Tempted by a Rogue Prince

by Felicity Heaton

  The elf blinked, shock written across every line of his handsome face.

  Rosalind ignored the bolt of heat that went through her, turned her nose up and stomped along the corridor towards her cell, shaking like a leaf in a storm and unsure whether her jelly legs would give out before she reached her quarters.

  There was one thing she was sure of though.

  The next time she set eyes on that elf, he was going to find out that Hell had no furies that could match a witch scorned.

  CHAPTER 5

  Ki’ara.

  Vail refused to believe he had called the female such a thing. It was all a trick she had devised to lure him into her trap. She had heard him mutter that word, picking it out from all the others, latching onto it in the hope it would weaken him enough for her to cast a spell on him. She meant to enslave him with it, just as another had before her.

  He stared at the ceiling, studying the cracks between the dark grey stones, and clawed his hair back, pulling it tight, until his scalp stung.

  Had he called her ki’ara?

  Why?

  Vail laughed emptily to himself, the sound unnerving even him. The occupants of the cells on either side of his shuffled further away, evidently deciding it wise to distance themselves from his insanity.

  Yes. That was why he had used that word for her. Kordula had driven him madder than he had thought possible, and that was the reason he had called the fair female such a name, because he had no ki’ara.

  He wasn’t that lucky.

  The ceiling of his cell swam out of focus as his heart beat frantically against his ribs, far quicker than normal, the pace sickening him.

  Filling him with dread.

  It wasn’t possible that it was her heart causing his to race, the product of a bond he had initiated between them by giving her blood. It wasn’t. He shook his head and barked out another laugh, this one bordering on hysterical judging by the way the incubus slunk away from the bars of his cell across the corridor from Vail’s and eyed him warily. She couldn’t be.

  The incubus.

  Vail slowly tilted his head to his left to face him. “You.”

  The dark-haired male pointed at himself, his green eyes wide, as if he wasn’t sure Vail was talking to him. Who else was there to speak with in this dreadful place? This fae was the only one he could see, and the only one who could see him where he lay, and that meant the male had witnessed everything.

  He had heard everything.

  Vail allowed his hands to fall away from his hair. They hung limp, his arms stretched out above his head, the length of chain securing him to the stone slab dragging across the flags.

  “Did she speak the truth?” Vail said and the incubus nodded without hesitation.

  Vail turned his face away to stare at the ceiling again. Ki’ara. He had called her such a thing.

  “You made her drink from you,” the male said in a voice laced with disgust, one that let Vail know exactly what this male thought of him. “Sick wanker.”

  He wasn’t sure what that profanity meant but no profanity was complimentary. This male thought him wretched indeed.

  “To heal her,” Vail whispered to the ceiling, still unable to believe that he had done such a thing.

  Yet he could feel the ties that bound them, his body to hers. He knew their hearts beat in time with each other, hers causing his to race, speaking to him of how frightened she had been when she had confronted him and the fury that lingered within her still. It would be that way until the bond was complete, something that felt impossible to him, but necessary too, as vital to him as air and blood.

  Their feelings mingled and flowed from one to the other. He was weak of body and mind, hunger draining his powers, but he could sense her fear and every instinct he possessed demanded he reach her and take away the source of that fear so she would feel safe again.

  Impossible. He was the source of her fear. He was the one who had upset her.

  She had already removed herself from him.

  When she had stopped outside his cell and looked at him, her eyes had sparked with silver fire that had danced amongst the cool blue waters. He had witnessed the power held locked within her and knew that she had longed to direct it at him. She had wanted to hit him with a spell.

  He unleashed a feral snarl and battled the sense of connection to her, refusing to believe it stemmed from anything other than his blood in her body. She was not his ki’ara. The prediction given to him as a youth had been wrong. It had all been a lie, a trick by Kordula somehow. Her ancestors had planted the seed in his head that his fated female would be a sorceress and he had foolishly believed it. They had then sent her to him and she had set her trap. He had fallen right into it.

  He’d had no bond with Kordula, and he had no bond with this witch either.

  Using the same power that kept his connection to Loren closed, he severed the one that linked him to her, shutting out her emotions.

  His heart didn’t slow though.

  Demons stopped outside his cell again. Vail ignored them, focusing on his heart instead, willing it to slow and adopt a normal rhythm, one that didn’t make his head spin and leave him feeling weaker.

  One of the demons opened the door and held it while the other stepped inside his cell. Vail spared them a glance. They weren’t the normal dungeon dwelling guards. These two wore loose black shirts with their black leather trousers, and carried a set of restraints that he didn’t like.

  They locked the cell door and approached him. The witch’s words came back to him. He was to see the king.

  The demons bent over him, clamping gleaming solid metal cuffs around his wrists and his ankles, and unlocking the ones that held him fastened to the slab. The male nearest his wrists grabbed the short chain between his new manacles, hauling him into a sitting position and then onto his feet, and he didn’t fight them. He wanted to meet this king.

  His knees wobbled under his sudden weight and he locked them, refusing to show any weakness around these wretches.

  The other demon, slightly smaller than his companion, with a chunk of his dirty grey left horn missing, placed a thick band of metal around Vail’s waist and locked it behind his back. It bit into his hips, the metal cold against his skin, but it wasn’t the chill that made it crawl.

  There was magic in these bonds. He could feel it sapping his strength and he growled under his breath, itching to fight it and get it off him. He clenched and unclenched his fists, battling his rising panic, trying to subdue it before it ate away at his control. He had to stay lucid. He couldn’t lose control.

  The demon who had secured the band around his waist placed the chain between Vail’s wrists into a thick loop on the front of the band and shoved it closed, locking the chain to it and making it impossible for him to move his arms. Vail growled when the other demon placed a collar made of the same magically reinforced metal around his neck.

  The larger demon opened the cell door and the smaller one shoved him forwards. The length of the chain between his ankles was only long enough for him to shuffle his bare feet over the smooth cold stones. When he reached the open door, the two males hit the band around his waist and he jerked forwards, losing his balance. A tug on his collar stopped him from falling on his face.

  He glared over his shoulder at them and realised they hadn’t shoved him or pulled him back. Both demons held long metal poles that were now attached to his belt and his collar, keeping him at a distance from them.

  They both pushed on the ends of the poles, forcing him to move. He snarled and flashed his fangs, but had no choice but to obey. He shuffled forwards, his eyes fixed on the floor in front of his feet, shame burning through him. The chain between his ankles rattled and scraped across the stones.

  He despised it.

  Being restrained physically was almost as bad as being restrained by magic.

  He looked at his shackled wrists. In this case, he was being restrained by both magic and a physical item. He hated that he co
uld feel the sorcery in the bonds that held him. It crawled over his skin like an oily slick, suffocating him and making it impossible to think rationally. He hated that he could feel magic in the female too. It drove him mad.

  Sent him deep into dark, twisted memories that pulled him under, tugging him away from reality and leaving him lost in a strange, deranged state that left him feeling as if he was living a nightmare—as eternal and dark as the most hellish pit in the underworld.

  The demons marched him past the cells and he kept his eyes cast downwards, his thoughts turned inwards, fearing he would sense the witch and would lose his grip on reality. He struggled up the stone steps to an arched doorway and flinched as he raised his head and bright torchlight washed over his face. The guard on his left shoved with his poles and Vail silently bared his fangs in warning before trudging onwards, out into the light.

  Males milled around the enormous courtyard of the black castle, some locked in mock battle and others talking in groups. Not all were demon. He spotted bear shifters and one or two dragons in their human forms.

  Not all were male.

  Vail growled low in his throat on sensing the presence of dark magic, his gaze instantly seeking the source of it. Two women stood off to his right, one blonde and one a redhead.

  Vail snarled at her and launched himself in that direction, forgetting that his ankles were bound. He tripped on the short chain and stumbled, and would have fallen on his face had the two demons holding him not pulled back on the poles, jerking him upright like a marionette.

  The two dark witches laughed, the high sound mocking him. He bared his fangs at them and hissed, his pointed ears flattening against the sides of his head, warning them not to laugh at him. It didn’t stop them.

  The warriors around them paid him no heed. They were too busy staring at the witches, hungry gazes raking over their bodies, taking in every curve put on display by their long tight black dresses.

  The witches stared at Vail though, giving him their undivided attention, turning his stomach over with the force of it. Their magic was in the bonds that held him prisoner, touching him. It was all over him, that oily slick covering every inch of him now, smothering him, making him itch to wash himself and scrub it away.

  All witches made him feel this way, whether male or female, dark or light, and he despised them for it.

  The demons shoved him forwards, forcing him to continue his march of shame through the courtyard.

  It struck him that Little Wild Rose didn’t make him react in such a way. When he was around her, he wanted to fight and attack her, needed to defend himself and drive her away, as he did with these witches, but he didn’t feel sickened, drowning in her magic and choking on her presence.

  He shook that thought away. The cuffs she wore dampened her power so he could only feel a fragment of it, and that was the only reason she didn’t repulse him.

  One of the demon guards pushed him in the back. “Keep moving.”

  Vail came back to the world and discovered he was inside one of the towering buildings of the castle. He had lost track of his surroundings, thoughts of the witch stealing his focus, a dangerous and foolish move to have made. He should have been focused on discovering the layout of the castle and looking for weaknesses in its defences, something he could exploit in order to escape.

  They entered a cavernous hall lit by torches mounted on the great gleaming obsidian pillars supporting the vaulted ceiling. Ahead of him, at the end of a long wide aisle, stood a black throne on a raised stone platform.

  On that throne sat a huge demon male, his grey horns curling from beneath his jagged green helm, their painted white tips bright in the low light. They were extended, curling around themselves and flaring forwards into dangerous points, a sign of the anger that flowed from him.

  His broad bare chest bore the scars of war, both recent and centuries past, and a thick braid of black hair lay down one side of it, curling over his shoulder from under his green helm. As Vail approached, his dark eyebrows drew down, narrowing his green eyes and lending a grim edge to his expression.

  “King Bruan, we have brought the elf prisoner as instructed.” The biggest male pushed Vail forwards with such force he almost lost his balance again and he had to fight to stop himself from turning on the inferior wretch.

  He kept his focus locked on the male several metres in front of him. King Bruan.

  The demon king shifted in his seat, his left arm remaining dangling over the edge of his obsidian throne.

  In it was a green and black thick metal torc.

  The male had lost a loved one?

  Vail knew of the demon tradition of wearing a torc to signify the loss of a mate.

  King Bruan lifted it, drawing Vail’s gaze up with it, and stared at it with a faraway look in his eyes.

  “My brother wore this,” he murmured in the demon tongue, his deep voice rumbling through the room. “He lost his female centuries ago, and honoured her for all that time, upholding his vow to make the Fifth Realm the most powerful all Hell had seen.”

  The immense male rose fluidly to his booted feet and glared at Vail, pinning him with green eyes blazing with fury and pain.

  “Frayne would have succeeded in carrying out that vow had it not been for your prince and his part in the war.” The demon king lifted the torc and tightened his grip on it, his knuckles burning with the force. “Now this is all I have of him. This…”

  He tossed the twisted curved piece of metal at Vail. It clattered across the stone flags, the sound loud and jarring in the cavernous room, and stopped a few inches short of his bare feet.

  “And the oath I swore to my warriors when their king fell.” The male prowled down the steps towards Vail, his powerful body shifting with each step, making Vail aware of the vast difference in their strength. In his current condition, he was no match for this king of demons.

  Bruan stopped in front of Vail, grasped his metal collar, catching his neck with his claws at the same time, and hauled him off his feet by it, bringing Vail’s face closer to his. The sweet scent of mead rolled off his breath.

  “I will avenge him,” Bruan snarled down at him, flashing emerging fangs. “You will tell me all you know of the locations of the elf army along their borders.”

  Vail held his gaze as calmly as he could manage when what he really wanted to do was claw the demon’s eyes out and then dig a hole in his chest to extract his black, still-beating heart. A heart he would crush before his eyes so he could see the fear and the light of life drain out of them.

  “I know nothing of troop movements,” Vail stated, sure that the king wouldn’t believe him even though he was speaking the truth.

  Demons were thick-headed. He had learned that the moment he and his brother had set foot in Hell to build their new kingdom. Vail had wanted to take three legions of their army to teach the First and Second Realms of the demons to respect the elves. Loren had suggested a more diplomatic approach of venturing into those kingdoms and speaking directly with their kings. It had almost got him killed. His older brother had always been painfully obstinate and irritatingly diplomatic, wanting to see the good in everyone, even those who held only darkness in their hearts.

  Like him.

  Vail closed his eyes.

  He didn’t understand why his brother fought so hard for him. Could Loren love him still, after everything he had done to his kingdom and his people?

  His strength faltered, his fight leaving him for a heartbeat of time before he dragged himself back to his present location and away from the past and his brother.

  Bruan was studying his face with a shrewd eye, one that Vail didn’t like and that set him on edge. He had underestimated the intelligence of this particular demon and had to tread carefully if he was to convince the male he was of no use to him.

  The demon king lowered him to his feet but retained his hold on Vail’s collar. “You are not a soldier?”

  Vail shook his head. The king eyed him closely, looking
him over from head to toe and back again.

  “I admit you are scrawny and weak, but you do not look like a civilian. There is a little too much pride in those eyes and a little too much courage.” The demon released his collar and stepped back, as if needing to view all of him in one go in order to make a decision about his profession and whether he believed him. He eventually shook his head. “You fought well against my men. You are a soldier.”

  “I am no soldier, although I have done my share of fighting and killing as one of them. I left that life behind long ago. If you see pride and courage, it is born of that period of my life and nothing else. I have wandered the earth since leaving my homeland and have not set foot in it in many centuries.” Vail straightened his spine, standing as tall as he could manage while the demons behind him held his neck and waist under their control. “I have no allegiance to the elves or Prince Loren.”

  “An elf with no allegiance to his kind, who has done his share of killing…” The king moved a step closer again, a glimmer in his eyes that Vail recognised. Madness. The loss of his brother had driven him mad, crazed by a need for vengeance. The male narrowed his green eyes on him and smirked. “I thought you a soldier we could question for intelligence on the prince and perhaps the Third King.”

  Bruan moved so quickly Vail wouldn’t have had a chance to shift backwards to evade him even if he hadn’t been held by two guards. He grabbed Vail’s jaw, his fingers pressing into the left side while his thumb dug into the right, and shoved his head back. He stared down into Vail’s eyes, his smile growing.

  “Forgive me… your highness… I did not recognise you at first.”

  Vail tensed and barely bit back the growl that curled up his throat. He hadn’t expected the demon to know him. He had never seen this male in his life, had never ventured this deep into the interior of the Fifth Realm, and the male was young. It wasn’t possible that they had met.

  The king’s smile held. “You are thinking in there… calculating… you do not hide it well, Mad Elf Prince. You wonder how I know you.”

  Vail did growl now. The demon didn’t flinch.