by Grey, T. A.
“Supposedly, I’m really powerful or something,” Abby said, trying to lighten the dark mood.
Aidan smiled wryly. “Seeing as you froze me and my men in place and escaped from us without too much trouble, I’d have to agree.”
“Yeah, well, about that whole escape thing. You can’t keep us here, Aidan.” His pointed look gave her pause. “Okay, well I’m sure you could keep us here but what for? Just let us go. We have a queen to kill.” Wow, she was talking about it as if she was actually going to go through with something so insane.
“What do you get out of this?” he asked her.
Abby put on a smile as she struggled to find an answer. Alrik looked down at her and something strange swirled in his eyes. It was a haunted look. A look that flashed at some hidden thought because instantly guilt and shame filled his gaze. The look sent the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. She did not like this. She didn’t like this at all.
He was hiding something.
Something that had to do with her. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good. Then she remembered. At first, she did think he’d kill her. There was no way he’d let her kill her mother and just walk away plain as day. Maybe he really did plan to kill her.
Intense, stomach-churning pain exploded inside her. Tears welled in her eyes. Her body suddenly felt so cold, except for where his hand still clutched hers. Maybe it was just her mind playing tricks on her but she swore he held her hand so much tighter than before as if he was clinging to her.
He saw the look on her face and knew. He knew that she knew.
Looking down, she stared at her lighter colored hand in his dark, cursed one. His touch had comforted her before. Now she felt only disgust. She sniffled, her nose starting to run.
Oh, God, why did it have to hurt so badly? Her heart felt like it’d exploded in her chest cavity like something hard was lodged inside her was trying to break her apart. She wanted to just run away and bury herself away crying until she turned numb. Just numb.
Stupid, Abbigail.
She understood now why she was reacting this way to that betraying look in his eyes. Those few moments where raw honestly had flashed in his eyes and told her something she wished she’d never found out.
She loved him.
It took effort, but she swallowed hard and pushed back the tears, delicately cleared her throat so the heavy emotion couldn’t be heard and then tugged her hand—hard—until he let her go. Another lance of pain cut through her. Oh, she hated this, both wanting him to touch her and not touch her.
She managed to lift her heavy head to Aidan who watched her with an intense look. “What is it?” he asked.
“What do I get out of this?” she repeated. Damn but her voice was hoarse. It couldn’t be more obvious that she was near the breaking point. “Apparently, I don’t get anything out of this.” Her lips twitched with a bittersweet smile. Alrik was hiding something from her. Something big judging by the guilt in his eyes. She didn’t need to have witch’s instincts to know whatever it was didn’t bode well for her at all.
I trusted him! her mind wailed.
“Come with me and you will.” Aidan’s final plea didn’t move her in any way except to make her feel worse. She didn’t want to hurt him, but that’s what she had to do. She could use his help but he wouldn’t help her. He just wanted her for his own purposes too, and then what would happen when the other demon’s got jealous of him having a woman? There’d be bloodshed and somehow she’d get hurt in the process.
“No, I’m not going with you either.”
Disappointment flashed in Aidan’s eyes, pulling her heartstrings.
Alrik tensed, his big shoulders bulging. “What do you mean ‘either’?”
She tried to hold his gaze, but couldn’t.
Aidan saved her from the pressing intensity radiating from Alrik. “You will let her make her own choice. If she doesn’t want to help you any more then she doesn’t have to. She can come with us.”
No, no I can’t, she wanted to say.
The atmosphere shifted, becoming tense like a string pulled taut. “I’m not leaving here without her, and I think it’s time you took your leave Aidan,” growled Alrik.
That icy energy was starting to pour out of Alrik. In her witch’s eye, the one she’d managed to shut off for so many years, she could see it like a fog forming around him.
Some instinct inside her had her taking one step back then another as the two big men faced each other. It all felt so wrong. She didn’t want them to fight. She didn’t want to be the cause of any of it.
But that look in his eyes...
God, how could he?
What did he have planned?
How could she have been so blinded by him?
Well, she wasn’t now. She’d woken from her stupid, romantic dreams. He was up to something and if it wasn’t to kill her like her gut told her, then it was something else but it was just as bad. Maybe he meant to kill her and her mother? To leave no possible witnesses? Another horrible idea hit her. The thought nearly sent her to her knees. Maybe he’d already killed her mom.
Oh, God...
It was hard to breathe. She kept sucking in air but it wasn’t enough, it didn’t fill her lungs full like it should. Her mind whirled as if she was riding a carousel spinning out of control moving faster and faster. Blood pumped fast and hard in her head and throughout her body. She was too warm; too much was happening.
Alrik and Aidan were in each other’s faces. Their lips moved but she couldn’t make out what they were saying. So much anger. So much negativity. They shook with the rage. That icy cloud around Alrik grew and grew. She didn’t want anything to do with this. She just wanted out. She just wanted to go back home to her rented little house with the cheap furniture.
She just wanted it to stop.
She didn’t know who threw the first punch. The men were a blur of movement, but one of them struck first. All she saw, or, heard rather, was the sound of flesh being pummeled. She winced stumbling backwards as her stomach convulsed trying to make the contents in her stomach come back up.
“Stop it.” Her voice was too quiet.
“Please, stop it,” she tried again, a little louder.
Still, the men launched at each other, grunts and cracks, and those horrible sounds of flesh hitting flesh assaulting her senses as they did each other.
Her senses went on overload. She couldn’t contain it anymore. She had to unleash the burning, fiery energy boiling up inside her. It had to be released—must go somewhere. The spinning of her mind had to stop. The pain in her heart and in her belly had to stop.
With a shout that could cause an avalanche, she screamed. “STOP IT!”
With her scream, something else happened. Something she didn’t expect.
The men were thrown back as if struck by a wrecking ball. They flew high into the air and backwards. They had to have gone nearly half a mile. Abby shook, her knees knocking together, and her arms trembling with the force of what she’d just done. She’d never done anything like that.
She could hear the demons waking up behind her, asking questions, and moving around. There was no time to waste; with one final glance at Alrik she watched his body slam into the trunk of a tree. It was too far away to be certain, but she thought she heard a bone-snapping crunch. The tree shuddered and limbs broke and crashed around him.
She took a step toward him then caught herself. He’d be fine, she knew that. Besides, she needed to get away from him now, not run over there and try to nurse him back to health.
She just hoped he was hit hard enough to give her some time to run. With her heart breaking, she took off down the length of the fissure.
It took her a moment before she realized it.
That she was a blur of speed.
All that energy inside her still hadn’t burned up. Her high emotions drove the magic in her blood.
The fire was still there, even as she trembled from the power of it, and she ran fast as light
away from the one who broke her heart.
She had at least one thing to thank Alrik for ; he had helped to make her stronger. Now she could get away from him.
Chapter Eighteen
Alrik was dreaming, or not really. He drifted between two worlds of consciousness, one he is aware that he was waking up, and the other still lingering in the dream world.
As a young man he used to dream in vibrant colors of scenes that always seemed cut short and never made any real sense. All they served to do was make him feel good or bad when he woke up. In that way, his dreams used to set the tone for the day. But, he hadn’t dreamt in a long time. Not since… His body jerked, fighting the thought but it came anyway, always unrelenting.
The last dream he’d had happened before Arianna’s death—before his brother took back his kingdom.
Then he had dreamed of a fantasy for what happened could never be true. He had looked like his real self, golden-skinned like his brother Telal. They stood next to each other on the dais in the kingdom’s hall. All the haute and prolitare stood in the crowd, most but not all with smiles upon their colored faces.
A somewhat familiar face was there. The succubus woman, Lily Bellum. She meant something special to his brother. That was evident from the way his brother’s eyes watched her with reverence and in the way he kept her hand tucked in his.
As his mind started to drift out of the dream, a different memory took him. The bitter sounds of Telal weeping at her death. Alrik had felt the same way seeing his Arianna die in front of him. He’d been unable to heal her. Except while there’d been two deaths that night his Arianna couldn’t be resuscitated. At least Telal got his woman back.
More strange thoughts came seemingly out of nowhere as his body drifted in the ether of sleep lightweight and floating in air.
Once upon a time, he could heal death from a person’s soul. It would only work on a fresh corpse, but that kind of mighty power ran through his veins. Using that kind of power would zap him, incapacitate him for days maybe even longer, but once in his hands he held the power to heal. No longer did he have that.
It’d died with his heart many years ago.
That didn’t mean he didn’t try when Arianna fell before him, her white gown pooling around her body, and blood spilling from her lips.
He’d leaned over her graceful body and her last words had ringed in his red-hazed, raging mind for a long time to come: “Be good, Alrik”.
He’d gone mad. He’d summoned all the magic inside him to heal her, to bring her back, but nothing happened. Not a lick of warmth had stirred inside him that accompanied a healing spell. Nothing but iciness encased him. Her breath never stuttered once, her heart didn’t beat again, not even a single palpitation.
She was dead, and it was his fault.
Not that he quite saw it that way at the time. At the time, it was Telal who’d killed her, Telal who had stormed into his life only to ruin it again. Only later, after he’d been cast out banished from the kingdom by Telal, did he think. When one had nothing but his own thoughts as he wandered an endless land, his thoughts became him.
Oh, he’d thought over that terrible night again and again and again.
The more he walked the more he realized. His brother might have cast the final blow but if not for all of his own deeds, Arianna would still be alive and breathing.
He didn’t come to such a discovery easily. Oh no, it’d taken months and months of trekking through the rift, searching for his mother, and cutting of idummi heads to realize it.
He got her killed. His actions, his deeds led her to that place to begin with. He was the reason she was dead. And, he was the reason he couldn’t save her.
Yet even that wasn’t the whole story. For it was the curse that bound him to think dark thoughts, to be dark inside that made him unable to heal with spellcasting. His mother’s curse held the real blame. It was her fault ultimately, and he’d see her pay before he died.
His thoughts drifted as his numb body floated between sleep and aware. He drifted below the line of conscious once more allowing thoughts and colored pictures of the past to come over him.
It went back to the dream on the dais where he stood with his brother and his mate.
He was smiling at Telal.
Seeing that, even in a dream stunned him. It was as if he saw himself from another person’s body. He watched his smiling, golden face with violet eyes and auburn hair shining with the glint of red in the light—colors he hadn’t witnessed on himself in ages—as if he watched a stranger. For that’s what he’d become to himself.
His gaze wandered to the woman standing next to him. She stood with her face hidden in the shadows. Unease flittered through him and he tried tugging on her hand to bring her into the light with him.
Telal made a joke and Alrik laughed. Their voices were muffled, faraway sounding to his dreaming mind. He couldn’t make out the words, but he could feel the emotion of it. His chest warmed and his body felt as if he was floating as the laugh went through him.
His gaze moved back to the woman standing with him covered in shadows. A frown tugged his lips, and he tugged on the small, delicate hand trying to pull her into the light but she resisted. He wanted to see her. Needed to see her face.
No words left her lips but he sensed a hesitation, the “no” on her lips, though she never spoke. She started pulling away from him and sorrow clouded his heart, made him slow to grab for her when she pulled back. Then, she slipped into the shadows and was gone.
That dream had happened within a month of Arianna’s death, and now he’d just had it again.
What did it mean?
Had it hinted at Arianna’s impending death? He didn’t know, but then why was he having the dream now? Did it have anything to do with Arianna at all? Maybe the dream had everything to do with Abbigail? If it did have to do with Arianna then that didn’t make sense. Why did he look like his old self? Maybe the dream had just been a sign that she was the hope he’d been looking for because t she could have found a way to cure his curse. Then they would be standing hand in hand, mated, across from his brother and mate.
Too many questions and not enough answers.
He cursed himself, wishing he’d asked the seer. The seer would have the answer. He needed to know.
Some niggling thought kept coming up. Was it Abbigail and not Arianna pulling away from him this time? Even in sleep, his gut churned at the idea. If so, why would she? The very thought brought a sharp, tight pain into his chest and throat as if he was stuffed to full.
Yet the thought didn’t sit right with him.
Alrik sighed. That dream had happened more than a year ago, before his life was completely ruined. He never had a repeat dream until that one. Why that dream? Why now? Those dreams didn’t bare repeating since he could never forget it.
Damn if the dream didn’t make him feel things he hadn’t in so long. It made him want to share the mirth he’d found so briefly in his dream. He wanted to find it and share it with her. Not Arianna. He could see now that it wasn’t meant to be. Even with her death staining his hands, he could see it. He did love her. He’d loved her for a very long time, but they’d had such a short time to grow together. In fact, Alrik wasn’t so sure they did at all. Maybe if they’d had more time together.
Maybe...
But if he did love her then that couldn’t explain what he felt for Abbigail Krenshaw. For that woman, that human, made him feel things so wildly different, so tremendous that he didn’t know if he could always keep it contained.
Alrik started to rise back to consciousness, his dream and painful thoughts fading. But then, something pulled him back under and he dreamt once more.
This time he dreamt of something new. Something he’d never dreamt of before and it set forth a new drive in his heart.
Abbigail and he were at a strange place where the sky shined so bright he had to squint to see. White soft sand rested beneath their warm bodies, the substance finer than sugar. The
heat made him so warm like he could never remember being, almost as if the beautiful light was baking him.
Abbigail looked stunning. Nude, her skin glistened in the bright light with splotches of sand on her legs and arms. She looked up at him with that brilliant smile on her face, and he couldn’t stop smiling back and sharing in the moment with her. He reached over, his hand cupping her cheek as he leaned in to kiss her. In that moment he realized his skin was golden. Her beautiful eyes slowly closed and her lips curled with a smile that parted for him.
But his dream warm fuzzing feeling in his chest ended with a mighty blow.
Alrik came crashing back into reality as a mighty kick landed against his ribs. His eyes shot open, and before he thought twice, magic thrust from his fingertips. With a grunt the perpetrator slammed into a tree sending flakes of woodchips around him.
Alrik stood slowly, cradling his side with one hand. He surveyed the man he had pinned to the tree with invisible binds. Of course, he should have expected it. The vampire would not give up so easily.
“Trying to kill a man when he’s down? I thought you were above such sleazy tactics, Aidan.” Not thinking about why he did it, he released his magical hold on Aidan.
The vampire smiled, a flash of fang showed and then disappeared. “Just giving you a good old wake up call, king. Your woman has fled. I would have sought her out...but she made her choice. It isn’t me she wants. Apparently it isn’t you either.”
Alrik saw Aidan’s sickeningly happy smile and wanted to run his fist through it.
Memories surged back at once. Fucking hell.
Alrik jerked his gaze in the direction from where it all happened, where Abbigail had unleashed such power that it’d stunned him with its strength. She’d tossed him and the vampire as if they were mere pebbles not large, fully-grown supernatural men. And she’d done it over a long distance.
So, what the seer said was true. She really was powerful. For the first time he really believed she could do this. He’d seen her perform magic at the castle, then with the jaheera, and now this. In such a short time together, that only meant she was growing stronger and recovering faster. Soon, she’d be able to cast powerful magic more than once a day and not be spent.