Suki tried again.
And met with the same result.
It was as if she was being bounced back by some sort of barrier. A spell just as Julianna had said?
Tegan hated her that much now?
Suki sank onto the couch, losing a battle against the sudden surge of despair that ran through her.
Julianna picked up the other talisman and charged it up before holding it out to her. “It’s good for another two attempts if you want to make yourself more miserable.”
Suki snatched the lump of black rock and glared at her friend. “What do you suggest I do? Just give up?”
The witch’s warm chocolate eyes widened.
“Oh, mother earth, you’re in love with him.” Julianna didn’t even flinch when Suki hit her with her best scowl, stood and stomped towards the door because she didn’t need another person looking at her as if she had gone mad, or soft, to have fallen for Tegan. Just as she reached the door, her friend said, “So don’t give up… get even.”
Suki paused with her hand on the knob and looked back at her. “Get even?”
Julianna nodded and swept around the couch, closing the distance between them as she smiled wickedly. “He hurt you, so think of a way to hurt him back.”
Suki looked down at the talisman she clutched in her right hand.
It was tempting.
But she had already hurt him.
She didn’t want to cause him more pain.
But she wouldn’t give up.
She would find another way.
She would win this war.
CHAPTER 30
Rosalind had been right about the spell. It had hurt when she had cast it upon him after performing some sort of elaborate ritual involving his blood. It had more than hurt. Pain so intense it had blinded him had wracked him, left him cold and shivering on the floor of his drawing room, sweating profusely as his blood had boiled and every instinct had fired. The most primal of them had damned him, feeling as if they were going to tear his body apart and fracture his mind as thoughts of Suki had flooded him.
He had somehow mustered enough strength to tell the witch to go to the door and seize the demon who guarded it. Upon seeing the state of him, the demon had attempted to attack her, and Tegan had been forced to find the strength to speak again, demanding he leave her and take her to the male who had brought her to him so she could be returned home.
Rosalind had left, but not before she had reiterated her vow that he would have to fight her husband for the cure in a dark and grave tone.
After which, she had added a rather cheery goodbye and good luck.
Tegan had waited for the door to close before dragging himself up the stairs to his bedroom.
He had reached the foot of the bed before succumbing to the pain and passing out.
When he had awoken, he had been moved to his bed, and three of the males who served as medics in the Royal Legion were watching over him.
Together with a rather angry looking Ryker.
The fever had still gripped Tegan, but he had assured them all it wasn’t poison or an attempt to murder him, and that he would recover once the spell had settled. The medics had looked slightly less distressed.
Ryker had looked as if he was considering killing Tegan himself.
Tegan had sent both the medics and his brother away, and had rested on his bed for the entire day, drenched in sweat and restless as his body alternated between burning and freezing, and delirium threatened to take his mind from him, tormenting him with memories of Suki that had stirred his instincts into a frenzy.
She wasn’t his mate.
The quicker his mind and his body got that message, the better.
After succumbing again to the fever, he had awoken this morning feeling brighter. Definitely stronger. He had been able to walk to his bathing room and wash, had managed to dress with only a few stumbles and one moment where he had fallen on his naked backside and drawn the attention of his guards. They had been sent away with a vicious roar, because he was damned if his men would see him weak and sick.
He had eaten the food the medics had brought to him, and digested the news that Ryker had returned to the border near the Fourth Realm to continue protecting the villages there from a potential attack. Apparently, his brother had left a message.
Tegan had read the note.
It had been one word.
Dumbass.
He wasn’t sure what that meant, but if the look Ryker had given him before leaving his rooms was anything to go by, it was not a compliment. His brother was angry with him still, and he couldn’t blame him. He hadn’t thought about how he might appear to others and he hadn’t even considered telling Ryker what he had intended to do.
“Are you sure you are well?” Eryt eyed him closely, concern flickering in his dark eyes as he twisted his hands in front of his black tunic.
Tegan dragged his wandering focus back to the four males assembled before him and managed a nod. “I think I simply need some air. The castle seems stuffy today.”
When Balkan tossed him a sceptical look, he stared the male down.
“I will not leave the castle grounds. You have my word on that.” Tegan pushed his chair back and stood slowly, not quite trusting his legs.
They felt stronger, but sometimes pain suddenly ripped through him. When that had last happened, he had collapsed to his knees in the hallway outside this room.
And Raelin had witnessed it.
The bastard had summoned Tegan’s other advisers and he had been here ever since, listening to them chastising him as if he was a child but too tired to fight them today.
“You must go to the grand hall. Your presence there has been greatly missed recently.” Raelin offered a gentle smile that lacked the warmth he presumed the male thought it had.
Tegan could see straight through it to the pleasure he was taking from seeing him weakened and worn down, so tired and miserable that he lacked the strength to fight back against anything the male said.
Including when the male had suggested scaling back the number of test areas for windfarms.
Tegan shrugged, because he was stronger today than the last time they had spoken, although he was just as miserable. “I will go there when I am done getting some air.”
All four males stood and bowed their heads as he walked around the table, heading for the door. He didn’t notice the corridors as he moved along them, paid no attention to the men he passed. His thoughts turned inwards again, towards his shattered heart, and he fought to keep them away from Suki and failed.
Why had she done this to him?
He pulled the phone from the pocket of his leather trousers, woke the screen and found the pictures of her that had become his personal Hell over the last few days. How many times had he stared at all of them trying to discern why she had betrayed him? He never found the answer to that question. He still didn’t understand any of what had happened.
He had loved her.
He loved her.
Cool air greeted him as he stepped out into the courtyard of the castle, but he didn’t take his eyes off the phone as darkness, oily and thick, swirled inside him, filling the cavity in his chest. It wasn’t the first time he had felt consumed by it, driven to unleash the fury he had locked inside him, the despair and desperation, all the damned misery in the hope he could purge it all.
It was growing like a living, writhing beast inside him now, demanding he sate it, and every time he denied it and fought it back, it came back stronger.
Now, as he stared at her image on his phone, he felt as if he was spiralling out of control, deep into the dark abyss, and soon there would be no coming back.
The black urges that filled him, fuelled by his misery and fed by his pain, tempted him to surrender to them, to step into the darkness to leave the light behind. Several times he had been close to teleporting to the borders with the Fourth Realm, a terrible need to provoke that kingdom into fighting him boiling inside him. He ached for
a fight, for the pain in his heart to become something physical, a battle that would wear him out and give him a way of venting all the darkness churning inside him.
His fingers closed around the phone as he ambled around the bleak courtyard of the castle, his eyes narrowing on the picture of Suki and him together, one he had cherished once.
Now it tormented him.
Or perhaps he tormented himself with it.
His grip on the device tightened, the urge to destroy it rising inside him for what felt like the millionth time, but just like all the times before, he eased the pressure of his grip before it could damage the phone. He couldn’t bring himself to part with it.
Just as he couldn’t bring himself to part with her.
The spell hadn’t changed a damn thing. Her betrayal hadn’t changed anything either.
He still loved her.
A sense of power surged around him, ringing alarm bells in his mind as his muscles tensed and he instinctively braced his feet apart, preparing for a fight.
Because it wasn’t a demon who had just arrived through the portal in the middle of the courtyard.
Guards rushed from their posts, the sound of their heavy boots striking the black flagstones filling the air as Tegan turned to face the intruders, sure it would be Prince Vail come to eviscerate him because the scent of the two males was distinctly elf.
Demons crowded the circular stone where the portal exited, blocking his view of the intruders.
“Back off.” A deep voice snarled, gruff and demanding. “As much as I would love to fight you scrawny runts, I’m here on the orders of Commander Bleu of the elf legions.”
“Way to go, Dacian. You trying to start another war when we’re meant to be recruiting for one already?” The lighter male voice carried an amused but exasperated note.
Dacian.
That name was familiar.
Tegan had met an elf called Dacian a long time ago, centuries back when the male had been hunting for a dragon and had sought permission to cross the Second Realm.
“Leave them,” Tegan barked and every one of his warriors stiffened, looked across at him as if they had only just noticed he was there, and swiftly backed away to reveal the two elves.
The larger of the two, a shaven-headed male who rivalled the height of many of his warriors and was just as broadly built, packed with muscle beneath his skin-tight black armour, pressed his right hand to his chest and bowed his head as he closed his violet eyes.
“Second King,” he gruffly muttered, and when his companion didn’t salute him in a similar manner, he slid him a glare and cuffed him around the back of his head, sending the shorter male lurching forward, the threads of his long ponytail flying up from the force of the blow.
The younger male rallied, pressed his hand to his chest and nodded. “Second King.”
Tegan recognised him too.
“What business have you with me? I heard war mentioned.” And he had locked on to that word like a fiend possessed, the darkness inside him roused by the thought of a battle, hungry to split flesh and break bone, and feel the pain of his enemies’ blows on his own body.
The warrior in him stirred too. The treaty between the realms allowed him to go to war if called upon by one of the others.
He tried to conceal how much he wanted them to tell him they had come to ask him to fight, but his horns flared a little despite his efforts.
Neither elf mentioned it, although both noticed as they stood before him, their steady violet gazes locked on him.
Dacian ran a hand over his shorn hair and down the line of the scar that cut across his scalp and Tegan frowned at the fresh cuts on his face and neck. He looked the male over, taking in the black scales that covered every inch of him. How many other wounds did the male bear? Had he been fighting recently?
His dark eyes flicked to the male beside Dacian, one who also had a long gash across his cheek and one on his forehead, and a bruise forming on his neck. It darkened as Tegan looked at it, revealing that it was fresh, still in the process of blooming.
“You received those injuries in this war you spoke of?” He took a step towards them, compelled to take a closer look, the sight of them giving his hunger for war a stronger hold over him.
The younger male stroked the knives strapped to his ribs beneath his arms, nerves flickering in his violet eyes. “Not quite. We were sparring.”
Tegan grinned. “And enjoying it by the looks of things.”
He loved to spar too, but his men took it easy on him, and if any of them cut him, they apologised profusely, to the point where it irritated him, and then they ended the session, which annoyed him even more.
It had been too long since he had been in a good fight.
His mind tossed the fight against the incubi at him and he growled and shoved it out again, his heart aching at the memory as it brought everything that had happened afterwards rushing back.
He wasn’t sure he would ever be able to set foot in his private mansion again.
“Commander Bleu sent us. I’m Fynn and this is Dacian. We’ve been asked to relay a message to you.” The younger elf, Fynn, fiddled with the knives again. “You probably don’t remember us.”
“I do. You sought a dragon several centuries ago.” He nodded towards the castle. “Come, let us speak in comfort.”
“We don’t really have the time.” Dacian’s hard tone had Tegan easing back on his heels, a frown tugging at his eyebrows as he looked at the male. “It concerns the dragon again.”
Tegan arched an eyebrow. “The dragon? You never caught it?”
Fynn shook his head. “You know he stole a sword from Prince Loren?”
Tegan nodded. “An heirloom that was precious if I recall… and powerful.”
Dacian’s grim expression only darkened. “This dragon, Tenak, still has that sword and now he’s heading towards the elf kingdom. It’s possible he will pass through your lands from the dragon realm. Word is, he’s amassing an army along the way.”
An army led by a dragon in possession of a powerful sword?
That sounded like a good war to Tegan.
“We are to request you consider evacuating any villages that might be in the path of his army,” Fynn said.
Tegan hiked his shoulders. “Or I could fight him if he dared enter my lands.”
But knowing Tegan’s luck, the damned dragon would avoid his lands entirely, stealing a beautiful bloody war from his grasp.
“You could.” Dacian squared his shoulders, his muscles tensing beneath the black scales of his tight armour. “But we were sent to tell you that the dragon’s sister is with us in the elf kingdom and she has seen a vision of the Second Realm, First Realm and Third Realm fighting on the side of the elves in our kingdom… in a great battle against her brother.”
A great battle.
Gods, Tegan liked the sound of that.
The last report from his brother at the border had stated that the Fourth Realm were showing no sign of attempting it, and that several of that realm’s legions had withdrawn in the past day. Because of this new threat? Were the Fourth Realm preparing to battle the dragon?
If the two elves were to be believed, and he did believe them because dragon visions were rarely wrong, then the dragon would make it to the elf kingdom and the war would take place there.
Attempting to battle the dragon and his army in the Second Realm wouldn’t stop that from happening.
Tegan inclined his head. “Relay to Prince Loren that the Second Realm will answer his call. I will gather my finest warriors and we will travel to the elf kingdom as soon as we are able.”
“Thank you.” Dacian pressed his right hand to his broad chest and bowed his head again.
Fynn followed suit. “Thanks.”
Light traced over the elves and they disappeared, leaving only a faint outline of them in the air where they had been.
Tegan stared at it as it dissipated.
War.
It was everything h
e wanted come to him at last.
His thoughts turned to the slight, fae female who had stolen his heart and the darkness in him wavered as he realised that war wasn’t the thing he wanted now.
It was her.
She was everything he wanted. All that he needed.
If he had Suki by his side, he could gladly live another thousand years ruling a peaceful realm.
But she was gone.
War was all he had now and he craved it more than ever. The need to do battle raged back to the fore to destroy the vision of a peaceful existence with her at his side. A fantasy.
He had been born for war.
Not peace.
It was time he remembered that.
CHAPTER 31
Tegan stared off at the horizon, his horns curling and fangs sharpening as awareness pounded in his veins, hunger drumming in his heart, and the darkness he had been fighting since Suki had betrayed him roared back to life inside him, stronger than ever.
Soon he would be on a battlefield again, cleaving bone and flesh as he unleashed the rage and pain that blazed inside him, and it would be glorious.
He might even find his end there.
The grim thought filled his mind before he could stop it and he didn’t deny it, let it swim around his head, because he had never been one to shy away from death. He had danced with it more than once on the battlefield, outwitting it and somehow surviving.
If it claimed him this time, so be it.
Death would be a relief from the pain, an end to his suffering, and dying on the battlefield was a noble, honourable way to go.
He looked at his kingdom, at his castle, his mind turning to Ryker. Guilt flooded him, churning his stomach, but it was no match for the darkness and rage that lived within him, goading him into surrendering to it.
He needed an outlet for it, for the self-destructive and destructive urges that refused to loosen their hold on him, rousing a recklessness that he knew was dangerous, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.
Nothing mattered now.
Suki was gone.
Seduced by a Demon King Page 32