Shadow and Ice (Gods of War) Read online

  Unlike everything else, the rod wasn’t obscured by ice. It stood on its own, no sign of the horned man.

  Intrigued, she reached out...

  A powerful blast of wind knocked her backward, and she slammed into a pillar. Electric pulses danced over her skin, stars winked through her vision, and air gushed from her lungs.

  Crack, crack. Lines appeared in a handful of pillars.

  Frick! This had better not be a you-break-it-you-buy-it situation.

  All right, forget the staff. She straightened on unsteady legs and returned her attention to the soldiers. Yeah, definitely soldiers. They stood in assorted battle poses, clutched weapons and wore varying expressions of absolute, utter fury.

  Her gaze skimmed over a black-haired man, only to zoom back. He exuded enough power to crush...anyone. And he was heart-stoppingly gorgeous. The kind of gorgeous that stole your breath and your thoughts and incinerated your panties.

  One look at him, and she was certain she’d ovulated.

  He was sex, rough and raw, primal and animalistic, his masculinity a palpable caress against her skin.

  No one, real or fiction, was sexier. Not even Legolas, the standard by which she measured every man.

  This statue had the sinister aura of a pitiless conqueror, radiating both icy cold and boiling heat, his hard expression promising both earth-shattering orgasms and a torturous death. His eyes outshone the bluest, rarest sapphires; they were framed by long, curling lashes reminiscent of black velvet, somehow both pretty and primeval.

  So many contradictions. So intriguing.

  His cheekbones appeared to be carved from granite, and his lips...glory hallelujah. His lips were plump, scarlet, and made for kissing. His chin was square, his jaw slanted and shadowed by stubble.

  Her gaze returned to his lips, drawn like a magnet, and her fingers followed, tracing a swirling pattern over the ice—not just any pattern.

  Ugh. She’d drawn a heart. “I believe every life is a book in progress, and my story just got a lot more interesting,” she told him.

  He was shirtless, revealing a ring of black tattoos around his neck and wrists. Taking up prime real estate on one of his muscle-cut shoulders was a tree of life, set inside a circle. In fact, all of the frozen men and women bore a tree of life tattoo somewhere on their gorgeous bodies.

  Her attention returned to the sex god. Or war commander. He held two daggers with brass knuckle handles. Pants made of a black leathery material covered his lower half, and a silver belt buckle rested atop his snack basket—a modern gadget when everything else about him screamed ancient warrior.

  “A shame you aren’t naked.” He—

  Vale jolted. Plot twist. He’d just blinked.

  No way. Just...no way. While some part of her had always believed ancient myths were based in fact, aliens and ghosts walked among humans, and magic truly existed, she had trouble accepting what she’d seen. What she thought she’d seen.

  She wasn’t crazy—most of the time; she just hadn’t found any evidence to support her suspicions. Therefore, he couldn’t have blinked. And those ocean-water blues couldn’t be staring at her, intent with challenge, daring her to come closer.

  He wasn’t aware of her. He wasn’t aware of anything. Because he wasn’t alive.

  He couldn’t be alive.

  Could he?

  CHAPTER TWO

  KNOX FOUGHT THE ice with all his might, doing his best to ram his body forward, then backward, then forward again. Since his confinement, he’d never stopped fighting and, because of the fervent and constant strain, his bones had been broken repeatedly, his muscles torn. Pain seared him every second of every day.

  He should be used to forced incarceration. Before coming to Terra, he’d spent more than eleven hundred years under Ansel’s control.

  Here, now, a problem persisted. Knox was surrounded by enemy soldiers. If he failed to gain his freedom first, he would die. No doubt about it.

  Every fiber of his being rejected the possibility of defeat. Kill the competition, win the war.

  He had to win, had to return to Iviland. If Ansel kept his word and freed Knox from the slave bands, even for a second, the entire royal family would die screaming. By my hand.

  Finally, Knox would know peace. True peace. His fellow slaves would be freed. No longer would they be mocked, ridiculed and treated as if they deserved such a dreadful fate, told they should be grateful the All Wars had given them a purpose.

  If not...

  He would just have to find another way.

  The slave bands posed the biggest problem. Once, as a young boy, he’d flayed off the tattoos. But the ink had already tainted his blood, and the marks had grown back. But he would try again, and again, using a different weapon each time; he would try until he found something that worked, or died.

  He already had his next weapon in mind.

  As the centuries had passed, he’d had time to think this through—despite the lack of air that had left him in a perpetual haze. Carrick of Infernia was a well-known prince of his fire realm. A prince by might, not by birth. He obeyed no dictates but his own.

  Carrick had tattoos similar to Knox’s. However, the other man’s markings aided rather than hindered, somehow causing a strange force field to spread around him. He owned a special dagger capable of burning a victim from the inside out, turning the veined blood into lava.

  Knox planned to win the dagger and use it on himself. As long as he had the power to activate it, not even he—the wielder—would be immune to its powers. Perhaps the lava would burn away the poison that tethered him to Ansel. Then, Knox could use another weapon to turn his blood back to normal.

  In theory, he would heal. In reality, he might die.

  Worth the risk. A dark entity seemed to live and breathe inside him—the puppet master who pulled his strings. This entity had a single purpose, a task it couldn’t be swayed from: avenging Knox’s daughter.

  Her name was Minka, and she was conceived after Knox had won his first All War.

  As a reward for his victory, Ansel had released him from service, though he’d refused to remove the slave bands. On some level, Knox had always known the king would demand a return to battle. He just hadn’t known the bastard was biding his time, waiting for Knox to develop an attachment to someone, anyone, so that he could be better managed.

  Back then, Knox hadn’t cared. For once, he’d gotten to eat, sleep and fight whenever he’d wished. And, though he’d never dropped his guard, his suspicious nature ingrained, every day had been a gift, every night a revelation. He’d bedded more women than he could remember.

  What he hadn’t suspected? His lovers had been paid to get pregnant with his child.

  He’d been careful, but one woman managed to succeed. Or maybe she’d lied, and another man had fathered Minka. Either way, Knox had planned to forsake the pair. Then the mother left the little girl in his custody and walked away without looking back.

  The moment, the very second, he’d held the beautiful newborn in his arms, her tiny fingers squeezing one of his, his heart had swelled with more love than he’d ever thought possible. Minka had been perfect in every way, so soft, so delicate, and he’d vowed to forever cherish the miracle he’d been given.

  She had been his greatest treasure—and she had been taken from him.

  Soon after her second birthday, Ansel decided to reenlist his “ace.” Do this, or the girl dies.

  Knox did everything in his power to win a second All War. To this day, tales of his savagery were talked about in hushed voices.

  The war lasted sixteen years. While he’d fought, earning another kingdom for Iviland, a family chosen by Ansel had raised his precious Minka. Upper-class snobs who’d treated the innocent child as less than nothing.

  Upon Knox’s return home, he’d learned his daughter had run away a few m
onths before, and no one had been able to find her.

  But I did. I found my sweet angel.

  She’d ventured topside, where others feared to tread, where lawless criminals lived with abandon, torturing the desperate, their minds slowly corrupted by toxins. A place where Ansel dared not send his soldiers.

  The things that were done to her before she took her last breath...

  I hugged and kissed a smiling toddler goodbye, and returned to a dead teenager.

  Rage and sorrow seared him. Tears welled in his eyes and frosted, obscuring his vision. Focus. Emotions wouldn’t aid him. He needed to see to escape. More accurately, he needed to see to escape first.

  Inhale, exhale. He blinked until the frost thinned, melted. Then he attempted to ram his shoulders into the ice. Ram, ram. Snarls rumbled in his chest, his level of pain increasing exponentially. So what. Nothing compared to the horrors he’d already suffered.

  Then, suddenly, a stunningly beautiful female stepped into his path, shocking him into immobility.

  She wasn’t part of the war, but she was here. How was she here? Why was she here? Who was she? Thousand other questions raced through his mind, and he reeled.

  She was the second person to enter the ice prison in...ever. Erik of Terra, once a viking king—still a viking king?—must have taken measures to keep intruders at bay.

  For centuries, Erik had visited once a month. He’d never missed an assembly. Did he know why he felt compelled to return so often, or that doing so had kept him from disqualification? He definitely didn’t know he was part of a war, everyone in this cave determined to win his homeland, or that he needed to slay the other combatants. Otherwise he would have done so already.

  In the beginning, Knox had expected an army of Enforcers to portal in and liberate the frozen warriors, allowing the war to resume. After a few decades, he’d realized the High Council couldn’t interfere, or losing realms would have the right to question the eligibility of the winner.

  At long last, the ice had begun to melt. Cracks branched through 60 percent of the pillars. Had the Rod of Clima weakened after near-constant use, or had weather conditions changed drastically? Perhaps both.

  Now, a human walked among them. Why?

  “I’m losing my ever-loving mind,” she muttered, his translator interpreting the words.

  Such a low, raspy voice. His muscles clenched, an involuntary—and intolerable—reaction.

  Through agonizing conditioning, he’d trained his body to overlook desirable females during times of war. Too many males had met their demise in the bed of a temptress. A combatant never knew who to trust, or who had been paid to distract him.

  If ever Knox’s conditioning failed, he simply obliterated the distraction. No mercy, no problems.

  {Protect the girl. She is necessary...for now.}

  Denial echoed inside his head. No. No! The eyaer could not consider this woman necessary for his survival. Her? She was a tiny fluff of nothing, not even big enough to act as a human shield.

  Besides, Knox needed nothing and no one. Wanted nothing and no one. Except...

  As the female looked him over with languid fascination, the clenching intensified. His blood heated. Could he really be blamed, though? She was unlike any woman he’d ever seen, with an exquisite, fine-boned face and fascinating hair. Silken waves, the top half snow-white, the bottom half raven black. And her skin...pale and flawless, made for a man’s caress.

  How soft was she? How warm?

  Would she flush when he touched her?

  He pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth. When he touched her? Like it was a done deal?

  Her eyes were a startling mix of amber and emerald, rimmed with thick slashes of kohl and mile-long lashes of the purest jet. Scarlet lips boasted the perfect heart shape and silently offered the sweetest temptation.

  Her clothes...so different from the styles worn by everyone he’d come across before the freeze. Just how vastly had the world and its citizens changed?

  Her fingernails were painted the deepest shade of black, and strange symbols were tattooed around each of her knuckles, giving her rings of ink.

  Was she owned by a Terran king?

  Knox tensed, angered on her behalf and confused by his growing awareness of her.

  Between wars, he’d gravitated to women who were quiet, gentle, reserved. Or at least the ones who’d pretended to be. The “high class.” The supposed best of the best. Ladies. His preferred bed partners had represented everything he’d lacked as a child, everything supposedly too good for him.

  What perplexed him most—those high-class women had never really satisfied him. He’d been too afraid of losing control and accidentally hurting them, or frightening their delicate sensibilities.

  Then again, he’d never wanted to be satisfied. Losing track of his surroundings, even while at peace, could cost him everything.

  “If we were in a book or movie, you would be a warrior frozen in time, and this would be the start of our passionate love affair,” the Terran said. “Too bad you’re man-made. Although there are story possibilities there, too. If you’re based on a real person, I want his number, because you, baby doll, are a total smoke show.” Her hazel gaze looked him over more leisurely, taking his measure.

  She walked around him, every step a revelation of grace and carnality.

  “But those blue, blue eyes,” she said, sounding awed. “I swear they’re following me.”

  His heart thudded against his ribs, harder and harder. A snarl rumbled deep in his chest.

  If she affected him despite his training, she had to die. She had to die before another combatant decided to use her against him.

  {Protect. Necessary.}

  He bellowed an obscenity, the sound muffled by the ice.

  “Whoa. Did you just shout at me?” She licked those red, red lips. “I taste whiskey and honey, with a dash of cream, so I definitely heard something. But you can’t make sounds because you aren’t alive. I must have heard something else. Yeah, yeah. Something else.”

  She heard a shout and tasted whiskey and honey? Knox failed to make a connection.

  Forget her oddities. He formulated a plan.

  He would break free—today—even if he had to lose limbs to succeed. This wasn’t an assembly day, the invisible wall down, all weapons activated.

  Knox would seize the Rod of Clima, ensuring the viking couldn’t use it a second time, and then he would kill Carrick. Once those objectives were met, he would slay as many warriors as possible...taking out pillars in the process. It couldn’t be helped. At some point, the cavern would collapse. At the first sign of trouble, he would whisk the female with the odd white and black hair to safety and find out why she was “necessary” to him.

  Yes. Perfect plan, no flaws.

  Next, he ordered his kills. After Carrick—Zion, Bane, Ronan and Ranger. The others could die in random order, their weapons and the threats they posed a lower priority. Perhaps, though, Knox would take out Shiloh last, as dictated by the truce.

  Come on, come on. First, he had to get free. Snarling, Knox fought... Fought so hard, harder...but the ice continued to hold steady.

  Footsteps echoed as a second female entered the corridor. A dark-haired beauty with the aura of delicacy Knox had always preferred, and yet his gaze returned to the other female. The wild one.

  “Vale!” The newcomer pressed a hand over her heart. “Are people trapped in here?”

  Vale? He hailed from a realm with three vales, or suns. Valina, the sun that warmed. Valtorro, the sun that lit. And Valeique, the sun that guided. Which was his necessary female supposed to be? His warmth, his light or his guide?

  “These freaky things?” Vale propped a hand on her hip. “Nah. They’re statues. Some kind of tourist attraction, I think. Men and women will come from all over the world to view these frozen
sexcakes.”

  Her jacket—thin though it was—prevented him from making out the size of her breasts. Skintight black pants hugged her lower body, revealing toned legs he would like to—

  Blank your mind. Ignore the yearning.

  “Statues? Yeah, that makes more sense. But sexcakes?” The brunette chuckled.

  “Why, my sweet Nola Lee, you’d rather I call them life-size lady boner figurines, wouldn’t you? Well, you’re right, I like that description better. Take a gander at this one.” She hiked her thumb in Knox’s direction. “Grade A beef.”

  Vale and Nola. Noted. Their affection for each other was obvious. He’d seen similar bonds in others but had never experienced one firsthand. Had never wanted to experience one firsthand. Attachments weakened you, made you vulnerable.

  Nola approached Zion and gasped. “Okay, yes. Sexcakes is absolutely right. I just made eye contact with this one, and I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant. With twins.”

  As Vale joined her, Knox jammed his shoulder into the ice with more force. He wanted his female farther away from the brute, not closer. If the other man—

  Cracks appeared in front of Knox’s face, distorting his vision. He stilled, shocked. Triumphant. Finally, blessedly, a development in his favor.

  Cracks meant liberty awaited.

  CHAPTER THREE

  OVERCOME BY VIOLENT FERVOR, Knox fought harder, harder still. Can’t stop, can’t stop.

  “You were right, Vale.” The brunette traced a heart over Zion’s icy chest. “We did it. We survived. We’re close to civilization. Rescue is more than a dream. It’s a probability.”

  Rescue. Had the two gotten lost in the mountains, and merely stumbled upon the prison?

  The cracks prevented Knox from seeing Vale’s expression, and he desperately wanted to see her expression.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she said, sounding more worried than relieved. “Celebration dinner of the year!”

  “Let’s be all lavish and crap and fold our napkin—aka scarves—into swans.”

  “How about fists with a middle finger extended instead?” As the other woman laughed, she said, “So what’s on tonight’s menu, chef?”