40. Chapter 40
Chapter 40
B lackness dotted her sight.
Streaks of pain burst forth again from fighting the need. Her throat grew tight with a cry fighting to escape. She reached for him, but his eyes darkened.
He snarled at her in a warning and pushed her away. “Not yet. It’s too out of control.”
She held her breath, gritted her teeth, and tried to focus enough to fight back. Magic slammed against her, pushing her, raging at her, demanding she feed from Kiran. Resisting it tore her up inside. The longer she fought feeding from him, the tighter her body grew, threatening to unfurl explosively as the urges added to an increasing mania.
“Why are you stopping this? I can’t. I can’t bloody do it.”
“Fight it. You made this choice. I’m not immune to this magic or pain, either. We need to wait a bit longer.” Kiran’s jaw clenched. His eyes, face, and signature radiated equal parts rage and unease, a strange combination for the elf prince.
“Where is she?” he muttered, his jaw clenched tight, glancing at the door.
Imani wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. The physical repercussions weren’t nearly as bad for Kiran. Neither her body nor her magic was as strong as his. Although she’d fed, she was exhausted and injured.
Feeding from Kiran was all she wanted, and if she did, she’d want to have sex with him—badly. Maybe he was making them wait because it would be easier to resist the sex. Who was he waiting for?
But part of her was grateful. She couldn’t sleep with Kiran in such a state of vulnerability. She shouldn’t sleep with him at all , even though she could admit to herself now how she wanted to. Boneless, she fought against a whimper. Imani couldn’t sound weak or out of control in front of him. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
His gaze narrowed on her as if he didn’t like the flash of pain she showed. But he made no effort to help as his expression turned impassive and stony. He was right; Imani had made this choice all on her own. But he didn’t have to behave like a complete bastard while she was in pain. That choice was his.
With a nasty sneer, Kiran dissuaded Imani from any passing notions she mattered. The bleak reality of what this was—and wasn’t—and how little he cared crashed into her again.
Good. Imani needed the reminder. And the truth that she might die later from this binding gave her enough strength to speak clearly again. A strangled cry rose in her throat.
“I hate you,” she bit out.
“Trust me; the feeling is mutual right now,” he snapped.
However, if she wanted to survive this, and he refused to let them feed together or have sex with each other right now, she needed him to touch her at least.
He knew it. He didn’t like it but came to the same conclusion because his expression morphed into something animalistic.
“Imani,” Kiran’s deep, melodic timbre filled her ears while she screamed unabashedly, begging him to stop, hating her powerlessness. Darkness licked her skin, but staring into his strange eyes sent soothing waves rushing through her.
The pain dulled.
“You were warned many times not to bargain with me, you stupid girl,” he ground out, clutching her against him.
“I will find a way out of this binding,” she seethed, trying but failing to keep the lust from her words. Damn this magic for making her want him so badly.
Kiran wrapped his arms around her without warning again, yanking her against his hard body. “You will fail. I long to see your face when you finally understand my power over you.”
His utter confidence silenced her. But was this another facade?
It took her a few heartbeats to gather her wits and school her face into a mask of indifference. The trembling eventually calmed, but it didn’t abate the hunger entirely.
Kiran pushed the sweat-drenched hair away from her face. His pupils were blown wide. “You’re the most perfect female I’ve ever seen. And Tanyl was right … I don’t deserve you.” A flicker of surprise flashed across his face at the admission. But moments later, it was gone. “I knew you would cause so many problems for me.”
Exhausted, she let her forehead fall against his chest.
His heart beat erratically. He hid it well from her, but as he said, he wasn’t immune. Neither of them would survive if he lost it now. She’d needed him to touch her, and he probably needed the same. Damn this magic.
Barely moving, she lightly pressed a few soft kisses to his chest, trying to calm him. If it did anything for him, he didn’t let on. But his trembling slowed. For a while, they didn’t move.
Sensations of being torn open persisted, but they lessened to a dull ache as the root binding created a layer of magic in them, steadily searing tighter and tighter, mooring together. If they couldn’t feed and fuck at the moment, they needed to be close as the magic worked itself through them, binding them.
Her eyes flew open when his mouth brushed against hers. Then his teeth nipped her bottom lip. A soft, surprised gasp escaped her mouth. He gave in, and she was relieved. A part of her hated him, but not enough to stop wanting him at this moment. Maybe it was the magic. Maybe it was something else, but she lifted her hips instinctively.
He reacted immediately, losing control, kissing her with a need they both possessed.
The world quieted, and the pain dulled. Coherent thoughts slid to the back of her mind as she threaded her fingers through his hair. It was soft but thick, and she liked her hands there. The sound of their breathing echoed through them, the only sound she cared about.
Pulling away, an expression she didn’t understand came over his face. Afraid he might stop, she reached inside his pants and wrapped her fingers around him. He was hard in her hand.
Touching him only marginally muted the yearning clenching her stomach. Her body begged for relief. She only needed a little … just a taste to get her by.
Like slipping through his wards, wisps of her magic twined and twisted into his signature. Waves of pleasure from the intimacy were unleashed. Even from a mere brush of initial contact, she sucked in air, grasping the depth of his power.
But it wasn’t enough, not even close. Imani needed to go deeper, feed, and be close to Kiran. Layers and layers of the Fabric itself were woven into his existence and welcomed her inside, exuding a lovely brightness?—
There.
A thread of sparkling warmth trickled from his signature.
Snatching a sliver, she devoured the tiny piece of his essence before it receded inside the cage he’d built around his heart.
The amplified magic churning inside her set off a chain reaction, settling something into place inside her, answering a forgotten question she’d asked long ago.
A current of power blasted through her middle. It was his. Or hers. Or maybe a combination of their magic. It merged into one stream, a collision of dark and even darker, granting them a bridge.
A bliss of sensations skittered across her skin, and her mind went blank again. Is this what the heavens beyond the Under feel like?
The binding strengthened as the spell’s roots grew deeply, embedding themselves in her signature and body.
For a moment, the massive well of power trapped inside them roared like a tidal wave about to crash on some unsuspecting town. It gathered, gathered, gathered, and?—
Rearing back and pushing himself into a seated position, a fierce growl built in his throat. His magic exploded around him, like a mix of heat and ice. She stilled in anticipation, but nothing happened for several moments.
He gaped at her, on his knees, and she didn’t know how to react to it or him. It was as if whatever magic he’d performed spooked him.
Moving to straddle her, he wrapped his hand around her throat and held her in place. Closing the distance between them until their lips brushed, his angry eyes peered into hers. “And they say I’m manipulative. If you try to feed from me again, Ara’s punishments will be like pleasantries between lovers compared to the pain and horror a witch like me will inflict. Do you understand, little elf? If you were anyone else, you’d be dead already for what you tried to do. So, I won’t tell you again. I told you we must wait to feed until the spell calms down, and that’s a command.”
The telltale tightness wrapped around her throat as he’d exerted his power over her again. Sinking her nails into his forearms, she drew blood. The binding choked her more, and she coughed. Kiran let out a string of curses in elvish as his lips wrenched back in a snarl that was every bit the dark, savage elf he was.
Imani coughed and sputtered, glaring at him. “You will never fully control me,” she choked out, trying to breathe through the binding magic around her throat. She was stupid for trying to hurt him, knowing the binding would hurt her, too.
“I will in all the ways that matter.” Shadows moved around them, but Kiran never even flinched. Instead, he grasped a handful of hair, unaware or uncaring Imani’s magic still poured out of her in an uncontrolled stream. Acting on all instinct, his green eye turned wild. “Now that you took from me, I’m going to take from you.”
She didn’t even know how a drow elf like Kiran fed. Was it the same as her? However it was, she would endure it with dignity.
Painfully wrenching her head back, he bared her neck to him and nuzzled his nose down her skin. Then his signature swirled with hers, poking for a way in. She opened herself a sliver, and he shoved himself through.
It was the same.
How much of her soul he took from her, she had no idea. She shut her eyes and let him, even as he went against his own words not to feed yet. It was only fair since she’d taken from him, and although she hated it … it was heaven.
A sumptuous, heavy feeling coursing through the binding sparked a primal knowledge that this wasn’t just about satisfying a pang of physical hunger.
He cupped her breasts, and she let out a gasp of pleasure. The silky strands of his hair fell through her fingers as she ground herself up against him. He groaned.
But then he let out a growl of frustration.
Dropping her to the floor, she grunted. A furious madness stared down at her. He didn’t use the binding but waved his wand, muttering a spell.
And her body was frozen.
Imani had experienced this spell before—from Ara. And it made her hate him even more.
She writhed against his power as it stifled the air, holding her rigid in place. All her muscles tightened, and she could barely get a breath out, as if he’d locked her organs, too. She hated being so powerless in front of him.
A deep rage simmering inside her threatened to boil over. Then flashes of intermittent darkness and light intensified in the room as Kiran’s magic lifted from her. Imani stripped away his spell over her and sat up with a lopsided, cruel smile. Shrouding him in shadows, her black magic slithered around him, waiting for Imani to cast the final command and bury him in the darkness.
Kiran’s eyes widened in surprise at her fighting back against his magic.
“You should’ve used the binding if you didn’t want me to fight back.” Derision coated her voice. “Let me be clear: I possess something out of your reach entirely. And you will never truly own or control me.”
The little piece of her mind that had fought off Malis’s magic, that piece was hers to give, and no one could take it. And a part of her magic was as strong as Kiran’s, or stronger, because she could strip it away.
The binding protected them from hurting each other, but could her dark atrophic magic bypass it? It could bypass his wards and his cadence magic, after all. It had bypassed Malis.
Maybe it was because she lay naked and exposed, maybe because she was half-starved and delirious, maybe she liked hurting people, or because she lay beneath a remorseless, spoiled prince. Whatever the reason, an icy rage descended on her, and she could not stop it. While she didn’t want to kill him, she wanted him to hurt. And he was right; she barely had a shred of control over her shadows.
With a growl from deep inside her chest, a void of her magic sucked the air from the room. It moved violently, blanketing the walls and floor in pure nothing again, as the inescapable darkness engulfed him.
A loud crack shattered in her ears and rattled her chest. The binding strangled her.
She shrieked in horror, wrapping her arms around her middle as her heart wrenched. It was like being separated from her body. Strange screeching, and scratching, and incoherent whispers surrounded her, growing louder the longer her inky magic ran wild through the room.
They couldn’t overpower such a strong binding. She should’ve known.
Come back , she ordered them.
But the pain continued.
Pretending they weren’t about to perish, she tried to drag herself to Kiran, thinking for some insane reason she could save him if she could get to him, touch him. But she collapsed. The energy she spent attacking Kiran, the binding, the emptiness caving in her chest—Imani could have sworn she was dying. She probably was.
The room faded as a different sort of darkness enveloped her.
In the moments before she lost consciousness, Imani could have sworn a massive shadow—not her own—grew up the wall above and roared.
The room went silent.