Chapter 40 #2
She cringed, hating the way he introduced them like they should be familiar with one another. It was some sick, twisted way of making the use of her magic more personal. More vengeful. Even though she held nothing against them.
Kralv Oldrich gestured to the cell, and the female hissed like a rabid beast. “These two are withholding information from the crown.”
“What sort of information?” Everinne didn’t dare look at him. Instead, she kept her gaze focused on the male…the human male, she realized belatedly. She stole a glance at the female who was, surprisingly, also human.
There was a huff of annoyance and the kralv sighed. Heavily. “That’s what you need to find out.”
Everinne shifted, uneasy on her feet. The woman, Alevka, was glaring at her now, her dark brows drawn in suspicion.
“But Your Imperial Majesty,” Everinne began, the beating of her heart suddenly too loud for her own ears.
She knew where this was going, she knew what he wanted from her, but it was agony, a kind of self-inflicted pain knowing what she was capable of doing.
Unknowing if she’d be able to control herself, or if the darkness inside of her would take over.
“I don’t have that kind of power. Reading minds, hearing thoughts…
those are not types of magic I possess.”
“I know that, Everinne.” He stalked toward her, gripped the hollow of her cheeks with his thumb and forefinger, and fear licked at the corner of her mind.
Tightening his hold, he jerked her face up, as the acrid stench of sulfur and smoke caused her eyes to well with unshed tears.
“That is why I need you to force them to talk. Compel them. Do whatever it takes to get me the answers I seek, do you understand?”
Kralv Oldrich shoved her backward, his lack of patience with her etched into the severe lines of his face.
“He wants you to torture us, milazk.” Alevka scraped her fingernails against the stone wall of her cell, the sound enough to make the guards standing watch shudder. “You can try, of course, but your tainted magic will never clear your name. You will always be the prince of pleasure’s whore.”
Everinne faltered. Her lungs squeezed, compressing the air until she could no longer draw breath.
She hadn’t been called that in…years. The foul nickname had stuck to her like grime she could never clean from beneath her nails.
The orgasm gifted to her courtesy of Atlas’s magic had been the only thing everyone talked about for months.
She couldn’t go anywhere without overhearing intentionally loud whispers full of snark or callous remarks.
Some were even bold enough to chastise her to her face, though they were usually female, and almost always jealous.
Then for a while, it seemed as though most of Starysa’s elite had all but forgotten about the incident.
Apparently not.
Wilhelm, the male who was still huddled in the corner, suddenly stopped rocking. His round, dull eyes shot to Everinne. His face was a mask of emptiness when he said, “That’s the one?”
“Yeah, I’d remember those eyes anywhere, all glazed and lusty.” Alevka pointed a crooked finger in Everinne’s direction and snickered. “The prince didn’t have to lift a finger, I don’t think he even looked at her. But she came apart all the same, moaning and crying out like a common harlot.”
Alevka’s words were like a swift punch in the gut.
Everinne balled her hands into tight fists, clenching her jaw until it ached.
She remembered too clearly how Atlas’s magic made her feel, how his quick dismissal of her left her burning with shame.
Time had been a burden, moving so slowly, and she’d bottled up that mortification for so long that it fermented into loathing.
Except now it no longer mattered, because Atlas was her mate.
Still, the sting of the memory did not ease.
“That was years ago.”
“Everinne is going to be the future princess.” Kralv Oldrich’s droll voice hung from the dungeon’s cold walls like mold. “Mind how you speak to her.”
Alevka only grinned wider, sticking her tongue between her teeth. “The prince of pleasure and the princess of pain, how fitting.”
Tension spread between Everinne’s shoulders and crawled along her neck. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Don’t I though?” Alevka taunted, her fiendish grin widening. Her yellow gaze flicked to the kralv, then back to her, and she sneered. “I know your magic is as dark and merciless as your soul. You hurt and terrorize, you inflict agonizing pain at the whim of the kralv because you lack a backbone.”
“That’s not true,” Everinne countered, but the lie scalded her tongue.
“Yet here you stand.” Alevka gestured grandly to Kralv Oldrich, her rasping laugh grating against Everinne’s fraying nerves. “Doing the bidding of the kralv, while your betrothed buries himself between the thighs of any willing female. And trust, there are many. ”
“Lies,” Everinne hissed as she teetered on the edge of all-consuming rage.
Her power awoke at the tremor of violence, simmering through her veins, slipping from the tips of her fingers.
Emotions churned through her like a torrent, volatile and restless.
Anger at the audacity of this woman, as though she knew anything about Everinne or the truth of Atlas’s nature.
Frustration with herself at being caught beneath the kralv’s thumb and unable to escape.
And worst of all, regret. Because she knew her magic was strong, her control was lacking, and she wanted revenge against Alevka for the seeds of doubt she’d planted.
“You don’t believe me?” Alevka ran her tongue along her teeth.
“What makes you think he’ll be loyal to you?
I’ve seen you at the parlors, especially the Grand Cru, hanging from the chandeliers, taking home every male who buys you a drink.
A sloven fae who is touched by death and thinks the world owes her sympathy.
The prince sleeps around to find release from his sexual magic, you fuck and forget their names just to convince yourself you’re still alive. ”
Her final insult left Everinne untethered.
Power erupted from her in dense, pulsing waves, and the cloying scent of midnight lilacs was so thick it was almost suffocating.
She lashed out, capturing Alevka’s mind, piercing her thoughts with violent claws of magic.
They sank deep into the mortal’s feeble head, ripping through her innermost secrets, forcing her onto her knees as her body twisted and contorted in agony.
Her screams were filled with a harrowing kind of terror.
They scraped the walls of the dungeon, so horrific, they would haunt the dreams of the dead.
But Everinne did not relent.
She scoured the woman, shaping her with blades of pain so she scratched at her own skin, desperate to escape the torment, willing to tear her own flesh from her face. Pulsing violence thrummed throughout the cell, swift and predatory.
From some dark, cavernous swath of space, low laughter sounded.
Kralv Oldrich.
Everinne had played right into his hand. She recoiled, hating herself for being unable to see through his schemes. He was a mastermind of his twisted games, and she was his target.
She would seek out the information the kralv sought, and then she would withdraw. Then she would find a way to break the invisible chains he kept wrapped around her neck.
Again, she pushed, delving deeper into Alevka’s head, flipping through her mind like a storybook, tearing out the pages of images she considered useful.
Everinne caught glimpses of Rizenrok Forge, wooden barrels full of gems that sparkled like a midnight sky caught on fire, and lurking in the shadows of the mountains was a pair of golden, honey-colored eyes.
Without warning, Alevka’s body jerked, then convulsed, her mouth opening and closing helplessly as soundless sobs were choked from her.
She collapsed onto the damp floor of the cell, arms and legs twitching once or twice before a profound stillness settled over her limp body.
Tears of crimson stained her sallow cheeks, blood dripped from the corner of her open mouth.
She was like a smoldering flame, snuffed out completely by the breath of death magic.
The silence rattled Everinne’s bones.
Pinpricks of ice prodded along her forearm as an inky vine snared around her wrist and a fourth blood rose bloomed, the tattoo marking another life she’d stolen.
A hoarse, shuddering whisper floated from the corner of the cell, where Wilhelm stared at her in abject horror.
“ Nevtorh.” He curled into himself, hunching over, and squeezed his eyes shut.
Monster.
The word struck Everinne in the heart, stabbing her like a blade of damning.
She dropped her head and looked at her open palms, where tiny threads of black and violet slithered between her fingers.
The hands of a killer. Of a monster. Wrapping her arms around herself, she stumbled back a step.
Her heart thudded loudly in her ears, loud and unforgiving, a steadfast reminder of what she’d done.
She grabbed the sleeve of her sweater and tugged it down, hating the way the fresh ink marked her skin.
A cloak of despair draped itself around her shoulders, enveloping her in misery.
Again, her gaze dipped to the contorted, lifeless body on the ground, and a depth of understanding tangled her stomach into wretched knots.
For the first time, Everinne had controlled her magic.
And she’d shattered someone’s mind with it.
Nausea swam through her, and she swallowed the scalding rush of acid burning the back of her throat.
Kralv Oldrich’s rumbling voice sliced through the disorder of her thoughts.
“Tell me, Everinne.” His footsteps echoed through the bleak dungeon, scraping the stone walls with purpose. “What did you learn from our dear friend Alevka?”