smiled at that, which would have surprised him at any other time. It was funny how that fact would have caused him anger barely two weeks ago. “I never knew he took you out. Is that why you were mad that I brought you back?”

She said nothing.

“He cares for you, Dimithinia. And I get the feeling he’s the reason you know now you didn’t really love me back then, isn’t he?”

“It does not matter now,” Dimithinia said, standing back up.

“Why? Why doesn’t it matter? You have a body now. You two could try—”

“No. He will never feel for me the way I feel for him. He might care, but that is it. He will never have me in this form. Besides, a monster like me does not deserve what you and Ismini now share.”

“Dimithinia, why? Why won’t he—”

“Just let it go, please?”

Dyletri sighed but did as she asked. He knew damned well that she was thinking of Crius’s past. Of his last life and what had been done to him by the woman he’d adored.