67. Chapter Sixty-Seven
67
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
KAIUS
D aylight was still hours away, not even a glimmer of dawn bleeding through the greenery that consumed my windows as I woke. The distinct thickness of a nightmare clung to me, its presence a dull ache that seeped into my bones, reigniting the pain simmering just below the surface.
Pulling in steadying breaths, I propped myself against the headboard waiting for the pain to work itself from my body. For the shadows within me to chase it away, they were my safe place. I tried to force my mind into order, listing poisonous plants in alphabetical order.
Aconitum, Belladonna, Bloodroot.
The nights had been steadily growing worse, the horror of my dreams only aiding the memories that would press into my mind at the most inconvenient fucking times. Yesterday, I had been halfway through ripping out someone’s fingernails only for my mind to try and convince me that my arms were burning in cursed flames.
The hunt was still on for whoever had sent Elodie’s attacker into the palace, except now I was handing the reins to my unit. Not that they knew that yet; they would find out the same as everyone else I was gone.
Cerbera Odollom, Datura, Henbane.
Scrubbing a hand over my face in an attempt to drive away the lingering sleep and memories I didn’t want to recall, I wished I was waking up in a different bed. Under different sheets where the scent of spiced honey found me even in my dreams.
Because when I was with her, that’s what they were — dreams. Not nightmares.
I wanted to bathe in the smell of her, roll around in her bed like a fucking dog until it coated my skin. I didn’t understand where this obsession with her began, but I wasn’t ready for it to end.
From the first moment I saw her, half naked yet willing to fight two men who had broken into her home, I had wanted her. The challenge in her eyes more than enough to catch my interest, and I couldn’t deny seeing the power she could wield, how she stood up to Bastian, had me lying awake with my dick in my hand more than once.
Now, that had grown into something I couldn’t put into words. A need within me that had nothing to do with getting my hands on her body and everything to do with her .
There was no comfort in knowing that what kept my nightmares at bay would be the exact thing I was preparing to walk away from.
Waking up next to Elodie after sleeping beside her soft, warm body, had been the most rested I’d ever been. Even with the pendant Bastian had gotten made for me, I had never slept so soundly as I had with her. So completely.
It was addicting.
It might never to happen again.
I knew there was a connection between us, the way that my whole being was drawn to her, desperate to be near her. I was certain she felt it, too.
Maybe I should have told her what I was going to do. She wasn’t aware of the cost to me, didn’t know about my past. I could have convinced her I was getting her help, that I was only going away for a while.
Yeah, going away to have your bones cracked open and darkness poured inside.
Closing my eyes on a sigh, I knew my choice wasn’t going to be taken well—not by Bastian. He knew the most about what had happened to me, had seen how damaged I really was while trying his hardest to put me back together.
Incaendium had been the most logical place my parents could send me, as the connections between our kingdoms ran deep, and Bastian and I had been entwined in each other’s lives long before I was sent here.
I already had control of the dark power that was forced into me by the time I arrived.
I couldn’t afford not to.
It was a cruel, destructive energy that had tried to swallow me whole countless times. I had battled with it, my young body doing anything it could to force it out, but it was no use. We were intrinsically linked; there was no one without the other. The greater control I held with it, the more my tormentor used me to wield its powers in ways no child should have to endure.
What he failed to foresee in all his experiments was that the more the shadows bonded to me, the more it tore me from his control.
They bent to my will, they obeyed my commands and over time—so fucking slowly I almost lost my sanity—they became mine .
Eero had fled once Blair and I had escaped, knowing he had no way to keep me in check. To stop me from outing his deranged experiments, but I knew how to find him. Delivering myself to him went against every bone in my body, but I could see no other way, and it wouldn’t be like it was before. I wasn’t a child he could threaten and terrify.
I’d had time to think over the bargain I would make, knew he would probably come in his neat blue pants at the thought of having me back. The chance to have me willingly under his claws was something he would never pass up, which meant getting what I wanted would be frighteningly easy.
Elodie was a prize he would have done anything to collect, one he would have relished in pulling apart piece by piece until he’d spilled all her secrets onto the dirty floor of one of the rooms he kept especially for such occasions. The fact I had to include her in the bargain, that he would even know her name, made bile churn in my stomach, and a fresh wave of phantom pain twisted through my body.
Larkspur, Oleander, Veratrum .
My fingers itched for the feel of my daggers laying on the bedside table, but I held back for now.
There was no other way, no one else I knew of who had the ability to free her mind without destroying it in the process. Trusting him to do so went against every fibre in my being, but I couldn’t see any other path. I didn’t know anyone who could match him in his skills. If I did, there would be not a single fucking chance I would allow her into his presence.
He could never know the depths of my feelings for her. I didn’t want to imagine the danger that would put her in. I had to put on the greatest show of my life and convince him this was all for the good of the kingdom, because if I slipped, if he figured it out—there would be no way out for me.
Once he found out about her, it would only be the bonds of the bargain and her ties to Incaendium, and now Oraculum, that kept her safe from him.
For now.
Bastian wouldn’t let her go, and as much as she wanted to stay for the answers she was owed, part of me didn’t think she wanted to be sent away, either. I trusted Bastian would keep her safe despite the pent-up anger he directed her way.
For years we had been trying to save the kingdom, to save all the kingdoms , coming across dead end after dead end.
Time was running out as we failed, more people went missing, more lives were destroyed. Bastian didn’t believe she was the answer, but I did. There had been something about her that pulled me in, and it wasn’t a conscious decision. It was a part of me I had no control over. It was how I had found myself outside her room that first night, something had been leading me down those halls. Why else would I have been wandering down the disused servants’ halls?
I don’t suppose it mattered much once I was gone, but I could do this for her.
For Bastian and the kingdoms and the broken people who lived in fear.
If the key to saving them all was behind getting Elodie’s memories back, then it was worth what was coming. Despite the dread that settled inside me like a dead weight, ready to rob me of everything I had built after crawling my way free from his bonds once before.
I threw my head back into the headboard, as the sharp sting of wire slicing into my thighs added itself to the list of agony already bearing down on me. I tried to push it away, to forget that first time when I had screamed in terror as I saw my skin split apart. Throat raw and broken as I suffered in a dark room where no one could hear them anyway.
He always put me back together in the end, after I’d suffered for whatever length of time he deemed necessary.
Until the shadows had begun to do it for him.
Biting down on my lip, I relished the small tear still there from Elodie’s teeth; this was the pain I liked. As Fae, I healed quick—quicker if I wished to—but I had been keeping this one open, pulling at the edges when it threatened to knit itself back together. The flare of pain wasn’t like the others, and as the tang of blood met my tongue, the thought of her was enough to chase all the others away.
Running my thumb across the new edition on my knuckle, a ring I had taken from a box filled with them when she’d left the room, a barely perceptible thread of energy brushed across my skin. I was content with even the smallest connection to her.
I knew there was no point in waiting for a new day, slipping away with the dark was better, so I rose from the dream-tossed sheets and dressed without much thought, taking with me only what I needed. My silver daggers and the underwear I had stolen from Elodie’s drawer.
Was it bad I’d sneaked a few?
I dipped my hand into my pocket, fingers stroking the lace as soft as her skin had been and found I couldn’t give a fuck one way or the other.
I’d considered leaving a note for Bas but thought better of it. There was no real way to write ‘ I’ve gone back to the man who tortured me as a child to try and help the girl you hate get her memories back. ’
He would find out soon enough.
And hate me for it.
No matter how much I tried to spin it to myself that I was doing this for the good of the kingdoms, there was no denying I was doing it to help Elodie. I’d barely known her for a few weeks, but it felt right.
Another reason I couldn’t tell Bastian.
There was a slight chance I would be able to convince him it was worth it, but if I told him I was doing it to get Elodie her memories back because I cared for her in any way, he would freak the fuck out.
Shadows wove tight around me. I could let them out to play in the solitude of my room, holding me in place as my mind sunk under the reality of the choice I had made. My feet were moving of their own accord with little direction from me, and within one moment of clarity to another, I found myself already on my way to her. It wasn’t long before I was in front of Elodie’s door, the thought of seeing her one last time enough to lift the fog that clouded my future.
The darkness within me streamed from my skin, as eager as I was to get to her, their essence pressing against the lock that softly clicked open, and I slipped inside on silent feet.
The ache in my chest that gripped my heart like a coiled vine, drew me to the slightly ajar door she slept behind. The smell of sweet cinnamon reaching me even before I stepped foot in the room. I inhaled deeply, letting it sink into my lungs, willing it to infuse into my skin so I could carry it with me wherever this decision would take me.
The sound of Elodie’s gentle breathing was the only noise in the room as I carefully pushed the door open, my racing heart something only I could hear. Moving closer, I gazed down at her, curled into a ball right in the centre of the bed, her white hair trailing over the pillows, and the blankets tucked around her. Her face scrunched into a small frown, and I reached out, running a finger gently down her cheek and those anxious lines smoothed under my touch.
I remembered the way her face had lit up when she shared the new memories of her mum; I wanted that wonder to never leave.
With nothing more than a thought, seven white peonies grew in my fist, their tightly pressed buds bursting open to reveal layers of fluffy petals.
I should leave before it becomes impossible to do so.
Instead, I edged round the bed, unhooking the blades that I kept strapped to me at all times, before setting them on the unit. Pulling back the blankets, I slid in beside her, my heart hammering as she uncurled, settling next to me yet still lost in sleep as I held her close.
There wouldn’t be a morning that I got to wake up with her. To watch as she blinked away dreams to find me by her side, bask in the shy smile she would offer before I leaned down to kiss her good morning.
I made a promise to Tieralla that this wouldn’t be the last time I felt her as my fingers travelled across the golden expanses of her skin, my touch featherlight as I revelled in the secret caress that had her breathe out a sigh. Her soft body pressed against the hard planes of mine was almost irresistible. The need to slip my fingers beneath the waistband of her shorts, feel the slickness that would be there. Taste her again as I had in those sacred waters and feel her writhe beneath me as she woke with my tongue inside her—was overwhelming.
The need to have her was consuming. It was animalistic, raw. I didn’t want to consider what it meant as it all but begged me to make her mine, my magik pulsing, desperate to feel hers.
But I couldn’t do that. It had long been since I had been a slave to my power, and like fuck was I going to lose that control now.
If she woke now, there was no part of me that could leave her.
These few hours of darkness were all I had left, because when Xol finally swept his rays across the frozen ground of this kingdom, she would wake, and I would be gone with only the memories of her to keep me alive.