Tempted by a Rogue Prince (9 page)

The question of the day was did he want to fight her or the demons?

He had tried to protect her before. Was it that same desire that made him growl now? Was it the thought of her being tortured that upset him?

“I’m healing you, whether you like it or not.” She moved around the other side of him, allowing the light from the corridor to wash over his body and help her with her task.

She began with a visual inspection, not wanting to risk enraging him by laying her hands on his body until it was necessary.

The incubus prowled around his cell across from her, his bare feet silent on the stone floor but his movements still a distraction, together with the unsettling feeling of his intense green gaze fixed on her.

“Bloody annoying git,” she muttered in the fae tongue, knowing he was listening, and brought all of her focus onto the elf.

Her visual check came to an abrupt stop when she hit his knees. A soft gasp escaped her and she covered her mouth.

His knees were bruised and swollen, spotted with red beneath his tight skin. The demons had broken them. She bent and hovered her free hand above them, her heart going out to him. Her healing power warned her that it wasn’t only his kneecaps they had broken. There were several fractures in the ends of his femur bones too. She couldn’t imagine how painful it had been for him at the time it had happened, or even now.

The demons hadn’t stopped there though. They had brutally broken his feet and his hands too. She leaned over and ghosted her fingers over the left side of his head, down from his temple to the thick layer of dark stubble coating his jaw. Black bruising mottled his swollen cheek and eye. Someone had dealt terrible blows to his head.

Rage burned through her and she clenched her fists. The bastards. What had he done to deserve such punishment?

What would the king do to him this time when his men dragged the elf before him?

Death would have been a mercy.

Rosalind sank to her knees beside him, staring blankly at his face as his lips moved, his voice growing quieter as he settled. Her heart ached with a need to help him, and with something far more dangerous.

A hunger to avenge him.

She sucked down a breath and held it, searching for solid ground again. She couldn’t allow herself to feel anything for him, not when she wasn’t sure who he was or the specifics of her fated future. She had to act professionally. She was here to do a job, and she would do it to the best of her abilities.

Rosalind reached for his mouth to check on his fangs.

He snapped and snarled at her, the feral sound startling in the silent dungeon. She withdrew her hand to a safe distance, giving him time to settle again. His fangs were growing back but she had expected them, and his wounds, to have healed more than this in almost three days. He was an elf. He had the ability to heal rapidly when healthy.

He fought his restraints again, uttering dark-sounding things to himself, or possibly her, his wild behaviour reminding her that he wasn’t healthy. Not in mind at least. What had happened to him to drive him towards a madness so deep that it could grip him like this?

She continued checking him over, pondering her patient and considering asking the incubus what he knew of him. She never had liked learning about people from someone else though. When she had healed the elf, and he was calm, she would ask him about himself. It was dangerous, might only increase the sense of connection and care she felt towards him, but she wanted to know. She wanted his name at the least, and his story at most.

If he told her his, then she would tell him hers.

Rosalind ran a final assessing gaze over him. He was still too thin. When had he last fed? He needed blood to heal wounds and keep his strength up, and she hadn’t smelt blood in any of the bowls the guards carried on the trays at feeding time. It was a scent she would never forget now. One that would always stand out to her, even over the foul odour of the slop they fed her.

The elf had given her blood to heal her though, weakening himself.

Her gaze darted to her wrist and away again. No way that was going to happen. Feeding him from the vein was the swiftest way of increasing the care she already felt for him. She would give him blood, but without directly feeding him. Perhaps she could pour it into his mouth from a bowl, but she didn’t have one. She would get one somehow, and feed him later.

She focused on healing him with her power, working on the worst of his wounds first. His knees were slow to heal, the bones refusing to mend beneath his battered flesh. She willed them to do as her spell asked, to knit back together and become strong again. Her spell fizzled out before even the smallest fracture had closed. She called another one and channelled it into him, chanting this time to maintain a strong focus and aid the spell.

Rosalind managed to get one femur healed before her head spun and she had to stop. She peeled her eyes open and looked at his face. What was wrong with him? Why wasn’t he healing? His body should have assisted her magic, his natural healing ability using the spell as a burst of power to rapidly heal him.

Something was wrong with him.

He needed more than sorcery to get him healed and was too weak to heal himself naturally. The dark arcs beneath his eyes were worse now too, his sunken cheeks alarming her. He had looked ill when she had first met him, but now he looked close to death.

She was weak herself, but she might still have what he needed and the power to save him. Finding a bowl was no longer an option. She didn’t have time.

He didn’t have time.

Rosalind swallowed hard and before she could reconsider what she was doing, she used one of his remaining claws to cut a line across her wrist.

He sniffed.

Muttered, “Ki’ara.”

That woman’s name again. She silently cursed him for calling her by another’s name and had to force herself to remain in place and not give in to the urge to slap him and make his injuries worse.

Or strike him and leave.

It would certainly be more satisfying than helping him and letting him think another had done it. This woman. This Kiara.

His fingers curled into fists and clenched, and his body tensed and bowed off the dark stone slab. “
Ki’ara
.”

“That’s not my name, dammit.” Before she could stop herself, she slapped him hard enough to rattle his brain in his thick skull, and the chain between her wrists followed her swing, battering him too.

He snarled, lunged and had his mouth latched around her uncut wrist before she could begin to pull it out of his reach, his whiskers scraping her skin. He bit down, blunt teeth bruising her flesh below the manacle, and growled in frustration. Rather than releasing her, he bit harder, clearly not grasping that his fangs were missing.

Rosalind cried out and finally managed to wrestle free of him. Her wrist throbbed, sending white-hot pain ricocheting up and down her arm.

“Shh, Ki’ara,” he murmured softly.

She grunted darkly, stood and kicked the slab he was laying on. Her foot ached from the blow and she hopped, clutching her buzzing toes.

When he groaned, the sound pained, she stopped and stared down at him. He writhed on the stone, his face screwed up and his agony flowing over her. Why wasn’t he healing as he had before?

Was he weakening?

It worried her. She didn’t want to admit it, didn’t want to feel anything for this man, but it worried her. She could feel his pain still, running through her like an undercurrent, all focused in the places where she could see injuries on him. His knees. His hands and feet. The side of his head. How? Why could she sense those injuries as if they were in a way her own?

Because he had given his blood to her to make her stronger? Had it formed a connection between them?

“Female… come,” he husked and she almost did until he tacked on, “Ki’ara.”

“No.” Rosalind stood her ground, holding her bruised and throbbing arm to her chest while blood trickled down her other one. From a wound she had made for him. And then the bastard had started calling her that name again.

He opened his eyes with great effort and struggled to focus them on her. They kept rolling back into his skull but it didn’t deter him. When they finally settled on her, they were purple again, hazy with pain and bloodshot.

He tried to lick his lips but only made it as far as touching his tongue to them, and his throat worked on a hard swallow. He was thirsty. Hungry. She swore she could feel it in him, and she could definitely see it in his eyes and the way they fixed on her, implored her as if only she could end his suffering.

She would be a fool to go near him.

But then she always had been a healer first and foremost, had never been able to see anything in pain without helping it, and this elf was in agony.

She kneeled beside him again and held back, giving herself a moment to reconsider the lunatic move she was about to make. For all she knew, he would drain her dry and kill her. His purple eyes tracked her. How lucid was he? Conscious enough to answer some questions before she placed her life in his hands?

She needed a reason to do it. She needed to understand what was wrong with him.

Maybe then she would know how to heal him with her magic.

She lowered her gaze to his mouth and stared at it, fixing all of her focus on it and ignoring the heat that curled through her as he stared right back at her, his purple eyes locked on her face with such force that it rocked her.

“Your fangs are gone,” she whispered, cleared her throat to dislodge the tremble from her voice, and added, “They’re regenerating, although slowly. Why slowly?”

“Blood.”

A reasonable request and one she would get around to after he had answered her question.

She nodded. “I will give you some.”

His black eyebrows dipped low and he managed to shake his head. Had she misunderstood?

“Gave you,” he croaked, his voice thick and hoarse.

Rosalind frowned now. “The blood you gave to me? But why would that affect your healing ability?”

His eyes slipped closed and lines bracketed his mouth as his body heaved off the slab, shuddering and tensing. Blood trickled from a deep gash across his chest, sliding down his ribs. He groaned.

“You,” he whispered. “Ki’ara.”

She didn’t understand. He thought she was this woman he always spoke of with a deep husky rumble in his voice and that meant he was healing less quickly, because he gave her blood? It didn’t make sense at all.

His eyes opened again, glassy now. Whatever grip on his sanity he had mustered, he was losing it and was beginning to slip back away from her.

“Blood. Ki’ara. Give. To. Me.” He laboured over each strained word, pain etched in his eyes and on his face.

“My name isn’t Kiara,” she snapped. “It’s Rosalind!”

“Not. Kiara. Ki’ara.” His eyes rolled closed and then flicked open again, sharper now. “Not. Name. Ki’ara.”

“Not a name?” She risked it when he shuddered again, thrashing against his bonds, and placed her left hand on his forehead, leaving her right one on the slab beside him. He instantly stilled and she swept her fingers over his dirty skin, stroking the sweat-slicked black hair back and waiting for him to attempt to bite her again. He didn’t. She stared down into his eyes. “What is it then?”

He husked, “You.”

Something flickered amongst the pain in the depths of his purple eyes, something hot and fiery.

Dark and possessive.

It spoke of hunger and desire, of passion that caused heat to flare in her veins and burn through her, turning her blood to flame and scalding her cheeks.

“Me? I’m ki’ara?” Rosalind sat back, needing a moment to take that in and get her body back under control. She placed her hands in her lap and toyed with the chain between her cuffs, more confused than ever.

Whatever a ki’ara was, the term obviously had a special meaning, and he used it for her, said it with dark desire in his eyes each time. A term of endearment? She eyed him. He only used it when he was lost in whatever darkness haunted him, maddened by it. When he was sane, she was a witch with a capital B, judging by the way he said it. He despised her then.

But he needed her now.

She had never met a man who made as little sense, and confused her as much, as he did.

“Blood.” He sounded strained again, weaker than before.

He had answered her question and she had promised him blood, and if he thought her to be this special-whatever-it-was then maybe he wouldn’t kill her after all.

She lifted her cut wrist and placed it to his mouth. His firm lips brushed her skin, sending an achy hot shiver coursing through her entire body, and then he closed them around the wound and sucked greedily, yet softly.

There was reverence in his gentleness and it almost knocked her on her backside. She hadn’t expected him to be so careful and gentle when he was hungry. It shocked her and stripped away another layer of her defences, leaving her more vulnerable than ever to this mysterious elf.

He grunted and his huge body lurched off the stone slab. It healed before her eyes, every wound closing and bruise disappearing, far quicker than she ever could have accomplished with her magic.

Mother earth. How was that possible? Just who was he?

Her answer came in a fashion that did knock her on her backside.

Colourful markings flashed into existence, lines of symbols that curled from his nipples around the square slabs of his pectoral muscles and across his collarbones to swirl around his deltoids. They chased over his hipbones and down beneath the black material she had placed over him too.

Rosalind realised with dread that he was no ordinary mysterious elf.

He was an elf prince.

She snatched her wrist away from his mouth, her heart slamming against her ribs as she clutched the chain between her restraints and told herself that she was seeing things. He wasn’t a prince. He couldn’t be.

The incubus in the cell across from her grunted, “You should have let him die. You should have kept far away from him, Little Girl. You know who he is, don’t you?”