Gasping, Lektra stared at the flushed, wild-eyed woman in the mirror. A woman thoroughly satisfied by her lover. Brutally satisfied. And now . . .

Feeling strangely heavy and numb, she twisted on her perch to face him. “Now you—” It took her a moment to understand what she was seeing—and what she wasn’t seeing. “You—You’re not aroused.”

“Why would I be?” he replied, sounding bored and cold. So terribly cold.

“It didn’t excite you to make love to—”

“I serviced you like I serviced the bitches in Terreille who tried to play games with me. Love had nothing to do with it.”

She slid down into the seat. Her legs didn’t feel right. Neither did her arms. And she couldn’t quite draw a full breath.

“You don’t mean that,” she panted. “You love me, and I love you.”

“I don’t know you—and you don’t know me.”

“But—” She pushed herself out of the chair and tried to walk over to him, but her legs wouldn’t hold her. She collapsed on the floor. “There’s something wrong with me.”

“Everything has a price.” Holding out his right hand, he flexed his ring finger. “The price for playing with the Sadist is pain.”

She watched the snake tooth slide out beneath the long, black-tinted nail. “You—you poisoned me?”

He looked at her and smiled a cold, cruel smile. “Yes.”

Remembering the prick she felt, she tried to reach up and touch her neck. “You poisoned me . . . while . . . I . . . was—”

“Coming. Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because of your obsession with me, you tried to hurt Jaenelle. So you will be the lesson for any other bitch who thinks she can have me if she eliminates the competition. Just between you and me, darling, if I have to kill every witch in Amdarh to assure no one tries to hurt Jaenelle again, I’ll do it and have no regrets. You’re all expendable, and she is . . . everything.”

Lektra stared at him, fighting for each small gasp of air. Pain danced through her limbs, setting her nerves on fire. She would have screamed if she could have drawn enough breath.

“Daemon . . . help me.”

“I will,” he promised. “Before you draw your last breath, I’ll finish the kill. At least you won’t have to face the High Lord and endure this kind of pain a second time.”

As her lungs failed and her vision faded, she tried to see her beautiful love one last time. And even though he stood in front of her, the only thing she saw as the cold Black rage ripped through her was those glazed, sleepy eyes and that cold, cruel smile.

After he finished the kill, Daemon studied the room. The Blood had a saying: The walls remember. Wood and stone could hold strong emotions, and a skilled Black Widow could draw out those feelings and replay a ghostly image of what happened in a room.