Chapter 18
Kaed
and all that I am starts to take shape,
as I worship in deed and in thought.
I roar. I fight. I fail.
How many times will they make me break her? How many times will I succumb to this dark magic?
Her screams have echoed through every inch of this place.
Every inch of my mind. She is fragile. So soft.
Even if her blood claims otherwise. The bond hisses at me through the magic.
Jeering at my weakness. My inability to grasp it.
It’s so close my skin writhes, but it’s as if it is sealed behind a wall of glass.
I press against it with everything I have, clawing at the edges, begging it to crack, to let me through.
I reach for her magic, try to stir it awake again.
I try to grab her, to kiss her. But my body stays rigid.
I will not stop fighting, I will not fail her. Or my King.
I have been forced to conduct twenty-three of their useless experiments in the last fifty-five days.
Each one worse than the last and each one a failure.
But I could have told them as much. She has stopped fighting; I do not need a bond to tell me that.
I wish I could tell her to keep pushing, but I will have to push for us both.
The final light went out in her eyes when Vale pulled out a parchment claiming the skin must be without any dark blemishes.
She had a small, clumsy butterfly tattoo on her wrist. I was ordered to tear it from her flesh with my fingernails.
Along with the freckles plastered across her face and scattered over her shoulders.
Sometimes I meet her stare. Past the haze of Vale’s elixir.
That’s when my hand hesitates before drawing her blood or cutting scraps of her flesh and hair to feed into vials.
When I can, I send out cold healing smoke to soothe her wounds and fight infection as she sleeps.
If there is one thing I still have, buried deep beneath the layers of pain and dark magic, it’s hope. Hope she gave me.
They fear her. It’s clear in the way they tread so carefully around her, avoiding contact as if her touch might burn them alive.
Good. I know the danger too. But she doesn’t scare me.
I yearn for her to come into her power, to release herself upon this godsforsaken place and everyone inside it. Today is Vale’s turn.
“Captain.”
The word pulls me to my feet like puppet strings, halting me just behind him.
Forced into stillness but so deeply desperate to grip his head and twist and twist. Smoke pours from my hands, rushing toward Ashley’s limp body.
Beads of sweat trickle down my neck while I wrestle for control, trying to reign it back and wrap it around Vale’s throat instead.
He glances at me over his shoulder as if suddenly aware he is alone in an underground prison with two of the most dangerous fae in this universe.
He circles Ashley’s chair, mimicking Theron.
But his sloppy, uneven steps are punctuated by wheezing breaths, undermining any intimidation he hopes to achieve.
“Now. This next experiment will require the Princess, er—prisoner’s entire hand. So, brace yourself, girl.”
Her eyes are half closed, and her head lolls to the side, completely unaware of what is about to come. There is something unbearably gentle about her. An unguarded beauty that has no place in a world built to break things. If I could just kiss her.
“Captain, if you will, please.”
Magic yanks my foot forward. There are no weapons in sight. He intends for me to rip her hand straight off her arm. Panic flares in my chest.
“Erm, halt!” Vale stammers. I stare death into the back of his head, awaiting his next blundered command. “I have a dagger here, and something for her to bite down on.” How kind. “You’ll be fine, Princess. After all the blood Kaed has lost, he hasn’t died… yet.”
He chuckles weakly and fumbles with his belt, the dagger clattering onto the stone floor.
Muttering curses under his breath, he bends down to retrieve it, but the fool stumbles over his own foot.
Toppling forward. Onto Ashley’s lap. A blinding flare fills the room, and a wave of heat unlike anything I’ve felt before slams into me.
It’s something glorious and something violent, and it burns through my skin like the wrath of a god.
I’m thrown against the thick iron bars with enough force they bend under me, but the magic streams from her body relentlessly.
My ears ring, but something is there above the blaring noise, calling me, in the distance.
The bond. Gritting my teeth, I put one hand in front of the other.
Ignoring the pain coursing through me. I drag myself across the floor towards her.
My vision swims, and I can barely make out her figure through a bright white haze.
Though her eyes are glowing an unnatural, piercing black, and her veins writhe under her skin like spilt ink.
The black flame. Vale screams, his skin blistered and bloody.
His bleeding eyes are clenched shut as he roots around his robes for something.
“Lock her in! Back to your chair! Do not kiss her or speak. Resist the bond,” he bellows seconds after he throws a bottle of elixir my way.
The glass bottle explodes in front of me.
The vapour finding its way into my nostrils.
The magic takes hold of me, seeping into my mind and dulling my senses.
My near-broken legs drag me upwards. Away from her.
Away from the bond. I slam her cell door shut behind me.
When I take my seat, pain pulsing through me, Ashley’s head is tipped back, eyes ablaze.
That’s it my beautiful Princess. Unleash.