Institute of the Shadow Fae Box Set

by C. N. Crawford

  “I remember you, too, Prince Ruadan, demigod of the night,” she hissed. “You were only a child when he brought you to me. You hadn’t become powerful yet. Hadn’t developed those fine muscles I see before me now.”

  So they did have a history. I’d thought as much when I’d first seen them together. No wonder Ruadan’s rage was turning this place into the inner circle of hell.

  An infuriating smile curled her lips, and she inched closer, sloshing through the blood. It was up to our ribs now, and freezing. “Your master, Baleros, used to feed you to me. Down in that bloody cave, just like this one. Do you remember how many times I froze you? And I cut your body?” She tutted. “Don’t get so angry. It was all part of your training. It made you strong, didn’t it? Look at the man you are today. And it was such a wonderfully delicious sustenance for me. Your pain was finer than that tea.”

  My stomach twisted. She’d been his torturer.

  He couldn’t move, but I felt his primordial magic snaking over me all the same.

  The World Key glowed on his bared chest—a stunning gold among all the gloom. But Ruadan didn’t quite look like himself anymore. His skin had taken on a silvery hue, and phantom wings swept out behind him. And as his skin changed, it looked as if he were pushing the toxins out of his body. She didn’t seem to notice. What would happen if he shifted fully? I was starting to think we might have a chance, here, even without my death powers.

  The Caoranach slashed a talon across his chest, and blood poured from the wound. “Baleros feeds me. He always has. The least I could do is give him this little bit of skin from your chest.” Her gaze flicked to me. “Has she told you what she really is, yet? She’s not fully fae. Anyone can tell that. So what sort of demon is she? A demigod like you?”

  My mind screamed. I didn’t want to dwell on this particular topic.

  She hugged herself, shivering. “I don’t like the cold.”

  Her tongue shot out again—this time, stroking up his body. She didn’t break the skin. Rather, the movement was distinctly sexual. Rage erupted inside me.

  My angelic side was threatening to come out to play, but if I unleashed the terror of the gods, my secret would be known.

  “A demigod,” she purred, a taloned hand groping his chest. Her lips had turned blue, teeth chattering. Ice formed around her body. “What a wonderful gift Baleros had given me. You can come so close to death. I could torment you to the point that your mind would break over and over again. But you never died. Such a wonderful … gift….” Her teeth were now chattering so hard she could hardly form words, and her eyes lost focus.

  At that moment, Ruadan roared. He gripped her neck and twisted, the snap of bone echoing off the walls.

  But she wasn’t dead yet. With her neck disturbingly crooked, the lower half of her body began shifting. A scaled tail erupted from where her legs had been. Her serpentine form filled the tunnel, tail thrashing. Ruadan reached down into the rising blood and snatched his sword. He swung for her, hacking into her bent neck. Her shrieks pierced the air. Her body thrashed, tail booming against the tunnel walls as he cut off her head.

  Except her tail just kept going on its own.

  Light debris rained down on us, and I desperately wished I could cover my head with my arms to shield my skull.

  Ruadan turned to me, his skin an eerie silver. How exactly had he broken free—just his sheer demigod strength?

  I didn’t have much time to contemplate it. The walls around us were shaking, and so was my body.

  With Ruadan’s rage freezing the air, the blood river chilled me to the marrow, and chunks of ice floated around us. Great mounds of rubble blocked our paths.

  Ruadan lifted me into his arms, then carried me up to the top of the rubble. With his warm body pressed against me, I tried moving a muscle. I managed just one tiny movement—a twitching of my pinky finger as we reached the top of the rubble. That was it.

  Holding me tightly, he carried my frozen body down the rubble on the other side.

  The walls boomed again, large chunks of rock raining down around us. We were going to be buried alive in here, entombed by that creature’s disembodied tail. As we plunged back into the river, the blood froze my body, rising higher, up to my breasts. Ice crystallized around us.

  The loudest boom of all, and my heart slammed against my ribs. Ruadan pulled me tighter against him.

  I clamped my eyes shut and braced myself for the collapse of the walls around us, for rocks battering my flesh, slamming into my skull—but I felt only Ruadan’s powerful arms around me, his breath on my neck. Why hadn’t the rocks slammed down on us?

  I looked up at Ruadan’s eyes, but I found only darkness. But behind his shoulders, a glimmer of starlight.

  What in the hells…?

  It took me a moment to realize what had protected us from the debris. Ruadan had unveiled his incubus wings, and they spread above us like a shield. The black, leathery wings gleamed with silver flecks like tiny stars. Faint light beamed from them over my skin and glinted off the icy blood river.

  Right now, Ruadan had gone into his primal mode. Was this it? Was this him fully shifted? And if so—was this a bad situation?

  His primal side had taken over, and I could barely move. Not to mention the fact that I was close to freezing to death, and Ruadan didn’t seem to be able to control his ice rage. The only mercy at this point was that the blood river seemed to be receding.

  Still, I was pretty sure that the way he’d spread out his wings, he was protecting me. Even in his demonic form, he was shielding me.

  “Ruadan,” I tried to whisper, but my muscles still wouldn’t move the way I wanted them to. My teeth were chattering so hard I thought I might involuntarily bite my own tongue off.

  He cocked his head, the movement pure animal. A low growl rumbled from his throat, trembling through my gut. Right now, I was completely reliant on Ruadan. But was the fae I’d come to know in there at all? Or was this some hellish demon from the shadow void, about to tear my throat out if I annoyed him?

  His dark, preternatural gaze trailed over my damp chest, then he lowered his head to my throat. One powerful arm held me close to his hard body. Right now, I had a hard time reconciling this creature with the controlled, distant fae who ran the Institute.

  He opened his mouth, and my pulse began racing out of control. His canines had lengthened completely. In fact, they looked like vampiric fangs….

  His fingers clutched my waist so hard I was certain he was going to leave marks. I stared into his dark eyes. This wasn’t the Ruadan I knew, but a bestial creature of the void. And right now, he seemed fixated on my throat.

  My heart beat harder, and I fought to move my lips, my vocal chords. My attempt to say his name only came out as a moan. Godsdamn it, I wanted to move. How had he managed to break free?

  Powerful shivers wracked my body again. Ruadan unleashed a long, slow growl, his dark magic snaking over my skin. His hard body pressed against me, warming me. My neck arched, and his eyes were locked on the vein in my neck, the pulsing blood. His tightly coiled muscles gave the impression of an animal about to strike. My heart pounded like a drum.

  Incubi didn’t drink blood. Did they?

  Then, to my horror, he moved. His fangs pierced my throat—a sharp, delicious pain.

  Chapter 79

  Ecstasy bloomed in my body. Ruadan’s tongue flicked against my skin, and my mind burst with images of the night sky, like an explosion of stars. My eyes fluttered closed, and I melted into him, muscles softening. My toes curled with white-hot pleasure, and I moaned. I’d never let anything bite me before.

  No, no, no. Was he going to drain me? Was he even in there, under the demonic exterior? What the fuck was going on?

  “Ruadan,” I groaned. It took me a moment to realize that this time, I could say his name.

  My fingers twitched, then my arm. I moved my hips a little, brushing against Ruadan’s warm body—which seemed to have become even larger.

&
nbsp; Ruadan pulled his mouth from my neck, and I reached up to touch his face.

  I could move again. I blinked up at him. How had that happened?

  He licked a droplet of blood off his fangs.

  I ran my tongue over my lips, finding that I had control over my mouth once more. Now, the river’s surface had lowered, back down to my hips once more.

  Ruadan was still holding on tightly to me, and I slid my arms around his neck.

  “Did you suck the toxins out of my blood on purpose?”

  “Why else would I be sucking blood from your neck?” His voice sounded different—deeper, and otherworldly. In his clipped tones, I had the sense of barely restrained anger.

  “Why would you be sucking my blood? Because you’ve fully transformed into a terrifying demon with giant leathery wings. With stars embedded in them.” I reached up and touched his wing, running my fingertips over the apex.

  He shuddered, and each one of his muscles tensed. He gripped me so hard now that it started to become painful. “I’m not fully transformed,” he said. The tips of his claws pierced my skin.

  Wait.

  “You have claws?” The chattering of my teeth echoed in the small space. “Never mind. How did you free yourself from that woman’s toxins? And how were you able to suck them out of my throat without poisoning yourself?”

  “She imprisoned me for decades, feeding off me. I built up a tolerance to her toxins. I never let her know.”

  I stroked the side of his face. I wanted to wrap him up and keep him warm by a fireplace forever. “Can we get out of here? The blood river is full of ice. I’m about to freeze to death.”

  Ruadan flexed his wings, and rock rained down from them. Apart from the silver flecks in his wings, almost total darkness enshrouded us.

  He straightened, finally releasing me. I surveyed the dim space, lit only by the faint light from Ruadan’s wings.

  The wall of debris blocked one side of the tunnel—the side we’d just come from. Dust clouded the air, and I coughed. “I guess we have nowhere to go but forward,” I said.

  I desperately wanted out of here. When Ruadan created another ball of silver light, I looked down at the river again. The blood was gone, and clear water rushed around us. The Caoranach, it seemed, had left us.

  Still, red streaked my white dress, and my lip curled in disgust. “Godsdamn it, Ruadan. Can you turn off the ice?”

  He ignored me, plowing on. I had the sense he didn’t have much control over the temperature, and in his partially shifted form, he certainly had no desire to explain it.

  After a few minutes, we came to another pile of rubble, and it nearly reached the ceiling. At the base of the rubble, Ruadan turned to me, his features cold as marble. Then, he lunged forward and grabbed me around the ribs. He hoisted me up as if I weighed nothing, dropping me farther up the pile. His partially shifted incubus side was irritatingly dominating.

  “I can move on my own,” I snapped through chattering teeth.

  Truthfully, although Ruadan had sucked the toxins out of me, my body still wasn’t working as it should. It felt as if ice had flooded my own blood, and every one of my muscles had gone rigid. As I climbed up the rocks, I was shivering out of control.

  At the top of the rubble, we had only a few feet of space to crawl through, and it seemed to go on for a few yards. Walls had collapsed around us, and darkness yawned on either side, but most of the ceiling remained intact. As I crawled through the gap, the broken stone bit into my palms and my knees.

  When I reached the end of the gap, the broken rock sloped downward into the river. Here, the water smelled clear, and it was only about a foot deep. As we reached the bottom of the rubble, the silver flecks on Ruadan’s wings illuminated the dark water.

  Up ahead, a beam of moonlight streamed into the tunnel, pouring in from a grate or something above. I hugged myself as I walked through the cold water. At this point, I’d mostly gone numb.

  I breathed in again, taking in a floral scent. In the dim light, it took me a moment to realize there were vines growing on the walls down here, all of them flowering with white blossoms. Moonflowers, in fact. I hadn’t expected to find beauty down in the sewers, but here it was. As Ruadan walked past the flowers, frost spread over their leaves, and the petals crystallized with ice. The moody bastard was killing everything.

  “Ruadan,” I said sharply. “Stop it with the damned ice. She really got to you, didn’t she? She used to feed off your pain. She tortured you, and she’s a monster. But you’re the one who told me to master my emotions.”

  He whirled around, his expression unreadable.

  I understood, even without him explaining. Baleros had sacrificed a young fae to that tea-drinking, skin-flaying monster.

  I stepped closer to Ruadan. “I know how it would have happened. Baleros would have told you that he was doing you a favor. He was making you strong, you see. He was making you into a powerful warrior. But he had an ulterior motive. He wanted to curry favor with one of the Old Gods, and so you were a sacrificial victim. He’d torture you while convincing you he had your best interests in mind.”

  Violet magic sparked up and down his body, glinting off the edge of his wings. That was his incubus lust magic, but he was keeping it contained. He was protecting himself. Just a stony expression, eyes black as night. It seemed like his incubus form protected him so that he didn’t have to feel anything. All his emotions were on the outside, making the air cold. With his wings out, claws sharpened, nothing could hurt him.

  The survivor in me told me I had to do the same in my own way, that I had to protect myself. If I got close to him, if I let myself care for him, I wasn’t sure I could take it when he learned the truth about me. I couldn’t let myself love him and then watch darkness slam into his eyes when he realized who I really was.

  The betrayal would kill me before the sword ever did.

  Still, I needed him to get control of his emotions right now, or I’d freeze to death. I had the strange sense that if he could say it out loud, it might help. I moved closer to him, until I was within touching distance. His transformed appearance sent shudders through my bones, but he transfixed me all the same. Shadows bloomed around him—a miasma of darkness. His face betrayed nothing, his beautiful features like cold marble.

  I pressed my palm flat against his cheek, trying to warm him. I held his gaze steadily. “What did she do to you? What did she and Baleros do?”

  I brushed my thumb over his cheek, softly, and a chink of light flickered in his dark eyes.

  He stared at me for what seemed like ages. At last, he spoke. “When I was a child, she kept me in a river of blood. Severity is the way of the Shadow Fae of Emain. It’s how we grow strong. But her ways were extreme even for us. She carved my flesh from my bones, over and over. She’d bring me near death and feed off the torment. She grew strong off me.”

  Rage shot through me, hot and red. I’d save it for Baleros—this pure destruction trapped inside me. I’d keep it locked in my chest until it was time to unleash its full force.

  “I cannot die,” Ruadan went on in his emotionless voice. “At least, she could not kill me. Few know how to kill a demigod. It was as you said. Baleros told me the torture would make me stronger. It was part of my training. I was in and out of there for years until I reached adulthood. And then, I was of age. I was married. I was free.”

  I pulled my hand from his cheek. Impulsively, I reached out and stroked the top of his wing, and his sharp intake of breath echoed off the walls.

  “Baleros was lying to us when he told us he’d make us strong,” I said. “But here’s what he never envisioned: that we would become strong, and we would come for him.”

  Ruadan’s dark eyes surveyed me. Blood from the river streaked his bare chest. We’d gone right into his worst memories—the river of blood, the Caoranach. We’d practically relived it. No wonder he hated being trapped in places.

  “I’m getting this blood off you,” I declared. “I know y
ou think you don’t care right now, because you’re an incubus and you don’t feel normal emotions, but it will help to bring the real Ruadan back. Then maybe you can ease up on all the ice.”

  I reached down to the freezing river and scooped up the clear water, then splashed it over his chest. He stared down at me, unmoving. As I washed off his skin, violet magic pulsed from his body over mine.

  Did he realize he was dosing me with little waves of his lust magic? As I cleaned the blood off him, a shiver of pleasure washed over me, and my skin heated. Being this close to Ruadan in his incubus state was a dangerous game, one that made my breasts feel tight against my damp dress. He stared down at me, impassive, and another wave of his magic rippled over my body.

  This was very dangerous territory indeed.

  Chapter 80

  I brushed his bare skin with my fingertips, licking my lips. Water mixed with blood, turning pink.

  “There,” I said, my voice husky. “You’ll feel better.”

  Till death us do part. I shoved the phrase out of my mind, and I watched the rivulets of pink streaming off him. Breath clouded around my face.

  For some reason, I’d expected that, once cleaned of blood, he’d return to his usual form. Instead, he still loomed over me, wings spread. Not Ruadan anymore—just an ancient predator, looking at me like I was prey. A low, slow growl rose from his chest, rippling over my body. What exactly was happening?

  Chunks of ice floated around my legs, and I was pretty sure my lips and skin had turned blue at this point. As much as I wanted to feel the warmth of his body, I took a step away from him, suddenly unsure of myself.

  Ruadan cocked his head, gaze sweeping over me. Then, a glimmer of violet returned to his dark eyes. “You’re freezing,” he said. The dark wings behind him had started to fade—only phantom wings once more.

  “Yes, thank you.” I threw my hands up. “I’ve said that repeatedly for the past twenty minutes.”

  He reached for me, then pulled me close to his hard body. His warmth caressed my skin, and I leaned into him. My muscles began to relax. His body crackled with violet light, his magic warming me from the inside out. Still, I couldn’t linger too long against him. I couldn’t keep letting myself feel close to someone who was clearly my enemy.