Chapter 25
“Get away from me!” Gerard bellowed the words with all his might—but they emerged only as a hoarse and desperate whisper from the moving cage of his body, which was no longer under his control.
As if caught in a nightmare, he felt his own hand reach against his will to grasp the hilt of his sword while Lorelei stumbled backwards, mouth wide open in shock, nearly tripping on the rocky mountainside where the two of them had been dropped.
Other competitors were racing around that same mountainside, intent on the tournament’s official quest, but he took no notice. He couldn’t have turned his head to look at any of them even if he’d cared anymore.
“Gerard.” Lorelei’s voice trembled with emotion as she ignored his frantic orders and stayed exactly where she was, in excruciatingly imminent peril. “My darling. This is not your fault. It is not!”
Jovar’s hells, why wasn’t she running from him? She’d heard Oberon’s enspelled command just as clearly as he had; she knew what was about to happen.
Gerard had spent decades building his willpower into an unstoppable force, but now he couldn’t even stop his own damned arm from drawing his blade from its scabbard.
“Bind. Me!” He forced the words out in harsh fragments of sound as his sword hissed free.
Thick green vines leapt out of the ground to twine around him in answer—but they only slowed him for an instant. His blade flashed forward, arm muscles working with well-practiced ease, to slash himself free. Damn it, even the vines’ leaves were soft. What was she thinking?
“Thorns,” he rasped. “Poison. In me!” She couldn’t afford to be so gentle with him now! He’d been trained to kill from the time he was a child. She had to fight him like the ruthless opponent she always had been.
He’d spent years dreading the day when he would be forced to meet her in battle, but he had never imagined this.
“I…” Shaking her head, Lorelei finally began to back away, but she wasn’t moving nearly quickly enough. “I can’t,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “I can’t hurt you.”
Gerard had sworn to her only the night before that, unlike her earliest lovers, he would never hurt her, either.
Now, stinging tears leaked out of his eyes for the first time in decades.
Inside his head, he screamed in absolute refusal of Oberon’s magical order.
Following it would break him forever—yet he couldn’t stop his own right arm from swinging back in preparation for a killing blow.
With all of his strength, he forced one final command from his lips: “Kill me. Now!”
It was the only outcome he could bear.
“As queens, we do what we must, not what we would prefer.” Her mother’s words, spoken so long ago, echoed in Lorelei’s head as she backed away from the impossible choice playing out before her.
Even she couldn’t break the hold of a true-name command while she and Gerard remained in the fae realm—and there was no way to leave the fae realm now without violating its most essential code.
If Lorelei publicly broke her sworn word by abandoning the tournament midway through, she would be exiled from Efaelen forever after, never allowed to visit her mother or her first home again.
Was it only a few minutes ago that she had gazed covetously at those golden arrows and seen a promise of full acceptance here at last?
Oh, how smug Oberon must be feeling. He’d finally found his perfect revenge …
And she knew exactly what Queen Morgana would tell her to do, no matter how painful it might feel.
No one in the assembled crowd of fae onlookers would blame her for sacrificing her mortal partner, even if they knew why he had turned upon her. Everyone would understand that it was the only option Lorelei had had to save herself and her home.
Even he was begging her to do it.
Until this week, the Empire’s Golden Beacon had never allowed her to see any of his deeply buried true emotions.
Now, tears shone in Gerard’s anguished amber eyes as his right arm drew back, raising that lethal sword in preparation …
and a final knot of tangled emotions melted away in Lorelei’s chest, leaving her path laid out before her with perfect simplicity.
For once, her instincts and cool logic were in full agreement.
She spun one forefinger through the air as his blade arced towards her. Its steel tip landed—and stuck—in a shimmering, rapidly growing fae portal that hung in the air between them. Caught off-balance, Gerard stumbled.
Lorelei drew a deep, final breath, absorbing that gorgeously rich and familiar land-magic that drenched the air in Efaelen and caressed her skin with loving delight …
and then she leapt forward, flinging herself on Gerard’s big body, to knock him fully into the portal.
As they fell together through it, she didn’t cast a single look back.
She had been a fool ever to imagine that she could harm this man, whether for the sake of her people, her goddess, or any other higher cause.
He was her true home, and some part of her had known that from their first meeting. She would never let him go.
They landed in a tangled heap in night-darkness, with a hard thump against wooden flooring that knocked the breath out of Lorelei’s chest. It would certainly leave bruises later, but even as she gasped for air, deep relief suffused her.
No magic tingled in this room except the lingering traces in each corner where her familiar, lush pink roses bloomed, long out of season but thriving in her care.
She knew every inch of this polished wooden floor.
If she’d had more time to properly focus her portal, she would have aimed it three feet over, to set them both on the big four-poster bed, but she didn’t care about her own bruises now.
“Gerard!” Scrambling off him, she gently touched his closest shoulder, which was hunched against her and unmoving.
Had he been badly injured in the fall? Knocked unconscious?
No, his muscles were locked tight; he must be awake.
Was he afraid to move in case the spell took hold again?
“My love,” she murmured, “you’re safe now.
We’re in Balravia, in my bedroom, in my own secure hunting lodge.
Oberon can’t touch you here or ever again. I swear it.”
She couldn’t imagine the violation he must feel. For such a tightly controlled man to be worked like a puppet against his will …
Rage lit deep within her belly, only waiting to spread and become a wildfire.
For the sake of her mother’s partner and diplomatic relations between Efaelen and Balravia, Lorelei had allowed Oberon to survive his attempted assault by love potion upon her. As she watched a tight shudder shake Gerard’s big figure now, she swore she would not show such mercy again.
She fought for control, but her voice shook with fury even as she gave his bunched shoulder a long, soothing stroke.
“I am so, so sorry that that was done to you, but darling, I promise it will never happen again. Oberon has made his last mistake. I swear to you, he will pay for it. I won’t let you be hurt or used like that ever—”
“Lorelei.” Gerard abruptly rolled over to face her.
She couldn’t make out his expression in the unlit room, with blackness pressing against the glass windows to their side, but his voice was ragged.
“How can you bring yourself to touch me? I could have killed you. I would have killed you with my own sword!”
“No,” she said firmly, “you would not.” Leaning forward, she cupped her palms against his cheeks, cradling him with the utmost care.
“Oberon would have killed me through you, but he couldn’t, because both of us fought against it—and you, you impossible man, actually told me to kill you to protect myself.
Did you truly believe I would ever do that? ”
“I prayed that you would,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t have survived your loss regardless. Lorelei…” He took a deep breath. “You are the first—the only—true joy I’ve ever known.”
In the darkness, emotions billowed up through her until they filled her throat, nearly choking her. She couldn’t speak.
But she felt his sudden jolt of realization against her palms. “Wait. You brought me here to save us both, but the tournament hadn’t ended.
What about your sworn word? You told me…
” He jerked himself abruptly upright into a sitting position, and her hands slipped away from his face.
“Lorelei, they’ll never let you back again!
How could you have forgotten? I would never expect you to give up—”
“Oh, you foolish, foolish man.” Lorelei had never taken such a frightening step in her life, but she forced the words through her tight throat, risking everything. “Aren’t you the one who told me first? I’ve been in love with you for years. How could I ever make any other choice?”
There was a long moment of stunned silence. Then he lunged for her in the darkness, and she met him with a thankful cry.
As his big hands plunged into her tangled curls, she met his lips with a kiss full of relief, passion, and desperate tenderness—and he met and matched her with a new desperation of his own.
There was a bed only three feet away—but that thought slipped from Lorelei’s mind like a will-o’-the-wisp winking out of view as they tumbled together to the polished wooden floor, scrambling and pulling at each other’s battered clothes.
She wasn’t in charge this time, but neither was he.
There was no space left between them for control. Everything was pure sensation:
The rough cloth of his jacket against her palms as she grabbed at him.
The incineration of his kiss and the furnace of his skin through his clothes as their bodies pressed against each other with urgent need.
His big fingers cradling her head—then sweeping downwards, shaping every inch of her form as if to reassure himself that she was truly here, no mere illusion, still alive and unharmed and openly loving him at last.