5. Tempest
5
TEMPEST
A flash, and we stood in a small meadow surrounded by woods. The grass had been clipped—or eaten to the nub by creatures—and what remained was carpeted with a billion flowers in various shades of purple.
Vexxion stared down at me with so much desperation on his face, it gutted me. His hands gripped my shoulders tight enough to pinch.
But it was the caring in his eyes that made me wrench away from him.
Sneering, I took in the setting. “Such a lovely meadow.” Sarcasm strengthened my words and my spine. “Do you plan to drag me below the ground and bind me to a chair inside another torture cave?”
He jerked his head in a no.
A snap of his finger and his silver threads surrounded us, creating a dome overhead that wrapped down to the ground, encircling us on all sides.
“Now isn’t this endearing,” I said. “You’re trapping me here with your threads instead of your hands. Is the picturesque setting supposed to lull me? Because I know you can’t.”
From what I’d seen so far, no one was able to lull me, something I needed to think about later.
“We couldn’t talk inside the aerie,” he said.
“It’s my understanding that we can’t talk anywhere, or is that rule suspended now that you’ve betrayed me?”
“I never betrayed you, Tempest. Never.”
“You have from the moment you met me.” Anger ground through my voice, and I spit the words at him. “Oh, but wait. Actually, you started betraying me long before you met me, from the moment you mounted Glim and flew to the fortress, intending to send me to the Claiming where you could wrap thorny vines around my throat and then gift me to your delightful father.”
“He’s not my father.”
“ Bastard .”
“That, I am, but I’ve never claimed him as a parent. Don’t you see?”
“How can I?” I snarled. “You’ve shared nothing with me.” Damn my eyes for stinging and my voice for cracking. “Nothing!”
“I told you all I could.”
“You’ve only told me what you had to in order use me,” I bellowed. I paced in front of him, testing the boundaries of his threads. When I got close, they hummed against my skin in a manner unpleasant enough to make me back away but not enough to cause pain. A gentle trap was a trap nonetheless. “Let me go.”
“I can’t.”
“You won’t, you mean.” I whirled back to face him. “That evil prick stole everything from me. My parents. My friends. My life.” The love I thought I had for this man. “Soon, he’ll take whatever floundering magic I’ve found since you awakened it.”
“If we let him.”
“We don’t have a choice!”
“There are always choices,” he said. “I’ll make sure there are.”
“I doubt your wishes matter to your father.”
He blinked. “I’m here to stand judgment.”
“And collect on your favor. Don’t forget you threw out that tidbit back at the aerie.” It didn’t matter if he’d manipulated me into granting the favor. I gave my word to one of the fae; I still owed him something.
“Don’t do this, Vexxion,” I whispered, struggling to hold on to the grief that kept raging over me, dragging me down below a furious sea.
His spine stiffened. “I have to. If I don’t . . .”
“What?” Did I really want to know?
“All will be lost.”
“I believe it already is.” For me, anyway. Within a short time, I’d be hanging visitors’ belongings in their closets, my milky gaze trained on nothing, my soul wandering through the ether forever. Would I find Reyla and Brodine wandering there? Maybe I wouldn’t even recognize them if I saw them. “What do you want for your favor?”
He stepped right up to me. “So much.” Lifting a wedge of my hair, he glided it across his lips.
I reeled away from him, nearly yanking the hair from my head in my determination to put distance between us.
“No,” I said. “I will never willingly give my body to you again.” Did he truly think I’d do so to repay his cursed favor?
“I wouldn’t ask for that,” he said softly, though with our location and his threads, he had no reason not to speak in a normal tone.
Ah, I understood why he used such a sweet voice. He saw me as a feral creature who needed a soft hand to tame her. I guessed he had listened when I talked about how I trained beasts.
“When you come to my bed again,” he growled, “it will be because you want me. Because you crave my touch. Because you still love me.”
“Never again.” I jerked up my chin. “I owe you a favor, not my soul. Name it or go away.”
“Work with me until this is over.”
“I assume you mean until I kill the king, but define what working with you means.”
“I’ll continue to train you.”
My blink was acknowledgement, not agreement. It took spoken words to lock in anything with one of the fae.
“You’ll behave,” he said .
I’d only behave if it fit with my agenda.
“Do as I ask without question,” he said.
“I ask when I need answers.”
He jerked out a nod. “Do as I ask when the king or anyone else is around—without question.”
“Is that all?”
“You’ll listen to me now while I explain. I can fix this. I promise.”
Was this where he’d pretend to grovel?
“I’m not that good in bed,” I pointed out.
His lips curled up but only briefly. “There will never be anyone else for me but you.”
My eyes stung all over again, proving the floodgates were still wide open and gushing with my pain. I wasn’t sure there was enough water in the world to cleanse me of this man’s touch. “Don’t do this.”
“I need to explain. You need to listen.”
“You want me to trust you again,” I croaked. “I never will.”
“Have I lost you completely?”
I wanted to shout yes, but that blink in the throne room . . .
Was this another trick?
“This isn’t over yet,” he said.
“I’ll agree with you on that statement, assuming you didn’t lie when you told me you were determined to do whatever you had to to kill the king.”
His hand rose to his scars, and I wanted to snap at him for reminding me that he’d suffered as much from Ivenrail as me.
Could I form a truce with this wicked fae lord?
“Explain first,” I said. “Then we’ll talk about your deal.” I still couldn’t believe what happened in the throne room. “Your father stole everything from me, but you let him do it.”
His hands twitched at his sides, but his jawline remained stoic. “I didn’t.”
“Don’t speak softly.”
“Would you like me to yell at you?” His lips twisted in a grimace. “I can’t do that, Tempest. You’re right. I’m wrong. Listen and judge me.”
“He stole everything, and you knew he’d do it.”
“I came here, but it was already too late.”
I frowned. “What do you mean you came here?”
“As soon as I’d recovered from the Claiming, I flitted here to help Reyla and Brodine, but I was too late.” His head dropped before he lifted it, his gaze meeting mine. “I owe them, and I’ll find a way to fix this.”
His determination—his obvious remorse—gouged into my heart. I hated that I was softening to him already.
“You used me.” The words tasted as bitter as they had when I shouted them at him in the throne room. “You’re still using me by calling in this favor that you essentially manipulated me into giving.”
“I am.”
He. Did. Not. Blink.
“Fuck you!” I whirled around and rushed forward, slamming into his thread wall and bouncing off it, falling on my ass.
The ground wasn’t as hard as I’d expected. I frowned down at the pile of flooferdar blankets I’d landed on before scrambling off them and rising to my feet. “Do you plan to offer me a plate of horig cakes next? ”
“If you want them, yes.”
A crack fissured along one side of my wall. Damn me for wavering even one little bit. He knew me too well. Stepping forward, he tugged me into his arms and held me. His warmth surrounded me, his chin only lightly holding me in place.
I wanted to take the comfort he offered, but that meant giving in to the betrayer.
The vines encircling my neck squirmed beneath my skin, reminding me of who had placed them there. Reminding me of who he was and what he’d done to me and everyone I’d ever loved—even himself. I backed out of his embrace, and he let me go, his arms falling to his sides.
“Are the vines listening to what we say and reporting to someone else?” I asked.
“No.”
“That’s right. Mine serve only one master. You.”
“I am the king’s controller,” he said with a wry taint in his voice.
The air froze in my lungs. I couldn’t force it back out. “Are you saying you control all the vines?”
“Yes.”
“Then release them, every single one.”
“I would if I could.” Stark honesty came through in his voice, but I didn’t dare believe it. “They won’t obey that command.”
How could I ever trust this man again? “Then you’re useless to me.”
“You know that’s not true. ”
“Oh, yes, you still have more training to offer me before I can kill the king and put you and the rest of this wretched fae realm out of its misery. Will some of my training continue in your bed?”
He slammed his eyelids closed but only for a moment. When he opened them, they blazed into mine, bolts of lightning blasting through them. “In that, I have always— always —been honest with you. You have all of me. Everything that makes up me belongs to you .”
“What if I don’t want that any longer?”
Profound sadness filled his eyes, as if the veil he’d placed over them to keep the world from seeing the true Vexxion parted only for me. “Then I have no reason to exist.”
“Do not pin that on me.” I started stomping around again, expending my fury in my movements as well as in my voice. “You and your friends came to the fortress. No, we won’t call them friends. You, your brother—”
“Half-brother.”
Whatever. “You, Zayde, and your cousin came to the fortress solely to make sure I would be claimed and presented to your father for draining.”
“I went to the fortress to speak with the commander, nothing else.”
“Forgive me if I have a hard time believing you.”
He nodded. “I deserve that. Hit me if you want.”
“While smacking you would bring me endless pleasure, it won’t change what you’ve done.” I grunted. “Back at the fortress, you said you told the commander no, but then . . .” I sorted through my memories, trying to line them up. “You said you told him you’d speak to . . .” Ah, yes. “The king, I assume, as long as he did something for you.”
“Yes. That’s when I asked him to send you to the Claiming.”
I flung my arms up into the air rather than pull the blade at my side and slam it into his belly. Oh, how I itched to do it, to end this with the dagger he’d gifted me. But then I’d have to turn the blade onto myself if only to sever the feelings still coursing through me for this wretched fae man.
“Farnoll had already spoken to the commander, though I didn’t know that back then,” he said. “He was sent to make the arrangement, not me. I will mention that I knew he’d traveled with me to ensure someone was sent to the Claiming. I didn’t know it was you.”
“And you had no problem with that? You were going to blithely allow him to send a powerful Nullen to be drained by your father?”
“I told you I don’t claim him as my father,” he bit out.
“Your wishes don’t matter in this, because he’s claimed you already, Controller .”
“I’ve spent almost all my life convincing him that he can trust me, as far as he trusts anyone, that is.”
“Why?”
“How else will I get close enough to kill him? He won’t stand in place and let me drive the blade through his heart like I ache to do.”
“You’re close enough to him already. You hover by his side, doing his bidding without question. Pull the knife and stab him through the eye. You did it with dregs; do it with him. ”
“I told you his spell keeps me from doing anything that might cause him harm.”
“Is that why you’re weak after you flit? Do his spells impact everything you do?” If so, I could only imagine how powerful Vexxion would be if his magic wasn’t suppressed.
“Yes, the spell weakens me at times, but it doesn’t impact everything.”
Obviously, or he wouldn’t be able to function as the controller.
I laid it all out as I saw it in my mind. “You were weak when you arrived at the fortress.”
“I’d just come from Bledmire. His spell had full effect.”
“But you grew stronger the longer you were away from him, strong enough to flit here to try to help Brodine and Reyla.”
He nodded.
“And now that you’re back here again, the spell deadens your magic.”
“More or less.”
“You tell me. More or less?”
“When I’m here, so much less.”
I couldn’t imagine having as much power as Vexxion. He could do so much even while the king’s spell muted his magic.
“Why didn’t you tell me he was your father?” I asked.
“Would you have asked me to claim you if you knew?”
Absolutely not. “Why did you decide to claim me?”
“Once I met you, I couldn’t let anyone but me put a collar around your throat. I couldn’t let anyone hurt you.”
“You hurt me with one lie after another. ”
“I lied to protect you.” Lashing out, he gripped my arms. “Don’t you see?”
I flung myself away from him. “Lies hurt even if they’re done with good intentions.”
His sigh showed his agreement. “Ask the rest of your questions. I’ll answer them.”
“Will you give me the truth or feed me another set of lies?”