99
“Leave,” I commanded the guards in light white armor at the prison’s entrance in the forest.
“But, Your Highness,” the one on the left said, “we have orders to guard—”
“ Go!” I erupted.
The sentries looked at me as if I were more frightening than Amlach’s monsters, then hurried toward the palace.
I kept my eyes on them until they vanished from sight, then I exhaled sharply through my nose and quickly descended the uneven steps carved into the ground.
I moved through the damp underground passageway with moss-covered rock walls and stopped in front of the third of the five cells.
The door was left open, and the candle in the corner was unlit.
Amlach sat on the stone bench against the back wall, stripped of his fine armor and only wearing his leather robe and trousers, just like me. Heavy shackles bound his wrists, and a thick slave collar with a chain attached to the wall was around his neck.
I observed the magical runes carved into the metal to prevent him from breaking it, despite having only a fraction of an elf’s physical strength.
Then I watched with growing fury the crusted blood that had dripped from the cuts on his eyebrow, cheekbone, nose root, and lip, along with the purple halos beneath the wounds.
I tried to suppress the violent urge to go back to Araton and return him every single blow I was sure he had struck my mate, then I stared at the latter.
“Look at you . . .” he said mockingly, but there was no sign of amusement in his expression as his eyes traveled over my face. “You’re so . . . pure again.”
I clenched my fists at my sides to conceal the spasms in my hands. “Not exactly,” I replied between my teeth in the common tongue.
It took him half a second to understand what I meant.
“ Oh,” he said, slowly rising, his gaze suddenly shining with interest. He stepped forward as far as the chain of his collar allowed and looked me up and down with an expression so ravenous that it ignited a liquid heat between my thighs.
“You still feel it, even though I took it away from you.”
At the sound of his mellow voice, my breathing grew heavy. “I hear it call me,” I said. I was so tense I felt like I was about to explode. “It calls me from inside the Crystal.”
A glimmer of excitement in his eyes. “Is that so?”
My pulse leaped. “What did you do?”
His smirk was barely perceptible.
I entered the cell with an assertive attitude and stopped before him. “Tomorrow my father will have you executed, Amlach,” I told him, trying to suffocate my agitation. “He believes you are a danger even without your magic.”
He watched me as if he were imprinting every detail of my appearance in his mind. “A wise king,” he remarked, his delivery flat.
I took another small step forward. “We need to talk to him,” I said, unable to hide my despair any longer. “Together.” I instinctively enfolded my hands in his. “We need to make him understand that you chose me over power and—”
“But I didn’t choose you.”
My breath caught. Unable to take my eyes off him, I slowly withdrew my hands. “What?” I whispered.
“Poor elf . . .” There was a devious wickedness on his face as he raised his shackled hands to stroke my dirty cheek with the back of his fingers, no longer black. “Stupid till the very end.”
I suddenly recoiled, seized with a wave of nausea. “No . . .”
His grin grew more accentuated. “Did you seriously believe I was dumb enough to give up my magic?” His voice carried bitterness. “That I would surrender the darkness I have worked so hard to bend to my will?”
Anger scrambled up my body like an army of insects. Shame rose up my throat like bile. My voice dropped to a hiss full of ferocity and fear at once. “What. Did. You. Do.”
Amlach drew a deep breath that tasted like inevitable victory. “I transferred part of my spirit into the Crystal, so that I could control my power from there as well.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, crushed by those terrible words. When I reopened them, my face reflected the purest and most relentless rage.
Amlach looked at me from head to toe with a vulturine gaze. “Maybe, if I try hard enough, I can make you feel how furious Calien is right now as she tries in vain to subdue my dark forces.”
I struggled to breathe. “So, tomorrow—”
“I won’t die,” he anticipated. “This body will die. But I . . .” He straightened up, greatly proud of himself. “I will survive inside the Crystal. One day, I’ll take on a new form, though you probably won’t like it as much as this one I specifically chose for you,” he taunted me.
I twisted my lips in disgust.
His expression grew increasingly greedy. “And eventually, I will come back, stronger than ever, wielding all of Calien’s magic.” He paused to relish all my terror, all my anger. “You could say things didn’t go as I planned, but, in a sense, it’s even better this way.”
Before I could stop myself, I lunged and shoved Amlach against the wall.
As he fell onto the bench, I positioned myself between his legs, grabbed the slave collar chain, and tugged his head back.
He responded with a wicked smile that made my blood boil, so I took hold of his chin with my other hand and pressed my fingers into his cheeks in an attempt to distort his face.
“I’m still the Crystal’s keeper,” I growled. “Which means I can finally take my own life without you stopping me.”
I tugged the chain a bit more and had to hold back from biting and sucking the bulging tendons on his neck, whose muscles were very tense to resist the collar pressing on the trachea. He let out a deep, sensual yet menacing groan, and I felt his fingertips move up along my inner knee.
“The Crystal will vanish,” I continued, warring with myself to resist his touch, “and your soul with it.” I leaned in to hiss over his mouth, “Forever.”
“No, it won’t happen,” he replied. “Because the first thing my power did, once completely inside the Crystal, was to release you from it.”
I flinched, widening my eyes as my arms slowly fell limply at my sides.
“Calien’s Crystal no longer has any keeper,” Amlach went on cruelly. “And it will never have another. It’s . . .” His fingers crawled up my thigh. “Finally . . .” He slid them between my legs. “ Mine,” he finished, pressing them hard against my sex through my trousers.
I jumped back, devastated by what I had just discovered, feeling powerless against the intense, tremendous, and inexorable longing I still felt for Amlach, despite all he had done.
Despite the subtle and indelible evilness he was staring at me with.
“You deceived me,” I said, in a small, pain-soaked voice. “Again,” I added, so furious at myself for my naivety, my weakness. “You made me believe it was for me . . .” I dropped my head with a suffering grimace to hide the tears welling in my eyes. “Why?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“It’s my nature, Elf.”
My eyes snapped to him. His attitude, indifferent and cruel at the same time, provoked an uncontrollable fit of violence in me. The next moment, I lunged forward and grabbed his jaw with one hand, slamming his head against the wall so hard that the rock crumbled.
“Hmm,” Amlach moaned, giving me a look that was as murderous as it was excited.
“Tell me you love me,” I ordered on a whim.
His expression turned dangerously dark.
I pushed him against the rock once again, with more force. “ Tell me.”
His face grew harder than granite. “I don’t love you.”
I listened to the powerful rhythm of his heart, reflecting my own.
I studied the wrath burning in his eyes, locked onto mine.
I moved my lips close to his and whispered, “Who’s the liar now?”
I let him go with an abrupt gesture full of disappointment, then left without looking back.