Chapter 58 #2
I muster enough strength to pinch my upper lip into a snarl at her suggesting I don’t know the true darkness of S?las when he so intimately let me see his darkest depths the night by Emerald Lake.
She snaps at my bottom lip like a plump blackberry. A metal tang filling my mouth.
A traitorous moan erupts from the stinging pleasure. I hate not being in control, feeling things that make me feel wicked. The shame I’ll carry looking into S?las’ eyes, knowing I felt pleasure in a touch that wasn’t his. How can she even do this to me when I have a Fated mate?
Fuck.
I need to get the fuck out of here. I need to save him. I may not be able to love him like he deserves, bright and beautiful, full of light, but I can save his life. Even though I know, without me, it isn’t much of a life worth living.
A sharp slap to my cheek snaps me from my thoughts. A harsh tsk, tsk at the cusp of my ear. “Naughty, indeed. I am so very lucky you’ve been stubbornly resisting this bond that mars your heart. Let’s take care of it, shall we?”
A wicked grin kicks up her midnight lips. “How foolish you are, loving him while still refusing this bond. Pretending you don’t know how to love when you can’t help but do so for that wretched nothingness,” she hisses, prowling around me.
Her words punching the air from my lungs. I thought I loved him, but how can I if I feel fucking pleasure from her? She thinks I love him? If anything, this little escapade has taught me I don’t know the first thing about love.
With my shields down, she has access to all my memories, all my emotions, my thoughts. Wuvon use the power of crushed skulls and brains of the strongest telepathic magical creatures to heighten their powers. So how can she be wrong? Perhaps I can still love him.
Just as the stars love the night: impossibly and hopelessly.
I decide being stuck in a mindtrap with a deadly Wuvon isn’t the safest place to continue my contemplation of love. Especially of someone who I’m failing miserably at saving currently.
The female saunters in front of me with a wicked smile as she licks my blood from her canines with wild amusement. Her golden eyes shifting to molten silver, swirling with ash.
And then I remember.
Those silver eyes, haunting my dreams.
A dagger of pure nightshade wisps into her hand out of nothingness. Terror stilling my heart as I put her abilities together.
She’s a Nightlancer—and something else, given the ashes emanating from her black mist. She controls darkness, can Dreamweave and create all manner of weapons to wield.
Her imagination is the only limit to her power.
Her touch is as cold as fear itself. Her abilities drag up your deepest terrors.
Mental demise is a certain fate when getting caught by one with your shields down.
The hairs along body prickle at the realization.
There are some ancient texts that suggest Vyzon, the first leader of Wuvon and corrupted Ellian Knight, who Gildora and Reaya killed, was thought to be a Nightlancer.
The information around the first five corrupted Ellian Knights is heavily redacted.
When I asked Atlas about it, he said it was due to the shame the five uncorrupted Ellian Knights had of not being able to save them, failing to notice the darkness corrupting their Chivalry.
Her metallic black hair has the same sheen as the blade in her hand. She cuts the bands wrapping my chest from the bottom, hissing as she watches S?las’ shadows swirl beneath my skin.
“I should cut these evil things right out of your flesh.” A thousand wraiths screech within her threat. The bloodcurdling sound chills my bones to ice. I thought sounds like that only came from monsters.
“Mmm,” she purrs, “I have something much more devious in mind. A love note for your prince of nothingness.”
She grips my throat again, twirling the nightshade dagger through her fingers as her eyes shift once more, the night sky drenched in crimson, dusted in silver, gleaming like stars.
Darkness creeps in at the edge of my vision, a heady sensation taking over before I hear her sharp tsk as she loosens her hold.
“Now, now. I want you awake to feel the pleasure of my craft. My artwork.” Her cold silk voice is against my neck, each breath more chilling than the last.
Her dagger plunges into my chest as I choke on silent screams.
Burning frost seeps through my veins, biting into the skin under my breasts. My heart stutters, icy tendrils spooling out from her blade, coiling around it, thorns sinking deeper with each beat.
With the next movement of her blade, I watch misty darkness pour down her, plunging into me with searing waves of pleasure. Crisp, cool night fills me, spurring the faintest crackle of my power between my fingertips.
Before I can latch onto the spark of magic, she drives the blade deeper into my chest.
Straight into my heart. I gasp as her black magic gushes into the next beat of my heart, filling my veins with ice and the darkest thrill.
I wait for my last heartbeat to come… It’s only a matter of time with an injury of this degree.
Fear pelts through me in a torrential downpour.
I’ve failed so utterly. I put my entire Zenith at risk to go into the Blackwood to save S?las.
Now, they’re not just losing one of us, but both of us.
I let whatever I feel for him cloud my judgement.
I refused to listen to Calais, who knew I sought death running into these woods, woods even she didn’t dare venture into with her mate injured here as well.
I failed to save Sully. And Pip! She’s likely captured him, too. He’ll end up dissected in a million pieces to give unfathomable amounts of power to the Wuvon.
I’m a fuck-up, just like my foster father said I was. Curseborne. Everyone who cares about me, telling me I’m stronger than I know… Now look at me. Proving them all wrong.
Perhaps Chaos Magic is more fitting than I thought, with my reckless ability to destroy everything I touch.
Maybe this female isn’t Wuvon at all; she very well could be death herself.
My jealous lover, finally come to claim my soul as her own.
It would certainly explain how the darkest parts of me swirl in delight around her magic coursing through my blood.
A raspy cough pierces my thoughts, the onyx shade lifting from my eyes as her black magic doused in fear retreats from my veins. I watch her wipe away thick, tarry mist, dripping from the side of her mouth. Her face suddenly paler as the blade evaporates from my chest.
My power buzzes beneath my skin in her moment of weakness. This time, I grab the spark and hold it in my hand, imagining it in a box of nothingness, so neither I nor her can sense it.
Her molten silver eyes lock onto mine, widening with a flash of fear or defeat before her face hardens back to ice and malice. Her eyes returning once more to gold as ashes swirl in violent storms.
“This pesky bond is tied to something ancient, something much more profound than an unaccepted Fated mate bound.” A sadistic pout tugs on her lethal lips, stained in a poisonberry hue.
She clicks her tongue, as if pondering what to do with me next.
Then an opulent throne of black glass appears with crimson velvet cushions.
The legs and arms made out of vines covered in a thousand thorns.
She drapes her legs over one side and props her elbow up on the other, resting her chin on her hand.
For a second, I wonder how she isn’t bleeding before I remember we are in a pocket realm, a mindtrap, a shared space between our minds.
She has complete control with my shields down.
If she wants things to bleed, they will.
If she wants pain and pleasure, it happens with just her mind willing it into existence.
We’re taught about this ability of the Wuvon. I never thought I’d so stupidly let myself fall prey to being caught in a mindtrap.
I’m not sure what she seems to be waiting for. Perhaps for reinforcements to arrive, collecting my physical form? She’s made it clear she wants me alive, not dead.
“Oh, my precious little Starfire,” she purrs while looking at her nails, as if bored by the inconvenience of whatever she’s waiting for. “I took care of that little pest that’s always seeking to kill you.”
Chet. She must be talking about Chet, who also crashed into the Blackwood.
Before I can even blink, her lips are a mere whisper from mine, digging her talons into my chin, ensuring I hold her gaze. She twirls a strand of my iridescent hair around the finger of her other hand.
“I left his brain a spindly mess of fluff. It was pure delight. You should find him… much improved.” She lets out a wicked cackle.
A thousand whispers echo through my mind all at once as I watch the Nightlancer’s head snap to the direction they come from. I can only make out bits and pieces of the eerie sounds.
He comes… He’s near… He hungers.
I use her distraction to let my chaos escape the box of nothingness I hid it in. In this mind realm, there are no molecules or particles for me to sense. But there’s energy. The magic of her Persuasive powers, which require control.
I close my eyes, reaching out, sensing for her control, and it’s all around me. I imagine that spark turning into an arched web of lightning and release it. Blue light cracks apart the tightly wound power of her control.
Her eyes whip to meet mine. “Clever little minx, hiding things from me. I’ll make sure to punish you later for that.
” She winks with a devilish grin that tells me she’ll make true on her threat as she vanishes through the black mist that emanates off her.
I glimpse a room of red marble surrounding her before the darkness fades to nothing.
I look around to see myself exactly where she found me; the only trace she’d even been there at all are the specks of ash rising towards the now night sky. Apparently, in a mindtrap, time works differently.
All my armor and weapons are in place, except Dream Singer lies at my feet, which doesn’t make sense unless… Pip.
He’s gone.
I crumple to my knees in horror. She took him. That must have been what she was waiting for, someone to grab him while she had me distracted.
I have to get him back, my innocent, pure companion who never abandons me. I pray to the Celestials his dragon fire is strong enough to melt whatever metal they’ve caged him in. I’ll see the entire Blackwood burn to ash before I let them hurt him—even if I burn right along with it.
I tremble, the feral darkness in me reveling in the idea of carnage, right along with my Chaos Magic, nipping at my skin to be released. The clear night sky suddenly clots with clouds. Howling winds whip through my hair as the static charge of lightning builds.
My chest is hollow, the warmth once kindling there now left suffocated. Only cold coals remain. The thoughts of my utter failure spiral like a cyclone above me. The earth beneath my boots fractures, mirroring my soul at the realization of what my actions have cost me.
The gale whispers. A familiar chirping sound, freezing my power in my veins.
It can’t be, can it? I close my eyes, listening to the frequency, honing my senses in on it like a beacon. I lunge towards the sound of snapping branches, raising Dream Singer as my magic crackles along its blade. Ready to destroy whoever’s chasing Pip.
A blur of orange and blue whirls through the darkness, knocking into my chest. A large slobbery tongue licks my face, smelling of bacon. I drop my sword and squeeze Pip tight in my arms, spinning with relief and joy.
A set of strong, familiar arms wrap around me as the scent of spruce and amber fills my lungs. I almost cry for the happiness of it all, but something’s off.
Something is different.
I hadn’t felt S?las approach. I can’t feel his emotions. I close my eyes, searching for his black velvet ribbons that shimmer like stardust in my mind.
They’re gone. And so is the beautiful, starry, stained-glass window that tethers them to my mind. No. It’s not gone.
It’s shrouded in fucking black mist, with ashes dancing on an invisible breeze. That fucking bitch.
What did she do? I try to reach for the latch of the window, but black mist sears my flesh like frostbite, turning my fingers black.
A little tag hangs from the bottom of the window on a thin silver ribbon, twirling on an invisible wind alongside her ashes. Thankfully, the tag is right outside her midnight mist.
I grab it to read: