Tempted by a Rogue Prince (16 page)

“Better to take the quicker route and hope you can control yourself, than allow you to hurt yourself and draw out your pain. I won’t let you do it. I won’t let you suffer like that.” She planted her hands on her hips and ignored the flicker of surprise that lit his purple eyes. “So yes, I have power.”

Before she could turn away, he clutched his right hand and viciously twisted it. Pain screamed through her hand in response, every finger burning violently, the agony almost blinding her. She held it to her chest, gritting her teeth to stop herself from crying out. She hadn’t realised that she would experience an echo of his pain.

Vail made no sound as he shattered his bones in strategic places, each crack and snap forcing bile up her throat and tearing a grunt from her. When he squeezed his broken hand and pushed it through the steel cuff, she clutched the wall and barely stopped herself from vomiting from the pain.

How could he do such a thing without making a single sound, without showing a flicker of the agony he had to be experiencing? She only felt a shadow of what he was going through, and it was enough to have her breaking out in a sweat and on the verge of passing out.

He looked down at her and his violet eyes glimmered with the agony he was holding inside.

Rosalind pulled herself together and rushed forwards to help him.

His demeanour changed in an instant, his expression twisting into a dark snarl as he flashed his long fangs at her. His ears flattened against the sides of his head, his warning hiss sending her magic spiking and wanting to protect her. She squashed that desire and focused on him instead. She had to help him right now or she was going to pass out from the pain.

“I need to heal you,” she whispered and held her throbbing right hand to her chest. “Please. It hurts so much.”

His gaze dropped to her hand and softened. He swallowed hard and she risked reaching out to him, sure he would allow her to heal his hand now that he knew she felt his pain and was suffering too.

The moment her fingers connected with his broken right hand, he snarled at her.

“
Witch
.”

The manacle hitting the floor was the only warning she had before his left hand shot out and his fingers closed around her throat. Light flashed over his body. Cold darkness engulfed her, sending her head spinning, and she cried out as her back slammed into the stone wall metres behind her. His bare chest heaved from the exertion of using his partially bound powers and she prayed to mother earth that he didn’t teleport her again. She didn’t think she would remain conscious if he did and she needed to heal him.

Healing him suddenly became a non-issue when his fingers tightened against her throat and he shoved her harder against the rough stones, pinning her off the floor by her neck. She struggled to breathe as the force of his grip crushed her windpipe. Cold weight pressed down on her chest, squeezing her heart as tightly as his grip squeezed her throat.

“Vail. Release me,” she wheezed but he only tightened his grip, pressing his short claws into either side of her neck.

The demon looked in on them and she tossed him a hopeless but pleading look. He quirked an eyebrow but didn’t make a move to help her. The bastard probably thought it was sex play. He turned away again.

Rosalind mustered all of her strength as black spots winked across her vision and grasped Vail’s left arm with both of her hands. Big mistake.

He flashed fangs at her and growled in her face, and squeezed her throat so hard that she almost blacked out.

Her gaze dropped to his broken right hand, her own aching in response, each bone on fire. She let her hands fall from his arm and hung from his grip, slowly gathering her strength as she fought the black wave threatening to pull her under. Speaking to him wasn’t going to get her anywhere. She had to heal him. If she could just heal him, she might be able to bring him back from the dark place he had gone.

She inched her left hand forwards and used her remaining strength to call up a healing spell, the strongest one she could manage in her current condition.

Darkness swept through her, bringing a chilling cold in its wake, and she paused and stared into Vail’s eyes. Black spots coloured his purple irises, darkness that she could feel within him. It spread through her, a vile hunger for violence and blood, a terrible desire to tear into flesh with her teeth and snap bones.

A burning need to destroy.

All of it aimed at her.

Because she was a witch.

He was going to kill her.

The second her fingers made contact with his wrist, she grabbed his hand and unleashed the spell, channelling it into him so quickly that all of her strength rushed out of her, leaving her with only enough to cling to his hand and keep the spell working. Her heart laboured and the darkness encroached, swallowing the edges of her vision.

Vail growled at her, flashing dangerous daggers, but she kept going, refusing to die here and clinging to the hope that he would come back to her when he was healed and his pain no longer rode him, driving him into the dark embrace of his sickness.

His grip on her neck loosened and air scraped over her sore throat and burned her lungs.

His violet eyes widened, fixed on his hand where it still grasped her throat, his claws pressing into her flesh. He shook his head and stumbled backwards, blinking hard as he released her.

Rosalind hit the ground in a heap and coughed as she tried to breathe normally. She looked up at Vail and he stared down at her, his eyes locked on her throat. She lifted her hand and touched it, feeling the bruises he had caused.

He squatted in front of her and reached out towards her throat.

She flinched away.

Vail snatched his hand back and withdrew again, shuffling backwards, placing some distance between them.

He still wasn’t quite with her. She could see it in his glassy eyes. Over the time she had known him, she had come to recognise that the black spots discolouring his violet irises were a visible sign that he wasn’t fully in control.

He threw her a pained look that conveyed every feeling she could sense in him through their link and turned his face away.

She rubbed her throat, fighting to breathe normally and subdue the fear that filled every inch of her, driving her magic to the fore to protect her. It wasn’t the thought of that magic provoking Vail into another attack that made her battle her fear with everything she had.

It was the pain she could feel in him. Not a physical hurt, but an emotional one.

He sat balanced on his toes, his nails idly scraping the stones between his bare feet and his eyes averted. Tears glittered on his long dark lashes and she could sense every drop of the pain that tore at him, together with the darkness and the shadows that haunted him, tainting his heart and his soul.

Corrupting and weakening him.

She could sense it all through their link, experienced it as she had his dark hunger to kill her because she bore magic.

Just as she could also feel his distress and horror, and knew in her heart that it was because she had faced the monster within him.

He hadn’t wanted her to see those things. The link between them faded and she knew he had the power to control it and was closing it and shutting her out again.

Rosalind sank onto her backside and stared at him in silence, unsure what to say and what to do. He continued to scrape his nails over the stone, the action methodical, a set length and interval. It seemed to calm him and she didn’t want to interrupt, felt he needed a moment to pull himself back together and pretend she wasn’t there, bearing witness to this side of him.

He was fractured, in mind, body and spirit. Before her was a broken and dangerous male, and his hold on his sanity seemed even more tentative and fragile than she had thought.

Why?

Who had broken him?

Her heart said it had been a witch. He hated her kind for a reason, and she had a feeling she didn’t want to know, even as she needed the answers.

He murmured softly in the elf tongue, the words lyrical and beautiful, and his violet gaze darted towards her and away again. He inched closer, remaining on his haunches, his bare feet shuffling on the stone. He flicked her another glance, scraped his claws over the stones again, and whispered in his language. She caught a ‘ki’ara’ in there and the edge of pain in his eyes as they met hers before leaping away again. He shuffled a little closer.

She kept still, waiting to see what he would do.

With his eyes remaining averted and his face turned away from her, he reached out and gently laid his left hand on her throat. Her pain faded and her eyes widened as bruises appeared on his neck.

He was taking her injuries.

The bruises disappeared quickly, the remnants of her healing spell taking care of them for him.

He lowered his hand and his head, the longer strands of his blue-black hair falling forwards, and clawed the stone floor.

She was about to speak and shatter the silence when he blinked, lifted his head and raised his right hand.

“It worked.” He turned his arm this way and that, staring at it as if it was a miracle.

Completely unaware of what had happened.

His purple gaze swung her way and the beginnings of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. It faded and he frowned, reached for her but withdrew his hand before it could make contact with her cheek.

“You have been crying. Why?”

Rosalind didn’t have the heart to tell him that he had attacked her and had come close to killing her, not when all the pain and suffering that had been in his eyes just seconds ago was gone.

She rubbed her cheeks, hiding the evidence of her pain, afraid he would keep asking about it and would realise he had hurt her. She never had been very good at lying, but it was better than telling him the truth.

“Don’t break your other hand,” she whispered and looked down at it, hiding her eyes from him and sending a prayer that he wouldn’t detect her coming lie. “Healing your right one drained me.”

She waited for his response, holding her breath and hoping he would do as she asked. She didn’t want him to go through that madness again. Not because it frightened her or because he might kill her this time. She didn’t want it to happen because she felt sure that if his mind eventually healed enough for him to remember it, for him to recall the things he did when lost to the darkness, he would hate himself.

She wanted to spare him that pain.

“Try teleporting,” she said but couldn’t bring herself to look at him.

Pale blue-purple light burst across her eyes and when her vision returned, he was gone.

The sounds of bones crunching and the muffled cry of the guard outside the door turned her stomach. The scent of blood reached her nose, acrid and sharp, stirring memories of her own that she would rather forget. She stared at the slick patch creeping under the door, her breathing accelerating as her heart began to pound.

She had spilled so much blood.

She had killed.

Rosalind backed away from the wet pool of dark liquid, unable to take her eyes off it as a horrific replay of the battle flashed through her mind. The agonised cries of her victims rang in her ears and bright bursts of colourful magical spells detonated across her eyes. She had taken so many lives. She had murdered them all.

She shook her head. She had done it to help the others, to protect Thorne’s men and those of Prince Loren, and to keep Olivia and Sable safe for them. It had been the warriors of the Fifth Realm or her and her comrades.

She couldn’t have saved both of them.

She’d had to choose.

Screams shrieked in her ears and she covered them with her hands, trying to block out the sound. Bloodied hands reached for her, flesh peeling away to reveal bone and tendon, and she squeezed her eyes shut and backed away, her heart beating wildly as she desperately tried to evade their grasp.

Her back hit something solid.

And warm.

“Witch.” Vail’s snarl shattered the illusion engulfing her and she swiftly turned to face him. The dark edge to his expression melted away in an instant as he looked down at her, right into her eyes.

She should have shut down her fear and hidden it before turning towards him, but she had been gripped by a powerful need to see him and know she was no longer on the battlefield, going against everything she had once stood for and taking lives instead of saving them.

Now he had seen it in her, the same darkness he feared her seeing in him. They were both murderers. They had both done terrible things. And she feared she would lose her mind as he had lost his, and the darkness would consume her.

He cocked his head, studying her, and she looked away from him, unable to hold his gaze while he was scrutinising her, attempting to see in her eyes what she hid in her heart. He couldn’t know. Regardless of how she had felt a few days ago, when she had thought he could tell her how to cope with the pain of having taken lives, she could never tell him. It was her burden to bear. Her sin. He had enough of his own.

Besides, she wasn’t even sure he would care or give her the ridiculous comfort she needed if she did tell him.

The urge still pressed down on her though, making her squirm. She held it back, convinced it would pass if she ignored it for long enough and telling herself that Vail wouldn’t give her the comfort she desired. He wouldn’t care that she had taken a few lives and it haunted her, so why did she wish that he would?

Mother earth help her but it was becoming impossible to keep her distance from him, to pretend that he wasn’t the most gorgeous man she had ever met despite the darkness he held within him and his madness, and that she hadn’t found herself fantasising about kissing him on more than one occasion. She was doomed. If not to death, then perhaps to a broken heart. Vail would sooner kill her than love her, and she was a fool if she thought he was capable of anything but hate for her.

He stared at her for what seemed like hours, the thick heavy silence pressing down on her, and then metal scraped on metal.

Rosalind risked a swift glance his way to see what he was doing.