Bleu didn’t want to have to go back to Loren and report that he had driven Vail into a fit of bloodlust.
Loren would probably see red himself on hearing it.
“It needs me,” Vail whispered in a broken voice in English and a tear slipped down his temple, soaking into his dark hair above his ear. “Gods… it calls for me.”
“I know.” Rosalind brushed her thumb across the back of his hand and his armour peeled away from it, leaving it bare for her to caress. She smiled and kept with her stroking, soothing her mate as best she could. “Where is it waiting, Vail?”
His breaths came quicker and he shuddered. Her eyes widened as he raked his fingernails over his stomach and then his chest, and struggled against her, his entire body lurching off the seat. She pressed her right hand against his forehead, pinning his head to her knees, and trapped his arms against his chest with her left. Strange words fell from her lips, a soft chanting that filled the air with the tinny scent of magic. The hairs on the back of Bleu’s neck stood on end, an odd sensation skittering over his skin beneath his armour.
His every instinct warned him to remain where he was, even when a part of him wanted to aid her.
Vail’s eyes snapped open.
Edged down towards him.
Froze his backside in place on the seat.
Black.
They were as black as midnight.
“Vail,” Rosalind snapped and slapped her mate across his right cheek.
The darkness instantly evaporated, disappearing literally in a blink of the eye as Vail blinked and looked up at her, his violet gaze confused for a heartbeat before he groaned and screwed his eyes shut.
“It’s okay,” she murmured softly and resumed petting him, her grip on him loosening as he relaxed again. “You just had a little moment. Nothing to worry about. Happens to us all.”
Bleu eyed her. It did?
Rosalind was quirky, her mood flitting from serious to bubbly so quickly it sometimes left him dizzy, but he had never seen her having a ‘moment’. Did the witch have a dark side too?
It would explain why she could love a male like Vail.
“You don’t have to go back in.” She smiled down at Vail as he opened his eyes and looked up at her again, weariness in his.
He really did need to go back in. Bleu needed to know where the sword was and beyond the border of the dragon realm meant nothing. There were countless realms beyond its borders.
“I am fine,” Vail gritted out, sounding for all the three realms as if he really wasn’t. Stubbornness evidently ran in the family bloodline. How many times had Bleu heard Loren tell him that he was fine when he was falling apart?
Vail closed his eyes again, heaved a sigh, and started to relax. Rosalind began murmuring the same soft encouraging words she had used before, and again the sensation that they were magic ran through Bleu. She was so small and slight, but she held such power over her brute of a mate. It was incredible.
For four thousand years, Bleu had been convinced that Vail was a beast with no conscience, a monster made flesh and bone, unable to feel anything or be tamed by anyone.
But a tiny female had tamed him.
Had made him love, and even live again.
It all seemed so impossible.
Was this the power of a bond? Was it magical enough that it could save even the blackest soul?
“I feel it,” Vail whispered in the elf tongue. “Beyond the dragon realm.”
Bleu wanted to point out that he had already told him that but held his tongue instead. He leaned forwards as the air thickened, the sense that Vail was forging a stronger connection with the sword through sheer will alone running through him as he watched the male’s expression shifting. Vail gritted his teeth and bared his fangs on a pained snarl, the black slashes of his eyebrows meeting hard as he grimaced.
Rosalind shot Bleu a black look that blamed him for her mate’s suffering.
Holy fuck, something was wrong with him, because he wanted to tell Vail to stop. He didn’t want to see the poor bastard suffer any more.
He was on the verge of stopping Vail when the elf exhaled a string of words in a torrent that took Bleu a moment to rewind and unravel.
“It waits near the Devil’s domain, in a valley at the border of the dragons.”
It was a start, but he needed better information than that. The border between the dragon and Devil’s realms was long and treacherous, and it could take months or years to scour it.
“It is all I can give you from here.” Vail’s deep voice filled the tense silence and Rosalind stroked his chest and his hair.
Bleu looked at Vail, at the sweat dotting his brow, and listened to his ragged breathing as he twitched under Rosalind’s tender touch, and didn’t have the heart to ask him to try harder or mention the possibility of him travelling to Hell with Bleu’s team where he could get a clearer picture of the sword’s location.
Vail wasn’t ready for that.
He was struggling, hurting himself by helping him, and Bleu actually felt sorry for him. He had never thought he would take pity on Vail, that his opinion of the elf could change for the better, but seeing him suffering in order to help another was enough to have him feeling that way.
He also suddenly had the impression that keeping the peace with the council of elders wasn’t the only reason Loren hadn’t been able to come to his brother and had tasked Bleu with the mission instead.
In fact, he had the distinct impression that his prince had known that his feelings towards Vail would soften, his anger lessen, if he saw the male with his mate and saw how traumatised he still was by the things he had done, but that he was fighting to better himself and make amends.
And, gods help him, but Bleu felt enough for the male to offer a few words that were both born of gratitude and a desire to help him on that path.
“Loren constantly thinks of you, and he is trying to get the council to allow you to return home.”
Vail looked across at him, the black receding from his violet irises, and the corners of his lips quirked into a smile that wasn’t forced this time. It was odd seeing Vail smile again, really smile, as he had so many millennia ago before everything between them had changed. Seeing it left Bleu wondering something that he didn’t like, because it made him cold inside.
When was the last time he had really smiled?
Not a forced one, designed to placate others or because it had seemed the right response.
Really smiled.
He recalled laughing with Kyter and Iolanthe when he had been helping them a few months ago, and how it had warmed him but it had felt so foreign to him too.
He wasn’t sure he had smiled or laughed with meaning for millennia before that day, and he hadn’t since.
Iolanthe had told him once that he had been a changed male, one grim and sombre, since he had stopped talking of his dreams to her, of his one true desire.
The one he had set aside in favour of serving his prince.
The one he was beginning to yearn for again, despite all his protests and attempts to pretend otherwise, as he watched Vail with Rosalind, saw the love and devotion they shared in the life they lived together in the small cottage.
The dream of finding his mate.
CHAPTER 8
Taryn left her bleak quarters in the castle behind, obeying her urge to escape the confines of the room her brother had given to her. It was enormous, like all the rooms in the black citadel, but the walls had still closed in on her as she had paced, planning her next move.
She hurried down the stone steps to the next level, fearing she would run into Tenak. She had left him hours ago in his large empty library, pawing over a crudely drawn map of the kingdoms of Hell and muttering about his plans for them all. Being around him the past few days had been harder than she had expected.
It had made her realise the depth of his madness, the hold the sickness that infested him had on him. He thought only of killing and subjugating, ruling all th
ose he viewed as beneath him.
Today, when he had started talking about her role in his righteous plan to bring Hell to its knees before him, she’d had to make her excuses, stating that she was tired from her journey and needed rest. Tenak had turned concerned eyes on her, had touched her hand and had bidden her a good sleep.
Her hand still felt chilled from that touch.
She rubbed it and quickly crossed the large entrance hall, heading towards the open arched door.
Tenak never bothered to close it.
That chilled her most of all, that certainty that he could slay any fool who dared to enter his home.
He had been kind once. Protective and fierce, but kind. He had flinched like any youth when dealing a blow in the training ring, had apologised countless times to those he hurt by accident or whenever he won a match. Now the cold eyes of a warrior looked back at her, tinged with madness, corrupted by a hunger for power. She doubted he would flinch if he had to fight the Devil himself.
He certainly wouldn’t apologise.
She broke out into the sloping area of smooth rock that she supposed was the courtyard of the castle. It had been carved deep into the mountain, with jagged sections left standing in a ring around it, natural walls at least twenty feet tall.
There was no gate in the wall that enclosed the castle, no weak point. Any attacking forces without the ability to teleport or fly would have to use ladders to come over the walls or risk scaling the mountain to reach the rear of the castle.
The lower section of the castle was heavily fortified too, with only narrow arrow slits for windows. She looked back at the arched doorway. If an enemy tried to enter that way, there was a thick steel portcullis ready to drop on them and seal the door.
It was a grand castle, a perfect example of one, but she couldn’t imagine who had built it.
Here in the Valley of the Dark Edge, so close to the Devil’s domain.
Had it been his men who had created the building that loomed above her, cragged towers reaching towards the dark grey sky?
It suited her image of the male who had once ruled all of Hell, and still ruled half of it. He was dangerous and mysterious, little more than a myth or perhaps a legend. She only had stories to go on, and those stories had been told to her as a child four thousand years ago. None had seen him in long millennia.
Or if they had, they hadn’t lived to tell the tale of the beautiful fallen angel who had given birth to this land and the demons who filled it.
Taryn stared beyond the high mountains that formed the valley, her gaze on the amber glowing sky to her left where the Devil’s domain stood.
She wanted to see it.
As a child, she had been warned to stay away from the valleys close to the Devil’s realm, for wandering baby dragons were the food of the beasts his kingdom contained.
She had met a fallen angel once.
He had tried to sell her at the black market, the one where she had crossed paths with the elf again.
Her gaze grew hazy as she thought about that elf male, her senses instinctively reaching out across the land, drifting over it like smoke as she searched for him, part of her fearing she would sense him near and the rest of her aching to find him there.
Taryn whipped her focus away from the elf and pinned it back on the mountains. She wanted to see the Devil’s lands. Today, she would scout that section of the valley.
She closed her eyes and willed the shift, but forced it to come slowly, embracing the pain as her bones grew and distorted, broke apart to form new shapes beneath her skin. Scales rippled over her and she used what magic she had to cast her leather trousers, boots and corset away, baring herself to the elements.
The warm breeze caressed her naked skin a split-second before the scales covered it, and she fell onto all fours as she allowed the shift to accelerate. She opened her eyes as her vision sharpened and the ground dropped away from her as she grew, transforming swiftly into her dragon form.
She threw her head back and roared as she beat her wings, the feel of them battering the air flooding her with joy she couldn’t contain, not even when she still feared her brother would hear and follow her.
Taryn spread her wings, stretching them wide, so the white membrane between her violet wing bones pulled taut. There was something deeply satisfying about stretching her wings in such a manner, feeling them from where they joined her shoulders to the very tips of the bones that intersected the membranes.
She carefully placed her front paws down on the black wall, towering above it now, and beat her wings. Her back paws lifted off the ground and she stopped her wings, let her paws touch the ground again, and then sank low and kicked off, launching into the air. The valley fell away in an instant, becoming nothing more than a black streak before it blended into the rest of the lands, a blur of shadow.
A sea of darkness.
She beat her wings, holding herself suspended above Hell, her sharp eyes picking out clusters of light in the swath of black. Whenever she focused on one, her vision zoomed in, revealing the village. She scanned each one in the dragon realm, something that was becoming habit, an urge that she found as difficult to deny as the need to fly.
She pretended she wasn’t looking for anything in particular, even when she knew in her heart that she was.
The elf male.
When her scan of the dragon realm was complete, she spread her wings and soared lower, letting the wind buffet her as she swept back down towards the valley. She twisted her body, lazily spiralling downwards, the black lands nothing more than a whirling blur that rushed past her eyes, punctuated by a brief flash of light.
She flapped her wings to slow her descent and skirted the valley, denying the urge to fly higher again and look towards the source of that light.
The elf kingdom.
She had realised two days ago that she could see it when she flew high, able to pick out the golden light that filtered down on it and part of the lands that surrounded it. It had been so green, filled with colour and warmth. Life.
It had tainted her view of the rest of Hell, painting it in a dull light that left it wanting.
Even the dragon realm, her beloved home, now appeared black, cold and grim to her.
She turned her gaze towards it as she neared the end of the valley, looking back in the direction she had travelled to reach her brother, and then pulled her eyes away as she banked left. She followed the mountain ridge, heading towards the Devil’s domain, and started her work, charting all the escape routes she could take if necessary.
Her tension faded as she flew, her mind occupied with small tasks, thoughts pulled away from the castle that often felt too cramped and her brother’s plans. She focused on flying, feeling the warm air on her face and wings, flowing over her scales and curling around her tail.
As she circled back around, passing the castle, she gazed down at it.
A bolt of fear ran through her, scattering her calm.
That fear had steadily been growing since her brother had taken her in, keeping her awake at night and setting her on edge around him. He hadn’t mentioned the sword since she had said it was gone, but she knew he hadn’t forgotten about it. It was his ultimate treasure, and that was the reason she had hidden it deep in the bowels of the castle, in a place far from the ones he frequented in his daily routine.
Taryn breathed deep, her nostrils flaring as she took a massive gulp of air down into her lungs. She opened her jaws and exhaled, and the taste of ashes coated her tongue. Her ancestors would have breathed fire but all she could do was breathe ashes, her power diminished by the roof of Hell that stole sunlight from her scales and magic from her bones.
Her kind had been losing powers that were rightfully theirs since they had been cruelly banished from their home, cast into Hell and cursed.
It was just another cell, larger and grander than ones she had occupied during the last three centuries, but a cell nonetheless.
It held her, trapped her away from
the light, stole her power from her and made her weak, leaving her at the mercy of others.
Fire blazed through her blood, impotent flames that licked at her skin and wanted to burst from her, desperate to mix with the fetid air of Hell and burn her grim cage to ashes.
Taryn flew harder, needing to feel the air in her lungs and rushing over her scales. She needed to fly. Her wing bones ached but she refused to slow. She couldn’t. She had to keep flying. She had to be free.
Had to fly.
It was a compulsion, one she feared would drive her mad if she denied it.
Pain burst along her entire left side and she barrelled right, an agonised roar escaping her as she dropped through the air. Sharp claws pierced her scales, savagely raking over her ribs and back, close to tearing into her delicate white wing membranes. She turned wild eyes on her foe, her heart pounding hard and blood thundering as she instinctively lashed out with her barbed tail. It struck hard.
On the shoulder of the violet and white dragon who was driving her down towards the mountains.
Tenak.
Taryn cried out again as she crashed into the ground at the base of the mountain, jagged rocks punching hard into her right side and boulders and gravel spraying ahead of her as she slid across the uneven terrain.
He rose above her when they came to a halt, his front paws on her hip and shoulder, pressing her down into the black ground. He bared huge sharp teeth at her, his violet-to-white eyes wild and filled with fury that she could now sense in him. Anger at her.
She hurled her head back and shrieked as he raked claws over her left flank, scoring long gashes in her scales. The pained sound echoed off the mountains, mocking her with its feebleness.
Tenak snapped at her wings and neck with his jaws and she tried to scramble away from him, kicking at him with her back legs. She caught him in the belly with her talons and he snarled at her, his elliptical pupils narrowing into thin deadly slits.
Possessed by a Dark Warrior Page 8