6
Heir of Illusions
Blair
The bathwater laps warm around me, renewing itself with every sweep of my hands through my hair, washing away the last streaks of putrid mud. The floral oils are so pure it feels as if I am floating in the heart of a spring meadow.
Connus walks in, two glasses of red wine balanced easily in his hands. He stops mid-stride, eyes raking over me—how my nipples breach the veil of foam, how my new, white hair curls damply around them.
“White suits you,” he drawls. “What happened?”
“Not your fucking business,” I croon back lightly.
“What happened?” he asks again, so gently I want to punch him in the gut.
I break his gaze. “Caryan…he took everything.” My voice is barely a whisper.
But it’s the truest thing I’ve said in a long time.
My magic. My phantom wyvern. Even my gods-damn hair color that hammered home my nickname the Crimson Death.
She’s dead, that woman. Caryan drank her empty with his teeth, his damn hands, his body.
I say nothing as Connus comes closer, setting the glasses down on the silver-edged table beside the bath.
“Not everything, Blair. You’re still you. Resilient. Unbreakable.”
My hand shoots out, nails biting into his wrist hard enough to draw blood. His eye widens at the speed of it. Ha, I’m still a witch. Still a flesh-devouring monster with fangs and claws, magic or no.
I yank him closer. “Don’t fucking give me a cheerleader pep-talk, Con. And don’t you dare give me pity.”
“What’s a cheerleader?”
I roll my eyes. Right …Congrats, you’re back in the fae world, Blair. No phones, no radio, no cars. Just bloodthirsty, cruel monsters, who constantly fight over status and position and the size of their dicks.
I dig my claws into his skin in answer.
He swallows, holding still, but his green eyes never stray from mine.
So close I notice the black tendrils spreading like veins around his pupil.
A sign of black magic. I wonder how he could keep the shadows at bay for so long.
If he built this place with black magic, with sorcery, he must have long gone mad.
His eyes should be all black, his soul consumed by the shadows.
But he isn’t mad. I don’t have the nerve to ask how he does it, though.
I’d rather drown in my self-hate and self-pity.
“I never would. And you don’t need pity. You need something else.” His lips tug into a lopsided, ambiguous smile. “Last time I heard, you were in Caryan’s dungeons. Well, it’s been a long time since—”
“Where is that girl?” I cut him off, ignoring what he said and the suggestion he made.
The slap comes faster than breath, sharp enough to snap my head to the side. Then—magic. Fingers of air—fucking phantom hands—close around my throat and drag me from the water.
Connus. One of the last true sorcerers in the world.
Trained in Akribea itself—back before my aunt shuttered every school save for those that taught black magic.
Everyone who wasn’t a witch was exiled or executed.
Everyone except Connus, because he had mastered black magic even better than the witches themselves.
Phantom hands lift me unceremoniously into the air and then dump me on his bed. I thrash, but the magic pins me down into his silken pillows. I glare at Connus.
He only leans a shoulder against the bedpost, watching me, faintly amused.
“Fuck you, bastard!”
“Well, you ruined my shirt,” he says flatly. “Not easy to get real clothes around here, you know. Just a tiny payback.” His gaze drifts between my spread legs, those damn hands holding them wide apart.
“Your girl is fine,” he says, voice thickening into that tone I know far too well. “I gave her a tonic. She’ll heal, but she needs rest. I’m no healer, so it’s not instant.” His eyes glint. “Want to tell me what happened? With Caryan and you?”
“Want to tell me how you ended up here in the Black Forest?” I shoot back.
Connus had been everything over the years—shady trader, diplomat, seneschal to the king of the north. Hells, I don’t even want to know what else, but if it was dirty and dubious, he probably did it.
“Actually, no,” he murmurs, lips curling at my attempts to escape those damn hands. “Right now, all I want is to fill you up.”
A shiver betrays me, skating down my spine as his gaze settles between my thighs again. Hells, it’s been weeks since I got laid. And he knows it. The way his eyes linger on my breasts—the bastard knows exactly what he’s doing.
And what turns me on.
He shrugs out of his shirt, bronze skin gleaming in the firelight. His chest is cut from the kind of muscle that makes my mouth dry and water at the same time. The magical hands loosen. The moment they do, I lunge for him—
—and am yanked back. Not by men. But by perfect, naked replicas of them. Illusions of two of his henchmen. One of them is Mr. Mohawk Renfris. The other one is a dark-skinned wolf shifter with blazing blue eyes.
“Really? That asshole Renfris?”
A low laugh rumbles in Connus’s throat. “I remember you saying that you like assholes in bed. And besides, always the dark-haired, wasn’t it, Blair?”
“Then how did you fit that bill?”
“Huh, I guess I was just lucky you picked me because of my talent.”
“And your dick,” I counter.
He laughs quietly. “I remember those times—in that dusty study. When you had me conjure up students you liked. Male and female. And we had them join us—or, well, their illusions.”
Oh, hells, I remember.
I try to tear my brain back to reality and ignore the way Renfris’s damn abs shift and ripple when he moves closer. Hells, if I find Renfris hot I clearly need to get laid. Now. No! Later! “We should talk about that girl. Melody. What do you want with her?”
“The girl from the prophecy. The one who’s believed to be able to change the tides of war. To end Caryan, if such a thing can even be imagined.”
I roll my eyes at him. “It says that she’s meant to end the blight , dumbass So, by all means, define blight because there’s really no mention of Caryan. Now, are you done reciting the prophecy to me like some professor? Because I always found professors hot.”
He stays serious. “What can she do?”
“What do I know?” I bat my lashes up at him.
“You do know something.”
“I know that she’s a half-blood like you. I also know that I’m going to slice you up slowly and eat the strips of your skin raw if you touch a single hair on her head again.”
Connus watches me in a way I don’t like. Like he can see right through me. “You’re quite protective over her.”
“Oh really? Then let me be even clearer: Harm her and I’ll kill you. I swear you won’t see it coming.”
He has the nerve to laugh. “Easy, Blair. I don’t want to harm her. You know that, after all, I’m a pacifist. And a hedonist.” With a flick of his long fingers, the illusions of Renfris and the other guy stalk slowly toward me.
I let myself fall back against the pillows as the dark-skinned magical creation leans down and slowly starts to lick up my arm, his tongue rough in just the right way, trailing heat to my shoulder…to my neck. Gods. I arch from the bed, but keep my eyes trained on Connus.
“What can you offer me?” I ask.
“Offer?” he scoffs, as if I’d made a joke.
“Yeah. Or I swear I’ll set your damn fucking mansion on fire and fry your balls off in the process.”
“Big words for a witch without magic.”
“Well—there’s still a fireplace and a whole lot of hells-damn kindling around.
I would guess all that wooden furniture and panels will burn nicely.
Oh wait, the whole mansion is made of wood.
” I make a show of looking around, my tongue in my cheek, before I let my gaze land back on Connus.
“I want her safe. Caryan will drag her right back, collar around her throat, and lock her into his sweet little dungeon. And she won’t survive that. ”
“I planned on bringing her to Lorvil.”
“The High King of Palisandre?” I snap, shoving the mohawk-illusion out of my face when it tries to kiss me.
I sit up. It’s damn solid, like a real man, and full of muscle.
I have to shove the guy off with my full strength, palm flat against his wide chest. “Are you mad? He’s a monster.
And I thought you said he tortured you in his dungeon. ”
Connus just shrugs, as if I made a fucking comment about the fucking weather in fucking Akribea.
“Well, we finally came to an agreement. And I came to believe that everyone is a monster in this game, Blair. But the balance of magic, of power, has shifted too much already. Those rips in the world, they’ve widened.
At some point, they’re going to tear this one apart and swallow it whole. ”
I cringe inwardly. He’s right. Those shadow rips, where monsters from the other worlds can slip in, have become a serious problem, and once Caryan absorbs the magic of the artifacts some impossibly powerful elves once bound magic to and hid away from the world—and away from Gatilla, my aunt, and the darkest figure this world has seen in a long time before Caryan killed her—it will get worse, the balance tipping further. End of story. Fun over.
Connus continues. “This world is better off if Lorvil gets the artifacts and their magic, instead of Caryan. He is already incredibly powerful. And if the war is coming—and it is coming—then Lorvil needs all the magic he can get.”
“So you’d rather have Lorvil on the throne, keeping us all under his thumb, than Caryan?”
“I don’t know. You were his lover.”
“Fuck off. You were Lorvil’s prisoner,” I shoot back, pinning him with a glare.
“I didn’t mean to sound sarcastic. But, in all honesty, how is Caryan as a ruler? As far as my sources told me, he’s uncontrolled. And he’s getting worse. So what do you think?”