Cruel Enchantment

by Bast, Anya

  He blocked her foot and pushed. She staggered to the side, almost landing on her ass in the dirt. He came at her and she whirled to the left, narrowly missing his enraged grasp. She danced away from him, but he was too fast. He grabbed her upper arm and she brought the flat of her palm up again, this time hitting pay dirt. Blood exploded from his nose and he yelped in pain.

  Totally intending to hit a man while he was down, she set up for another kick, this one aimed at his kidney. That would send him down for a while. Midway through her turn, he swept her leg out from under her. She went down hard on her side, her breath oofing out of her. He was on her in a second, blood dripping into her face. The burlap bag slammed down over her head and he knotted it at her neck.

  A moment of pure panic arrested her breath in her throat. Sharp memories scratched and ripped at her mind.

  She exploded in a frenzied attempt to yank it off, but his arms closed around her midsection, pinning her arms to her sides and holding her down on the road. The inside of the bag smelled sweet. She knew what it was—Kass, a Norwegian fae herbal concoction that would knock her out if she breathed enough of it in. It was an old trick, one she’d used herself a time or two.

  She held her breath, but he just waited her out. Finally, compelled to take a deep breath, everything went black.

  HE still couldn’t believe it.

  Sinking down onto the floor of his forge, he watched her lying on her side, still unconscious from the Kass.

  Long ago, when the days of Piefferburg were still young, he’d befriended Ronan Quinn. Ronan was an Unseelie mage with unique abilities born from his mixed fae and Phaendir parentage. Ronan had put in place a web to trap this woman if she ever set foot on fae ground. The moment her boot had hit the earth past the gates, complete awareness of her presence had flooded Aeric’s body and mind—bowing his spine, snapping his head back, and making him bellow until his throat was raw.

  Now, on the floor of his forge, she lay with one arm thrown over her head and the other flopping behind her. He’d parked his motorcycle not far down the road from where he’d found her on the road to Piefferburg City. Once he’d collected her, blood streaming from his nose, he’d put her on the back of his bike and driven her through the Boundary Lands and down city side streets to the back of the Black Tower, uncaring who saw him. Apparently no one of consequence had, since he’d yet to have a knock at his door from someone inquiring about the prisoner in his apartment.

  Hundreds of years of wishing and here she was in front of him.

  He tipped his head to the side, the loose tendrils of his hair falling over his cheek. She was not what he remembered, not at all what he’d ever imagined, with her shoulder-length red hair, bright green eyes, slender stature, innocent face.

  Of course she was probably still glamoured, even in unconsciousness. He was not looking at the true Emmaline now, so fragile and slight on the concrete floor. He had to remember that. This was false glamour, the glamour she always wore, the only thing she knew how to be—a fraud.

  The Emmaline he remembered was a monster, an assassin. Working for the Summer Queen during the fae wars, she had used her skill with personal glamour to kill more Unseelie nobles than the entire Black Army had managed to slaughter. Slipping into the Unseelie Court, she’d seduced and murdered more than her fair share of men, all the while lusting after him—the Blacksmith. Her crush had been known to him, as it had been known to all.

  Back then he’d wanted nothing to do with her. He had his Aileen, his soul mate and perfect match. He was engaged to marry her and would have shared in the time-honored tradition of Joining Vows with her. Never had he imagined the depths of Emmaline’s obsession. He’d underestimated her and it had changed his life forever.

  He would not underestimate her now. He would not buy into the fragile, innocent guise she wore. Emmaline was going to pay for what she’d done to Aileen—slowly, thoroughly, and mercilessly. Though, he mused as he touched his sore nose, she’d started things off by making him pay. It was sheer luck his nose hadn’t been broken. He hadn’t seen stars like that in a long time.

  She roused, grimacing. Bowing in on herself, she curled into a fetal position, pressing the palm of her hand into her eye socket. He’d used a none-too-gentle herbal concoction to divest her quickly of her consciousness so she wouldn’t fight him. She’d be feeling the effects of sickness from the Kass as she woke.

  Her red hair curled around her head and narrow shoulders as she writhed, groaning. One green eye popped open, cast about, focused on him, then widened. She scrambled upward and crab-walked back into the wall behind her, staring at him. “You can’t do this,” she rasped.

  His lips parted in a mirthless smile. He sat against a wall, one arm draped over his knee. “I can—and will—do anything I want. Go ahead and scream.” He motioned lazily around his forge. “This place is secret and completely soundproofed. The only man who ever knew of this place has gone to dance with the sluagh, so he’s not talking. No one will answer your cries for help. It’s just you and me, baby.”

  She raised a hand as if to stave him off. “Aeric, I know you must hate me—”

  He raised an eyebrow and that action alone seemed to arrest the breath in her throat. She was frightened of him. Good. She should be. “Hate you? Emmaline, what I feel for you goes far beyond hate. I have nursed a cold, undying passion for your torture and eventual death for the last three hundred and sixty years. I have cultivated it in my heart. Nurtured it. Caressed it. Fed it. It’s not hatred that I feel for you. It’s something much worse.”

  “But you don’t understand what happened the night Aileen died, and you don’t know why I’m here now.” She shook her head as if trying to get it to stop ringing and put a hand to her temple. It was the Kass; he knew she must have a hell of a headache right now. “You have to listen to me, Aeric. I came to find you because you’re the only one who can help. What I have to tell you now goes beyond anything I may have done in the past. My mission is too important. To you. To your people. Our people.”

  Lies. Always with the lies, the illusion, and the deceit.

  Rage burned through his veins like acid. Roaring, he lunged to his feet and charged at her. Going down on his knees, he pinned her to the wall with his hands on her upper arms. She tried her best to melt into the concrete wall behind her and turned her face away from his, her hair curtaining her cheek and eye. Her breath came short and shallow. He scented the fear coming off her in waves.

  “No,” he whispered near her ear. “You will not speak. You killed my soul when you murdered Aileen. You destroyed my future. You did kill her, didn’t you? You can’t deny that.”

  She swallowed hard and nodded. “I killed her.”

  “You shot her with one of your fucking trademark assassin crossbow bolts, one with a poisoned tip.”

  She let out a shuddering sigh. “I did. But—”

  “Then there is no misunderstanding here. There are no buts. You will pay for your crimes at my hands. Consider it your past catching up with you. Consider it karma. You must have always known that eventually the bill for your sins would come due.” His voice was low, silky, dangerous sounding even to his own ears. “You’re mine,” he murmured near her ear, making her shudder. “Every inch of you. Prepare to suffer.”

  “You won’t hurt me.” Her voice shook, revealing her uncertainty about that statement. “You’re a good man.”

  He bared his teeth at her. “Maybe once, long ago, I was a good man. That man died with Aileen.”

  She shook her head. “No. No, you’re still a good man, Aeric. I know you are. You always were and always will be. The essential core of a person never changes.”

  He leaned in closer and snarled into her face, “Then what does that say about you?”

  Her breath hitched in the back of her throat.

  He remained that way, intimidating her with his voice, breath, and body. Then, slamming the flat of his hand against the wall by her head and making her jump, he lurc
hed to his feet, spun on his heel, and strode from the room, locking the door behind him.

  EMMALINE let out a long, slow breath, her eyes wide. Slumping, she slid down the wall and rested on her side, trying to calm the thumping of her heart. Every single one of her irrational fears had come true.

  No, worse.

  She’d expected that if the Blacksmith recognized her there would be conflict between them. Hundreds of years ago, she had killed his fiancée—but clearly he was not correctly apprised of the circumstances surrounding that death. It was, of course, her own damn fault he wasn’t aware of what really happened. She’d tried to protect him and now she was paying the price.

  No good deed ever went unpunished.

  Shaking, she pushed up and looked around. Immediately her gaze caught on the portrait of the woman in question hanging above the cold forge. Aileen had looked like an angel in real life and his painting had encompassed that same aura of her. Clearly he had kept Aileen as an angel in his heart as well—and Emmaline as the demon who’d killed her.

  Which, needless to say, would not bode well for her—or for the objective she’d come here to accomplish.

  She closed her eyes, resting her head back against the wall. And the Phaendir—they were probably the least of her worries at the moment, seeing as how she was prisoner to a man who wanted to torture and kill her slowly, but they were still a worry. When she didn’t show up at the Seelie Court and report in under her guise as part of the Faemous crew, they would be suspicious. The cover she’d cultivated for so many years was now in serious jeopardy and she was in risk of being exposed as a fae and locked in Piefferburg forever.

  Of course, the upside was that her life here would apparently be short.

  A crazy bubble of laughter escaped from her throat and echoed through the cold, concrete room. She bet this place wasn’t always cold, though. It looked like a well-used space, somewhere Aeric still regularly produced charmed iron weaponry. At night it likely glowed with heat and steam, if the glinting iron weapons on the walls were any indication.

  She looked around, her misplaced laughter dying. All kinds of weapons surrounded her now—ones she wouldn’t hesitate to use to defend herself with. Why hadn’t he bothered to restrain her? She’d been an assassin, after all. He must know that she could use those weapons very well.

  If she tried to injure him with them, she’d need to be careful. She studied the axes, frowning. After all, if she hurt him too badly, he wouldn’t be able to make the key she’d come here for. If she went for his thigh, she might be able to wound him enough to defang him and be able to talk some sense into him.

  He really should’ve restrained her.

  Of course, he probably knew she was capable with an ax or knife but still wasn’t concerned. She was like a reed stalk compared to his tree trunk. Even with training, the thought that she could wield any kind of weapon against a man of his size and strength was laughable. He’d just snap her in two and throw her away. Weapons weren’t even an issue.

  How he hated her.

  The knowledge burned in her gut like acid, even after all these years. Gods, she’d been in love with him. She’d never burned for a man the way she’d burned for Aeric Killian Riordan O’Malley. He was the most caring, intelligent, attractive man she’d ever known. Even though he was Unseelie and she was true blood, pristine—albeit orphaned and penniless—Seelie, she’d wanted him. But she’d respected his relationship with Aileen and kept her crush—obsession—on the sideline, though she’d always been embarrassed that her adoration had been so apparent.

  And she’d never meant to kill Aileen. Oh, Danu, never.

  But she had killed her. She could still feel the warm, tacky blood on her hands, even after so many hundreds of years. She could still feel the horror of what she’d done spreading over her and the way she’d chanted no no no no no no in her head as she watched the bloodstain spread over the white sheets and the life leak slowly from the woman. She’d wanted to take back the bolt she’d shot.

  She knew she’d destroyed Aeric that night, known she was doomed at his hands if she stayed around, no matter the true circumstances of Aileen’s death. So she’d run. Not long after, Watt syndrome had hit in earnest and the Phaendir had sprung their hideous trap for the fae. She’d managed to stay out of Aeric’s hands.

  At least, until now.

  A part of her had always been convinced she would avoid a reckoning for that night, but it appeared that—like so very often—she’d been wrong.

  THREE

  AERIC slammed the bottle of amber liquid onto the table hard enough to shatter and then glowered at it when it didn’t. Since he hadn’t been able to break Emmaline right off, he needed to see something destroyed. He was being soft on her and he had no idea why.

  He took a drink from his glass. The rush of pure alcohol burned through his veins and tightened his body. He nearly never drank, but the lure of the whiskey was too strong to ignore tonight. Anyway, it was good liquor. There were some things humans did right and whiskey was one of them. He bought bottles of Jack Daniel’s imported from outside Piefferburg even though they were triple the cost of fae-made alcohol. The fae traditionally drank elderberry wine or hard cider. Both spirits were Piefferburg’s biggest exports to the outside world, but give him a flask of Jack and he was happy.

  Not that he was happy tonight.

  He picked up the bottle, rose to his feet, and hurled it against the wall. It smashed into a thousand glittering pieces and leaked amber down to the floor. Satisfied, he grunted and slumped into his chair, throwing his hair back with an angry snap of his head.

  Fuck him six ways, he had his greatest enemy locked in his forge. Goibhniu, he still couldn’t believe it. How stupid could she be to enter Piefferburg? She knew godsdamn well that the fae had a long memory. Apparently she’d been hoping her glamour would protect her against him. And normally it would have. She’d probably never expected the magickal net he’d put in place for her.

  Thank Danu and all the gods for Ronan Quinn.

  Yet, despite the fact that he’d had graphic fantasies about what to do with her if he ever laid hands on her, he was finding himself flummoxed when faced with her in the flesh. He’d always imagined throttling her on the spot, but he hadn’t been able to do it back in the Boundary Lands. She’d looked so fucking innocent standing there in the woods, so surprised. He’d ambushed her good, though she’d fought him like the demon she was.

  The exact reason why he hadn’t crushed her throat right there on the road to Piefferburg City remained elusive. It appeared her death would have to wait until he was ready.

  So, for now, he would simply savor his victory . . . and get stumbling drunk.

  Aileen. Never had her memory been so sharp as it was tonight. He could still scent the light gardenia of the perfume she’d swipe on her wrists and under her earlobes. His fingers curling in his lap, he could recall the smooth skin of her abdomen and her inner thigh. Her laugh still rang clear in his mind when he called it up, and the way she’d whisper his name in the middle of the night, so full of need, made his cock hard even now.

  In the years since her death, he’d been in more than one serious relationship but none of those women had diminished her memory. He’d known Aileen since they’d been in the cradle. Both of them had belonged to the Unseelie Court from birth and had grown up in Ireland, under the Shadow King’s rule. Their parents had been friends and he and Aileen had played together as babies, learned to walk together through his parents’ garden, and run away from each other’s cooties before adolescence had hit.

  Back then they’d lived in a small village in Northern Ireland, side by side with humans who didn’t know their true nature. Most of the fae had lived in cottages in the woods in that area, while the humans resided in the village itself.

  In childhood Aileen had used her looks to get away with all kinds of shit another little girl never would have been able to pull off. He especially remembered the bout of bad behavior
she’d displayed when she was about eight. He’d caught her catching and tormenting animals in the woods, projecting her inner pain onto poor defenseless rabbits and birds. The things she’d done to them had been gruesome, but he’d understood that it had been her way—no matter how misguided—of dealing with her traumatic home life.

  It was an act that had complemented her magick. She could cause a living thing to bleed internally until it died. That was what made her Unseelie, but it was only part of what she’d done to the animals. Letting them bleed internally hadn’t been enough for her. Thinking about it still gave Aeric a stomachache.

  He’d helped her through that dark period of her life, helped her through the pain of having an insensitive drunk for a father and a cold, unloving bitch for a mother. It was a time he didn’t like to think about, something he’d kept secret from everyone to protect Aileen. Usually he pushed it far from his mind because it tarnished his memory of her, but tonight his emotions were so high they forced him to recall everything.

  They’d always shared a special bond, knowing absolutely everything about each other. That bond had deepened when they’d turned sixteen and noticed each other as more than friends. They’d fallen in love—an unbreakable, magickal kind that was rare even to the fae folk. They knew every aspect of each other and shared a unique psychic bond. Essentially, they were soul mates, two halves of one whole.

  He would have given his life for hers, if he’d been able.

  If Aileen were alive today, they would be married— soul-bonded, no less—and have a passel of kids, Danu willing. He pressed the flat of his hand to the center of his chest. It physically hurt to think about his loss.