Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
ANDREIEN
W e pushed past the vanguard. Bringing down the basic wards on the front, side, and back entrances was simple but grueling. We infiltrated the house, encountering more little surprises an unexpectedly canny Dartanyon had left for us.
More golems, plus the usual assortment of protections and booby traps. He didn't have much of an imagination, but what he lacked in creativity he made up for in sheer quantity.
If the stakes weren't so high I might have enjoyed it as a kind of training exercise. But my power wasn't infinite, and I was the strongest present. If I went down, the others would fight, but what could take me could take them.
Constin shouted an order as I weaved between my warriors, a blade now in my hand because it would do better to husband my magic.
My Anah was in this house, I felt her presence. Gritting my teeth, I relaxed as the barrier shrouding our bond began to dissolve, slowly, so slowly.
“Drei, behind you, damn it! Pay fucking attention.”
I whirled, met the attack and dispatched it. Turning back, I headed in the direction tugging at my insides.
She was in this house, and she lived. But in what state? I dreaded the answer.
As I steeled myself, I made her the silent promise that no matter what had happened, time and care would offer healing. I would abandon her for nothing.
I’m coming, my darling. I’ll save you.
HASANNAH
On that strange bed in a madman’s mansion, a mouth cajoled mine open, breathing sweet floral and candy scented breath into my lungs.
I struggled, fearing suffocation, but as my lungs began to burn Dartanyon pulled away, staring down at me with eyes gone to an almost purple candlelit glow. There was no green in his eyes to offset the blue. No amber flecks.
“I wanted more time with you,” he said. “But it appears I made a mistake somewhere. I suppose I never meant to draw it out.”
The last he almost said to himself, half turning as I heard the distinct sound of. . .my brow furrowed. Like something big and heavy ramming against a barrier and creating aural booms of electricity.
“It’s Andrei,” I said.
Battle. Those were the sounds of Fae warriors breaking into a fortified mansion. So cool.
I giggled.
Dartanyon whirled back to me. “If you think he’s going to save you, it’s too late for that.”
I laughed. “Well, his timing isn’t the best. But your dialogue is worse.” I laughed again, vaguely concerned at my behavior.
But, I mean, were there instruction manuals on how to act when kidnapped by a crazy Fae Lord who stuffed ballerinas into giant glass cages?
No, sir and madam, there were not. Point me in their direction if so.
I giggled again. “Oops. Said that last bit out loud.”
I tried and failed to sober, flexing my legs. High as fuck. He’d definitely drugged me with Ixnie again.
“You drugged me, didn’t you? I can’t even be mad cause, my man, that’s some gooood shit. Wow. I feel like doing a happy dance, but I’m not a penguin so it wouldn’t color me properly and I’d just tumble down the rainbow brick road. I hate skinning my knees. They always taste like chicken when they bleed.”
He stared at me.
I struggled to rein myself in. Damn. “This is worse than that brownie I ate that one time in a single go.” Or better, depending on one’s point of view. “I kinda regretted leaving that ex cause of his sister’s baking skills, but he had other issues.” They always did.
Dartanyon continued to stare. I didn’t like his stare. It was scary.
“Dartanyon? I’m scared.”
His expression softened. “There’s no need for you to feel pain or fear. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
He sat on the edge of the bed and took my hand. “You understand, my swan, this is the only way we can live a full, rich life together. The brat thinks you’re his, and his merry band of dwarves support his every whim. We must start over again, both of us. I’m almost certain that by dying together in the same realm, we’ll be born again within close proximity. I’ve. . .experimented. I believe the tags I’ve placed on my soul will draw me to you. Just as it drew you to me here in Casakraine.”
I blinked at him. “What do you mean? I didn’t seek you out. I hopped in the slipper and the giant balloon took off.”
Damnit damnit. I was struggling to even think somewhat rationally, and when I opened my mouth, my brain synapses stumbled.
I leaned forward, putting my hand on his cheek, and inhaled as his pupils dilated. Inside, I let my succubus unfurl, the satin in my blood rising to the surface. She wasn’t affected by the Ixnie. It amused her.
“I need more time with you,” I breathed. “Don't let him win. Don't let him take us from each other.”
I would never get past Dartanyon by running, and brute force was out. Not only was I still physically weak despite a few hours of sleep, but he'd drugged me with Ixnie. It was a struggle to control even a part of my mind. How could I control my mind when the Wicked Witch was in the Whitehouse? They were sending a rocket to Mars, and that would ruin everything. Mars was where the exiled Dark Fae lived. They’d accidentally release the ancient Wild Hunt and I’d never eat Snickers again.
I couldn't work against Dartanyon.
So I would work with him.
Placing my other hand on his shoulder, I leaned back, drawing him down over me. The part of me that screamed and wriggled in horror I shoved away. Instead, I let the succubus rise as I smiled, enveloping him in my glow the way he'd pumped my lungs full of potent narcotic.
“Come to me,” I breathed. “Be with me.”
Let me eat your heart.
Let me drink your soul.
But Dartanyon wasn't a fool; he understood my nature.
He struggled. A hand wrapped around my throat, pressure increasing. “You seek to trick me, my swan,” he said, voice low and rough.
Even as he ground his hips against me. He was almost mine. And I’d already wrapped my pretty noose around him, I now just had to tighten it, and cut off his balls.
“Do you think I am so easy to seduce?” he asked.
Was I supposed to answer that? Had any man I’d ever wanted told me no?
. . .never. Which was part of the problem. Maybe if they’d been able to say no, I would have been spared a few cycles of pain and aching. I supposed it was a kind of self-inflicted karma. They’d been my victims as much as I’d been theirs.
I let my legs fall open, cradling him, not fighting the sensual motion or the threat of his fingers around my throat.
“Kiss me,” I said, letting my eyes drift closed.
My stomach rebelled, but I suppressed the visceral response and tightened my noose a little more, drinking down a trickle of energy that helped clear my mind.
Andrei was coming, I needed to give him time.
I ran my hands through gray and rose-pink hair, deciding the hue was natural, just unusual. Andrei had green hair, after all. And it wasn't dye, because I'd been watching his roots grow out, spent evenings running individual strands between my fingers and examining the color as he laid pliant and preening, eyes warm with amusement at my expense.
“If you're going to kill me, then let me taste your lips before I die,” I whispered, letting myself love him a little, letting him see it in my eyes. “How else will I know you in my next life? Your taste, your feel. Your scent. Your skin on my fingertips.”
My hands drifted down the locks of his hair to his shoulders, slipping my fingers under the collar of his loose shirt to meet bare skin. Smooth, bare skin. Muscle underneath the silk, heat in the body pressing me into the mattress.
Still, he struggled. He knew it was a trap. But my succubus wouldn’t let him care. I hadn’t realized I was strong enough to entrap a Lord . . .but maybe he wanted to be trapped. He had a death wish, after all.
“If you intend to die,” I said, “then die in my arms.”
The fingers around my throat loosened, and finally, finally, he broke.
“I will have you first,” he said, “but you will die again, my swan. In this life, they will have nothing of you but your corpse, and let them do with that what they please. We’ll both be long gone.”
He tore the top of the leotard from my body as if the fabric was made of tissue, baring my torso to air and his touch, then kissed me again.
I rose from the bed, ignoring the slickness between my thighs and the power splitting my skin as if I'd been turned inside out, and my organs were all now exposed to air. To pain. To bruising from the faintest touch.
I also ignored the man weeping on the bed.
“I don't know why you're crying,” I said as I walked to the door, my limbs strong and quivering with energy. “You'll get at least half of your wish.”
I’d drained him of everything. Well, the succubus had. Of his love, of his will, of his desire for vengeance.
I'd left him with nothing but tears, arrowing into him the moment he'd arrowed into me, taking the wound of that intrusion the way you might take a blade to the side on a battlefield in order to burrow under the defense of your foe. Con would be pleased with that analogy.
Lose the skirmish, win the war.
“Anthoni,” he said, weeping. “Come back. Please. I learned my lesson. I grew. Will he give you your freedom? Do you think his invisible cage is better than mine, the one you can see? He is Heir ! He is as dangerous as his mother! Don’t let him fool you. Don’t let him?—”
“Be quiet.” My hand on the knob, I glanced over my shoulder. “Stay here,” I said gently. It wasn't in him to disobey me. He couldn't. “Drown in your love. Choke on it. In this life, what’s left of it, this is all you’ll have of me.”
I felt a dark joy at flinging his words back in his face. And then a pang in my heart as I gave him one final look, and wondered. . .but no. I belonged to Andrei. I wasn’t Anthoni.
Opening the door, I walked out knowing that once my sated succubus faded back to whatever part of my psyche she emerged from, I'd be left with ashes.
But right now it wasn't in me to regret anything.
I headed towards the sound of battle in the hallways. Steel, and the peculiar crackle of magic, shouted orders from voices I recognized and voices I didn't. Grunts and cries.
The cacophony. . .was beautiful.
I smiled as I walked.
Behind me, Dartanyon continued to weep. And weep.
And then his voice went silent, but I didn't think it was only because I turned the corner.
I paused, turning back slightly. The succubus had driven him to this. There was no doubt in her mind what he'd done to himself.
She'd eaten his heart. She'd drunk down his soul. Left him with nothing.
Only a single choice. End it now, or have it ended for you.
I turned back around with a shrug.
No, I still couldn't find it in me to care.
Maybe I would tomorrow.
ANDREIEN
Her scent, adulterated with freesia and jasmine and cotton candy and another particular, masculine stench that set my teeth on edge, assaulted my nostrils. I scented her before I saw her. Before I heard her and when she turned the corner I understood why.
She wasn't wearing shoes. She wasn't wearing clothing at all, nothing but her long dark hair draped over her shoulder, large luminous eyes pinning me.
I froze, taking her in.
Outwardly unharmed, her skin unblemished by bruises or other indications of abuse.
But the look in her eyes.
I almost went to one knee, because what looked out of her eyes demanded submission, worship.
It demanded I offer her my heart and my soul and sate her hunger with my mouth between her thighs.
She walked towards me, her natural grace and sensuality multiplied.
“Lady Hasannah,” I said. “You are well?”
Half of my attention had still been on the battle, but as soon as she'd stepped into view, the magical traps had dissipated, and my warriors had taken care of the rest of the physical obstructions.
Anah lifted one shoulder in a shrug, and glanced behind her. “Dartanyon isn’t. I didn’t need to wait for you after all.”
“Wh—what?”
She turned back to me. “He's still in one piece unless he can cut off his own head, but I doubt he's alive.” She smiled, pleased. “I can feel you in my mind again.” Anah stepped forward and twined her arms around my neck. “I think I'm still hungry.”
My body hardened. Just that edge of breathiness in her voice, just the look in her eyes, and I was helpless.
I braced myself against the sudden, raging need, and sheathed my blade, settling my hands on her hips. “Not here, cygnet. I'll feed you when we return home.”
She pouted a little, rubbing her bare chest against mine, and pulled my head down towards her. “Are you sure?”
Not at all.
Not entirely of my own volition, I slid my hand between her thighs, feeling her flesh, then stilled. Her wet flesh. The inside of her thighs warm with slick. The source of that masculine scent.
“Hasannah? Are you well?”
The words were strangled. I couldn’t quite control my voice, the surge of vicious rage that another male had touched, had hurt, what belonged to me . For a single, defining moment, everything in me went Dark.
Touched her. He’d touched her.
I felt her begin to retreat and stuffed my instinctive reaction down, gently shackling her upper arms. This was a battlefield. In battle there were deaths, and injuries. And in the end, she was the one who’d been harmed. My feelings were not important.
“Are you well?” I repeated when I could speak again, gentling my voice. I caressed her arms with my thumbs.
Anah grimaced and lifted her chin as if forcing herself to meet my gaze. Unflinchingly. “I had to distract him. But I'm full, so there's that.”
It was the succubus talking, not my bonded. But they were one and the same.
She. . .had had to distract him.
I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath, and when I opened them again gave her the kiss she was silently demanding, brushing my lips against her own.
“I'm glad you feel well, my darling, and I'm certain you were lethally distracting. Your aid was invaluable. Will you accept my escort home?”
She considered, her gaze traveling around and pausing on Con and Math before she looked back up at me. “If you insist.”