Chapter 1 Violent Like a Storm and Fierce Like the Ocean #2
"Luella, rein in your power, and cease your storm.
" Vale’s strong hands, warm like fire, wrapped around her, careful of her back.
She was limp in his hold, save for her unyielding grip against his shirt.
Her fingers ached from the force with which she held onto him.
"Or we will all die here tonight." His rings cut into her ribs as he held her with equal possession.
She shook against him, the air too loud for her to think, to do anything, except focus on the storm and him—him and the storm.
"Do not let this be your end, darling. You were made to burn, not be snuffed out by wind and water. "
Her lips brushed his chest as she spoke, voice tremulous, "I can’t stop it. It won’t listen to me."
He stilled, a brief pause in a world of chaos. "I am ordering you, call it back."
She felt as the Binding mark throbbed, growing more intense, but something strange happened: it did not build into a deeper ache to force acquiescence from her. It pulsed just once. A gentle understanding, cowed by her might, then stopped altogether, forced to become small in the face of her fury.
Vale did not relent. He spoke again. And again, voice growing more furious, just as the wind whipping through the watery depths of the throne room, carrying the tides of the ocean, grew more violent.
"Stop." The scales slowly overtaking Vale’s flesh burned as the rigid silkiness rubbed against her. "I demand you. Stop."
Hurting, aching.
He had promised. One more show, and she would be able to rest. Could she not still be granted such serenity?
The well inside her pulsed, seeping outward too fast for her to keep track of. Simultaneously, the wind roared, the stone walls groaned dangerously, and the five males around her tensed, their fear flowing down the invisible threads binding them.
Vale huffed out smoke, reaching down to grip her cheeks with bruising force as he pulled her face from where she had tucked it against his chest, seeking out the comforting blindness of unknowing.
As he tilted her face up to his, her neck twinged with pain, sending shooting bolts down her spine and out to her fragile, shivering wings.
This close, she could count the individual flecks of darker emerald in his eyes, see the way his pupils shifted slightly, growing more elongated the longer he stared at her.
"Stop," Vale ordered.
Not angry, not violent; sad and tired and done with this—ready to be done with it all—Luella simply said:
"No."
"No?" Smoke wafted from Vale’s nostrils in dark grey plumes. "What do you mean, no?"
If the orchestra had still been playing, the musicians would have come to a screeching halt at the quiet fury laced between his words.
The hand on her face grew painful. She winced. The pain was nothing compared to the growing mass of agony at her back. She felt blood slip down her spine. Could Bastian taste the scent of her in the air? Or was the salty storm obscuring the iron tang of her lifeforce?
It was taking everything in her not to give in to the surging pain inside her.
Even so, she had started this. She would finish it.
"I will not stop this." Luella’s voice was quiet. "Even if I could, I do not think I would want to, Vale. You have earned this."
The wind took her words and broke them into a thousand pieces, scattering them around the watery floors.
"I may have earned this, but listen to me, Luella, do you think they have?" He gestured over his shoulder, to nothing and no one, except discarded wine bottles and overturned chairs. A ghost town, holding nothing but memories of lust and sin.
She was nodding before she could think it through, drowning in memories of laughter and taunts as she was dragged to the steps of the palace, thrown before the King.
They deserved it all—some even more than the dragon King before her.
The hands that had touched her, the lips that had spoken vile propositions and hurled wicked insults.
"Very well. But what about the innocents?
Will you blame the actions of one for many?
Think of the gentle souls, like yours." Vale’s fingers released their death grip on her face, turning achingly gentle.
A pretty lie, crafted to lure her in and make her pliant and willing.
But the storm raged on, not willing to be tricked. "Do you think they deserve to die?"
And…
He had her.
He knew it, too.
Luella’s shoulders dropped with a quiet sigh, the end turning strangled with a barely restrained sob.
"No," she whispered brokenly.
"I thought so." With one hand, Vale tugged free his golden mask and threw it over his shoulder; it splashed into the growing pool of water, sinking to lie right next to hers.
Their masks were gone, and they were both exposed now.
Onyx scales glistened on his cheekbones, rain sluicing down them, making them sparkle.
He leaned forward and pressed his lips, which she knew tasted of embers and ash, to her brow.
"No matter how many years you have to craft the skill of your tongue, know that it will never be a match for mine. I will always win."
His tone was withdrawn. She assumed there was no victory in winning against an already beaten-down opponent.
The vulnerably victorious pieces of her soul cracked. Just a bit.
As did the walls around them.
The wind beat against the structure of the castle, and even the hewn stone was no match against her storm.
Cracks splintered out. The sound of the fractures echoed around them, multiplied by the rippling water filling up the room.
Vale jolted, pressing her closer against him to keep her safe as smoke filled the air around him. She heard masculine calls, the others jumping into action.
Everything stilled, anticipating a crushing end.
Would it hurt? Would she feel her bones turn to dust and her skin to mush as stone fell upon them?
The cracks were loud, mingling with the storm as the air ripped around them and the rain soaked them all.
"Get her out of here," Bastian snapped. She felt cold hands on her shoulders, stark against the King’s heat. It was like a balm on her aching flesh. "Now, Vale. The castle will crumble at any moment."
Vale found her eyes. "If I take her, the storm will follow where she goes."
It was Tharen who spoke of the niggling thoughts brewing in her mind, as if he heard her. And perhaps he had. She was just aware enough to feel invisible fingers combing through her thoughts, plucking and pulling. Was Bastian sending her innermost secrets and musings to the others?
"Maybe not." The Prima’s tone was hard as ice. "She wants this castle to crumble down and all of us to fall with it. If we take her away, the castle may fall, but we won’t."
As Tharen spoke, Bastian tugged on her upper arms, Vale relenting and standing with her in his clutches. He kept her steady when she wobbled from the wind, a strong, unyielding pillar to cling to.
He was the eye of the storm, calm. But she was the hurricane itself, spinning wild around him.
Bastian’s red eyes flashed. "It’s true. She wants this place turned to dust, whether we are inside it or not."
She stared at a button on the King’s coat. "Get out of my head before I make you." The words were pulled from somewhere deep and treacherous inside her soul.
The ghostly hands retreated, her thoughts slipping through his fingers like sand.
Good.
Who is the well-behaved pet now?
She hoped he heard that thought. It was loud in her own mind; perhaps it spanned the space between them and filtered into his.
A flash of black feathers as Graves stepped forward. "She comes first."
Vale blew out a harsh breath, smoke clouding before her and mingling with the rain.
"We’re wasting time!" Azgorath spat. "You want to die here? Fine. But not her. I’ll take her myself. Lu, come on." The demon thundered forward, and Luella all but melted into his arms as he held her—she was surrounded by them and the rain.
A loud crack echoed, and this time, she flinched, cowering in their holds as if they were a match against this fortress.
"You can’t stop it, Luella?" Vale beseeched, voice distressed as he grabbed her hand, fingers lacing with hers as he forced her to stop, pulling her back into his orbit. She jerked her gaze down to his hand on hers, but he did not relent. "Tell me—truly."
She didn’t feel the Binding mark. Her words were all her own:
"Truly, Vale, I can’t. But I don’t want anyone to hurt—not the i-innocents," she sobbed.
"Not the ones who did not want to hurt me.
" It spilled out of her like rain. She felt as though she had lost her balance, and only at that moment, had she reclaimed it, stumbling and teetering, but it was a start.
Was it just her, or had the rain let up?
But it was too late. The cracks had been formed.
"I will shift and take her to my—my den." Resignation flashed over Vale’s face.
Graves nodded, just once. "Don’t let it become too much."
"I won’t," Vale replied. Cryptic. "Prima, get your wards to safety. I will return for you once she’s safe." His hands tightened on her.
"Wait," Luella whimpered. "You’re not coming? What if you—"
Die.
She couldn’t say it.
Because of me.
She didn’t want to say it.
This was all her fault.
Az grabbed her with ferocity, and amid the storm and the thundering cracks of the castle walls, he leaned down far to breach the height separating them and pressed his lips to hers. A moment of aching tenderness and devotion. She sighed into his mouth—but he pulled away too soon.
"Go with him. He will protect you—his dragon demands it. I’m right behind you, my angel." Az’s voice cracked.
And he let her go.
"Come get me," she whispered. "Don’t be a hero for someone else… because then you won’t be mine anymore."
Selfish. But the truth was often bitter and greedy.
Her demon’s amber eyes searched hers. "Always."
Luella looked to the others. Graves, Bastian, and Tharen. Forced to stay so she could go.