Chapter 30 Ariana
ARIANA
Clause’s words echoed in my mind, as if my brain were a chamber made to hold and recite them over and over.
It is my mate. It is you... It is my mate. It is you... It is my mate. It is...
“This isn’t possible.” My response was a numb whisper on my lips as I stared at the image of myself with pointed ears.
The painter captured the small curve of her lips, the glint in her eyes.
She was happy in his arms. And he... I tore my gaze from it, staring wide-eyed at the ground, trying to process the enormity of everything. “I am not her.”
“But you are.” Clause came around me till he stood before me.
A finger nudged my chin up, forcing my gaze to lock with his.
“The way you move, the way you speak, even your conjuring. The way it feels to be in your presence. You are my mate. I feel it. My blood sings at your existence.” His hand moved, tenderly brushing against my cheek.
“And I think you can feel it too.” There was something nearly heart breaking in his cold gray eyes.
My throat tightened.
I stepped back, breaking contact with him.
He was right, partially. There was always something strange moving through the air when we were near one another. When he had kissed me, it was not normal, nor was it right. Whatever tied me to him, I did not want. I rejected it.
I examined the painting again, desperate to understand. Clause’s eyes were warm and welcoming in it. He seemed different. “Are you the same person as the one depicted in that image?”
“It is a painting of me.” He observed me as the wheels in my head spun.
“But are you the same?” I glanced at him. “The person in this painting feels warmer, hopeful almost. Whereas you have a brutality that is not conveyed in the canvas.”
He took a step towards me, and I moved away. “When I lost you, things changed.” Gray eyes burned into mine.
Fear clogged my throat. I needed space, air. But there was nowhere for me to go, to run.
I caged myself with him, with this secret. It was difficult not to choke on the disgust. The Sidhe King and the Spirit itself were cruel and twisted beings, and I was never more than a pawn. In all of this, my fate was sealed. I was something to be used.
I tried to force a steady voice, but it wavered. “So. If you are correct and my soul is the same one you claim it to be–”
“It is. I feel it in every ounce of my being.”
I glanced at the image. The warmth radiating from the man in it. “Then in my past life, I fell in love with someone who no longer exists, mated someone who is no longer real.”
Clause’s gaze narrowed. Tension connected us, the cord amazingly strong as it coiled around my wrists and ankles, tying me to him. Anger washed over me. For the Spirit played with my fate like this.
That resentment fueled me.
I spoke the next words with certainty. “I have said it before. My heart is not yours.”
He tilted his head, viewing me with calculating eyes. “It is, Ariana. You are mine, and I, in turn, am yours. We will always be that.”
“I do not want this version of you,” I boldly stated, and the room grew colder, darker.
“Would you have the other?” He peered at the painting, at the man he no longer could be. The person he himself destroyed.
“After last night?” I shook my head. “It is impossible.”
His lip curved slightly, as if not swayed by a challenge. “You will come around. You will see. Our mating was unique, changing us on a mystical level. Nothing can shadow the bond we share. It is eternal.”
“Except perhaps the most powerful conjuror can.” I stared at him pointedly.
“You shadow that bond by your actions.” My back straightened with my resolve.
I was not some puppet with no choice. “What you forced me to do, the way you took an innocent boy’s life without a second thought, it is disgusting.
No amount of pain or history from your past excuses those actions.
If my soul loved you in another life, then I am truly saddened to witness the monster you have become. ”
His jaw clenched, a dangerous edge cut through his gaze. “Like I said, you’ll come around.”
“No. You are going to relinquish your control, or I will not stop till you are put down, or I am dead,” I stated. It was a warning of truth I hoped he heeded.
“You are not going anywhere, certainly not the afterlife.” He took a step, and I remained where I stood, refusing to back away again.
“The reason you died was because you trusted those you shouldn’t have.
You were not prepared for what came for you.
You were too soft for this world. I will now help you withstand anything and everything.
I will not allow you to slip away, to die again.
” Pain accompanied those words, attempting to pull at me.
He cared about only his own pain, no one else’s, not even mine, his precious mate.
I dared to scoff at his words. “You are a fool to believe that your actions are hardening me towards the world. The only person they are hardening me against is you.”
The tension tightened around me, pulling me, yet I refused to move.
He stepped closer and nearly all the space between us vanished.
Dipping his head, I felt his breath on my ear as he spoke.
“Tell me you feel nothing when I am close to you.” His hand found my wrist, pressing into it.
“Tell me your pulse does not race for me.” He released it and his hand traveled up my arm before finding my neck and pausing there.
He pulled back and his eyes burned as they met with mine.
“Tell me you do not crave this.” He leaned towards me, but his lips never found their mark.
With my heart thundering in my chest, I backed away.
“You sadden me nearly as much as you disgust me.” There was an anguish to him when it came to me.
A blindness. He secluded himself from everyone, remaining untouchable.
But there was one who could cut through his defenses, one who he would open the door for, and the Spirit used that to their advantage.
It was cruel, really. To wrap a curse in such a package, one he would never refuse. One he would welcome as a gift instead of as his potential undoing.
It was my birth that was the curse; the spirit had said at my ascension. I now understood what it meant. I was a curse that could cut to the heart of the most heartless being in existence.
My attention momentarily strayed from Clause and moved beyond the room.
The web of mist outside his door tugged at my concentration as feet rushed down halls, heading in our direction.
So, it has started.
My heartbeat thumped even stronger in my chest as new nerves traveled down my spine.
Without a single twitch of a finger, I conjured. Mist surged around the room we stood in, pushing up against the doors, walls, and windows until no crevice was left. It sealed us in, just in time for the first set of fists to pound on it just outside. The mist absorbed all sound.
My focus re-centered on Clause. “How many lives have you taken since your mate’s death?”
“Plenty,” he answered, likely not even knowing the number.
“I am afraid we are at an impasse. We stand on opposite sides. Your people deserve better than you as their King.”
His silver brows furrowed before he offered me a glimmer of a hope. “Perhaps you can help me be better.”
I recognized that hope as the lie that it was. He wished to placate me for the time being.
I shook my head no. “Maybe I could have, but not anymore.”
He chortled. “You place more value on the lives of those you hardly knew compared to the friend you brought here when you first came to visit? You warmed up since then, yet now have decided that it is impossible for us to meet each other.”
“Every life has value,” I snapped. “I miss Landin, but in part, I could perhaps try to understand your position. He drew his blade on you more than once.” My brows furrowed, and I looked to the ground for a moment in thought.
“You are right. There is something that ties me to you. That is why I wanted to understand you. I also wanted to help you see you did not need to keep living the way you have been. The world can be cold but can also be beautiful and warm, yet you hid yourself away from it. You keep the cold out, yes, but also the warmth. And what kind of life is that?” My eyes watered.
“Then last night happened. The lengths you will go through to hurt me is extraordinary.” My heart broke not only for Landin, for the boy, for Gorm, but also for the King standing before me.
Perhaps, there could have been a different outcome.
But he stole that chance when he turned me into a murderer.
Clause took a measured breath. “That is me protecting you by making you strong.”
“No. That is you trying to ruin me.”
He sighed. “You don’t understand.”
Of course, if I did not see his way, it meant that I simply did not understand. For how else could I stand on the opposite side of him? This thought was condescending.
He was infuriating.
“Just like your mother didn’t understand when your father forced his ways on to her?” I snapped, not caring if it brought wrath.
Clause’s jaw twitched, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. “I never caged you.”
“Cages do not have to be physical. You wish for me to not find the warmth I need from this world. The warmth I need to truly live. You wish to force me into an icy darkness, and keep me there.”
“No.”
“Yes. You wish to smother me, to turn me into something I am not. To care for nothing or risk you brutally taking it from me. A prison wholly constructed of your actions and decisions, because I am not free to decide for myself how I wish to live or who to care for.”
“Stop.”
There was an assault on the mist surrounding the room. Several rhythmic jabs all over, such as that from a sword. Malavika. Relentlessly, she attacked, trying to break through the barrier.
I continued, a new thought spurred by her presence.
“Why not bring Malavika happiness and make her your Queen, for she is the type of person you truly wish to stand at your side, not me. You think you love me, that you love your mate, but that is a lie. You wouldn’t try to change me in such ways if you truly did. ”
Suddenly he lurched forward, pushing me back till the wall prevented me from moving. Hands came on either side of me, trapping me. “Stop pushing me, Ariana.” His voice was a soft snarl. A warning.
My spine remained straight as an arrow. “Or what? You’ll kill me?
You’ll destroy everything I love and care for till there is nothing left of this version of me?
” His gaze pinned me, but he did not answer, so I continued.
“Did you stop pushing me when I asked you to? When I fell to my knees in front of you and begged you to have mercy, to show me kindness?”
The assault on the mist wall continued, and it was an extraordinary effort to maintain the barrier without splitting my attention between it and the Sidhe King. I needed to take a deep breath, and I needed him further from me.
I touched Clause’s chest, and his breath hitched as my fingers slid over the soft fabric of his shirt till resting in the center, over his sternum.
His warmth seeped into my icy hand. “Instead of showing me compassion, you shoved me off a cliff and turned your nose up at me.” I pushed him away from me.
His hands dropped, and he stumbled back a few steps.
“How do you not see how much I love you? How I miss you? How my actions are intended to protect you?” His head pivoted, looking at the painting with longing.
“I have missed you for nearly as long as I have lived. For centuries, my heart has only beat for you. I waited for you.” He turned, those cold eyes finding me once more.
“You are the only thing important to me in this world. I would give you the world. Why do you fight our bond?”
“You are lying to yourself if you believe that. Because you would only allow for me to experience your world, not the one outside these walls, and not the way I want to experience it.”
“You’ll change your mind,” he said, his eyes shifting to my tightly clenched fists. Those observant eyes then scanned me, resting on my hairline a moment too long, probably noting the moisture building there from silent effort. Cold gray eyes pinned me. “What are you doing?”
“What is right,” I answered.
In two long strides, he was before me, a hand at my throat. He did not squeeze, yet kept me pressed to the wall as his power invaded me, stealing away my conjuring. The mist around the room fell. A rush of people crashed through the door into the room.
Clause’s eyes remained on me, his jaw clenched.
“There’s been an attack. Our walls are breached,” Malavika stated.
“Go to your perch and kill them all,” Clause answered without even looking at her.
I dared to break eye contact with him and glanced at the door, finding Soren and two guards standing there, looking uncertain what to do next.
Clause’s hand moved, releasing my throat, only to run his thumb across my lips tenderly. I reacted, trying to push him away.
With ease, his free hand captured my wrists, trapping them in front of my chest.
Dizziness overcame me, taking my fight. My knees weakened. “What are you doing?” I drew a deep, shaky breath as gray eyes pierced into me.
Clause leaned towards me, his breath hot on my neck.
“Forcefully slowing your heart so that you are less likely to cause trouble.” When he pulled away, his hand gripped under my arm, taking me with him as he moved me towards the door.
“Soren, take her to the bird’s nest balcony so she can have a delightful view, as everything she thinks she loves crumbles beneath her feet. ”
Soren slipped a hand under my arm, taking the brunt of my weight, for I could no longer hold myself upright as the world somersaulted around me. But before we moved, Clause’s hand reached behind my head, gripping my skull and forcing me to face him.
He leaned in, his lips just shy of mine when he spoke. “Were you anyone else, I would have killed you for such a stunt.”
And that made me his perfect curse, something that even he was incapable of destroying.
But he was not my curse, and in that moment, I very much wished to end him and his horrid reign.