47. Chapter Forty-Seven
~Evalina~
With my strength returned, I had to fight the urge to throw myself at Tarron and wring his scrawny fae neck. He sat back with infuriating ease, his smirk radiating the confidence of someone utterly convinced we couldn’t touch him, ignoring the expression on Felix’s handsome face that bordered on murderous.
I had to bide my time. As long as Calista and the others were being held, simply killing Tarron wouldn’t be enough. Even if we could escape, the others couldn’t without our help. We needed to see the bigger picture, and Felix and I needed to be able to work together. So, I bit my tongue and let Tarron speak.
“Evalina is going to be my amorta.” He glanced at me as he spoke, a slight smirk in his expression that had bile gathering in the back of my throat, but he directed the words at Felix. “She’ll agree to it willingly, and when she does, your friends will walk free. Simple as that.”
“There’s nothing simple about it,” Felix snarled at him, muscles straining against the chains looped over his limbs. His eyes held none of the tenderness or mischievousness I usually saw in them, but although his expression remained firm, I could tell the chains hurt him from the way his usually strong shoulders hunched.
My hands clenched in my lap as I forced myself to remain still and not call on my magic to open the lock of Felix’s cage. The right moment would come, but not yet.
“She isn’t yours and never will be,” Felix added, practically spitting the words.
“Because she’s your mate? That doesn’t matter.”
A shudder rippled through my body at Tarron’s cold, clinical declaration. How did he know Felix and I were mates? How did he know about mates at all? Felix let out a low growl, but Tarron held up a hand to stop him, amending his statement.
“Well, if we’re being precise about things, it matters a great deal, but it doesn’t change the fact that she will be mine.”
“Why?” I interjected. Since they were speaking about my future, I deserved to be part of the conversation. “You don’t even like me. You despised me for years.”
Tarron’s lavender eyes turned to me, still aloof and unbothered. “It has nothing to do with ‘liking’ you. I need what your body will give me.”
My stomach twisted in revulsion and the cage rattled violently as Felix hurled himself against the bars, the sharp clang echoing through the room like a battle cry. The whole structure pitched forward but the door didn’t give, and Felix hissed as his naked skin connected with the metal bars. Instinctively, I leaned towards him, wanting to soothe his pain, but Tarron’s hand on my shoulder stopped me.
“You’ll only hurt yourself if you keep doing that,” Tarron informed Felix in a tone full of disdain. “And you’re upsetting Evalina.”
The first statement made no impression on my mate but at the thought of causing me any kind of distress, he went still. His glare could have cut through glass. “Get your hand off her.”
To my surprise, Tarron actually released me, but the condescending expression on his face remained.
“What do you need my body for?” I asked. Something in the way he phrased it made me suspect it came down to more than simple lust. Tarron never lacked companionship in his bed, I knew that from the gossip in the servants’ hall and firsthand from the time I spent hiding beneath the very bed I now sat on. The memory of how he groaned my name during that encounter sent another chill through me. Why had he been thinking of me then? What did it all mean?
Thankfully, Tarron seemed inclined to talk, even if he didn’t get immediately to the point. “I’ve studied the legends of our world my whole life, and by extension, the terrestrial world as well. All kinds of magic exist, the kinds we are born with and the kinds which are claimed. The elves who can transport themselves across space, for instance; that’s a magic they give themselves.”
So far, I understood him. “And there’s a magic you want to claim?”
His eyes gleamed with excitement. “Yes. It’s an ancient spell, forgotten by most of the world, but I’ve found it. It will give me powers beyond any other fae prince.”
That ambition fit in with what I knew of him and his delusions of grandeur. “What would you do with such power?”
“There’d be nothing I couldn’t do. Everyone who ignored me because Etta is a small, insignificant kingdom would soon regret it. They’ll all kneel before me.”
His expression turned dreamy, as if he could see the scene playing out before him, and I suppressed a shudder. He’d truly lost touch with reality, making him even more dangerous than I’d realized.
“Sounds like you’re compensating for something. The size of your dick, maybe?” Felix muttered.
Jolted back down to earth, Tarron fixed an icy stare on him. “I can assure you there’s nothing unimpressive about it, as Evalina will soon discover.”
If it were possible for Felix to break through the bars with sheer fury, he would have been free in an instant.
“What does this magic have to do with me?” I pressed, trying to continue with his explanation. If we knew exactly what he wanted, we might be better equipped to stop him.
“The werewolf mate bond is a unique power, deeply rooted in primal magic. To fulfill the spell, I need to corrupt that magic. Make it mine.”
He answered each question without actually saying much at all. “Corrupt it how?”
“The spell requires many special ingredients. Producing one of them requires a werewolf mate bond.”
At the word ‘ingredient’, my eyes darted around the room at his cases of objects. Was this why he gathered so many specimens?
“Get to the fucking point,” Felix growled. “What’s the ingredient?”
“The heart of a child.”
My breath hitched, and Felix froze, his face contorted with a rage so intense it seemed to darken the room. “That’s barbaric,” I gasped.
Felix’s blue eyes glittered with ice as he glared at Tarron through the bars. “What child?”
“My child,” he replied as calmly as if he were discussing the Etta berry harvest. “Born of a woman with a mate bond tying her to someone else.”
My hand flew to my mouth, as if that might stop the nausea bubbling inside me. This was why he wanted me? To breed me, to have his child, and then to kill that child to make himself stronger?
The man in front of me was no fairy. He was pure evil.
Felix remained still, his eyes still fixed on the prince. “The other wolf?”
I didn’t know what he meant, but apparently Tarron did. “It didn’t work with the child she bore, apparently because she didn’t give her agreement. It was a footnote that I missed. That’s why Evalina must be my amorta willingly. It will be her choice.”
As if he hadn’t just said the most disturbing, disgusting things I had ever heard another person utter, Tarron turned to me with a look of steely determination.
“And you will choose it. I thought you would accept me to save your mother, but you resisted even after I made her sick. This time, there’s no other option. If you refuse me, your friends in the pens will die, and this beast?”
He gestured at Felix with a cruel smile, his tone dripping with venom.
“I’ll introduce him to every agonizing torture spell I’ve ever mastered. And I’ve mastered quite a few.”
My stomach crawled into my throat, a sickening mix of terror and revulsion clawing at me as his words echoed in my ears.
I’d wanted answers, but now that I had them, I almost wished I hadn’t asked.