No being could grow to adulthood with power over others and not use it to help themselves, harming those around them in the process. Then, once the power was realized, they turned to it again and again, until all that mattered was power. He jerked his hand from behind her head and grabbed on to the chain around his neck. This was proof of that. Lusse’s quest for power had held him for five hundred years. Five hundred hell-filled years.

Spinning away from the female, he fisted his hands at his side. Power, another witch perhaps. Lusse had a particular love of destroying her own kind. He had taken no small amount of joy in it, too. Each one represented Lusse in his mind.

He should kill her himself. Why wait? Why give Lusse the chance to bleed her of her strength?

Kill her before she turned. It would be easy.

A low growl forming in his throat, he spun slowly back toward the door, and his prey.

Lusse whirled from the window, her blond hair snapping as she turned. “Where is he?”

Bader shuffled forward, his gaze glued to the white pile rug beneath their feet. “Venge is in the foyer. He was bloody. I didn’t think you would want him dripping on the carpet,” he mumbled.

“Not the whelp. I have no need for him. Risk. Where is Risk?”

Bader’s eyes darted toward the white double doors that opened to the hall.

“Where is he?” she repeated.

“Missing.” Bader hunched his shoulders, waiting for a deserved blow.

Like she had time to mess with him.

“I thought you said he fought the boy. Didn’t he return with him?”

Bader gave a slight shake of his squat head.

Pausing in front of a gilt mirror, Lusse ran her forefinger over her brows. “And the girl?”

Another shake.