Chapter 54
54
RIORDAN
T he inside of my mind was a battlefield, but I was fighting an enemy who was everywhere and nowhere at once. Ravok’s voice slithered through the slivers in my thoughts, an insidious whisper echoing with a thousand voices through the silence between my self-hatred and regrets.
“You’re wasting time,” he told me, his tone dripping with disdain as he tapped, tapped, tapped on the thin shell keeping me from collapsing altogether.
“Can’t you see how easy this could be—a kingdom united under your rule—I will make it all come true. All you have to do is give in.”
I didn’t respond, pushing against a rising tide that never stopped. Every hour, his presence grew stronger, his dark magic rooting deeper into my soul, that tapping drowning out every rational thought.
Someone—a female voice, strong, insistent, almost annoying—told me to keep fighting, but I couldn’t remember who she was, even what she looked like.
Ravok’s impatient chuckle turned menacing. “You can’t block me out forever. Give me your body and I will hand you a kingdom. You—we—will rule as our kind was meant to be ruled—with power, not ideals. And your people will bow, or they will break. ”
I gritted my teeth, focusing on the small part of me that still felt like me .
But his relentless voice oozed into every corner of my mind.
I didn’t know how long it had been since I’d slept, but darkness beckoned like a lover’s kiss, dragging me down into the depths where I could just…let…go…and…
“Ah, but what you truly want isn’t your kingdom, is it?” Ravok mused. “No, the real goal is her.”
Images of Evangeline— Silver , I called her—flashed unbidden in my mind. Her determined gaze, her fiery spirit. She danced at the edges of my thoughts, no matter how hard I tried to keep her out.
No matter how hard I tried to keep her safe from the monster inside my head.
“I see the way you look at her,” Ravok crooned, his voice curling like smoke around my memories. “I can taste her sweet pussy, still hear her moans. Feel my cock driving into her wet heat. You care for her, don’t you? But love, Riordan, is weakness.”
My silence only goaded him further.
“Oh, don’t look so sour,” he continued. “I’m not going to kill her. I see her value. Her blood—is extraordinary. Now that I’ve tasted her for myself, I must have more. Like drinking from the universe itself. So potent. So much stronger than any vampire’s blood has a right to be. Do you know why that is?”
I stayed silent, but a flicker of dread moved through me.
Silverwood . The word stretched through my consciousness like a banner streaming in the wind.
“We created the Silverwood line,” Ravok explained, a smug edge to his voice. “Her blood sings from a special strain of witch magic. That’s why it’s so irresistible, so... intoxicating. She’s not just a pretty distraction. She’s a treasure trove of power, waiting to be unlocked.”
A deep, twisting guilt surged within me. I’d known Silver’s blood was unusual. From the beginning, I’d exploited her for that, treating her like a means to an end.
I’d tried to build walls between us, walls that had crumbled, every single time I sank my fangs into her throat. My cock into her body. I couldn’t stop the traitorous, bone-deep shiver that went through me at the memory of her spread out on my bed as I’d fucked her. Drank from her.
We can have her again like that. All you have to do is give yourself to me.
Then she will be ours. We will keep her in our bed and bring her pleasure like she’s never known and she will make us invincible.
“It’s unfortunate she’s bound,” Ravok mused, savoring the revelation as I jerked in surprise.
“Oh yes, couldn’t you feel it? Someone bound her magic when she was young. But since you turned her, there are cracks in those bindings. So much terrible magic waiting to be unleashed, strong enough to rival even my own. And when you’re gone, I’ll unravel every ounce of her power like a ribbon. Imagine what she’ll become in my hands.”
The thought of him using Evangeline like that filled me with a rage fierce enough to cut through the fog of his influence, just for a moment.
“You’ll never touch her,” I growled, my voice low and raw. Blinking, I realized where I was. Back in the ballroom, surrounded by glass and blood. Why did he keep bringing me back here?
Ravok laughed, a sound that reverberated through my mind like a drumbeat. “You’re a fool, Riordan. You can barely keep me at bay, and you presume you can protect her? You think love will save her? You can’t even save yourself.”
His words struck a nerve, and for the first time, I saw the scope of my mistakes with sharp clarity. I had treated Silver like a tool, as Ravok intended to. And yet, somewhere along the way, she had become so much more. More than an ally, more than a pawn.
She had become someone I wanted to protect, someone whose fire and strength gave me hope even in my darkest moments. I loved her . Wonder swirled through me, effervescent enough the idea disappeared like smoke, the second I tried to grasp on.
“You were wrong about one thing,” I said, my voice steady despite the mangled chaos raging inside me.
“Oh?” Ravok purred, his interest piqued.
“Love isn’t weakness. Love makes us fight harder.”
Ravok went quiet, and I clung to that silence like a lifeline, untangling my doubts and self-hatred and fucking guilt. If I lost this war inside my own mind, I’d lose everything else that mattered. For one frantic moment I felt everything.
The brush of cold air on my exposed skin, blood rushing in my veins.
And then the world smeared as Ravok took me back over.
I would fight him, tooth and claw, until the end. Not for my kingdom, or for power, but for Silver—for the chance to prove to her I could make this right.