by Slade, Jessa
She snarled. “What song and dance is this, saturni? You think to trick me?”
“No trick. Just a truth I didn’t see until now.”
Tendrils of fog coalesced around her as she pulled the phae power closer, finally giving it form. Her mass doubled, then redoubled, until she hulked over him in her parti-colored robes, though her face stayed the same size with the death’s-skull starkness and serpent eyes. “I will not be Undone by a fantasy that can never be, Ruiner. When you die, all the gateways will open. There will be nothing to bind us here, and we will take what we wish from the human world. The power will be all mine.”
Raze opened his mouth to entreat her once more, but the fog around their feet suddenly sucked toward the throne in a whining wind along with the air in his lungs. The Queen’s robes streamed toward the vacuum, and she staggered to hold her position.
From the swirl of fog, a dozen cypress trees shot upward, their thick, flared trunks in a rough circle. Hundreds of will-o’-the-wisps lit the needles that arched overhead, and the rich, woodsy scent made Raze close his eyes, thinking of Yelena....
A multitude of gasps from the lurking phae emptied the throne room like a second vacuum. Then whispers filled it like wind.
He looked up and his gaze locked on the golden-black beauty that prowled out of the unexpected forest. Impossible! He’d sent her away.
Anguish had him reaching up to tear at the collar around his neck, mindless of the iron scorching his already damaged hands. She couldn’t be here! The Queen would be—
His gaze ticked up another notch to the figure emerging behind Yelena.
The King.
As golden-haired as the tigress, with eyes of a piercing blue even the sunlit skies couldn’t match, the King strode toward the Steel Throne. He moved with the effortless power of an incoming wave, and his samite cloak, threaded with fractal flowers of gold, surged behind him, untarnished as if he hadn’t spent the last several millennia locked behind impenetrable iron.
Raze felt every link of his chains burning him with shame. Along with a furious joy.
The King paused, his hand on the back of the throne. Yelena stood on his other side, tail lashing.
Blue eyes finally lifted. “My brother,” he said softly, with a musical lilt that hadn’t been spoken in ages. His gaze shifted. “And you must be my betrothed.”
The Queen reeled back, her reptilian-slit pupils expanding with shock to engulf her eyes with pitch-black. Her mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, until a noise, uncharacteristically feeble emerged. “Who...?”
“Your Lord and Master.”
“I have no Lord.” Still, her voice shook. “You are an imposter!”
“And you are a thief.” He shook his head, and the plaited locks of his hair brushed past his shoulders. “Stealing my throne.”
“Not stolen.” The Queen hunched her shoulders, seething. “You lost it.”
“And yet I seem to have found it again.”
“That can change once more.” The Queen sprang forward, hands raised.
The power she released stripped the robes from her body, revealing her scaled bulk and the mane of grizzled hair down her spine, but the blast went astray. The cypress circle splintered in a rain of kindling, and the gathered phae fled in all directions.
Raze choked on a cry until he saw Yelena had dodged behind the steel bulk of the throne.
The King, however, didn’t move from his stance beside the throne, except for one hand, which summoned the swirling cloud of will-o’-the-wisps. Raze shook his head helplessly; his brother would have almost no energy of his own, trapped as he’d been behind iron for so long. He would be decimated.
But the wisps gathered in an angry whirl, the usually inaudible hum of their tiny wings rising to a menacing drone.
The King gathered the gold-streaked cloak around him. “You want all the power to be yours? Then take it.”
He pointed, and the wisps descended on the Queen in a funnel cloud streaked with the afterglow of their lightning.
She vanished behind the spinning cloud, but her scream, high and shrill, cut through the whine of myriad wings. A dark pool oozed from beneath the cloud of wisps, reflecting the arcs of lightning.
Raze closed his eyes, knowing he was next.
But a tug at his chains made him glance up. “Yelena! I told you to get out of here!”
“I tried. But I came back.” She fumbled with the manacles around his wrists, unfastening the simple latch. “Don’t you people believe in keys?”
“Since no one can touch them, the locks have always been enough.” But not anymore.
He feasted his gaze on her naked curves, and the tiny hairs on his body prickled with the tingle of the verita luna still clinging to her skin. He wanted to grab her, hold her against him, never let her go. Not again.
But he saw the phae creeping toward the throne, uncertain but curious. Through gritted teeth, he said, “You have to leave. My brother will—”
“I explained your reasons to him.”
Disbelief forced a laugh from Raze’s aching chest. “He can’t have forgiven me.”
“Well, no. But you haven’t apologized to him yet.” She unclipped his iron collar and threw it aside with an oath. “How could she do this to you?”
“Because I deserved nothing more.” Wincing with the pain of his iron-inflicted wounds, he stripped out of the leather vest and draped it around Yelena. It was long enough on her to cover the curve of her backside, which he regretted perhaps more than anything in his long life. “I’ve done everything wrong....”
She pushed up on tiptoes to kiss him. “Maybe, but after all this time, you’re getting a second chance.”
The warm brush of her lips filled an empty place inside him. Not where his magic should have been; he was still drained from the touch of iron. But her touch...
No illusion and no truth could mean more to him than that.
So he stood his ground as his brother approached.
The King stopped a few paces away. “It has been a long time, Arazael.”
Raze started to explain the phae did not use true names, not when that intimacy caused such problems. But he stopped himself, though he still used the shortened version of his brother’s name. “Because I imprisoned you, Kel.” When Yelena cleared her throat, he added, “And I am sorry for it.”
The King made a noise in the back of his throat. “You would do it again if you thought it the right thing.”
Raze shrugged. “Yes.” Yelena groaned, so he amended, “But I would still be sorry for it.”
Kel’s lips quirked, not quite a smile. Then his gaze shifted to the cloud of wisps that had tightened around the bulk of the deposed Queen. “She would have been my wife. Her blood was right—” he stared at the black pool beneath the wisps “—and she would have ruled by my side. But she wanted it all.”
Raze shook his head. “She just wanted something, which she wouldn’t have had if you’d led us to our doom. That was why she took the throne.”
Kel lifted his head. “And you?”
“I never wanted the throne. I just wanted the phae to live.” Raze met Yelena’s golden gaze. “But I am told my definition of living left something to be...desired.”
She smiled at him, a glowing expression that filled him like the sun rising.
The King gestured, and the wisps spun upward in a loose spiral, glimmering brilliantly with devoured magic. In a huddled heap, the once Queen moaned, a small, helpless sound almost lost in the King’s dismissive growl. “I should kill you.” He glanced at Raze. “Kill you both.”
Yelena straightened, the verita luna brightening her edges. “You promised—”
“Promises...” The King waved his hand again. “Have you learned nothing of the phae while spending time with my
brother?”
“I learned people—all people—can change,” she said. “That’s why I took a chance and let you out.”
Kel looked at Raze, disbelief sending his eyebrows upward. “This is what you choose? Sharp claws and a sharper tongue?”
Unable to resist any longer, Raze stroked his hand down the strong curve of her arm, drawing her closer. “That is only one side of her.”
She made a sound halfway between a purr and a growl and leaned into him.
“Then you are trapped,” Kel said.
Raze closed his eyes briefly. “That is a fair trade. If you wish to put me behind iron for the time I imprisoned you—”
“No,” Kel and Yelena said together, Yelena with alarm, Kel with amusement.
The King shook his head. “If you were gone, who would rule the court?”
Raze stiffened. “You.”
“Not I.” Kel stared over his shoulder at the Steel Throne, his expression dark. “I want nothing more to do with metal chains, no matter how lovely the form.” He looked back at them and smiled, the gesture coming more naturally now, although something bleak and cracked still lurked in the clear blue of his eyes. “If there is a new shape for the phae, you and the wereling will find it without me.”
Raze wavered. Together with Yelena...
She glanced up at him uncertainly. “I can’t stay locked in the phaedrealii.”
He kissed her, taking strength in her skin against his, her breath mingling with his. “Half my geasa are gone; I can’t lock the court again. I won’t.” The thought of the alternatives made his head spin, or maybe that was loss of blood and the nearness of his tigress.
So he kissed her again until the dread was gone and all that remained were the dreams.
When he lifted his head, Kel and the deposed Queen were gone too, and the throne sat empty, waiting.
Yelena’s mouth was flushed red and her eyes bright with desire. She lifted his scarred hands to her lips. “We can make this world anything we want, Arazael, a place for everyone.”
He tightened his grip. “I already have what I want.”
She stared up at him, hope brighter than any sun. “Can we really do this?”
He placed her palm on his bare chest over his heart where he knew she would feel his pulse and know he spoke only the truth. “Anything is possible.”
Epilogue
A long soak in the cavern pool healed their wounds, or maybe it was the power of a loving touch.
Yelena traced her fingers in widening spirals over Raze’s smooth, unmarred skin. The fire and iron had done the dirty work, and the pool had done the rest. He’d given his athame to his brother before Kel disappeared, saying only that he needed time away.
“He had thousands of years,” Raze had fretted, watching his brother walk into the broken circle of cedars. The flawed portal might dump him anywhere.
Yelena had kissed his shoulder. “Let him be.”
Raze turned within the circle of her arms. “Then I will have to focus my power on you.”
“Do your worst. I can take it.”
They came together in the magical waters until the ammolite crystals above and below beamed with pulsing energy. Afterward Yelena found one last geas inscribed in his skin.
The symbol was simpler than most, a stylized bull’s-eye with winged edges. She pressed her fingertips over the mark on his chest
Raze laid his hand over hers. “The alchemical symbol for gold. It also means sun.”
She tilted her head. “What does this geas lock?”
“My heart.”
“And the key?
“Is yours.”
* * * * *
About the Author
Although a grade-school aptitude test predicted Jessa Slade would someday become a farmer, her fate as a writer was sealed when she won a writing contest where the prize was any book she wanted. Any book! Can you imagine? Since then, her imagination has taken her into paranormal romance, urban fantasy romance, and award-winning science fiction romance—basically, anything with woo-woo and woo-hoo! She can be found at all the usual online haunts as Jessa Slade on Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Her latest book news and newsletter mailing list are on her website at www.JessaSlade.com
ISBN-13: 9781460322192
DARK PRINCE’S DESIRE
Copyright © 2013 by Jessa Slade
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