Tempted by a Rogue Prince (12 page)

Fenix heaved a sigh and idly ran the fingers of his left hand down the bars of his cell, his ring scraping the metal.

Vail twisted his arms, lowering his left one and allowing the chain to slide through the ring holding it to the slab so he could bring his right hand to his face. He scrubbed the several days’ worth of stubble on his jaw and longed for his armour and his claws. With them, he would be able to scrape the irritating stubble away. He had no desire to end up looking as the incubus did, with a thick mass of hair covering the lower half of his face.

“Is your mate here too?” Vail said.

The male looked across at him and shook his head.

“Not anymore. She was here but the bastard Frayne killed her right in front of me… and now I do not know where she is.”

That didn’t make any sense to Vail. If the female was dead, then she was gone and this male knew exactly where she was. Had the male lost his mind on losing his female, or was there more to his bond than he was telling Vail?

“Frayne is dead, slain on the battlefield by King Thorne of the Third Realm. I witnessed it myself.” Vail inched himself up onto his elbows and studied the incubus for a reaction.

His fae markings remained deepest red and black.

“I knew of that, but it hasn’t assuaged my hunger for vengeance in her name. She had called herself Evelyn this time.”

“This time?” Vail couldn’t hold that question back. “You speak of her as if she comes back from the dead.”

A solemn smile touched the incubus’s lips beneath his beard. “She does. We are cursed. She more so than I, but I have the worst side of it. I have to bear being driven to find her, and then seeing her living out her life without knowing of me, and I know if I dare to make her love me again, she will die.”

Fenix closed his eyes and buried his face in his hands and Vail gave him a moment of silence, sensing his need to battle the surge of powerful emotions that had crossed his face and had coloured his voice, and his fae markings too. They shone in hues of black, purple and blue now, giving them a solemn appearance, one that spoke of suffering.

Seeing his female living without him tormented this incubus, drove him mad with a need for her, even when he knew that if she fell in love with him, she was cursed to die.

“She is reborn upon her death, stripped of her memories, and placed back into the world. I have to find her… or the one who did this to us. Yes… I need to find him. I cannot bear it anymore. I must lift the curse before she ends up dead again.” Fenix pushed trembling fingers through his hair, dragging the long lengths back from his face, and looked up at Vail. The sombre hues of his markings changed again, black and red sweeping over them as his green eyes narrowed on Vail. “You want out of this place, and so do I. I have to get out of here.”

Vail wondered if he looked as crazy as this male, driven wild by the things that tormented him, and by his captivity.

The steady echo of footsteps warned him that now was not the time to discuss escape plans. Two guards approached, the same males who had taken Little Wild Rose from him.

They stopped outside his cell, both of them dressed formally now, wearing loose black shirts tucked into their black leather trousers. Vail assumed they had fixed their attire to make themselves more suitable for their task of bringing him before their king.

The smaller male grinned and held up a pair of black trousers, reminding Vail that he was nude beneath the strip of material Rosalind had kindly bestowed upon him.

“Perhaps we should make him walk naked.” The larger demon snatched the trousers from his companion, bunched one leg in each of his fists, and threatened to tear them in half.

Vail’s heart jerked in his chest and he pulled on his restraints, battling the sudden desperate need to ask these demons for mercy. He stifled that desire, schooling his features into an expression of indifference even when his insides were twisting in knots, tightening at the thought of having to walk naked through the entire castle, forced to endure another form of humiliation.

The warriors in the courtyard would see him, and no doubt mock him.

The bear and dragon shifters too.

The dark witches.

He clenched his fists, grasping the chain as his heart pounded wildly, driven to a thunderous beat by the thought of those witches seeing him nude and exposed.

Before he could stop himself, he looked at the largest demon and whispered, “Do not.”

Those words felt like an admission of weakness, as if he had just revealed a chink in his armour through which these two demons could hurt him, but he hadn’t been able to hold them back. He had clung to the tattered remains of his pride, had endured every lash of their whips and every taunt in silence, giving them nothing and not allowing them to see how they humiliated him, but he wouldn’t be able to cope with such complete degradation in front of others—in front of witches.

The demons seemed to consider his request and then the larger one smirked and waved the trousers at him, teasing him with them.

“I do not think he learned the lesson our king wished for him. Maybe a walk through the castle naked would help him learn his place and that humility.” The smaller demon went to take the trousers from his comrade.

Vail growled at him from between clenched teeth, on the verge of begging the males to let him have the trousers and a shred of his pride, and promising he would behave with more civility towards their king.

“Leave him alone, you bloody bastards!” The female voice rang through the dungeon at startling volume and with so much venom that many of the occupants of the other cells became restless.

Fenix chuckled.

The two demons looked shocked and the smaller one lowered his hands to his sides.

“King Bruan probably wouldn’t be pleased with us if we did make him walk naked,” the larger one muttered and gestured to the cell door.

His companion opened it, entered the cell and walked straight around Vail to the cuffs and the chain attached to the stone slab. He unlocked the ring that held Vail’s chain, grabbed one of his restraints, and hauled him into a sitting position. The larger male unlocked the cuffs around his ankles and tossed the trousers at him.

“Dress. The king wishes to discuss his plans with you.”

Vail did so without hesitation, quickly slipping the black cotton trousers on and pulling them up. They were too large, but the waist was small enough that they didn’t fall down, but rather hung low on his hips. The larger demon fastened the ankle restraints back in place and then the other one pulled him onto his feet.

Neither male spoke as they led him from the cell and along the corridor, but Vail wouldn’t have paid them much attention even if they had. His thoughts collided, flitting between the witch and the king, and his current location.

He couldn’t fail to notice that they hadn’t restrained him in the same manner as before. The chain between his ankles was long enough for him to stride with purpose without the risk of tripping, and the chain between his wrists hung free, swinging with each determined step he made. They had given him more freedom, and were allowing him to walk sandwiched between them. Why? Was it on the king’s orders?

Instinct told Vail that it wasn’t a good thing. The king had treated him roughly before, had resorted to torture in an attempt to break him and convince him to comply with his orders and play a part in his plan. Now, that same vicious, cruel and manipulative male was having him escorted in a more comfortable fashion, given clothes and more freedom, and Vail suspected it was an attempt to lure him over to the king’s side.

The male had a new plan and Vail had a feeling he wasn’t going to like it.

He catalogued everything as he walked, making notes of all the details and the route the demons took. He scanned all the occupants of the cells too, but none of the males they contained were of any use to him. Only the incubus seemed healthy enough in mind and body, and had powers that could assist him in an escape.

And escape he would.

He would find a way to leave this place behind him and warn his brother, and he would use the incubus to help him make it happen.

Little Wild Rose. Her scent rushed over him like cherry blossoms caught in a breeze and his step faltered. He glanced her way, catching a brief glimpse of her huddled in the corner of her dank cell before she raised her head and he averted his gaze so she didn’t see him looking at her.

He couldn’t leave her behind.

Violence and darkness surged within him whenever he thought about her, barely tempered by softer foreign emotions, and part of him knew that taking her with him was too dangerous. She was liable to drive him mad, to steal away his sanity with her presence, but he couldn’t leave her behind.

He glanced back at her, locking eyes with her in the split second before the wall of her cell stole her from view, and his heart thudded hard against his ribs.

Darkness warred with light inside his soul, the swirling black swamping more of it, driving back the slender glow of good as he drifted further away from her.

He used his limited powers to close the connection between them as much as he could now that they were bonded. The compulsion to keep himself closed off to her was strong, overwhelming, and he did it without hesitation.

Not because she was a witch.

But because he didn’t want her to know him. He knew how dark and ugly he was inside, how twisted and broken. He had become aware of it the moment Kordula’s spell had broken with her death.

Her death had freed him from her rule, but not from what he had done. Four thousand years of killing, four thousand years of memories, and four thousand years of destroying lives, kingdoms and those he loved. All of it had remained after her death and lived on in his blackened soul. Everything he had done now rested on his shoulders, a weight that was too much to bear and was slowly driving him to his knees.

Loren had thought taking Kordula’s life would free him, Vail knew that and knew his brother had done it out of kindness, believing he would be restored and saved by his actions.

Loren had condemned him.

Vail had tried to come to terms with everything. He had fought the dark memories and attempted to convince himself that responsibility for all that death and destruction rested on Kordula’s shoulders and was hers to bear.

But it had been his hand that had taken those lives. His powers that had brought kingdoms to their knees.

His pleasure on seeing them fall and the lands run red with blood.

Kordula had only given him the orders and compelled him to obey.

It was the darkness inside him, the beast she had awakened in him, that had taken pleasure from rending flesh with his claws and smashing bones to ashes. It still took pleasure from it now.

He took pleasure from it.

When he had gone into a killing rage in order to protect Olivia during the battle, he had retained awareness of his actions. He had been the one in control. No one had compelled him to brutally slay all those demons, dragon shifters, and vampires. No one had controlled him.

He had been free, the master of his own body, and yet rather than fight with honour and a sword, he had chosen to savage his opponents with claw and fang.

Like an animal.

Kordula had awakened the beast.

But Vail had embraced it.

And now it was one with him, growing stronger each day as the weight of his sins filled his soul with darkness, dragging him down into the black abyss.

He knew that if Little Wild Rose felt that in him, she would leave him the second she could. The greater part of him wanted that, and welcomed it.

There was a strange fragment of him though, a tiny corner of his soul that had somehow survived four thousand years of torment and hell, that feared her doing such a thing to him because it knew that she was already becoming his anchor to this world.

His everything.

No matter how hard he fought it.

If she turned her back on him, that part of him would die and his fall would be complete.

He would become the darkness all elves feared and the world would know his wrath.

Light flickered over his skin and he squinted against it, his eyes quickly adjusting to the brightness as he strode through the arched doorway and into the courtyard. Huge braziers burned at intervals, illuminating the wide area.

His gaze scanned his surroundings, documenting everything, from the routes the guards took as they moved from building to building along the high wall, to the number of non-demons he could see. He focused on the arched doors and windows of the dark stone buildings dotted around the wall of the courtyard, trying to discern what their purpose was as the guards led him across the expansive open area towards the towering main castle ahead of him.

Vail noted that the witches were not present tonight.

His two demon escorts quickened their pace and he kept up with them, his chin raised and back straight as he eyed the warriors around him. They paused at their work to watch him pass, darkness in their emerald eyes but a touch of wariness too. No doubt they were seeing a very different male from the one who had passed through this same courtyard only days ago.

One who commanded more respect and inspired more fear.

The smaller demon in front of him shoved the twin black wooden doors of the main castle entrance open. Vail followed him into the darkness, continuing to catalogue everything he could see, including the corridors that ran off from the hallway. The one on his right appeared to go into a stairwell that led upwards, while the one to his left ran into the walls.

“Prince Vail.” The deep male voice boomed through the great hall as they entered, echoing around the high vaulted ceiling and the enormous obsidian columns that supported it.

King Bruan rose from his black throne and stepped down from the raised platform at the end of the aisle.

A very civil and friendly greeting from the demon male who had ordered him tortured into submission. He had suspected the king thought to charm him over to his side, and now he knew the male planned to do just that.