Page 191 of Season Warriors & Wolves

Mal held a hand on my back the entire time, even after we’d sat, his fingers wrapping round my waist a little tighter each time Golgotha would look at me.

The fallen god took some big gulps of his blood red wine. “You want me to join your war, is that it?”

“Not exactly,” Malik gritted out. “You can’t harm the human kind, it would be a useless attempt to have you out there with us despite your well-known skills in battle, and your creatures can barely survive a few hours on dry land.”

“What use do you have for me then?”

“Melanthe Delcour, you know of her?”

“Urinthia’s niece. Of course. Quite the troublemaker that one.”

“She’s garnered quite the power by consuming some blood of Aurora's lover.”

Golgotha’s pupils thinned again. “The immortal man.”

“More than a man now. He’s consumed Caligo blood and can turn into a dark beast. I know the Dark Crafters magic will suffer with you around, if the odds favour us, the beasts could, too. It will sense you as the biggest danger instead of us. Riveting and prodigious dark power tasting so akin to death it could mock it, and all of that crap unholy books say about you. You’d disable his shields, stultify his strong line of craft defences all over without lifting a finger.”

“You want to use me as a target.”

“Why would you be a target? The Winter King will have his hands plenty busy with us,” Mal said, leaning back on his chair and throwing him a wink.

Golgotha chewed on some odd, dried squid leg, narrowing his eyes on Malik. “Well thought.”

“I never think unwell thoughts.”

Idiot.

“Arrogance was a good friend of mine. He would like you.”

“I’m a likeable man,” Malik said, leaning forward again, his hand moving a bit lower on my waist. “Will you join us then?”

“What do I win from all this bother?”

Malik’s jaw twitched. “You’ll get to see sunlight, breathe fresh air, touch some grass and watch people slaughter one another. All four joys of life.”

Golgotha’s smile was serpentine. “The last should have been the first. I would have spared you your voice.”

“I’m quite enamoured by myself, I like hearing my own voice.”

I gaped at him and he threw me a shameless wink. “Close your mouth, sweetheart, something from this shithole might fly in.”

Golgotha’s servant eudemon pointed a finger across the hall to a bedroom door and then at me. When it pointed again to another room for Malik, my friend grabbed my hand and pulled me to the first bedroom. “Like hells you are sleeping alone in this place.”

“I wasn’t going to,” I said. “Was going to ask if you would stay with me. Perhaps you’d be scared enough of these pimply guys to cuddle tonight.”

“Menace.” He smiled a little, shutting the door behind us.

The room was massive and oddly modern. Black wood furniture and paintings of all sorts decorated the windowless square space lit by grey candlelight. “Is it an illusion?”

“No. He is powerful like that. Can turn chaos into reality.”

“Like the man who could spin wool into gold. From the tales.”

He threw me a look over his shoulder. “Like him.”

“What now?”

“We sleep and pray this night ends faster than it started. The stink of this place is making me nauseous.”