Back up. Lust—for her? Unacceptable! He would never bed a royal and disrespect Meredith’s memory. He would never bed a royal, period. He’d learned his lesson with Aveline. Nola might be a sweet, tasty little treat—and I might be hungry, starved—but in three weeks, she would change. He would perform the Blood Rite, and she would rise as a true queen, cold, callous and pure evil.

Nola...evil...

He’d had centuries to wonder about her. Who she’d be, what she’d hope to accomplish. Not once had he entertained curiosity about her personality or appearance. Now, he found himself fixating on her thick mass of blue-black hair, or her luscious heart-shaped lips, or her starry eyes, sparkling with happiness one minute, darkening with hurt the next.

When he’d held her nape, he’d imagined wrapping the long length of her hair around his fist, and angling her face to his. He’d wanted to hear her breath hitch, wanted to watch as a passion-fever deepened the color in her cheeks and the pulse at the base of her neck raced.

His shaft shot as hard as steel. Not because of Nola. His body hungered for sex, that was all. He’d gone more than thirteen hundred years without a lover. A circumstance he could easily rectify, if he so desired. Which begged the question—did he so desire? The moment he thrust inside a woman, his precious wife would no longer be the last one he’d kissed or touched. Even the thought filled him with gnawing guilt.

Enough! War now, sex later. Think.

A stunningly vivid memory filled his mind. When Nola appeared in the cave, she’d evinced such unadulterated joy, she’d made his chest ache. Because he’d known he would never again feel the emotion.

Fast-forwarded to the moment she’d crouched beside him. Her starry eyes had widened, and he’d noticed signs of hardcore crying. Puffy, red-rimmed eyelids. Tear tracks on her dirt-smeared cheeks. Pink splotches on her skin. Dirt had caked her fingers.

Before coming to see him, someone had made her cry. Zion?

Bane’s next breath proved fiery, heat seeming to forge daggers from air and slash at his lungs. Zion would pay.

Where the hell had Nola gone? Nowhere nearby, that much he knew. The presence of a royal calmed the beast. Here, now, the beast growled and pawed at his mind, expressing hatred and resentment more volatile than Bane’s.

Must find Nola. With her, the beast would quiet.

As he racked his brain more forcefully, new memories escaped the mental quicksand. He remembered crawling from the ruins of the ice cavern, leaving a trail of blood in his wake...remembered deep fractures spreading across the ground, nearly swallowing him whole. When he’d rolled away, a combatant had stabbed him in the back. That was when the beast had overtaken him, flying him to a nearby village.