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"Losing your touch, Mortaine?"
Lilith's hand froze against the corpse tree's petrified bark. Her magic had just failed, again, and of course Damian Dwayne would choose this exact moment to appear. The border stank of death and burnt offerings, and somehow he still managed to smell like expensive whiskey and cockiness.
She straightened, schooling her expression into bored superiority before turning to face him with deliberate slowness. "And you smell of wet dog and pride, Dwayne." She tilted her head, letting dark hair cascade over one shoulder. "I see nothing has changed. Did you come all this way just to be insulted, or do you have an actual purpose?"
He stopped three paces away, close enough that she could see the silver threading through his storm-gray eyes and the thin scar above his left eyebrow that somehow made him more attractive. Lightning magic. The Dwayne family specialty, passed down through generations of self-righteous warlocks who thought elemental power made them superior to everyone else.
She hated that he was beautiful.
"Your filth-coven has been crossing into Dwayne territory." He did not raise his voice. He did not need to. Authority dripped from every syllable. "Three times this week. Care to explain why?"
"Perhaps we simply enjoy the view." Lilith examined her nails with exaggerated disinterest. "Your lands are so much less dreary than ours. All that lovely lightning scarring the earth. Very aesthetic."
"Try again."
Static electricity raised the fine hairs on her arms. She felt his energy building in the air between them, pressing against her skin like a gathering storm. He was testing her, waiting to see if she would flinch.
She did not flinch.
"Try what again?" She met his gaze with a razor-sharp smile. "Lying? I thought that was your family's specialty. Or have you forgotten who started this little border dispute?"
"Careful." Damian's tone dropped to something soft and dangerous. "You are standing on my land."
"Am I?" Lilith glanced down at the blackened earth beneath her boots, then back up at him with mock surprise. "How fascinating. I could have sworn the boundary line was ten paces that way. But then, spatial awareness was never a Dwayne strong suit, was it?"
His jaw tightened. A muscle jumped beneath his skin. Good. She wanted him angry. Angry men made mistakes, and she needed him to make a mistake before he noticed the tremor in her hands, the weakness in her magic that made every breath feel like drowning.
"You are deflecting." He took a step closer. "Which means you are hiding something."
"I am bored." She crossed her arms over her chest. "There is a difference."
"No." Another step. "There is fear."
Her pulse hammered against her ribs. He could not know. There was no possible way he could know. She had been so careful, so thorough in maintaining her act.
"The only thing I fear," she said coldly, "is dying of tedium while listening to you lecture about property lines."
"Then allow me to make this more interesting."
Lightning sparked across his knuckles, brilliant white-blue veins of current that illuminated his face in sharp relief. He looked like a fallen angel, all dark beauty and controlled violence.
Lilith reached for her necromancy, feeling it come sluggishly, reluctantly, a bare trickle of what she once commanded with ease. Her magic flickered and sputtered, threatening to fail completely.
It would have to be enough.
"You want to dance, Dwayne?" She let black smoke curl from her fingertips, masking the weakness with theatrical flair. "I can accommodate that request."
"I was hoping you would say that."
He moved.
The fight was a violent dance of darkness and lightning. He pressed forward with calculated strikes. She deflected with theatrical flourishes that hid her failing strength. They circled each other like predators, magic sparking between them in a storm of shadow and light.
Then he was inside her guard.
One moment he was an arm's length away, the next his hand wrapped around her throat as their abilities exploded outward. The impact slammed her back against the nearest corpse tree, bark cracking beneath the force.
Her magic screamed in protest, too weak, too fractured to match his assault. She channeled everything she had left into a shield, barely managing to keep his lightning from cooking her from the inside out.
"Impressive." His breath was hot against her ear, his body pressed against hers. "Most people would be dead by now."
"I am not most people."
"No." His grip tightened fractionally, not enough to hurt but enough to remind her of exactly how much danger she was in. "You are not."
They were chest to chest, magic sparking between them in violent bursts of shadow and light. His eyes were mercury-bright, pupils blown wide with adrenaline and something else, something that made her stomach twist in a way that had nothing to do with fear.
This was not just a fight. This was a challenge. A test. A dark, dangerous game that neither of them knew how to stop playing.
His hand remained at her throat, not squeezing, just resting there with the promise of violence. Lightning danced between his fingers, close enough that she could smell the ozone and feel the heat against her skin. Every breath she took pressed her windpipe closer to his palm.
"Now that we have finished with the pleasantries," Damian said, his voice dropping to a humorless murmur that sent ice down her spine, "tell me what your filth-coven did."