Chapter Six #2
“Sort of. I came with Arson and a few others. Unfortunately, they were all killed shortly after we made it through the portal.”
“Damn,” Cassian sighed. “There goes my last bit of hope.”
“The guard just said that Killian is here with reinforcements. We just have to hold out for them to find us,” Viktor stated.
“It will be too late,” Naomi countered. “I don’t have long, and everyone else will probably run out of air or starve to death before they find this place.”
Her words had alarm bells ringing in his head. Viktor knew she was wounded, but the black clothes she was wearing concealed any visible injuries. He wanted to go to her, to check and see just how extensive the damage was and to try to heal her, but it just wasn’t possible.
“How badly are you hurt?” he demanded.
“Don’t worry about that. Right now, I need to know a few things. Like, how long you have been hanging out in here.”
Cassian snorted in derision. “Ha ha, very funny. Who in hellfire is this chick?”
“My mate,” Viktor growled low enough so only he would hear. “Watch your tone when you speak to her.”
“Oh, shit.” Cassian gulped. “That’s…talk about bad timing.”
“I mean, when did you get captured?” Naomi specified. “I need an approximation of how many hours you’ve been here.”
“I have no idea,” Viktor answered honestly. “We were captured shortly after dawn in the woods, then I was unconscious for a while—”
“It’s only been a few hours,” Cassian cut in. “I couldn’t move, but I was in and out of consciousness while they dragged us through the portal and hung us up here. I heard the guards complaining about having to cancel the auction.”
“Good. That’s good.”
Turning her head, she spat out some more blood. The dark stain on the ground was a macabre warning that was impossible to ignore.
“Naomi…” At a loss for what to say, Viktor’s voice trailed off.
She smiled at him. The sight of blood coating her teeth should have been repulsive. Instead, he found her smile heartbreakingly endearing. Viktor, the unemotional dark angel who hadn’t cried in centuries, wanted to weep for their twisted fate.
“I wish we had more time,” he said softly.
“Don’t worry,” she said weakly. “Time is the one thing we’ll have plenty of.”
“What does that mean?”
Instead of answering him, she said, “I know those shackles are probably pretty indestructible, but I’m going to try something. It might hurt a little.”
“Okay?”
That came out more as a question rather than a statement.
He barely managed to get the word out before she unleashed a torrent of powerful magic straight at him.
Since he had thought she was human, the move was completely unexpected.
Viktor braced himself for the impact, but the sheer force of the blast shocked the hell out of him.
The magic struck his chest like a physical blow, surging into him with a flood of heat and energy.
It hurt, though not nearly as much as he had expected.
Her magic poured into his depleted reserves, filling the hollow void that had been left by the enchantments suppressing his own power.
The pain faded into a sense of contentment, of belonging and pure joy.
She was marking him as her mate.
The bond between them snapped into place as she shared her essence with him, though it was still incomplete. They would never be truly bonded mates until he shared his magic with her. And under the circumstances, that wasn’t going to happen.
At least, not in this lifetime.
His body convulsed in agony as the new magic inside of him went to war with the powerful enchantment woven into the shackles around his wrists. The restraints were specifically designed to suppress and contain magic, and they reacted the moment his magic flared against them, trying to break free.
He gritted his teeth and fought to remain conscious as the waves of intense pain tried to pull him under.
As if she could sense what he was feeling, the stream of magic abruptly stopped flowing into him.
He went limp with fatigue, but his system was still reeling with aftershocks from the influx of new magic.
“You…know…” he wheezed.
“That you’re my mate? Yeah, I know. It’s nice to meet you and all, but it kind of sucks that it’s under these circumstances. But that’s why I thought you might be able to break free of the shackles if I gave you some of my magic.”
He smiled weakly. “It was a good try. You are very powerful.”
She nodded in acknowledgment. “But you can’t sense it. I know. I’m an anomaly.”
“I would say you are unique.”
She snorted out a laugh. “Sometimes an overload of magic will weaken the enchantments of magical restraints, so I thought it might work this time.”
“You sound like you have some experience with that,” Cassian stated suspiciously.
“I do. Last time, it worked. This time, it obviously failed.” She shrugged. “Different restraints, different results.”
“Why were you restrained?” Viktor growled.
“Which time?” She shook her head. “Never mind that. That’s not important at the moment. Right now, I need you to tell me something that you’ve never told anyone before.”
Viktor frowned over the drastic subject change. “Why are you asking me that?”
“Because I need you to tell me something to prove that we’ve met before.”
Perhaps she had hit her head when she’d been injured because she wasn’t making any sense. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to. Now, hurry up, and tell me something important that no one else knows.”
His mind spun at the seemingly random request, but he still felt compelled to answer. It wasn’t easy to come up with something that suited her criteria, so he blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“Viktor is actually my middle name. My real name is Aurelius.”
Her lips twitched. “Seriously? Like the Roman Emperor?”
He nodded solemnly. “Although I laid claim to the name before him. And now, you are the only being in existence who knows that.”
“And me,” Cassian reminded, then he tried to hide his face behind his arms. “Actually, forget about me. I’ve temporarily gone deaf…and blind. I know nothing.”
Ignoring him, Viktor shook his head. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“I will explain next time.”
Before he could comment on that, he was distracted when she suddenly coughed and hunched over in pain.
This time, she spat out enough blood to make it clear she was critically wounded.
Even though it was no use, he began struggling against the shackles holding him in place.
He couldn’t bear to watch her die in front of him without trying to do something, even if it was a useless attempt.
“Naomi! You need to get out of here and find a healer!”
Even though she was hunched over with pain, she turned her head and flashed him another smile. “Don’t worry. It’s going to be fine.”
“Fuck that. It’s not fine. Nothing is fucking fine about this!”
“It will be once I reset everything,” she wheezed out. “We will see each other again soon.”
“Wait, what are you doing? Naomi, no!” Viktor roared.
Helpless, he could only watch as his mate stumbled forward, then his world shattered as she jumped straight into the pit of devil fire.