Chapter Ten - Dante
I could hear the sound of her softly humming and brushing out her hair even on the other side of the manor in my study with the door locked. This bond that had opened between us had been difficult to block out before, but now, it was nearly impossible to keep her out of my head.
She’d touched my mark, and I had let her. Ever since that moment, the connection between us that had once been a trickling stream was a rushing river.
In her quarters in the opposite wing, I felt her as she smoothed the fabric of her simple green gown over her legs. The feeling ignited me. It was like my own hands were running along the satin fabric, the skin of her thighs warming my fingers as they stroked downward.
I shook my head, throwing up whatever walls I could against her. It took everything inside of me, every bit of strength I had to keep from walking down the hallway and bursting into her room, replacing her hands with my own and finishing what we had started on the bridge last night.
The mental walls offered me some reprieve, and I sat back heavily in my chair, focusing on my breathing and the simple sights and sounds of the room to bring myself back into my own body. All that remained traveling through the bond was the sound of her soft humming and the feeling of the smile on her lips.
After everything that happened, she was still wearing her own damn mask. Even in the solitude of her chambers, she hid behind a pretty smile, forcing away all the ugliness that had happened to her since I brought her here.
I knew why I hated the mask she wore so much. I knew exactly from whence the feeling of wanting to rip it away from her came. No one should be forced to hide their true self.
I drew a hand under the shadows that covered my face, remembering the way her hand felt as it rested there, the way her eyes had widened when she’d felt the mutilated features in the dark.
It was the face of the prophecy, but it was also the face that had earned my mother’s fear and loathing. It was my protection and my curse, the face I’d kept hidden since I had learned to control the shadows that haunted my every movement.
I had allowed her to feel it, to know it. I picked up a dry ink pen from the desk and spun it nervously between my fingers. It had been decades since anyone had experienced that part of me.
And it hadn’t scared her. She wasn’t afraid. Even after she’d watched that damn fool of a male burn, she hadn’t been afraid. Shocked and concerned maybe, but never afraid.
I scrawled a bit of writing on the paper in front of me. Two souls, two races entwined.
My prophecy and hers, entwined. I had seen what she’d been reading in the library. She was sure to know now, about the prophecy and about what I was cursed to become. Had it changed the way she saw me to know that all I am is a weapon? If it had, she didn’t seem to let on. Particularly not as she stood pressed against me on the bridge, as she’d bared her neck to me.
Still, the safest course here was to kill her. Or perhaps to seal her away in a dungeon where her pitiful human lifespan could run its course. That had been the thought behind keeping her here. Rhea would be nothing more than a slave, living her days in enough comfort before her eventual death. It had seemed the best course, the most humane. She couldn’t be allowed free, not when the power she was prophesied to have could end life as we knew it.
I cringed and tossed the ink pen onto the desk, leaning forward with my head in my hands. Hadn’t that very same rationale been used by my father’s advisors? Hadn’t they tried to lock me away?
I’d worked so hard, so tirelessly for his whole life to learn to control the depths of power inside myself. I had to show them I could control it, or else they would have killed me the moment I slipped. This power was the curse the fates gave me.
I felt a pulse of it deep in my core as if in response to the memory, the deep darkness that even now always sought a way to use me to bring about death and destruction.
Would any of that matter now? Rhea wormed her way into my life and deep into my mind. Would she somehow match my power and render me helpless at her command?
I should end her, for the sake of both our worlds.
Her humming rose again in my mind, tearing at the strings of my heart. It was not a song I recognized, some relic of the human world. But it was sad and sweet, and I’d give anything to hear her singing the words.
I growled deep in my throat and rose. I would end this torment one way or the other. I would go to her quarters and either end her or finally have her, every bit of her.
At that moment, the door to my study opened.
In strode my brothers, the only family I’d really ever known save for my sister, Vella. They were two of the most powerful males in Arelia and were nearly as feared and hated as me.
Aeon, bright blue-haired and wild eyed as always, came forward first with his hand on his sword’s pommel and a look of apprehension in his eyes.
“What is it?” I ground out, unable to keep the blustering emotions out of my voice.
Aeon sighed and sat in one of the upholstered chairs on the opposite side of the desk. He threw his soiled boots on the mahogany desktop and sighed again.
“You’re killing yourself here, my prince, when you should be channeling all of this angst into killing humans instead.”
I brusquely threw his boots off the desk and leaned on it, crossing my arms.
Horst came to stand beside me, patting me heavily on the back with one scarred hand. He was larger than any other male I’d met. Many in Arelia had taken to calling him Ki-hymla, one who blackens the skies. He took too much pride in the name.
“You killed a male last night,” Aeon said matter-of-factly, picking up the ink pen I’d thrown and using the tip to clean his nails. “You could have at least invited us to watch.”
“It wasn’t exactly a spectator event.”
“That isn’t what Pressos has said. He’s telling the whole kingdom of your burning shadows and of your cruelty as you forced him to watch.”
A mirthless smile touched my lips, and Horst frowned at the sight of it.
“We must return to the mission,” he said softly, his deep voice hardly a rumble. “Coming back here was never the plan, at least not without Vella.”
My heart sank. It had been difficult to think of anything else for the past few days, but Vella had never left my heart.
“We particularly had not planned to return with a human girl in tow,” Aeon commented.
“You know why I had to bring her here.”
“I know why you said you needed to bring her here.”
“Do you doubt me?”
“No,” Aeon answered sharply, tossing the ink pen back onto the desk. “You know I never will. But I think she’s clouded your head lately. And I think you know that we must return before it's too late.”
I looked down at the wooden desk beneath my fingers, my father’s desk, where we had sat and played thousands of days together before our childhood was so unkindly cut short. It was only a matter of time before Vella wouldn’t be worth saving, before her soul was stripped away.
They were right. Rhea could wait. She couldn’t fulfill the prophecy with me gone, anyway. And now that word spread of what would happen to any male who might touch her, she would be safe here.
“You’re right,” I said, standing and clapping a hand on Aeon’s shoulder. “We can’t delay anymore. Tell the stable hands to ready our horses.”
Aeon’s smile was instant and vicious as he stood, bowing briskly. Horst put a hand on the back of my head, pressing ours together with a force that made my ears ring.
“Back to battle, brother,” he said. I gave him a sharp smile and a nod as we three turned to leave through the vast wooden door to the study.
But all three of us stopped dead in our tracks as we saw the silhouette of a girl in a forest green gown standing casually in the doorway. I was certain the door to her room was locked, not to mention the door to the study. How had she gotten in here?
“Good to see you boys again,” she drawled, fully in the false persona she wore to protect herself from the world. “So, another trip through the veil, is it?”
I felt Aeon and Horst both look at me cautiously as she strode forward. But it was her eyes, those beautiful orbs of bright green, that I held.
“Take me with you,” she said plainly.
To my left, Horst barked out a laugh. “You really don’t understand what it means to be enslaved, do you?”
She scowled at him briefly, then turned back to me. Her face was set in grim determination. “I can help. I know things about the human lands, things that could help you find this woman you’re looking for.”
My heart skipped in my chest. How long had she been listening? Had it been through the doorway, or could she see into my mind as easily as I could see into hers? I put the mental walls tighter into place around my thoughts and frowned at her.
“Like we could trust you,” Aeon spat.
“Take me,” she said, not even deigning to glance in his direction or respond to the disdain in his voice. “I’ll prove it to you.”
“And why would you want to do that?” I asked carefully, crossing my arms over my chest. Her eyes flicked to where my fingers drummed against the skin of my bicep, and I couldn’t help but notice the sharp uptake in her heart rate before she quickly looked away.
“When I was reading in the library, I read some things I never knew about my people, about my home. I see now this war isn’t what I thought it was. I want to help.”
The sincerity swimming in her green eyes almost had me believing her. If she could be shown the beauty of the world she despised, maybe her heart could be changed… the prophecy could be changed.
At my right elbow, Aeon prodded me. “You can’t trust a word she says, prince.”
I sighed. Of course I couldn’t trust her. She was as much of a weapon as I was. She could never be brought to our side so easily.
“You have full reign of this manor until I return,” I said, moving to walk past her and out into the hall. Before I could move more than a few feet, her hand closed around my wrist.
My brothers stiffened, hands on their swords. I looked from her hand to her face, hardened with determination.
“Leave us,” I said, trying to hide the frustration I felt and forcing myself to keep my hands off of her, even as she held me tighter. Thankfully, my brothers listened, stepping quickly from the room and closing the door behind them.
“Why am I here, Dante?” she hissed, dropping my hand. “Why did you bring me here? You watched me kill those beasts, yet you would only use me as a pretty bauble?”
She stepped towards me, her eyes finding mine and sparkling with barely restrained emotion. “You can use me for so much more. You know what I’m capable of.”
I let my breath out in a slow, controlled exhale and turned away from her, walking to the floor-to-ceiling bay window and gazing out of it. “I took you here for my own reasons. Best you don’t worry your human mind over them.”
It wouldn’t do to have this discussion with her. I still didn’t even know what I would do with her in the end. Nothing good would come of her knowing more about our intertwined fate.
“So I’m just to wait around here until your whim compels you to put me on display again? To drug me and touch me as you so desire?” I could hear the frustration heavy in her voice.
The words stung me like the prick of a dagger point, but I kept the emotion from my face as I took in the view outside the window. Below, the city was just preparing for the day, markets opening and people hurrying about.
“I never touched you in there. Everything was an act.”
“Right,” she scoffed. “A tool for your political prowess. Just like burning the one who you commanded to touch me against my will. Another pawn in the game.”
I felt the muscle in my jaw tighten as I did my best to keep my temper cooled, but for her to think that man had burned for my own good was an affront.
“He deserved to burn for what he planned to do to you. They all do. But this warning will serve well enough to dissuade others.” I turned to where she stood, her arms crossed over the curves of her chest, her gown falling over the matching curves of her hips. Another slow breath out, this time to cool the fire burning in me at the sight of her. “Everything was an act, to keep you safe here.”
She blinked, her brows raising towards her golden hairline. She secured her hair in a spiraling braid around the crown of her head this morning, and the effect was beautiful.
“To keep me safe?”
How much to tell her without revealing too much? Even though she had a visceral effect on my body, I had to remember who she was, what she was.
“If I could have let you be bought off for the highest bid, I would have. But even for all your cunning and your power, you would not have survived it.” I stepped towards her, noticing the way she raised her chin ever so slightly as I came into her space. “And against my better judgment, I couldn’t see you used like they would have used you.”
Gently, almost without thought, I stroked a rogue hair that had fallen from her braid back behind her ear. This ever-present urge to touch her, in whatever way, would drive me to my undoing.
“And so you will use me instead?” she breathed, her eyes taking on that desperate, beautiful shade of green I’d seen in them last night. I knew what it meant, and I knew what I would be allowed to do with it, if I only made the move. “Do you just enjoy watching me suffer?”
I brought a hand to the waist of her satin dress and pulled her closer to me, close enough that the front of our bodies pressed together. All the control I had built up over these years, and the smallest pressure from her had it all falling away.
“Life is suffering, little shrike. We all suffer at the hands of those who have power over us.”
Before I could lose myself entirely, I pressed my lips to the line of her hair, allowing myself only this one small pleasure from her before removing her body from mine and striding out of the room.