Bound By Fate: A Novel of the Strong (2 page)

With the end of the Cleansing, and deaths of its king and queen, Venn Dom had fallen into complete disarray.

Nearly six hundred years later, Toran’s homeland still struggled with the loss of the hated faine––Toran most of all. Without his faine, he was unable to have what he wanted most in life, much less assume the throne. The acts of his father… and mother… had cursed him with a pervasive misery from which he could find no relief.

He
had
to find relief.
 

But it wasn’t just a selfish desperation for personal ease at stake. Toran’s kingdom teetered on the brink of destruction, its existence dependent upon a cobbled-together alliance that held more allegiance to Venn Dom’s coin than any fealty to a common cause.

Other than helping protect his people with his own sweat and blood, Toran was helpless to do much more.
 

After all, he was not yet king.
 

And there was the rub.

Despite his enormous strength, Toran was physically unable to do the one thing required of him by law to take his crown.

At least not without the help of his faine.
 

His key.

Toran’s greedy eyes once again swept the floor below, hungry for a glimpse of the female whose presence was promised to change everything.

Like most Vimor daemons, Toran gave sway to just three things in life: brutality, fate, and prophecy.
 

There were those who thought he should have chosen to fight, to outright battle to take his place as king. But Toran just didn’t have it in him to crush what was left of his people’s spirit.

They had suffered enough.

And, fate? Well, he held no illusions that such a fickle bitch could be thwarted outright. Thus, he saw no point in wrestling towards any specific outcome.
 

He’d let fate fall where it may.

Somehow, someway, Toran knew he was meant to be king, which had to mean something.

That left prophecy.

Luckily, prophecy seemed squarely on his side.

Toran believed his path to the crown rested in the words of a dying mystic, a tortured soul who whispered of a female spirited away.
 

The faine destined only for him.

Yes, to become king, Toran had chosen to play the long game. Instead of taking action guaranteed to further harm his people––and, he had to admit, himself––Toran was a slave to a long-decreed prophecy that promised to unlock a better future.
 

This had better be fucking worth it.

A slight shift in the air signaled the arrival of his faine.

Thoughts of his past and future melted away as his attention zeroed in on the small figure in the spotlight below. Small sparks of vibrant blue energy escaped his tight control, hissing impatient anticipation into the night.
 

Whispering a word of thanks, Toran cast out a lash of venna and cut the lights
.

The last thought he had before touching his faine for the very first time was that, finally, something had gone right in his totally fucked-up world.

*****

Holding her number card high, Liv strutted around the octagon, the gold in her hair glinting in the spotlight.
 

She was literally eating up the crowd’s attention.
 

Out of nowhere, she stumbled.
 

The barest hint of ozone colored the air before an earsplitting screech drove her to her knees.
 

The lights overhead shattered. Crying out, Liv gripped the cardboard tightly above her head, grateful for the thin layer of protection from the shards of glass raining down from above. In one single exhalation, the breath of thousands united into a deafening scream as the arena plunged into complete and total darkness.

Out of the blackness, blue light pulsed across the ceiling.

Liv struggled to her feet, her movements made difficult by the jostling mob trying to fight free of the chaos. Dropping her placard to the floor, she threw out her arms and blindly tried to make an escape out of the darkness. Her instincts screamed to harvest strength, strength she knew she’d need to save herself from whatever was to come.
 

And something big was definitely coming.

As if on cue, a frisson of energy kissed her skin, drowning out the feeble offerings of mere mortals.
 

What now touched her body was the undeniable and heady presence of the Strong.
 

Venna.

In the span of a heartbeat, the crowd disappeared, bodies brushed aside as easily as breadcrumbs off a table. The heaviness of empty air swaddled Liv in a cool embrace just before meaty fists wrapped around her upper arms and jerked her to a stop.

She was crushed against the chest of a tall, powerful male. Liv lifted her face, up, up, up, to gaze into cold, coffee-colored eyes that flashed an unworldly electric-blue.

A throaty moan escaped her lips as pure sensation bolted through her core. Energy she hadn’t tasted in over half a millennium pulsed from the male, bringing her long-numbed body to life.
 

Liv felt the hard edge of muscle pressed against her softness. The exquisite bite of fingernails into her skin. The searing heat of another’s body.
 

Gods, his touch.

She began to shudder against him, her heart struggling to process the feast of sensations. His grip tightened, further ratcheting up the fire coursing through her veins.
 

The male tipped his head down, his face now just inches away, his breath a hot whisper against her cheek.

 
A sustained burst of blue illuminated the arena, revealing the beautifully rugged features of a pure-blooded Vimor daemon. His intense brown eyes were set above chiseled cheekbones and a deeply dimpled chin. He had smooth, unlined skin, save for a small scar that nicked one corner of an eyebrow.

The male’s dark eyes flashed sapphire again. His thick lips parted, and his eyes glazed with hungry intent.

Liv knew that only one daemon would dare look at her with such possession.
 

He has finally come for me.

Liv heaved in a breath of helpless surrender, her bust pressing hard against his solar plexus.

The daemon's eyes narrowed as he took in the tops of her breasts. Teeth clenched in a grimace, he let out a low growl. His massive arms tightened, binding her to his body to the point of pain.
 

A jolt of high-octane power raced between them as waves of blue light lit the night, pulsing in time with the daemon's ragged breaths.

Liv cried out as he worked a thick leg hard against the juncture between her thighs. Her scalp tingled with pain as he fisted the hair at her nape. She felt his other hand slide over her ass to grasp the back of her naked leg. When he had her body thoroughly pinned to his, he began to pulse them away.

Gods, no. Not this.

Thundering panic choked out any attempt to beg for mercy.
 

As her physical being began to ebb into the Mythos, all the energy he had gifted her began to bleed away.

Ears ringing, consciousness ceding, Liv thought she heard Mandy’s voice calling from a distance before everything went black.
 

*****

The daemon prince is careless tonight
, Kellen thought as he took in the light show that flared through the darkened arena. Weak as it was, he was careful to keep his own venna under tight control. Concentrated immortal energy of any kind was a veritable beacon to the Strong; the Tenn was a fool to expose himself.
 

And expose himself he had. Kellen had found him easy enough. But, then again, he’d made it a point to know the Tenn's every movement through the Mythos. Though not his greatest enemy, the supposed heir to the daemon throne had caused him plenty of trouble.

Namely, Kellen blamed him for just about everything. For too long, the Tenn had sat idly by while the joint council––led by none other than Kellen’s treacherous father and Toran’s scheming uncle––ravaged the kingdom, bringing nothing but misery to those unfortunate enough to call the daemon ‘el home.
 

Since the times during and after the Cleansing, the Tenn had done next to nothing to right the many wrongs in Venn Dom. He had made no move to break the back of the council rule.

Sure, the Tenn did some good here and there. But he was a coward. Prophecy or no,
he didn’t fight for what was right.

No, that fight had fallen on Kellen’s shoulders. Over the years, he and his army of outcasts had beaten a path across the daemon ‘el, using force and fury in a so-far futile effort to shake their brethren out of crippling complacency. The Vimora were notoriously content to live upon their knees, blindly accepting whatever fate deigned to gift them.

To Kellen, it was an absurd way to live.

He refused to accept the eternal damnation of an entire daemon race for something that had happened so long ago.

If only the coward Toran would make something––
anything
––of his life, Kellen would not have to fight.

He would not be compelled to kill.

A brutal flash of light cut through the darkness. For long moments, a blue haze clouded out his vision. When it cleared, Kellen was stunned from more than just the force of Toran's venna. He blinked, trying to make sense of the two figures locked in a tight embrace on the arena floor.

He sucked in a breath as recognition rocked him to the core.

She’s alive.
 

But how could this be? His mind raced back through the centuries to all that his mother had told him, to all that he’d been taught to believe.
 

To all he’d been commanded to do…

Could his mother have been wrong about everything?

Impossible.

But as he watched the Tenn fade away with the female pressed against him, a cold sweat broke out across his brow.

Gods help me,
he thought,
what the hell am I supposed to do with this?

Toran had brought his faine inside his bedroom walls mere moments before an uproar downstairs forced him away from her.

“Where the hell is she, daemon?” A female’s angry shout cut through the stillness of the castle.

What the fuck?

Toran dumped the faine’s body into his bed. As their bodies lost connection, his skin prickled with unease. Before, on the human ‘el, the female had seemed to blossom under his touch.
 

Now, her skin was ashen.
 

She barely breathed.
 

“Goddammit, asshole, you give her back right now!”
 

Toran pushed away from the bed. Tensing his muscles, he gave himself up to the Mythos. A jolt of pure power shot through him, compressing his entire being to a flickering static. Condensed tightly inside his molecular state, he pulsed to the arched stone gallery that rimmed the great room’s cavernous space. Immediately regaining his solid self, Toran peered over the balcony.

A witch stood on the patterned flagstone floor below.
 

Eyes aglow in cats-eye yellow, she was screaming bloody hell.

Sensing his presence, she raised her eyes. Reddish-orange magic crackled in the palms of her hands.
 

Fucking magic.

Just as she swung her arm to ensorcel him, an electric blue disturbance split the air.

His cousin Merus materialized behind the female, his venna blanketing her body, trapping her arms to her sides.
 

The witch’s eyes went wide.

“What the hell?” she cried. With no way to release her spellcraft without causing harm to herself, she let it dissipate into the air. “Let me go!”
 

The female struggled, but Toran knew it would be to no avail. Her powers were bound by his cousin’s immense mental acuity, his venna and his mother’s blood combining to make him a formidable foe indeed.

Toran was fortunate that Merus fought on his side.

“Where’s Liv?” the witch screamed, never ceasing her struggles.

His faine was called Liv. Not her given faine name.

Interesting.
 

“What have you done, you stupid son of a bitch? Is she dead?”

Dead?

“Silence!” Toran yelled as he made the turn to jog down the stone staircase.

“Don’t you
silence
me, you medieval motherfucker!” she screamed. Despite his cousin outweighing her at least two to one, it looked as if it took nearly all his strength to hold the witch in place. “You obviously don’t understand anything!”

Well, he certainly didn’t understand how the hell the witch had gotten past Venn Dom’s carefully guarded gates.
 

Surely he hadn’t managed to fuck things up, had he?

“Do you have any idea what she goes through when she’s pulsed?”

That niggling sense of worry returned.

Toran again pushed it aside.

“If you have killed her, I will spend eternity making you pay,” said the witch. “I will flay your flesh into hamburger meat. Billions and billions will be served…”

Enough.

A deafening crack of thunder heralded the official arrival of his temper. His venna lashed out like a fist to seize the witch by the throat, immediately silencing her anger.
 

Toran tightened his grip. Through a haze of blue fury, he watched his cousin screw his eyes shut before dipping his head to whisper in the witch’s ear. She went still. Her yellow eyes shifted up to stare at Toran as he came to a stop a few paces before her.

She trembled in fear.

That was more like it.

*****

This was bad. Really bad.

Though Merus knew his cousin well, a stranger could see that Toran was not in the mood for this witch’s bullshit.

In one quick move, Merus stepped behind the female. His hands clutched her upper arms, pulling her body tight against his own.