Chapter 19 Malice
MALICE
Malice’s words sour as soon as they hit the air, and they both suffer in the stench of them as they walk in silence.
It’s easier to endure Aerin’s jabs when they’re lined with vitriol.
Today they’d been offered with a hint of teasing and a glint of playfulness that Malice didn’t know what to do with.
So, he crushed it in his fist. It was a stupid and vicious response to the surprising feeling of fondness that overcame him as she teased.
Malice can’t possibly be fond of her. Selfish, vapid, reckless—he repeats it again.
It's impossible to reconcile all the sides of Aerin he’s been exposed to.
Aerin is reckless, with her friends, drinking, drugs, and sex.
Yet she is completely in control, juggling a thousand secrets.
Like a curtain pulled back, Malice sees her for what she is: a mastermind.
No longer a vapid, immature party girl but rather a puppeteer, controlling what he does and doesn’t see of her.
Aerin’s played him like a fiddle, kept him so focused on their little games, he hadn’t stopped to wonder if there’s something else to see.
Now it’s painfully obvious. Aerin has done things with her magic that should have been impossible for a Fae of her strength.
Ending the fight between Malice and the Tiger, ripping him from his half-shift, flying on wings she created out of nothing, fully transforming Malice to appear as an Ursine shifter while she also transforms herself.
All of it is far beyond the “mostly useless” magic the King, her brother, and the press have spent years dismissing.
Not to mention Aerin knows how to sneak out of Valtara, a secret shared with Malice in exchange for a lot of money in a seedy bar in Zeneith.
Worst of all, she tailed him, forcing Malice to reveal the one part of himself he could not share. She put him in a position he never wanted to be in.
[Bond with her. I want to bond with her,] Reikan adds unhelpfully. He’s been repeating it all morning. Malice shoves the Dragon out of his thoughts, shutting and locking the door between them with such vigor he gives himself a headache.
Too many lives rely on this secret being kept for Malice to simply trust the Princess with this information.
He couldn’t trust her before, and now? With every secret and every lie stacking up, he would be a fool to trust her word.
As bonded-mates, it will force her hand.
Aerin will be obligated to keep the secret as just that.
Everything inside of Malice thrashes at the inevitability of becoming tied to Aerin Tolvare.
He’s been in chains his entire life, bound to Reikan, to his bloodline, to this secret.
He isn’t eager to add another. But he will do whatever it takes to keep the Dragon inside of him, even if it means going to extreme, permanent, lengths.
There is no pain he won’t suffer to stop the Dragon from being passed on.
And so, Malice stalks through the front door of Aerin’s apartment building and punches the elevator button. They get halfway to her floor before he realizes Aerin released her magic. He ruffles his wings before pulling them tight to his body.
When Aerin strides out of the elevator, Malice does everything possible to not look at any part of her.
Her golden hair cascades down her back, ponytail long lost. Her hips sway as she strides forward.
The memory of how her hips felt under his grip makes him painfully aware of his hands.
Malice clenches them into fists as he follows Aerin into her closet of all places.
He stands back as she gathers things she has hidden.
His eyes drag up her long legs, hovering at the junction between her thighs and ass which is just barely covered by her shorts. Malice looks away, swallows, chastises himself, wonders how long he can keep acting like he doesn’t want to rip her clothes off and ravage her.
Malice is distracted by his thoughts when Aerin speaks for the first time since he blew up at her. She holds a key, one she grabbed from behind a picture frame.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” she asks, looking at him like she’s trying to read him. Malice holds everything close, locked away. Behind one of the many doors in his mind. He gives her nothing.
“Once I use this key, there is no going back. No changing your mind,” she warns.
Unfortunately, Malice believes her threat.
He realizes that with the strength she possesses, Aerin could simply force him to take the blood oath.
That she could have forced him when she first proposed this idea weeks ago.
Malice still doesn’t even know why she wants to be bonded.
He feels like he’s being led to slaughter. To his execution.
The Dragon huffs in Malice’s mind, back at the forefront despite Malice’s efforts. [She is mine. Ours. Bond with her. Bond with her.]
Malice wants to snarl at the Dragon, rail against him, smother him in his sleep. If only it was possible to do such a thing.
Instead, he tries pragmatism. [We will be giving her access to our magic.]
[To my magic,] Reikan says haughtily.
[You’re an asshole.]
[Always with the name calling.] Malice feels Reikan rolling his eyes.
Malice doesn’t have an answer for Aerin. There is no right answer. Does he want to take the blood oath and bind himself and his magic to a reckless, secret-keeping Fae with unknown power levels and unknown motives? No.
Is he going to do it anyways? Yes.
Because Reikan is a narcissistic creature: capricious, vicious, and pompous.
Aerin would never be safe again, knowing Malice’s secret.
Reikan could change his mind at any time.
Could shove his way forward and disembowel her beyond saving in a matter of seconds if he decides he no longer wants Aerin Tolvare knowing.
But even a Dragon can’t disregard bonded-mates.
Reikan wouldn’t be able to hurt Aerin without causing irreparable damage to Malice himself.
And if Malice knows one thing about the insufferable creature that lives inside of him, it’s that he prefers Malice to all his previous hosts.
He will go to great lengths to keep him.
It's not just Aerin in danger either. If the news broke that some Dragon-Fae are hosts for true Dragons, he’d be putting every one of his kind at risk.
He is at a dead end with no way out. But Malice’s life has never been his own, not since the moment he was conceived. A very small, very quiet part of him longs for a bond because it would make him part of a Bond Group, a dream he’d given up on long ago.
Taking his silence as assent, Aerin moves across the room and pulls up the corner of the thick shag rug. She kneels, prying up a floorboard before reaching down with the key. A lock is flipped, and she pulls open whatever is inside.
Magic permeates the room, a force so strong and old that Malice takes a step back.
Aerin pulls out three items before returning the lock and floorboard.
She sets the items on the coffee table in the middle of the massive closet, dropping to her knees on one side.
She gestures for Malice to join her. Reluctantly, he does.
Of the three items, the first is a bowl small enough to cup in Malice’s palms. It’s an endless kind of black that swallows every bit of light, as if made from shadows. The walls of the bowl are thick, its interior rough and jagged, like a geode cracked open to reveal only darkness.
The second item is a dagger. The blade is the same deep black crystalline rock as the bowl but is carved razor sharp. Deadly. The ornate silver handle is decorated with intricate runes Malice won’t even try to identify.
The final item is a vial, filled with what looks like dried herbs and salts, suspended in a thick liquid.
This isn’t average magic. Not the kind that Fae, Shifters, and Mer revere over all else. It’s blood magic: risky and volatile, no matter the wielder. Malice can feel it buzzing around him in the air, as if the magic has been imbued into the three objects before him.
Everyone knows the stories of blood-bonds. It’s a means of binding both mind and magic when the two creatures in question are not bond-mates. A long-abandoned practice from the Kingdom of Old, when Queens would bond with their Knights for loyalty and protection.
Malice watches Aerin dump the contents of the vial into the bowl.
As a drop hits its surface, it sizzles, the contents vanishing.
Malice finds himself wondering where Aerin learned how to do this.
He never questioned if she could, despite it being relatively well known that only the most powerful of Fae can hold a blood-bond.
Aerin pushes the dagger towards Malice across the table. It sits atop a ragged piece of parchment, worn with age, edges curled with wear. He picks up both items and scans the words on the page. Directions, brief and to the point.
[Do it. Do it. Do it.]
[Shut. Up.] Malice shoves Reikan away again, feeling the weight of the dagger in his palm.
There is no more stalling. There is only Aerin’s golden eyes looking at him expectantly and the dagger practically buzzing in his palm, eager to be used. Despite everything, his thoughts are consumed by her beauty.
Malice reads from the paper. “I stand before you, Princess Aerin Tolvare, and offer my unyielding fealty. I offer my blood and plead for its acceptance into the essence of you. For you, I sacrifice myself and offer to become wholly yours. Please, accept my offer.” The vow comes out thick in his throat, but Malice’s hand is steady as he draws the knife against his own palm.
He forms a fist and allows the blood to flow into the bowl below him until a pool is formed.
Aerin doesn’t need the instructions; it’s as if she’s had them memorized for years.
“I accept your offer.”
Grasping the bowl in both hands Aerin brings it to her mouth, swallowing down the contents. When she pulls away, blood lingers on her lips, bright red. She flicks it away with her tongue, pupils flaring.
Aerin puts the bowl down and holds her hand out. Malice passes her the dagger, his own palm already healed.
With the dagger in her hand Aerin recites, “I accept your oath to me. In exchange, I offer to bind myself, body, soul, and magic to you. To become your bonded-mate.”
The bowl vibrates aggressively, magic spilling out around them in waves Malice feels in his chest. Aerin slits her palm. The heady smell of her blood saturates the room, making Malice dizzy with want. He grasps the bowl and brings it to his lips.
The blood is warm and thick going down his throat.
Malice never really liked blood, not the way other full-magic creatures sometimes do.
But Aerin’s blood is like a drug. Warmth erupts through him, spreading from his stomach to the tips of his limbs.
It’s euphoric. The world tilts. He feels the shag rug under his cheek.
Feels her inside of him, spreading through his every vein, every artery.
Re-writing him, re-arranging everything inside.
Aerin. Aerin. Aerin.
The crisp breeze of fall. Soft fur under his palms. The sound of waves crashing on shore. The burn of ice against his skin. Shadows at the edge of his vision.
Aerin is everything.
Then there is only black.