Chapter Sixteen
Reign
Every bone in my body screamed to remain with Aelia in the madness of that Bacchanalia.
The entire chamber reeked of lust and debauchery.
The way the Shadow Fae stared at her… Gods, it was a miracle I hadn’t turned the entire erotic revelry into a bloodbath.
There was nothing I desired more than to rip out their eyes for daring to look at my mate.
And Ruhl’s presence only exacerbated my nerves.
What game was he playing at? Or was he telling the truth the other day, and he’d merely gone back to his old ways?
Shaking my head to rid myself of the pointless thoughts, I strode down the quiet hallway, cloaked in shadows. The halls of Arcanum Citadel were exactly as I remembered them: sharp, cold, and humming with restrained cruelty.
Noxus, I hated this place.
The sconces still burned with shadowflame, casting flickering azure light across the dark stone walls.
I’d spent years walking beneath them as a student, dreaming of freedom.
Now I was back, not as a boy desperate to escape, but as a male who had finally tasted it and would burn this place to ash if I had to. Anything for her.
Focusing on the task at hand was nearly impossible. Not when I could feel Aelia’s desire pulsing through our bond, her scent still lingering in my nostrils.
Everything all right over there? I shot the question through the glittering strands that connected us.
Yes, Reign. You only left moments ago.
And yet, it feels like a lifetime to me. What are you doing?
Just watching Rue and Symon feed each other absinthe-infused grapes. I could almost hear her laugh in my mind.
Oh, realms, help us all.
Stop worrying about me and find Malakar. The sooner you do, the more quickly you can return, and I promise it will be worth it.
Another wave of lust crashed over me, this one so potent it nearly knocked me off my feet. My hand shot out, clinging to the wall to keep myself upright. I’m coming, princess.
Not yet, but hopefully soon.
Noxus, what has gotten into you?
Her teasing laugh flitted through our connection before the bond went silent. Muttering a curse, I adjusted my trousers, which had suddenly become too tight, and quickened my pace down the corridor.
The heavy door to Malakar’s office loomed at the end of the hallway like a gaping maw. I didn’t knock. I didn’t have the patience.
I let myself in.
The room hadn’t changed one bit in ten years.
Sprawling tomes and shadowed artifacts littered the obsidian desk.
Black banners hung limp on the walls, stitched with runes that slithered when I looked too long.
A jagged window cut across the back of the chamber, revealing a view of the Nightbloom Gardens and the edge of the Luminoc River.
And there, seated behind the desk like he hadn’t aged a day, was Headmaster Malakar.
He didn’t look up. “I wondered when the ghost would return.”
I didn’t speak. Not yet.
He set his quill aside with surgical precision, then slowly raised his eyes to mine. They were just as I remembered; deep, dark pools of void, ancient and eerily still. The kind of stare that flayed you open and cataloged every secret inside.
“You shouldn’t be here, Reign.” His voice was low and velvety, like oil dripping from a blade.
“I’ve come for your cooperation.”
His lips twitched. Almost a smile. “So bold. As if you’ve forgotten who made you.”
“I’ve forgotten nothing,” I said coldly, my shadows curling at my feet. I was a product of Malakar’s brutal instruction as much as my own sire’s.
“Mm. Haven’t you?” He stood, robes whispering across the floor. “You wiped your own name from these halls. Took great care, didn’t you? To erase the stain of your existence. And yet…” His gaze swept over me slowly, curiously. “Here you are. Again.”
Not willingly.
He stepped closer. “Tell me, how did you manage to disappear? How many minds did you poison, how much memory did you alter to vanish like smoke?”
“Enough.” I didn’t have time for games or to reminisce on the past. “We’re uniting the courts for battle. Training has already begun at Luce. You’re to do the same here.”
Malakar arched a brow. “And who appointed you steward of both academies?”
“No one,” I said. “But I’m not asking.”
The air shifted.
Malakar’s shadows coiled behind him like a nest of snakes, mirroring mine. “You always had a defiant streak. Even as a student. Dangerous. Foolish.”
I clenched my jaw. “You will begin joint training with the Conservatory of Luce. Immediately. Draven will be expecting your students first thing in the morning.”
“I will not.” He circled his desk. “King Tenebris has forbidden it. I spoke to him just yesterday.”
Of course he had. My father’s hand reached farther than I liked.
“I’m not concerned with my father’s orders.”
“You should be,” Malakar replied, voice sinking low. “He’s already suspicious of you. If he learns you dared to return to the Citadel—”
“I said I. Do not. Care.” I stepped forward, letting the darkness bleed from my fingertips. “This alliance is happening. If you won’t lead it, I’ll have you replaced.”
He chuckled, a sound completely devoid of humor. “You overestimate your reach, bastard. Or perhaps you’re forgetting that I trained you once. I know the limits of your power.”
I smiled slowly. “Then let me show you how far I’ve surpassed them.”
Before he could react, I unleashed the nox.
It surged like a tide, wrapping the room in shadow, blotting out the torchlight, warping the air until the walls pulsed like a living heart. Malakar reeled back, summoning his own defense, but I was faster.
Then I drew from the well of zar. The true secret. The forbidden energy licked across my skin like hellfire and frost, threading through my thoughts as I dove straight into his.
His gasp echoed through the chamber. His mind was a fortress. Ancient and barbed, coated in centuries of mental wards. But I’d been trained to unravel minds. And I knew how to tear down his.
He snarled, his voice a blade inside my skull. Get out!
“No,” I growled aloud, forcing the shadows deeper.
Memory shards flared. His promise to Tenebris. The orders. The fear. The doubt.
Finally, I found the crack. He actually wanted to fight Helroth. It was my father who deterred him, so I drove my will into the lingering doubt.
“You will initiate joint training with the Conservatory,” I commanded. “You will tell Tenebris nothing. If he asks, you will inform him the students are preparing for a separate incursion, a rebellion in the Wilds, if you must. But he will not know the truth.”
Malakar’s hands trembled. Blood trickled from his nose, coating his upper lip. “You are not… strong enough,” he rasped.
But he was wrong. For Aelia, I was strong enough for anything.
“War is coming,” I snarled. “And I will drag every corner of this realm into the light, whether they want it or not.”
The cuorem blinked to life, igniting with the fury of a thousand burning stars. I drove the command deeper, sealing it with a twisted thread of zar. A compulsion. One I had yet to attempt but felt fairly certain I could master.
A warning flared in the back of my mind. I’d never used zar this deeply before, not like this. If I pushed too far, I might unravel him… or worse, myself.
Too late.
Finally, Malakar gasped and crumpled to his knees, his shadows hissing and scattering like frightened things. The torches flared back to life.
I stood over him, breathing hard. “You will do as I said,” I commanded. “And you will forget I was ever here.”
Malakar didn’t speak. His eyes were glazed, distant. The compulsion had taken root. I could feel the toxic zar flooding his awareness, stealing his will.
And just like that, I understood how Helroth had strode into Aelia’s mind and forced her to do unspeakable acts. Now, if I could only find a way to undo it.
His expression remained unreadable, continuing to stare into nothingness as I turned and walked away. My thoughts were heavy, leaving the headmaster on the floor. But there would be no more delays.
My cuoré was waiting for me, and I would walk through hell, through my dark past, even through my own damned blood to return to her.
Aelia’s eyes met mine from across the ballroom, as if she’d sensed my approach and had been waiting. And gods, the satisfaction that brought was inconceivable. Before I made it more than a few steps into the lavish chamber, she darted toward me and tangled her fingers through mine.
“Finally,” she purred, her dark pupils flaring with need.
“Aelia, did you—”
“No. I didn’t drink or eat anything. But I cannot be certain they’re not pumping something potent through the air vents.” Shrugging, she spun me around, toward a narrow hallway adjacent to the doorway through which I’d just entered. “Come with me.”
Our eager footfalls echoed across the dark stone walls, her excitement and lust thrumming through our bond, fueling me. Finally, at the end of the corridor, I saw it.
The moment the door of the closet slammed shut behind us, I lost control. The scent of lust permeating the ballroom coupled with the intense desire surging through our bond for the past half hour had me in a chokehold.
With the lingering pulse of seductive music throbbing faintly through the obsidian walls, I pinned Aelia to the back of the door.
In the next heartbeat, my hands were braced on either side of her head.
My breath was ragged against her skin, shadows curling across the stone like smoke caught in a storm.
“I told you we shouldn’t have come here,” I growled, every word edged in frustration and something far darker.
“What happened with Malakar?” she shot back, her voice sharp, but breathless, laced with fire.
“Later,” I growled.
But I didn’t kiss her. Not yet.
I just stared, devoured her with my eyes, trying to read her. Searching for any flicker of doubt now that her inhibitions were lowered. Any regret. Any lingering thread of whatever the hell that look was Ruhl had given her when we’d first arrived. Like he’d bled out the moment she walked in.
“Stop thinking about him,” she whispered, plucking the thought from my mind as she pressed her palms to my chest.
“I’m not,” I growled, voice low and tight.
My thumb traced the hollow of her throat reverently, because even in my anger, I couldn’t stop touching her.
Couldn’t stop needing to feel that she was mine.
“You don’t know what kind of darkness festers in Arcanum’s bones, in the Bacchanalia, in Shadow Fae themselves.
It’s ancient. Hungry. It doesn’t just tempt, it consumes.
And you…” I swallowed hard. “You walked into that dark revelry glowing like sunlight, and every shadow in that den wanted to claim you.”
She leaned in, fingers fisting my tunic, her voice a whisper that shattered the last thread of my restraint. “Then it’s a good thing I’ve already been claimed.”
Gods, that broke me.
I crushed my mouth to hers. It was hungry, reckless, and ruined by her. The kiss was rough and desperate, a storm I couldn’t keep caged any longer. Her head hit the door with a soft thud as I tangled one hand in her hair and the other gripped her hip, grounding myself in her.
The cuorem pulsed between us, burning bright and deep.
She gasped against me as my shadows spilled over her skin, slick and possessive. They slid around her waist, slipping beneath her dress like they had minds of their own.
I pressed my thigh between hers and she arched against me, a needy sound escaping her throat that nearly undid me. “Tell me to stop,” I growled into her mouth.
“Never,” she breathed.
With a snarl, I lifted her, her legs wrapping around my waist like they belonged there. And they did. She did.
My kiss seared the truth to her lips. That I needed her. That I would burn for her.
Her scent. Her skin. Her light.
Gods, I was drowning in her.
Aelia arched against me as my hands traveled her perfect form, sparks of gold illuminating her body like sunlight incarnate. She was everything I wasn’t, warmth, purity, light, and yet she looked at me like I was made for her.
She was mine.
“Are you sure?” I asked, my fingers hovering just inches from her panties, my control fraying by the second. “Someone could come…”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything, outside of cementing our bond, of course.”
The words splintered through me, undoing me inch by inch. My lips found hers again, more softly now, before I untied laces and kissed my way down her body like a sinner before a goddess. I wanted her undone. I wanted her worshipped.
Kneeling before her, I slid her panties down, my hands shaking with barely restrained desire.
“Reign,” she whispered, voice trembling, and that was it.
Sloughing off my trousers, I stood up, then slid into her with a groan, every part of me scorching as she wrapped around me, body and soul. The cuorem roared to life, blinding and endless, binding us tighter with every pulse of pleasure between us.
Our powers answered each other, light curling into shadow, shadow kissing light.
My mouth moved over hers as her hands tangled in my hair, nails digging into my back. She met every thrust with a gasp, her fingers gripping me like I was something worth holding onto. “You’re mine,” I rasped, and she nodded, eyes glassy and dazed with need.
“I’m yours. Always.”
I lost myself in her. In her body, her fierce, wild love, and the trio of powers coursing between us. The world narrowed to the space between our hearts, the steady thrum of the cuorem anchoring us. When we shattered together only moments later, her name was on my lips, and mine on hers.
And as we stood there, tangled and breathless in the darkness with her cheek resting against my chest, I was certain of it. Returning here, seeing Malakar and waking all the dark memories of the past, it only confirmed what I knew all along.
I could, and I would serve up my own father for slaughter to protect her.