39. Chapter Thirty-Nine #2
“Not anymore.” She leaves, and the room goes cold.
When I first returned from the library, she was worried about me, but that dissolved over the weeks I collected the magic from the mages. I can’t tell her it’s all for her because she would demand I stop. I will save her from even herself.
I fling the apothecary door off its hinges and let all my new power grow, giving the witch no time to react as I’m finally strong enough to rip out her heart.
She clutches her chest, and for the first time since I met her, her eyes are wide with shock. “What have you done, beast?”
“I need your ability to bind essences.” I pull her power from her and start to crush her heart.
“You don’t truly understand what you have done, Lazzus. For I have tried to warn you of this path from the beginning. That first mirror wasn’t a mirror to show you what would destroy you, though it did show that.”
I loosen my grip on her heart. “What was it?”
“It shows the consequences of your biggest mistake. It predicts the future. There is no saving Evelia from the fate you have started her on.”
“Lies!” I squeeze her heart.
“The queen is what you are.” She smiles as I crush her heart to ashes.
In my anger, I don’t ask for clarification of what her final words mean, and it’s not like it matters.
I bind her soul in a jar and bring it back to the castle until I figure out what to place it in.
I’ve practiced soul binding with the mages I stole and lost the first four I tried it with.
By the fifth, I could place the souls easily into jars.
The tenth was when I learned to place them into objects.
It took three more for me to learn how to place the souls into living things.
The last two I successfully placed in a crow and a mouse.
I would need to try several more times before I try on Evelia, so I have a necklace made with a heart-shaped ruby.
It will preserve her soul in case she dies before I feel confident enough to place it back in her body, that the prince will help me preserve.
Over the next several weeks, I practice endlessly with any free time I have. I feel strong in the power I need to keep Evelia with me forever.
Evelia is dancing in the room I made for her, and I watch her dance through several songs before she notices me. Her tears soften the deep anger consuming me, but I wait for her to approach me.
She wraps her arms around my waist and sobs into my chest. “Quit leaving me, Lazzus. My heart can’t take what I see in your eyes now. Stay with me.”
“Time is so fleeting for humans, Evelia.”
“Exactly, it’s so short, and all you do is spend it away from me. Stay with me for however long we get. You are the greatest happiness of my life, and right now you are breaking my heart.”
I lift her chin and kiss her. “Never will I let your heart break. Never will I allow it to stop beating.”
“There are things I need to tell you, Lazzus. Secrets I’ve kept since I visited Zantara.” She pulls away and sits on her couch.
“What secrets?”
A soldier steps into the room with several others behind him. “Your Majesty, King Sarek is at the gate with a larger army, and they have strange suits on.”
“They probably think that will protect them from my wrath. Evelia, get to your room and stay there until I come for you.” I turn to smoke and fly past all my running soldiers who hurry to defend the wall.
Of all the days Sarek has to attempt an invasion on my castle, it’s when I’m in the worst mood, and there’s no part of me that wants to play his game.
A swift death to all his men will be all that happens here.
When I make it outside, all the king’s soldiers are wearing blue metallic armor that covers them from head to toe.
The suits appear seamless with no openings for me to sneak tendrils through to strangle them, and I assume the king thinks I can’t penetrate the armor to impale either.
A lot of wealth spent on these suits will go to waste if I find the smallest weakness.
I float above the castle wall and return myself to a mostly solid state. My arms and legs whip around like vines flailing in the wind. “Have you not learned anything, Sarek? I do not invade your castle out of respect for your daughter.”
“If you had any respect at all, you’d release my daughter!”
Several more tentacles burst from my back, twitching with eagerness to slaughter the army.
Evelia’s words about not killing torment my desire, and I pause only to show I give her opinions weight.
“This is your one warning. Turn around, and no one will get hurt. Unless you’ve forgotten how efficiently I slaughter your strongest.”
“We’ve taken some precautions and are not leaving here without Evelia.”
“You think I will allow you to take my wife? You’re a bigger fool than I ever imagined, Sarek.”
“She is not your wife! You stole her from her true husband.”
My tentacles whip behind me. “What did you say?”
“Evelia isn’t yours, and we are taking her today.
” He lifts his right hand, and when he flings it forward, his men blow apart my wall with a projectile so quick it’s a blur.
It explodes on impact, evaporating all my men standing too close to where it hit.
He strikes four more places before I can give the order for retreat.
I toss any soldier that attempts to cross the rubble but give it less force than usual in honor of my wife. “Your last chance to leave. This generous offer is only because I love your daughter.”
“You will find that leaving is not going to be an option for us. There is no way you can hold my men off forever.”
I pick up twenty at once and throw them with more force to injure but not kill. “When they are dead, they will be held off forever. Leave!”
They send three more projectiles through my wall, and I search through the crowd until I find the operator of the weapon.
It’s a weapon I supplied Sarek with in exchange for Evelia.
A promise he never followed through on. A promise he kept giving me until he had the weapons and changed to insisting his daughter would never be mine.
He thought the weapons made him powerful enough to overpower me because he made a few modifications to them.
“Final warning. Quit destroying what’s mine.” The words flow from my mouth like ice carries them as a deadly promise. Unlike him, I keep my vows. His daughter taught me that very young.
“This is retribution for all you have done to me. All you have killed and taken what was mine.” He raises his hand and sends another onslaught.
More of his army rushes through the open spots, and I toss them all as I weave more and more tendrils into the attack. Men fly in all directions, and the fury boiling under my skin pleads for massacre.
“Stop! Father, stop!” Evelia stands on a portion of the wall that hasn’t crumbled.
“Return to the castle where you are safe!” I pick her up and gently place her back into the castle, and I may have to lock her inside if she puts herself in further danger.
Restricting her will is not something I do lightly.
Only when I must fight to keep her. For the sight of her sustains my life in ways I barely comprehend.
Evelia runs back out and steps much too close to the edge.
She sends my tendril that inches closer to her a glare.
“No, this needs to end. Father, go home! I chose to marry Lazzus to keep you and our kingdom safe, and you march over here to ruin that. This is the life I have chosen. A life with Lazzus is what I want until I no longer breathe.”
Her father raises his left hand rather than the right he’s been using, and his army stills. “This is not the life you chose. Lazzus forced it upon you!”
“If I tell you this is truly what I want, that I have fallen in love with the monster you hate most, will you leave?”
My heart soars at her words, and for a moment, I realize she has always been far wiser than me. She's kinder, smarter, and everything greater than me. She is everything I am not, but our souls are somehow the same.
Her father takes three steps closer to the destruction he’s caused. “I would say you only believe you love him because he has taken you captive and created a dependency on him for all your needs. He is your kidnapper and abuser.”
“That is where you are mistaken. I have loved Lazzus since I was nine and snuck out of your castle for the first time. He was my fire fairy and best friend. The one who saw me when you barely glanced my way.”
“You were never even supposed to leave the castle!”
“Right. My room either, unless it was for lessons. You were my first captor, Father.”
“I was your father, and you were a child.”
“What was your excuse when I was grown, and you still didn’t let me leave? You negotiated for me as if I were mere property. You knew those negotiations were unnecessary because Lazzus was what I wanted all along.”
Her father takes another step forward and looks around like he’s searching for another way to her. There’s none that he can find in time for me to not launch him into the air. “Negotiating marriages of their daughters is something kings have long done.”
“Just because something has always been done doesn’t mean it should continue. I have never been your property simply because you sired me. That’s all I am to you, right? Something you bred to further your goals.”
“No, that’s not true, but the point of a princess is to help forge alliances for her kingdom.”
“And if you had just accepted my wishes from the very beginning, there would have been peace because the alliance with Lazzus was enough.”
He raises his right hand to make a plea to his daughter and stares at it for a moment before he raises his left. But it’s too late. The moronic king already signaled to his soldiers, and they fire into the wall where Evelia stands. She falls before my tendrils can catch her.