Tempted by a Rogue Prince
Page 16
Fair Rosalind.
His Little Wild Rose.
She stood before him, a slender sylph-like creature who had witnessed the worst in him but somehow found the strength to bravely step within his reach and risk everything in order to bring him light in his darkest moments. She seemed more fantasy than reality, too good and pure of heart to be anything other than a figment of his demented mind, something dreamed up in a fit of madness for him to cling onto and hold to his chest.
A beautiful shadow of the hope that had long ago died in him.
“You going to kneel there all night giving her moon eyes or are we good to get moving again?” Fenix’s deep voice boomed around the valley, reminding Vail that they weren’t alone.
He wasn’t sure what the term ‘moon eyes’ meant but he presumed it was not a good thing.
Or perhaps it was something unsettling judging by Rosalind’s reaction.
Her cheeks turned dark pink and she busied herself with the boots he had given to her, slipping her cut bare feet into them and diligently keeping her eyes away from him.
Vail scrubbed away all sign of his tears and held the connection between him and his brother open for a few seconds more, cherishing the deep bond between them, before he closed it.
He rose to his feet and waited for the witch. She shuffled around in his boots, testing them out.
His boots.
Vail growled low in his throat at that, the sight of her wearing one of his few possessions awakening a startling reaction in him. He liked it.
When she lifted her head and flashed him a brilliant smile, one that relayed her gratitude and said his thoughtfulness had touched her, he experienced an even more startling reaction.
His gaze dropped to her rosy lips and he felt a low tug in his belly, a yank in her direction together with a sudden urge to do something horrific.
He wanted to kiss her.
He flashed his fangs and hissed at her instead. “Witch.”
She backed off a step, hurt flickering across her face, causing her smile to fall away. She opened her mouth, snapped it shut again and spun on her heel, giving him her back. He kept his boots firmly planted to the black earth until she was over two metres away and then he started after her, keeping the distance between them steady as he slowly, piece by piece, destroyed the dark need she had somehow placed inside him.
Her restraints weren’t working and she had cast a spell on him to force him into wanting her, just as Kordula had done before her.
The remaining sensible part of him whispered that it wasn’t magic. Her powers were still at a low level just within range of his sharp senses. They hadn’t grown stronger.
It was the bond then.
She had wanted to kiss him and the bond had wanted to force his compliance in order to satisfy his female’s needs.
Vail settled on that as the reason behind his need to kiss her and closed in on her as they drew near to the end of the valley.
“You will rest ahead. I will stand guard while you and Fenix sleep.” He fell into step beside her, but kept some distance between them, so the constant level of magic she radiated didn’t push him over the edge.
He couldn’t afford such a thing when he was still fighting the effects of opening his bond with Loren in order to bypass the barrier he had placed on the elf kingdom millennia ago, shutting Kordula out.
Now, he used that same barrier to keep him from returning whenever he was weak and wanted to see his homeland again. As much as he desired it, longed for it, the elf kingdom was no longer his home. None there would welcome him after the terrible things he had done to his people and to his brother.
Little Wild Rose looked across at him and shook her head, causing her blonde tangled waves to bounce against her shoulders. “I don’t sleep.”
Vail frowned. She didn’t sleep? All creatures required sleep, even witches. He looked deep into her eyes, trying to detect whether it was the result of a spell, or she had a reason she didn’t want to sleep.
Was it because of the dark things he had felt in her back in the solitary cell? She had been gripped by a sort of madness, a hallucination that had shaken her and had made him feel she shared something in common with him.
Something haunted her.
Did it haunt her sleep too?
If it did and she refused to sleep because of it, then whatever awaited her in her dreams had to terrify her.
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her, the words all lined up and all very civil, when she turned her cheek to him and sped up.
Vail bit back a growl of frustration. Was he this frustrating to her? Whenever he thought he could speak civilly to her and might learn something about her and come to understand how she affected him so deeply and was able to bring him out of the darkness, she distanced herself.
She turned quiet and thoughtful, drawing into herself and away from him. Whatever she was thinking, it troubled her. He felt the weight of it on his heart, a steady ache laced with fear.
They entered the canyon, the steep cragged black sides rising to over one hundred feet above them. He had to drop behind her again, the winding rocky corridor too narrow for them to walk side by side. The vertical walls stole all light, plunging the path ahead into darkness. Fenix led the way, scrambling up an incline before disappearing over the brow, his fae sight most likely as clear as Vail’s was despite the darkness.
“Bugger.” Rosalind slammed face first into the path, her pain echoing in his right knee and palms. “Bloody sod it. This is stupid. I can’t see a damned thing!”
Vail cursed himself. He hadn’t even thought about the fact that she wouldn’t be able to see in the dark without a spell to aid her.
She huffed and ground out a few things in the fae tongue that he didn’t understand, but that drew a chuckle from Fenix. Vail’s name came up.
They were speaking of him to each other, knowing he couldn’t understand them.
He snarled at her and then Fenix, and the incubus wisely turned away and kept walking, swinging his blade up to rest on his bare shoulder.
“Why do you not sleep?” Vail refused to be civil now she had resorted to speaking about him behind his back but right in front of him, no doubt saying nasty things about him. Things he probably deserved. “You require rest.”
She didn’t respond. She didn’t even look at him. She dusted herself off and started walking again, bending forwards and using her hands to feel the path ahead.
The chain between her manacles jangled on the black rocks.
Vail grimaced. “Are you upset because I refused to release you?”
She shook her head but he wasn’t convinced.
He ventured closer and glanced down at her wrists. They were bloodied where the thick metal cuffs clamped tightly around her slender arms, new scars forming on her dirty skin. He dragged his gaze away, shame spiralling through him and leaving him feeling wretched that his fear of her hurting him was causing him to hurt her.
“What are your powers?” he whispered, afraid she might answer and he might not like it. He had met light witches in his time, those devoted to good and helping others. Was she one of their kind?
“I would never use them on you, Vail. We’re allies.” The glance she gave him said that she thought about them as more than allies.
She desired him.
The darkness within him was swift to rise, surging up like an unstoppable tide to sweep him away. A growl rumbled through him, his fangs lengthening in response to the threat she posed, and he backed off a step to stop himself from shoving her away.
She meant to deceive him. She wanted to lure him into her web and place him under her spell. She was vile and treacherous.
She would enslave him the moment he let down his guard.
No. Vail clawed himself back from the brink, refusing to surrender to the darkness and the need for violence stirring within him. He gritted his teeth and battled his urge to lash out at her, to hurt her before she could do the same to him.
Vail bared his fangs at her.
She withdrew another step, her hands rising to her chest, the action cutting at him together with the hurt and fear that flickered in her eyes. An overwhelming need to reach out and comfort her surged through him, a desire to apologise and make amends, even as the darker part of him whispered that this was his chance to strike without her seeing it coming.
Vail tunnelled his black claws into his hair, pressing their sharp tips into his scalp, and focused on the pain, using it to drive that compelling voice out of his head.
He chuckled under his breath as his heart twisted, torn by conflicting desires, and the voice grew stronger, mocking him.
No female in her right mind would ever desire a male like him.
He had never been good like Loren, not even before the sorceress had driven him mad, pushing him over the brink with glee and sending him plummeting into insanity. His behaviour around the witch was a clear indication of how bad he was inside—how evil—and how weak he was too. He couldn’t shake his instinct to protect himself whenever she used a trace of her power around him, or drew too close to him. That instinct made him twitchy and snappish, and filled him with a violent need to harm her in order to save himself.
What kind of female could ever desire a male such as that?
A ki’ara deserved love and respect. She deserved to be cherished and protected, kept safe by her devoted mate, pampered and given all she desired.
He could never do such a thing for her. He couldn’t give her the life she deserved as an eternal mate. His fated female.
He would forever be a danger to her, more likely to harm her than protect her, to put her through hell than give her a life filled with comfort and love. She would never feel secure around him, would always doubt his actions and his feelings, believing on some level that he despised her because of what she was, and that would constantly play on his mind, keeping him on edge and the darkness a relentless presence at the back of his mind, waiting to strike.
He closed his eyes, shutting out the witch and the world around him, searching deep within himself for a glimmer of good, for something that would make him worthy of any female or anyone’s affection.
Four thousand years ago, before he had met Kordula at the borders of his kingdom, he might have been worthy of the love of a good female.
Finding his fated one had been everything to him back then, and even his prediction about her hadn’t swayed him from his mission to locate her.
His female would be a sorceress and when they met, he would be maddened.
All the centuries after that prediction had been given to him, Vail had thought it to mean he would go crazy over her, not be insane when he met her.
When Kordula had used that prediction to spring her trap, he had lost all faith in it. He had spent millennia believing it had all been a trick devised by her kin to lure him to her so she could enslave him and attempt to steal control of his kingdom.
Vail cracked his eyes open and stared at Rosalind, deep into her eyes. Heat stirred behind his breast, warmth that eased his tired body and calmed his turbulent mind as it spread through his limbs. Peace.
Now, he believed in his prediction again, because she was standing before him, her dazzling blue eyes locked with his and filled with tender concern that triumphed over her fear, driving it back into the shadows of her heart.
He was insane, knew that without a doubt even though he despised admitting it and couldn’t bear to hear others say it about him, and now he had met a sorceress he recognised as his mate.
Perhaps everything he had been through and endured was so he could reach this moment, and had happened in order to bring them together in this dark place, but he wasn’t sure whether it had all been worth it.
He didn’t trust her, and he could never trust himself.
He didn’t understand her either.
She seemed troubled and refused to sleep. Why? He wanted to command her to tell him so he could do all in his power to help her, but she wouldn’t speak about it with him. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what someone should do in this situation.
He might have once, but not now, not when everything that had once been normal for him and was normal for others was now alien and confusing, beyond his grasp.
He didn’t know how to be kind, or affectionate. He wasn’t sure how to encourage her to speak.
His only point of reference was Loren. He had watched over his brother whenever he was in the mortal realm with his ki’ara, Olivia. He had seen how they interacted with each other, a series of gentle touches constantly reaffirming their bond without them even knowing it. He had seen his brother’s love for his female, and his devotion, and his happiness.
He was glad Loren was happy, but that emotion felt foreign to Vail too. Unknown. It was something he was no longer capable of feeling.
He only knew the darker side of emotions. He knew pain and rage, fury and hatred. They filled him and ruled him, made him who he was now.
If everything he had suffered had been to bring him to this place at this exact time, to deliver him into the presence of his fated female, then perhaps it had also been for another reason too.
To bring Loren to his ki’ara.
It had taken a decades long hunt to find his brother’s fated female, and in that time Vail had secretly visited many male witches, seeking their knowledge to point him towards Loren’s future mate. Every visit had threatened to push him over the edge, had filled him with hatred as he had waited in their presence while they had used their magic to scry for Olivia.
Every visit had ended the same way, with him going out and killing in order to purge himself of his fury and his dark hungers. He had gorged himself on blood until he had come close to passing out, swallowed by his lust for it. It had awakened an addiction that he fought to this day, a terrible thirst for blood that would send him into the arms of the darkness that lived within him if he gave into it.
That addiction had been the sign that had opened his eyes to how close he was to becoming one of the tainted and he fought it as best he could, a part of him unwilling to surrender to it and the fate that awaited him.
He would become a savage beast, his powers fading with each life he stole during his rages, with every soul he consumed as he drank its host dry. He would become something worse than a vampire—one of the very creatures who had fathered that species.
One of the tainted his brother and he had left behind in the mortal world when they had withdrawn the elves to this realm to save them all from such a dark and terrible fate.
No elf desired such a thing.
Not even him.
So he fought the beast within him that bayed for blood and hungered for the kill, clinging to his pathetic existence and a shred of hope that he might somehow save himself or find death before the darkness consumed him forever.
His fangs itched at the thought of blood and he glanced at Rosalind’s neck.
His markings flared into existence, a hot prickly flush that chased across his skin and illuminated the darkness as they shone through the scales of his armour, throwing colours across her face.
He hungered for another taste of her. The thought of biting her stirred more than his hunger though. It stirred desire in his veins, a powerful need to place his hands on her hips and draw her slender body against his, until he could feel her breasts pressing against his chest and could capture her mouth with his. His blood caught fire, the intense heat rising rapidly and blazing through him, an inferno only she could quell.
The dark beast within him snarled and railed against that dangerous desire, and Vail staggered back a step, horrified by what he had wanted to do.
He could not touch the witch.
He felt the ghostly press of her hands on his flesh, saw the cell around him again and her above him, her blue eyes roaming his body as she touched him.
Laid her hands on
his body.
Her bare flesh against his.
Vail turned his back on her and struggled to focus on something else, anything other than the press of her warm hands on his skin.
He reached for the bond with his brother, needing the calm that flowed through him whenever he opened it, washing him clean of his sins for an all too brief span of time.
The tiny remnant of the man he had once been, a man who felt more like a ghost to him now or an illusion of a life he never had, turned against him and whispered that he didn’t deserve Rosalind.
She was too bright to look at, too beautiful and pure, and he was ugly and tainted, darkness made flesh.
On the verge of a descent into a black abyss from which he could never return.
She had felt that inside him through their bond. She knew how wretched he was and how close to the edge, that he was holding on with just the tips of his claws, in danger of becoming little more than an animal, like so many elves before him.
“Vail?” she whispered and he snarled over his shoulder at her, needing her away from him.
“Leave me.” He staggered forwards a few steps and his right shoulder hit the jagged black wall of the canyon.
He wanted her to leave, hoped she would never turn back and would slip out of his wretched life, safe away from him, even though she was more vital to him than air and he would die without her.
He could bear the pain of his memories and the weight of his sins, but he couldn’t bear her being gone. He couldn’t bear knowing he would never see her again, would never bathe in her light and sense her sweet emotions, or be blessed by her smile. It stole the breath from his lungs and squeezed his heart in his chest.
He growled and clutched at the obsidian stones, pressing his claws in deep, the pain in his heart eclipsing that in his fingertips as he fought the fierce need to grab her wrist and pull her into his arms, to hold her and press her close, and refuse to let her go.
She had bewitched him completely, but he feared this wasn’t a spell. This was something infinitely more dangerous.
Something that drove him mad with a need to spurn her at the same time as he needed to hold on to her.