Free The Brush of Black Wings by Grace Draven

surprised him, its
necrotic effect on anything it touched didn’t. Demon kings didn’t
wield death in half measures. What the blade’s edge didn’t
accomplish, the sorcery would. And it was highly likely the
scabbard was no less dangerous to the touch.
    He invoked additional wards that enclosed the
sword within an invisible barrier. Silhara left nothing to chance.
He might be able to freely touch the sword with a pair of enchanted
gauntlets, but without the safeguards of barrier wards, nothing
else on his person was safe while in its proximity. The last thing
he needed was for the weapon to brush against his arm or
leg.
    The sword hissed when he wrapped his fingers
around the hilt. It literally squirmed in his palm as if trying to
break free of his grip. Silhara shook it in warning. “I only need
part of you to do what I want. Keep still or I’ll break you in half
and melt you down for tithing coins.”
    Sentient or not, the sword quieted at the
threat. Even the dirge-like humming stopped as the hilt settled
peacefully in his grasp long enough for him to retrieve the
scabbard and slide the sword inside. Silhara was still tempted to
melt it down despite its acquiescence. Conclave would collectively
piss itself at the idea of necromantic coins hiding in its
treasury.
    The forest settled into an even deeper hush as
Silhara, sheathed sword in hand, began siphoning off the curse
magic he held over these woods to protect Neith. Magic of the black
arcana offered great power to its practitioners, demanding great
strength in return. His sorcerous skills came not only from his
generous Gift but from impressive physical prowess. The curse magic
weakened but didn’t debilitate him, and he was almost as formidable
without its parasitic drain. When, however, he reclaimed it for
himself, the potent surge left him breathless.
    Flush with power and in possession of the
thing that tethered the demon king to this temple, Silhara began
the second ritual, drawing sigils in the air as he walked
widdershins over the wheel pattern and uttered spells written in
old blood on the pages of a grimoire bound in human skin.
God-smiter or not, Conclave would light him up like a torch without
so much as a by-your-leave if they caught him at this
ritual.
    A hot pain blossomed between his eyes, growing
from a pinpoint to a voracious agony that reverberated in his skull
as if he were trapped inside the mouth of a ringing bell. He
clenched his jaw and invoked magic through gritted teeth even as he
wept more blood. Crimson streams poured from his nose to splatter
on the steps.
    The temple’s center suddenly blazed in a burst
of emerald light, coruscating and tightening into a spinning column
just like the one Martise had described for him. The lit column was
empty, and he growled low in his throat as he scampered up the
broken stairs. The demon had already captured his intended
quarry.
    No plan and no time to make one. But Silhara
had will, rage, and the strongest incentive. Nothing, and no one,
would stop him from taking his wife back. He leapt the last two
stairs and threw himself into the light.
     

CHAPTER SIX
     
    Martise’s first impression of the half world
to which she had been taken was the stench. She dry-retched at the
smell—the same charnel house odor that surrounded Megiddo when he
first appeared to her in the temple. She bent at the waist, ready
to empty her stomach between her feet. Mercifully, nothing came up,
and she straightened, using her free hand to shield her nose and
mouth as she breathed.
    Neith’s snow-flocked forest had yielded to a
gray wasteland. Spires of mountains rose in a far distance,
silhouetted against a dull twilight with no emerging stars.
Martise’s first glimpse of this strange place lasted only a moment
before she yanked her hand out of the demon king’s icy grasp, his
geas on her broken. She fled, pain rippling up her wounded calf as
she raced toward a horizon where bleak sky met dead earth. There
was no