Gods, he couldn’t imagine, didn’t want to imagine, the horrible things Vail had endured as her slave.
Fuery killed because it was his job, and he had chosen it.
Vail had killed because Kordula had commanded him to do it, using him against his will. She had forced him to fight his own beloved brother, and he had been under her spell for four thousand years.
It was little wonder Vail despised magic.
But he was growing used to it, learning to control his darkness around it.
In the short time Fuery had been visiting Vail, the male had made great progress, could now endure Rosalind using basic spells in his presence without losing himself to his darker urges.
“Would you like tea?” Rosalind offered him a kind smile as she laced her fingers with Vail’s, and Fuery shook his head. “Some fruit juice then?”
He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten, so he nodded, grateful for her kindness.
“I’ll bring it out to you.” She turned away, but Vail kept hold of her hand, stopping her.
She looked back at her mate, her blue eyes soft with affection and understanding, and returned to him. Fuery tried to look away, but he couldn’t as she lifted her free hand and cupped Vail’s cheek. The male leaned into it, his eyes closing, and eyebrows dipping low above the elegant slope of his nose.
The petite witch tiptoed, and Vail seemed to know what she wanted because he dropped his head for her. She brushed a kiss across his lips and whispered something, voice so low even Fuery’s heightened hearing couldn’t pick it up, and then rocked back onto her heels. She smiled Fuery’s way again, and then squeezed Vail’s hand.
Vail released her this time, and she stepped away from him. His violet gaze tracked her as she walked back towards the house, and lingered on the door as she disappeared from view, and Fuery could sense his desire to follow her and take her up on whatever promise she had whispered to him.
He turned towards Fuery instead and nodded towards the winding golden gravel path to Fuery’s right, the one that would take him to the back of the house where they always passed his visits.
Vail led the way, his armour disappearing as he walked, replaced with black leather trousers, heavy boots and a thick dark violet jumper that looked out of place on him.
When Fuery continued to stare at him as he followed him towards the rear of the cottage, Vail looked over his shoulder and shrugged.
“It is Rosalind’s idea. She believes it makes me look more… approachable.”
Fuery could see that, but the mortal clothing still didn’t suit his prince. It was strange seeing him in anything other than formal clothing of tunic, tight trousers and riding boots, or his armour.
He looked down at his own armour, and focused on his body and his link to everything he owned. He called a pair of black trousers, and his boots, but couldn’t bring himself to call his tunic. Instead, he materialised a dark shirt that Hartt had given him, and let the tails hang loose over his trousers.
Vail ducked beneath the washing line that spanned the gap between two apple trees in the huge rear garden of the cottage, and continued deeper into the orchard, following the grass as it began to sweep down towards the valley below them.
Fuery stilled and looked down at his feet, at the very spot he had appeared before Vail while he had been lost to the darkness. His memories of that day were still fragmented, patched together by things Hartt had told him that had been relayed to him by Vail and Rosalind when his friend had finally found him.
“Do you still suffer the blackouts?” he whispered to his feet.
Vail’s booted ones appeared in view. “Yes… but they are rare now. As I learn to control the darkness again, I learn to sense them coming and I can prevent them… sometimes.”
That gave Fuery hope.
“I hate them.” Admitting that lifted an invisible weight from his shoulders—from his chest.
He swallowed hard, gathered his courage, and lifted his eyes to meet Vail’s violet ones, and an ache started in his heart, born of a desire to have eyes like that again. When was the last time he had looked in the mirror and seen more violet than black in his irises? Shaia had spoken of his eyes, had been shocked by the sight of them, and he wanted them to look as she remembered, wanted the violet back and those flecks of lilac she had mentioned.
“Do you think I… I… could learn too?” His eyes leaped between Vail’s as he waited desperately for the male to answer him.
His prince sighed, clapped a hand down on his right shoulder, and squeezed it, no trace of a lie in his eyes as he spoke. “Of course.”
He released the breath he hadn’t realised he was holding and followed Vail as the male turned away and strode into the orchard. The trees were heavy with fruit but also blossoms, the leaves rustling as a gentle breeze blew through them, stirring the scent of their blooms. He breathed deep of it, drew it down into him together with the scent of the grass he crushed beneath his boots, and the earth beyond it, and the sunshine that bathed his skin.
Vail seated himself on the rickety sun-bleached wooden bench beneath one of the trees, his amethyst gaze fixed on the valley and his noble profile to Fuery. When he patted the spot beside him, Fuery took it. He gathered his courage again, and leaned back against the broad trunk of the single oak tree in the garden, and waited.
Waited.
But nature didn’t bare her fangs at him.
The expected pain of being rejected by her didn’t come.
He felt only peace.
As if she reached for him, wrapping him in her gentle embrace and welcoming him home.
Because of the light Shaia had awoken in him?
“You are different today.” Vail’s deep voice rolled over him just as he closed his eyes and he opened them again and looked to his right, to his prince. The male glanced at him and then set his eyes on the distance again. “Not in a bad way. In a good way. You feel…”
“Lighter?” Fuery offered, because it was the only word he could find to describe how he had felt since Shaia had come back into his life.
Vail nodded. “The last time I saw you, you were unwell… sick in mind and body… but now you seem a little better. What happened?”
Fuery sighed and closed his eyes, sank deeper into nature’s tentative embrace, well aware it was in part thanks to the male next to him and his unbreakable connection to her. It bled over into him when he was this close to Vail, as if everything the male came into contact with, or even just remained near for a period of time, was touched by her grace too.
“Shaia,” he whispered, and sensed Vail’s gaze come to land on him. He sought the words, struggling to find them as he mulled over everything and found he wasn’t sure where to begin. Hartt had told him once when he had been fighting for the words that it was easier to begin at the start. So he did. “She is my fated one. We mated before…”
Vail tensed and said what he couldn’t. “Valestrum.”
Fuery nodded and opened his eyes, checking his prince’s ones for any speck of black, afraid he had stirred the darkness in him with his careless words.
Vail managed a smile, although it was tight and he struggled to hold it. “I remember I sensed a difference in you back then too… you felt happier… lighter. I did not know where the change had come from, but it must have been from your mating. I know this because mating with Little Wild Rose changed me too.”
Little Wild Rose was Vail’s term of endearment for Rosalind, one that spoke of his deep love for her.
Fuery wanted to know more about it, about how Rosalind had changed Vail, but he feared it at the same time. He wanted to nurture the hope Shaia had brought back to life inside him, believing it possible to reverse the damage he had done to himself, but if he discovered that it wasn’t, that hope might crush him when it died.
He stared at Vail, studying him and forcing himself to see the truth—Vail was even less darker now than the last time they had met like this.
If it was his bon
d with Rosalind taking away that darkness and allowing light back in, then there might be hope for him too.
Fuery saw the truth in that hope when Rosalind rounded the tree, a silver tray gripped in front of her, two tall glasses of golden juice on it. She smiled at her mate, and Vail’s eyes brightened, the light in him shining through them for Fuery to witness, and he could feel the darkness receding in him too, driven out by his love for the witch.
Vail rose and took the tray from Rosalind, and she thanked him with another smile. He pressed his side close to hers, lowered his head and nuzzled her fair hair before pressing a soft kiss to her brow, one she leaned into as her eyes slipped shut.
Her cheeks grew rosy again as she opened her eyes and looked at Fuery, and she cleared her throat.
Vail huffed and stepped back. “You do not need to be so embarrassed around Fuery, Little Wild Rose… he too has a mate.”
Her blue eyes widened. “You do?”
He nodded. “I thought I had killed her, but she is alive.”
Rosalind looked as if she wanted to probe into that, but merely smiled and glanced at her mate. “If you need anything else, you know where to find me.”
Vail nodded, balanced the tray on one hand and swept his other arm around her waist, hauling her up to him so quickly that she gasped, her hands flying to press against his chest. He swallowed the gasp in a brief, fierce kiss that had her blushing as he released her and had Fuery imagining Shaia in his arms like that, her lips on his and her hands against his chest.
The witch scurried away, Vail’s eyes tracking her, never leaving her as they darkened with need. They cleared when the door to the house closed in the distance, and he sighed, set the tray down on the bench where he had been sitting, and patted the grass.
Evidently pleased with what he found, he sat on the ground and lifted one of the glasses from the tray.
He sipped it, grimaced and shuddered. “Little Wild Rose thinks it is funny to slip grapefruit juice into her smoothies. She does it to tease me.”
Fuery eyed the concoction he had been in the middle of reaching for, his hand frozen near the glass on the silver tray. “Is it dangerous?”
He wasn’t familiar with grapefruits. They sounded harmless enough.
Vail pulled a face.
“Only if you drink half a carton without taking a breath.” His prince shrugged stiffly when Fuery looked from the glass to him. “I was thirsty and did not read the label. I was not aware it was a sharp citrus fruit. Rosalind happened upon me when I was choking on it.”
His mate had a strange sense of humour.
“Now she slips it into my drinks just to watch me react to the sourness.”
Fuery cautiously lifted the glass to his lips and sniffed. Vail was right, and there was a sharp bitter note hidden among the sweeter ones. He was familiar with some of them. Mango. Pineapple. Banana. Vail’s mate certainly liked the more exotic and sunny fruits.
He sipped it.
The sweetness was pleasant, and he couldn’t see what Vail had a problem with.
And then his mouth dried out and his eyes watered, his right one developing a vicious tic as a thousand tiny needles stabbed his senses.
Dear gods.
He set the drink back down and glared at it.
Vail sighed. “It will pass. I believe she does something with a spell to make the first sip hit as if you had swallowed an entire sour grapefruit.”
As if to prove his point, his prince sipped the drink again, and this time he didn’t grimace at all. He even smiled.
Which Fuery found amazing. Not because the drink was no longer toxic, but because Vail had mentioned Rosalind using a spell—magic—on the concoction and he was still willing to drink it, and there was no sign of the darkness pushing inside him.
During his second visit, Vail had explained that being around magic had an adverse effect on him, driving him into the waiting arms of darkness, and he found it hard to control his blacker urges around Rosalind when she was using it.
Now, barely weeks later, he could tolerate small spells and even trusted her to place them on his drinks and still consumed them.
What magic was she working on Vail?
He must have asked it aloud, because Vail looked up at him.
“She calls it exposure therapy.” Vail swirled the golden liquid around in his glass, his eyes on it now. “She creates a safe environment, one where I know I am in no danger, and will use a small spell, just enough magic to make me feel it.”
It sounded fascinating.
Vail set his glass down, leaned back and splayed his hands out on the grass behind him, propping himself up. “Each time she will make the magic a stronger spell, allowing me to grow used to the feel of it, and to overcome my fear that I will be the target of the spell.”
That sounded dangerous.
“But what if you react?” Fuery took another sip of his drink, waited for the sourness to hit him, and was pleasantly surprised when it didn’t.
Vail tipped his head back and stared up at the sky as it began to change colour, becoming threaded with gold and pink. “I am in control at all times. If I feel the darkness rising, if it becomes too much and I remember things, I tell her to stop and we stop.”
His prince’s darkening eyes and the tension that radiated from him said that sometimes they weren’t quick enough to stop the memories from seizing him together with the darkness. Sometimes, the darkness won.
Would such a thing work for him?
What was it he feared?
He stared at the distance, watching the trees sway and a deer cross a meadow as he searched his feelings while thinking about Shaia.
“I fear killing her,” he whispered and felt Vail look at him. “How do you overcome that?”
He lowered his gaze to meet Vail’s, needing to find an answer in them.
Vail’s expression turned sympathetic, his eyes softening as his lips twitched into a slight smile. “I have the same fear. I hurt Rosalind once… more than once… but she is strong, both of body and of heart, and she forgave me… and gave me as good as she got.”
“Shaia is strong.” Fuery felt that in his heart, knew that if he were to lose himself, she would be able to defend herself, might even be able to defeat him. It didn’t stop him from fearing the worst though. “But I do not want to hurt her… I do not want her to see me like that.”
Vail sighed. “I did not either. I expected Little Wild Rose to turn her back on me when she saw the darkness in me… my other side. She surprised me by embracing it instead, by embracing me… by loving all of me.”
Shaia’s words came back to Fuery, echoing in his head and in his heart, her voice in his mind telling him that he might have changed, but her love for him hadn’t, and she still loved him, because he was still the same male inside.
He had felt the truth in her words when he had been holding her in his arms, watching her sleep, trusting him to protect her and not hurt her. He hadn’t hurt her. The thought hadn’t even crossed his mind, and he hadn’t feared it happening either.
What if he could use the same sort of therapy as Vail was undergoing?
But how?
How did he overcome the fear of killing her?
Vail feared magic because it made him feel he was about to be controlled, forced to do things against his will, and the darkness within him responded in order to protect him.
Being exposed to magic allowed Vail to overcome that fear, seeing that he wasn’t going to be controlled whenever he felt it around him.
Fuery feared the darkness consuming him and waking to find he had hurt Shaia. Killed her.
He wasn’t sure there was a therapy that could fix that, not without placing her in grave danger, exposing her to his darkest side. He wanted to overcome the fear, but he couldn’t risk her, would die if he came around to find he had killed her. He wanted to be with her, but part of him felt it would be better for her if he never saw her again.
It would be hell for him th
ough.
Living his life, aware that she was out there, would destroy him.
Vail’s hand came to rest on his knee, drawing him back to the world, and he looked down at it and then up into the male’s eyes.
“Sit a while with me?” Vail gestured to the grass, and Fuery did as he bid, easing down onto it.
The moment he placed his hand down to prop himself up, the blades of the grass tickling his fingers, calm swept through him, easing his fears and scattering the black clouds in his heart and his mind.
“Better?” Vail said, and Fuery nodded. “Do you see how the light can chase back the darkness?”
It struck him that he had been losing himself, sinking into the dark abyss, and just touching nature had been enough to shatter the hold the darkness had been gaining on him.
“Shaia woke it in me,” he murmured and brushed his fingers over the long blades of grass, feeling their coolness on his skin as warmth in his heart as he savoured the connection to nature that had been denied him for so many years he had lost count. “I thought I would never feel this again.”
The part of him that wanted to destroy all hope in an effort to protect himself whispered that it was only Vail’s strong connection to nature that was allowing him to feel her now without her baring her fangs at him.
Vail seemed to read his mind. “It is not me. There is light inside you, Fuery. Light born of love. Endless. Unbreakable. The darkness can try, no doubt despises it and wants it gone, but it will not smother it.”
The darkness was trying to do just that. Before Shaia had awoken the light inside him, the darkness had come and gone, leaving him free of it from time to time, brief moments of respite from its torment.
Now, it was a constant thing. He could feel it lurking in the background, always there, as if it refused to leave him now there was light in him again.
Unchained by a Forbidden Love Page 23