51. Chapter Fifty-One
~Evalina~
All my bravado deserted me in the face of Tarron’s overwhelming magical power. Before, whether with my mother’s illness or when Tarron imprisoned me, I always found a way to avoid his offer if I kept calm and waited for the right moment to act. Now, however, I didn’t have the luxury of patience. The silver chain wrapped around Felix’s neck, choking and burning him, could kill him if I didn’t give in, and I had already played all the cards at my disposal.
Sugar wouldn’t help and my magic counted for nothing against Tarron’s powerful spells. To save Felix, I only had one choice, no matter how much my body and soul cried out against it.
“Yes,” I whispered, my throat tightening around the word like a noose. “Don’t hurt him and I’ll do whatever you want.”
I wouldn’t bear him a child and let him cut that child to pieces for his evil ends. I wouldn’t accept my fate peacefully, day after day. I would fight and find a way to free both Felix and myself, long before Tarron could achieve his goal, but for all of that, I needed time. At that moment, time was the one thing I didn’t have, and so I had to give in, just this once.
A strangled cry came from the side of the room where the chain bound Felix to one of Tarron’s cabinets, but I didn’t look in his direction again. I couldn’t bear to see the horror and dismay I knew I would find in his eyes.
At least I’d already shared something real with Felix. At least Tarron wouldn’t take that first from me. With all my might, I tried to find some bright side to what I just agreed to.
The smug, triumphant grin that spread across Tarron’s face turned my stomach. It churned at the idea of his lips against mine again, and I turned my head as he leaned down, hoping to avoid it. Unfortunately, he just pressed his lips against my neck instead, and it took all my self-control not to shove him away.
“Not… not in front of him,” I pleaded when Tarron’s hands went to the laces of my dress. Letting him touch me would be awful enough, but having Felix watch it? My stomach twisted again at the idea. I still couldn’t bring myself to look over at him. “I promise I’ll comply but let’s go somewhere else.”
Tarron’s ‘tsk’-ing sound reminded me of a mother scolding a misbehaving child. “I don’t make the same mistake twice, Evalina. You’ve seen that with the sugar. Just a moment ago, you promised to do as I asked and then you tried to trap me. Do you think I’m stupid enough to fall for that again?”
He didn’t want me to answer that. If I started telling him what I actually thought of him, Felix was as good as dead.
Tarron pushed the fabric of my dress off my shoulders, just enough to expose them, and his fingers traced along the line of my collarbone.
“It’s strange,” he said, his voice sounding far-away, as if he were talking to himself and not to me. “I never found you the least bit alluring until I realized fate had destined you for someone else. That you were the one who would help me get everything I’ve ever wanted. Since then, I’ve thought of this moment so often and what you will give me. The build-up, the… foreplay … has been almost unbearable. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted a woman as much as I want you.”
Each word repulsed me more than the last, bile rising higher in my throat with every syllable. Did that explain why he called out my name when he had sex that time I hid under the bed? He got off on the thought of the power he would gain from the heart of our child?
How could anyone be so vile?
Felix’s chain rattled in the background and my eyes closed, trying to block out the sound along with the knowledge that he witnessed all of this. I hated myself for causing him pain, but I didn’t know what else to do. I had to keep him safe until we could figure out what to do next.
Tarron’s hands went to my waist, lifting me off the ground and walking the few steps over to the bed to deposit me there. He didn’t make any move to pull my dress further down but went to the hem of my skirt instead, lifting it up to my knees. Felix’s growl thundered through the air around us, despite his weakness, but the sound only made Tarron smile as his clammy hands went to my ankles and pulled them apart.
“It might make the spell even stronger with the werewolf here in the room,” he guessed, his eyes bright with a manic sort of excitement. “The betrayal of the bond is even stronger. I think it might…”
Whatever he meant to say next never left his lips. A heavy black chain looped around his neck, and Felix appeared behind him, thunderous fury etched into his face
How he got free, I had no idea, but I scampered out of the way of Tarron’s flailing arms as he fought to free himself from the chain.
Was it the same chain that bound Felix before? It looked darker, not silver anymore, and Felix’s strength seemed to have fully returned.
Tarron thrashed violently, refusing to give up without a fight. Raising that damned hand of his, he used his magic to push Felix back. My mate stumbled and fell to the ground, not hard enough to hurt him but enough to ease the tension on Tarron’s throat. The prince’s magic didn’t seem as forceful as before, but it still gave him the edge.
We needed to neutralize his power, and as I stared at his hand, an idea came to me.
Leaping forward, I grabbed the chain around Tarron’s neck, intending to wrap it around his hand. Pain seared through my palms the moment I touched the metal.
“Ouch!” I cried, dropping it out of instinct.
“It’s iron,” Felix called out as he pulled himself back to his feet. “Don’t touch it.”
I glanced down at the dark metal and up to Tarron’s face. He was clearly struggling with it too, but doing his best to pull it off his body. We couldn’t let that happen.
“His hand,” I shouted to Felix, my voice thick with desperation. “Wrap it around his hand.”
Tarron reached for me with that very hand, but before he could do anything, Felix grabbed his arm from behind, yanking a length of the chain from Tarron’s neck and wrapping it around his wrist instead. “Now what?”
Now, I would try to use my magic. Up until then, I had only ever worked with locks, but the chain could be considered a kind of lock. Focusing on it, I imagined the links reforming themselves into a tight knot around his hand, and Felix leaned forward curiously as the metal began to obey. Soon, the iron formed a ring around his wrist, separating his hand from the rest of his body and dampening the power that flowed within him in the same way the silver weakened Felix.
“Release it,” Tarron snarled at me, all traces of his earlier excitement gone as his eyes blazed in anger. “Do it now and I’ll give him a swift death. If you don’t, he’ll be tortured until…”
Once again, his words were cut off.
From the corner of my eye, I could see a flash of fur as Felix shifted to his wolf form once more. Sharp teeth clamped down on Tarron’s other arm, the one not wrapped in iron, and the wolf pulled the fae prince off the bed.
I couldn’t stop my gasp as Tarron fell to the floor and Felix pounced. Tarron deserved no mercy, and Felix showed him none. Claws ripped jagged holes in his clothes, down to his flesh, and the sharp fangs of the wolf clamped down on the prince’s neck.
Tarron’s screams filled the room but I kept my gaze steady as Felix tore out a chunk of his throat, green blood spilling onto the shiny floor as Tarron’s cries turned to gurgles. The man who had loomed like a dark shadow over my life as long as I could remember twitched on the floor, his body suffering its final throes before, finally, falling unnaturally still.
Perhaps I should have felt some kind of pity for the man, but after everything he’d done, everything he wanted to do, I only felt relief.
Felix shifted back to his human self again, his naked skin now stained and spattered with blood. With determination, he strode towards another of the cabinets along the room’s walls, this one containing an assortment of swords. After examining them, he chose one and carried it back to the body of my former prince.
With a grim nod, he drove the sword into Tarron’s chest and began to slice at his flesh. It took me a moment to realize what he was doing. His heart. Felix cut out Tarron’s heart, pulling the organ from his body when he had made a big enough hole in his chest.
He looked up at me, not surprised to see me watching. “Magic resides in the heart, so if we want to ensure he can’t come back, we need to destroy it. Do you know if cutting it into pieces will be enough?”
I had never destroyed a heart, but I remembered my father telling me a story of a wicked fae king whose heart had been divided into seven pieces and when they were reassembled and put back into his skeletal remains, the king arose from the dead. “I don’t think so. It needs to be hidden somewhere that no one will ever find it.”
“Any ideas?”
I thought about it for another moment before leaning down to peer beneath the bed I sat on. Tarron’s box sat there, where it had been for years.
“I think I know just the place.”