Lord of the Abyss & Desert Warrior by Nalini Singh

finger over a seeping wound “—she belongs to me.” A chuckle as he stepped away to flick the whip almost desultorily over her already ruined back.
    Blood seeped out of her ravaged flesh, sliding down her ribs and into the channels. “She’s my mother.” A mother she loved.
    Another laugh, deep and from the chest, as if he had never heard anything so ludicrous in his life. “Then I give you leave to discover this wonderful talisman. Do show it to me when you find it.” A stroke of the whipover her shoulders. “I think my pets will enjoy their time with you.”
    Spiders—huge and mutated for use in another spell—fell from the ceiling to crawl all over her body, their furred legs rasping over her flesh, their mouths sucking on the raw meat of her back. Panicked, she tried to use her sorcery to escape, but her father was stronger and the restraints held.
    The entire time they terrorized her, he sat where she could see him, a small smile on his face.
     
    T HE G UARDIAN OF THE A BYSS flew across the skies, his wings slicing through the night air in much the same way as that of the bat over to his right, his wings as leathery and as dark. He didn’t know where his wings went when he landed—they simply appeared when he needed them and ceased to exist when he no longer wished them present.
    A gift from the Abyss.
    He thought of Liliana’s tale of a realm without magic and snorted again. As if such a land could ever exist. An instant later, his mind pricked at him with the other part of her story, the part about that place, the name of which he couldn’t even think about without a thunderous pain in his head, an anvil striking at his skull from within. He flew harder, faster, in an effort to escape the relentless pressure.
    A whisper of oily evil.
    Having located his prey, he moved toward it with furious swiftness. The man-shaped shadow was running over the ground in a vain effort to escape his fate, heading toward the borders of the realm. The majority of the condemned woke up from death to find themselves in thehowling cold of the Abyss, but some were able to claw themselves to a stop in the badlands.
    They had to be caught and sent through the doorway, for he would not take the chance that they might turn in the other direction, and seek to possess one of the villagers. However, sometimes, he allowed them to run—because waiting out here were creatures who could catch even shadows, crunching them up with sharp teeth before spitting out screaming, mangled tears of black.
    It was a lesson no one had ever wanted to repeat.
    Sweeping down on wings designed for deathly silence, he clamped his hands over the figure’s arms. It thrashed, panicked that anyone could restrain it—for it was little more than smoke—but the lord of this place had always been able to hold those destined for the Abyss.
    After all, that was the reason for his creation.
    Crying, scared, a small child in a dark, dark place.
    Guessing the alien images and emotions were the result of an attack by the creature in his grasp, he entrapped the shadow using thick black ropes infused with his blood, ensuring there’d be no more attempts at coercion. Then he flew through the cold, moonless and starless night, impatient to capture the others and return to the Black Castle. To get rid of his burden, nothing more.
    But after he landed, the shadows locked up in the cages from which nothing could escape, he strode not to his room, but to the kitchen. The lock on the door was no impediment. Everything in the Black Castle obeyed its lord, flesh or ether or metal. Everything except the woman fast asleep on the floor near the hot belly of the stove.
    Stepping closer, he stared down at her. She wasn’t beautiful, this Liliana with the potent magic in her blood that he knew and yet could not name, this storyteller whotold him outlandish tales as if she thought them true. Her nose was too big, her eyes too close together, her hair so much black