Chapter 21 Rae #2
And what? Run away with him? I almost laugh out loud at the absurdity of it.
“You still haven’t replied properly,” I whisper. “What do you want with me?”
“You are the only one who can push him into his potential.”
“How?”
“Deny him.”
I stare at him. “You don’t care about me at all, do you? It’s all for show. That’s what this mark on my wrist is about?”
“You accepted my mark. It’s too late to back out now.”
“Please,” I snap, frustrated. As if I had agreed to anything beforehand. “I’m just trying to understand what we’re doing here.”
“Athdara… has been in the court for a hundred years and yet he hasn’t been alive. The only spark in his eyes came when he killed. But since you appeared, he has slowly been coming back to life.”
I fight a shiver. “But—”
“You can’t be with him.” He turns around and starts toward me. “Don’t think I don’t know about your little tryst. He isn’t a good person.”
Neither are you, I want to shout at him. Neither. Are. You.
“And his potential?” I ask instead. “How am I to push him into it if I deny him?”
“Denying him is exactly what you need to do. The trigger of his power, indeed the trigger of all great power, is pain.”
Pain.
Pain controls Phaethon. Pain is the regulator. Phaethon can’t deal with the pain, abhors any injury coming to his host’s body. But emotional pain… is different, isn’t it?
“All this…” I whisper. “… it would require Jai to care for me.”
“Oh yes.”
“He told me he can only love once, and that the love of his life is dead.”
“She is.”
I swallow hard. Right.
“Denying him will weaken him. Make him more vulnerable to Phaethon, allowing the Eosphor to take over.”
“Permanently?” Horror fills me. “No.”
He grabs my wrist, lifting it and pushing me until I crash into the rolling ladder. The rungs dig into my spine. I cry out but he only snarls, baring too-long canines. His eyes are flat lakes. Nothing seems to live in their depths.
“You will deny him, my lovely human. Don’t forget, I know that you care for him, and that I can easily hurt him.”
“Don’t…”
“I can withdraw my help from him. I’ve already stopped taking his blood. He was suppressing Phaethon too much. We need a balance.”
“It’s not in your interests to withdraw your aid,” I grind out. “You need him.”
“He’s hard to kill, if you hadn’t noticed. Maybe impossible to do. If he goes out of his mind again, well, it’s a risk I’ll have to take.”
I snarl. “You—”
“Even if Jai goes insane, there will be sufficient time for me to get what I need.” A shrug. “I need Phaethon to open the gates. Time is running out.”
“And I’m an accelerator,” I whisper.
“A catalyst,” he agrees.
My jaw is clenched so hard it hurts. “I won’t manipulate him. Won’t lead him to insanity and death. I don’t care about your gates and your little mind games.”
His hand is crushing the fine bones in my wrist. “I’ve been more than patient.
He’s been a puzzle to solve, a knot to undo.
It’s taken me so long to bring him back from the brink of madness, to find a balance that won’t have him screaming and slamming himself against the dungeon walls, a balance that won’t have him curled up in a corner moaning in pain. But patience has its limits.”
“You make it sound so…” The image of Jai in such a state is a knife to my chest. “He’s a person! He deserves help.”
“Not to me. He’s an idle weapon, a drain on my time and resources, yet I can’t have him thrown into the sea because I need him. He’s been a good general, a good death bringer, but that’s not what I brought him here for. So damn annoying…”
My eyes burn. “Mars… Mars, what happened to you?”
His expression shifts, eyes narrowing. “I have told you before, call me Majesty. Or Anax, if you must.”
My stomach is a knot. “I can’t. Can’t stand this. I’m not doing any of it. I’m not playing your games.”
His head bows over me, his bared canines so close to my neck I can feel his cool breath on my skin, raising goosebumps. He could bite me, drink my blood, as he does to Jai. Find out my secrets, because that’s what blood drinking does, that’s why people in love do it.
“You don’t steal my words.”
My head hurts. I need to escape his hold. Create a distraction.
Swinging my gaze to the side, I can see his hand gripping the ladder. A mark is etched in the underside of his wrist—a dark purple symbol looking like a snake.
“You have a mark, too,” I grind out.
I feel him draw his head back. “What?”
“This mark on your wrist.”
He snatches his hand away and steps back, glaring at me.
“Some marks are placed,” he says eventually, turning away, “and some you are born with. Birthmarks trump marks that were applied. And I was born with this royalty mark on me.”
I think of the one I have on me, the birthmark on my back. Now I have two. A birthmark and a betrothal mark. The only betrothal mark I’d ever wanted was Mars’, and now that it’s happened, I feel… empty. I feel unwell.
If he hadn’t said those words to me, the words he spoke to me before he’d vanished from my life, if he didn’t know things only my lost love would know, I wouldn’t have ever thought he’s Mars. I look at his handsome face, frowning. It’s the right coloring, of course, the right shape… and yet not.
He was very young when I knew him, I tell myself. Of course he changed.
It’s been a hundred years.
An echo plays in my mind. Jai’s voice. “Fuck me, Rae, I haven’t felt like this in a hundred years.”
Thinking of Jai makes me want to see him. Need to see him.
With the thought comes a pain in my chest—a sting and a burn, and deep inside I know it’s Jai, and that I have to find him. Now.
“If we’re done here,” I say coolly, struggling to keep the slight panic from my voice, “then please allow me to return to my room. Highness.”
He gives a stiff nod, his gaze pensive, and I rush to go before he changes his mind. As I make for the double doors and march past the guards, I find myself trembling and I try to hide it.
Something is off here.
Something is definitely off.
And what’s worse, I’m afraid to face the answer.