The Darkest Promise

“You will pay me a small escort fee,” he said. “But be warned, my pretty. People enter his territory...and they never leave.”

2 (#uef6602c5-8df6-5939-8ee9-9d411bca3f6e)

“Life is a game, and everyone you meet is an opponent.”

—Becoming the King You Are Meant to Be

—The Fine Art of Decapitation

Between one second and the next, a sense of disconcertment enveloped Lazarus the Cruel and Unusual. He frowned. He wasn’t unfamiliar with the sensation, but he wasn’t well versed, either.

Bottom line, it could mean nothing...or everything.

With a weary sigh, he detangled from two sleeping, clinging forest nymphs and rose from the bed and fastened the pants he’d refused to remove. His legs were not for public viewing. Ever.

Anyone who had the misfortune to glimpse him bare, well, he turned the culprit into stone.

No matter where Lazarus had resided in his life or in death, he’d created a Garden of Perpetual Horror. His own personal stone army. A little like the terra-cotta armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China.

The newest garden currently had twenty-three statues, and they were a truly magnificent sight to behold. Each conveyed a different level of pain and panic.

His favorite? The king he’d defeated when he’d seized the Realm of Grimm and Fantica. The male was forever frozen in a position known as the blood-eagle, his body prone, his ribs cut from his spine and snapped backward to resemble wings.

Cruel and unusual. My specialty. Stand in the way of what Lazarus wanted, and suffer.

Cool air stroked him as he donned his shirt. He strapped on the weapons he’d discarded only an hour before. The daggers clinked together, reminding him of the day he allowed a demon-possessed warrior to behead him. The day he escaped the shackles of the sadistic Harpy who’d enslaved him.

The day his life with the dead began.

To be honest, the physical and spirit worlds remained indistinguishable to him. He still breathed, still thirsted and hungered. Still craved the touch of a woman. He could do everything he’d done before...except return to the human world. The same was true for everyone else in the realm.

In fact, there was only one difference between Lazarus and the other dead: a heart still beat inside his chest. He wasn’t sure why he was the sole exception.

On the bed, the nymphs stretched and sat up. Plump breasts bounced, and tousled hair tumbled into place, sunny smiles blooming.

“If you can walk, we obviously need another go at you,” the blonde said with a silky purr.

The redhead beckoned him with a crook of her finger. “How about I pretend you’re a lollipop?”

They had no idea he’d found nothing but disappointment in their arms.

“I have duties,” he replied. Lately, no one could satisfy him. Climaxing had become a frustrating impossibility, even on his own.

At least he never had to wonder why.

He’d found his μονομανία. His obsession. Or, to be more literal, his own personal kink. Long ago his father, Typhon, had warned him about her, whoever she was.

Somewhere out there is a female capable of weakening you. You will crave her with the whole of your being...but every second in her presence will lead you closer to destruction. Kill her. Do not make my mistake and allow your μονομανία to live. Save yourself.

Young Lazarus had listened, rapt, for Typhon had once been the most feared immortal on Earth. With good reason. He’d murdered anyone who’d opposed, offended or questioned him.

Typhon’s μονομανία had been Echidna, a Gorgon. Also Lazarus’s mother.

The Gorgons were a vicious race known for venomous snakes that grew from their scalps and an ability to turn anyone into stone with a simple meeting of eyes. An ability Lazarus had inherited...somewhat. He created his statues through touch.

Echidna had been Sovereign of the Sky Serpents, appropriately dubbed “Sss,” the sound an opponent heard just before he died bloodily. She’d been an aberration among her tribe. Kind, sweet and endearingly shy—with everyone except Typhon. She’d hated him with every fiber of her being. He’d abducted her, continually raped her, and kept her from her only child.

Typhon had hated her right back, but he’d refused to let her go, his sick desire for her overpowering all else.

He’d gotten his in the end, though. Every time he’d neared her, a small portion of his flesh had crystalized. Eventually the crystallization spread to muscles and joints, limiting his range of motion, slowing and weakening him.

Hera the Cuckoldress, queen of the Greeks, had despised Typhon for reasons Lazarus had never learned. When she’d discovered his poor condition, she’d struck at him through his wife, hacking Echidna to pieces as a helpless Typhon was only able to watch.

Young Lazarus had been there, too. Despite his best efforts, he had failed to save his mother. Then Hera had vanished with Typhon and the warrior hadn’t been seen since.

Lazarus curled his fingers around the hilt of the kris. The only dagger he refused to sheathe with leather, preferring to cover the blade with the blood of his enemies. Small barbs lined both sides; after piercing a body, they expanded into hooks, making it impossible to extract the weapon without removing a few organs, too.

One day, Hera would become intimately acquainted with the kris.

Soon after her crimes, she’d been locked inside Tartarus, the immortal prison. One day she would be free, and she would be killed, and she would end up in a spirit realm.

I will find her. His father, too. No longer a child awed by a parent, Lazarus reviled the male. Typhon had committed many crimes against his mother, but rape was a line no one should ever cross.

The pair would join the Garden of Perpetual Horror.

One of the forest nymphs leaned forward to rake her nails down Lazarus’s chest. “Word has spread throughout the kingdom, you seek a bride. Is this true?”

“Very.” He’d found his μονομανία, yes, but soon afterward he’d lost her. Desire for her still boiled in his blood and blistered his bones, and yet he’d made no effort to find her. The last time they were together...

His chest tightened with something akin to fear. The last time they were together, she’d begun to weaken him.

He rubbed a hand against his thigh, caught the motion and inwardly cursed. Along the surface of his skin branched thin, crystalized rivers. Poisoned veins. The beginning of his downfall.

He’d collected ancient texts to research the legends about his father’s familial line, hoping to find a way to save himself. A fruitless task. Anyone who’d ever developed crystal veins—if anyone ever had—had kept quiet, just like Lazarus and Typhon.

Broadcast your weaknesses today, lose your life tomorrow.

So. He would fortify his defenses, instead. He would wed a vicious, bloodthirsty woman with a large army at her disposal. She would strengthen him, never weaken him. And he would ignore his burning desire for his μονομανία all his days, lest he track her down and attempt to convince her to return to his kingdom.

His μονομανία would spell the end of him.

“Come back to bed, and I’ll show you why I’m your best choice,” the nymph offered with a coy smile.

Mind reading was another ability Lazarus possessed, thanks to his mother. His head filled with the other nymph’s thoughts as she considered ways to kill her friend and hide the body.

“I’ll show you better,” she rasped, batting her lashes at him. “Pick me.”

The females tended the roses in the Garden of Perpetual Horror. They were lovers, not fighters, and lacked the necessary malice to be his wife.