Four thousand years of being held against his will, forced to kill and forced to fight his brother, and punished whenever he found the strength and courage to go against his orders and attempt to save rather than slaughter.
“Vail,” she whispered and reached for his shoulder.
He teleported away from her and snarled, flashing his fangs. “Do not touch. No touching. Please. I was good. I did what you wanted. I was good. No punishment today.”
He clawed at his chest, leaving red lines across his pale skin, and growled through his teeth.
“Bad things. Always does bad things… no matter what I do. Says it’s a reward. Reward.” He laughed and it ended in another pained growl. He called his armour back and dug his claws into his scalp, squeezing his head with his palms, and dropped to his knees, breathing hard. “I do not want it. I do not want her touching me.”
He rocked back and forth and Rosalind stared blankly at him, struggling to take in what he was saying and the gravity of it.
He threw her a pained look. “No reward. No bad things. I did what you wanted. Please? Do not… hands… touching… not a reward. Fondling… hate her… want to kill her. Will kill the witch. Somehow. Will stop her… and she will not control me anymore… and I can die.”
“Vail, no.” Rosalind pushed to her feet and crossed the glade to him. She reached out to touch his face and he flinched away.
“Do not touch.”
She nodded and kneeled before him instead, aching with a need to comfort him, horrified by what he had said and what she placed in the blanks he had left for her to fill.
He had been told that a witch would be his mate, and this one called Kordula had used that to trick him into thinking he had found his fated one. She had enslaved him with a spell, seizing control of him so she could seize control of his kingdom.
He had done the only thing he could to spare his people from her reign of terror. He had turned on them, making an enemy of himself, severing the bond and trust that existed between them.
She couldn’t imagine how hard that had been on him. He had turned on those he loved, his people and his brother, in order to save them, and even that act of sacrifice hadn’t truly spared them. Kordula had turned Vail against them, forcing him to attack his own people and murder them, and attack others too, and forcing him to fight his own flesh and blood—the brother he clearly loved.
Her heart ached fiercely for him. He had done terrible things, and had been used terribly too.
Her mind went back to the cells at the castle and how he had acted, how maddened he had been by his captivity, and how he had reacted whenever the guards had left him nude, exposed and vulnerable. She ached to erase those memories for him, knew how much they pained him now she knew about his past. She had hated what they had done to him at the time, but now she really despised them for it.
She still couldn’t comprehend the full horror of what he had been through, how his life had been for the past four thousand years, a span of time that seemed like an eternity to her, or how deeply it had all affected him. She wanted to ask him things, but it would only hurt him and dredge up more bad memories that might bring out the darkness in him, and he had suffered enough. He needed to rest, to find a sense of peace and calm again, and she wanted to help him do that.
He looked up into her eyes and clawed at his scalp, drawing blood. His words rang in her ears and his demeanour told her everything. She could see it all in his eyes, how Kordula had abused him, fracturing his mind and shattering his heart and his soul.
She understood the reasons behind his behaviour too, and no longer resented him for anything he had done. She only wished that she had talked with him before their earlier moment.
Not to spare herself the pain, but to spare him the anguish and make the whole experience a better one for him, one that might have erased a fragment of his suffering and placed him on a path towards a better future, towards as normal a life as he could expect to have now.
She wanted to help him overcome his past and how it had coloured his perception of certain things, especially the ones that should have been beautiful experiences.
Ones he now viewed as a violation.
“Vail,” she whispered and he blinked but didn’t stop clawing his scalp.
She bravely moved her hands towards him. His gaze followed them as she brought them up his arms and held them poised over his.
“Let it go now.” She smiled at him and tried to feel good things, knowing he could sense them in her. “No one is going to punish you… or touch you if you don’t want to be touched. I’m sorry I used a spell on you. I never wanted to hurt you.”
His shoulders lowered and he looked down at his knees. “Never wanted to hurt you… Little Wild Rose.”
She smiled sadly, her heart hurting. “Because of the bond—”
“No.” He jerked his head up. “Not the bond. Because you… you’re… you smell like nature… like roses and rain… more pretty than the most beautiful bloom.”
He looked away again and she swore he blushed.
She definitely was.
“Little Wild Rose bloomed for me,” he husked in a thick, gravelly voice filled with hunger and her cheeks scalded.
She wanted to mention that she wasn’t the one who had experienced two climaxes but held her tongue, not wanting to provoke the darkness within him. Now she understood why they had shocked him though, and that he grew hard for her.
“It was the bond,” she muttered.
The tiniest tilt of the corners of his lips warmed her heart.
“Not the bond. Little Wild Rose wants me… as I want her.” His smile faded and he looked up at her, searching her eyes, his violet ones darting between them. “Not the bond.”
She shook her head, giving up her fight to be mad at him and make him pay for what he had done, because she could see in his eyes and feel in him that it had been real. He felt something for her, and she was crazy enough to feel something for him, something that ran deep in her blood and consumed her.
“Bad mate,” he growled beneath his breath. “Frightened Little Wild Rose. Thinks me a monster.”
She sighed. She couldn’t take it anymore. She couldn’t deny the need to comfort him and make him see that she didn’t think he was a monster, and he wasn’t really a bad mate either. Just one who had a lot to overcome. Four thousand years of being abused by one of her kind.
“I hope she’s dead,” Rosalind bit out.
Vail looked confused.
And then startled when she placed her hands over his, drew them away from the sides of his head, and clutched them together by her heart.
He stared wide-eyed at his hands and swallowed hard, his pupils gobbling up his irises. Perhaps placing his hands right against her breasts hadn’t been her wisest move.
She lifted them and toyed with his black claws, her fingers coming away stained with his blood. He frowned and his claws disappeared, his armour receding into the twin bands around his wrists, leaving his chest bare and his lower half clad in black trousers.
“Rosalind shouldn’t have to touch my claws.”
She smiled at the use of her name and the sincerity in his gaze as he looked at her.
“Did you kill the bitch?” she said and his demeanour changed abruptly, darkening dangerously.
“No.”
She cursed. How the bloody hell had he broken the witch’s spell on him?
“My… brother… killed her.”
That explained a lot. “I’ll have to thank him if I ever meet him again. No one deserves to go through what you did, Vail. No one.”
He didn’t flinch away when she risked brushing the backs of her fingers across his cheek.
“You should rest,” she murmured, lost in his eyes as they held hers, intense and focused, with a hungry edge that threatened to stir her desire again.
Now really wasn’t the time for that sort of thing. Both of them needed to process what had happened.
“Little Wild R
ose must rest too,” he said as she drew her hand back to her chest and released his.
She nodded, hating lying to him but knowing he would grow upset if she told him she didn’t intend to sleep. She couldn’t. The nightmares were waiting and she wasn’t strong enough to face them right now.
She would spend the night watching over him instead, as he had watched over her in the cave, taking care of her.
He stretched and then curled up on his side on the grass before rolling onto his back. She cursed him for looking so tempting stretched out like that, his honed torso on display, and shuffled further away, closer to the fire.
She sat with it warming her side while she watched him drifting off to sleep, his hands resting on his stomach, fingers stained with earth and blood.
Part of her wanted to cling to her anger, but the rest said to let it go. Tomorrow was a new day and now she knew more about her mysterious dark elf prince. She was finally beginning to understand him.
The trouble was, it had only made her fall harder for him and deeper under his spell.
She didn’t want to love him.
She didn’t want to fall for him when she would only end up torn away from him.
It frightened her.
But she wasn’t alone. She had seen it in his eyes and felt it through their bond. Far beneath his scarred exterior, somewhere in the depths of his heart, he felt something for her too, something that wasn’t the product of the bond between them or born of his instinct to be a good mate.
And it frightened him too.
She sighed, prayed to mother earth for guidance as she realised it was already too late for her, and watched over her mate as he slept, wishing him good dreams.
She didn’t want to love him.
But she did.
CHAPTER 20
Vail came awake to the feel of Rosalind watching him and a deep sensation of peace, as if a terrible weight had been lifted from his soul and he had slept for days. He felt rested, more so than he had in as far back as he could remember. He lay on his back with his eyes closed, breathing in the scent of nature and the feel of it surrounding him, a tranquil oasis that Rosalind added to, perfecting it.
He remembered speaking with her after she had bravely returned to him, easing his anguish and his fear that she had left him forever and he would never see his ki’ara again. He recalled how upset and hurt she had been because of him and the notion that he only desired her because of their bond and the fact she was his fated female.
That notion would have made sense to him once, no more than days ago when they had been in the cells of the castle. He would have agreed with her, unable to believe that he could feel anything for a witch without it being forced on him, whether it was by sorcery or the instincts the presence of his mate awakened in him.
Now that notion seemed ridiculous to him.
He feared examining his feelings too closely, worried that the darkness he held within him would rage to the fore if he did because they were feelings for a witch, but he knew in the sliver of his heart that had remained good that he felt something for her.
Not because of a bond. Not because of a spell.
But because she was beautiful, and pure, and good, and she had shown him so much compassion and care, had sought to understand him and had weathered his mercurial moods.
She had stood by his side when he had been calm and rational, had bravely faced him when he had been little more than a beast and wanted her blood, and had knelt with him when he had been crushed by the pain he held locked deep within him.
And she had come back to him when he had needed her and had been gripped by fear that he had lost her forever because of all the mistakes he had made with her.
She had worked her way into his heart and because of her, the sliver of good in it was growing, beginning to drive back the darkness.
His mind drifted further back, to what they had done prior to him upsetting her and her almost leaving him.
His body flushed with heat at the memory of being inside her, feeling her clenching him, and hearing her breathless moans as she gave herself to him. His markings sparked to life in response, sweeping across his skin, making him shiver as their fire scalded him. He shuddered and bit back the growl that rumbled up his throat, a hungry snarl born of his desire to do it all over again, the pressing need to bend her over and be inside her once more, spending himself in a mutual release of passion.
That shocked him.
He had expected the darkness to seize him, twisting his memory of what he had done with Rosalind together with his memories of Kordula, turning them into a waking nightmare that would strip him of control and unleash the beast held locked within him.
He didn’t understand it but decided it had to be because he had been in control for a brief moment. A moment of sheer madness. As much as he desired to do it again, it was too great a risk to allow it to happen or to indulge in daydreams about it. He wasn’t sure he would be able to retain control next time, pulled back from the brink of hurting Rosalind by his deeper instinct to protect and please his mate.
Vail focused and shut down his body, used to mastering it after millennia of doing everything in his power to refuse Kordula.
He slowly opened his eyes and tilted his head towards Rosalind.
She sat on the green armchair she had created in the centre of the glade, her feet tucked near her bottom, with a lot of long pale toned leg on show. He knew she had transformed her clothes into ones that were more revealing to test him, and to spite him perhaps. He tried to move his eyes away from her legs, and his thoughts away from his desire to stroke them and slowly ease them apart, but it was impossible.
Only her lifting something to her mouth gave him to strength to stop staring at her legs.
He raised his eyes to her face and frowned as she nibbled on the lump of something she had made, her striking blue eyes fixed on the dying fire between them. The carcass he had cooked for her had been picked clean, only bones remaining, and he was glad that she had fed well, but it left him wondering why she needed the brown lump.
She lifted her eyes, settled them on him, and smiled softly. It didn’t chase the fatigue from her eyes that he could also sense in her through their link. She hadn’t rested. Why? Because of the nightmares? He wanted to ask her about them, and also about something she had said that troubled him.
She had mentioned dying several times now.
He didn’t like it. He didn’t want her to die and he would do all in his power to ensure it never happened. She belonged to him now and he wasn’t letting her go when he had only just found her. He needed her. She would tell him why she spoke of death as if it was coming for her and he would find a way to save her. First, she would tell him what she ate.
“What is that?” he said, his voice gravelly with sleep.
A flush of guilt crossed her face and she looked away. He frowned and narrowed his eyes on the brown cake, growing suspicious of it. He focused harder on her and their link, attempting to sense everything about her, pushing past the fatigue he could feel to deeper things.
At the deepest level he could reach, he sensed a flicker of something that disturbed him.
He turned his frown on her and bit out, “What is it?”
She shifted it in her hands, her gaze locked on it now. Avoiding him. Whatever it was, she felt she shouldn’t be eating it and feared what he would think.
“Tell me.” He wouldn’t let her get away with her silence and wouldn’t stop pressing until she told him what she ate so he could put his fears to rest.
She sighed and flicked a glance at him, and rattled off a list of herbs and mushrooms.
Many of which rang warning bells in his head.
The mixture was not meant to nourish her.
It was meant to numb her.
Why?
She stood before he could ask, brushed down the back of her black dress, and hurried towards the path to the lake.
“I’m going to wash.” She tossed th
e words over her shoulder and disappeared into the woods.
Vail tipped his head back and stared at the black sky, resisting the need to follow her and press her to tell him why she desired to numb herself and why she refused to sleep. What haunted her in the nightmares that she hated?
He sat up, pushed onto his feet and stretched, clasping his hands together and raising them above his head. He yawned and called his armour to him, sending his black trousers away as the black scales swept over his skin, covering him from boots to wrists.
Vail lowered his hands and looked around the glade, breathing in the beauty and the scent of nature, and absorbing the calming effect it had on him. As much as he desired to stay in this sanctuary forever, they needed to continue their trek now that they had rested. He had rested anyway. He didn’t think Rosalind would rest, no matter how many days they remained here. It was better they continued their journey. He doubted the Fifth King had given up his pursuit and if they lingered then the male’s warriors would find them.
His gaze roamed towards the path to the lake and his thoughts to Rosalind.
Why did Little Wild Rose use herbs and mushrooms to give herself relief?
He didn’t like it. He wanted to be the one to give her relief and give her peace of mind, even though he felt sure he lacked the qualifications to do that. What peace could he offer her when he could find none for himself?
He sighed, picked up his blue elven boots that Rosalind had worn, and focused to send them back to his rooms in the elf castle. Once they were gone from his hands, he set about disposing of the firewood and the evidence of their stay, trying to keep his mind away from thoughts that only troubled him.
He attempted to fix them on their next move, planning their journey. He couldn’t teleport through the woods when he couldn’t clearly see a landing site and he wasn’t willing to risk ending up in a tree or worse, not while Rosalind was with him. They would have to walk.
The trek through the woods towards the Third Realm would be long but being surrounded by nature would do him good, and her good too. Perhaps he could show her the things he could do, as she had asked, and that might distract her from whatever ailed her and build trust between them.
Tempted by a Rogue Prince Page 24