Dark Prince's Desire (7 page)

“I know him better than anyone else. He is my brother.”

Chapter Ten

Yelena stilled. Raze’s face was so hard, as if set in stone. He wasn’t going to change, she realized, dismay settling into her chest even heavier than his expression. He couldn’t change, not because he wasn’t wereling, but because he wasn’t willing. That truth—he didn’t have to say anything more; she saw it in his eyes—stirred her dismay into a heavy sludge in her heart.

“You never intended to let me go, did you?”

His hesitation was so brief, she might not have noticed it except all her senses were on edge, ready to catch him in a lie. “No. I couldn’t unlock a portal just for you. And now that I know the havoc you have in mind, I’d be even more remiss to let you tear open secrets that have stood for thousands of years.”

She glared at him, the toxic sludge backing up into her throat, making her words rough. “Those are not only your secrets to keep.”

“I made them mine.” He shoved back his leather sleeves to brandish the pale scars gleaming like a second set of cuffs around his wrists. “I am one of the last, Yelena.
That
is what changed me. I betrayed my brother to save my people. I cannot undo that. I
won’t
undo that.”

Reluctant sympathy threatened to soften her rigid spine. “I don’t question the choices you made back then.”

“Just the ones I’m making now,” he translated.

“I would do anything to see my sisters freed. And yet you’ve kept your brother locked up for ages. Literally.”

“He would have been the death of us.”

“As if being buried alive is better.” She knew the accusation had struck home by the way he recoiled, though she hadn’t intended to toy with him. “I can’t stay here.”

His jaw flexed. “Many non-
phae
have called the court home.”

“Yeah, I’ve read those stories. They don’t usually end well. And even if they did, I’m not looking for a happy ending just for me.” She felt her cheeks heat thinking about the “happy endings” she’d already found in his arms.

Worse was the hot prickle in her eyes at the thought she might never experience one again.

But though the truth hurt—no wonder the
phae
didn’t like it—she wasn’t going to let him lie to himself. “You think you’re saving your people, but you’re as bad as that Afghan warlord, so afraid of losing what little you have you won’t let yourself reach for something better.”

He flared his broad shoulders, and the furious silver glint in his eyes was as sharp as any steel had ever been. For half a second, she wondered at the power he’d once commanded that had allowed him to imprison a King of the
phae.
If only he’d use that power to guide his people instead of confining them....

“You haven’t lived the past I have,” he said between gritted teeth.

“And you can’t see the future I believe in.” The impossible divide between them made her want to scream, but she was afraid the echo across that distance would sound too much like crying.

“I am leaving,” she told him, and she was relieved her voice didn’t crack. “Even by myself, I’ll keep looking for a portal out.”

“I could stop you.” His voice was as flat and stony as the dying plain around them.

She shook her head. “You can kill me. You can lock me up. But you can’t stop me.”

“You haven’t even found your way back to the
verita luna
, and that is the heart of what you are.” He lifted his chin to an infuriatingly arrogant angle. “What makes you think you can trick your way through a
phae
portal?”

The note of desperation kept her anger at his scorn in check. “I’ve done it before. I’ll do it again. You told me when I first came through, it was my desire that triggered the passage.”

“And now you desire to leave here.”

The simmering emotion in his tone was as varied as the colors in the ammolite crystals of his cavern. Were there reasons beyond the alleged havoc she’d cause that he didn’t want her to leave?

Slowly, she loosened the silky ribbons that bound the catsuit closed around her breasts. She peeled down the black and gold stripes, sensing Raze’s rising agitation. She couldn’t see anything—although she peeked—since the leather pants were too snug to reveal if another part of him was rising.

The geasa on his hands stood out whitely around his clenched knuckles. “What are you—?”

“You were right. I’ve been afraid to change, afraid to dream, since it went so badly for me last time. But you reminded me, living in fear of what might be is always going to be worse than what is.”

Naked, she stalked up to him, stiff and still in his spiderling black. Careful to avoid his bare hands so she didn’t force him to say anything he didn’t want to, she gripped his leather-clad shoulders.

“You set me free, Arazael, Prince of Flutes.”

She rocked up onto the tips of her toes. Not that she had the height or strength to reach him had he resisted, but he must have unbent enough that her lips pressed to his. She tilted her head, a wordless appeal, and parted her lips in a soft, wet stroke.

With a low groan, he opened his mouth. His tongue swept hers, locking their breath together. She tasted the stone and the storm in him, two conflicting impulses that nevertheless made her tigress growl with pleasure, wanting more and more.

Wanting forever.

She longed for the touch of his hands on her heated skin. Her nipples pebbled against the smooth leather of his vest, and her core melted with longing. She resisted the urge to reach up to frame his face with her hands, to look deep into his eyes and demand he answer: how could he not want this more than anything too?

But his arms stayed stubbornly ironed to his sides. Apparently not even in fairy tales did one kiss solve all the world’s problems.

She felt the
verita luna
tingling in her bones, a delicious ache. But once she changed... Missing the Second Truth had brought her here, brought her to Raze. For a heartbeat, the change faltered, the deliciousness losing to the hurt, just as she would lose him....

Hovering on the edge of the
verita luna
, her senses had sharpened, so she scented the new arrival before sound or sight alerted her. The burnt odor was more bitter than the dusty smells around them, and Yelena whirled away from Raze, her pulse hammering.

The tigress had not wanted the change or the kiss to be interrupted.

EveStar watched them, her multi-jointed fingers writhing although the rest of her was utterly still. Her elf-maiden glamour had altered. Her pale hair stood out from her head in a twisted corona and her skin had darkened and roughened like bark.

“I told you the wereling would destroy you.” The phae’s voice creaked like a branch in the wind.

Raze took a step forward, putting his black-clad shoulder in front of Yelena. Guarding, as he always did, she knew. His instinctive response made her heart pound.

“EveStar,” he said gently. “I am not destroyed. I am right here.”

“But you don’t want to be.”

Elation surged through Yelena, amping her heartbeat higher. The
phae
must see something in Raze’s aura, something he wouldn’t admit to her or himself. Was there a chance for a future, not just for the
phae
and the werelings, but for the two of them?

“You are a prince of the
phae
,” EveStar said. She spread her hands, her long fingers flickering eerily. “There are so few of the old ones left, and the Steel Born have forgotten. You mustn’t leave. The
phaedrealii
needs you.”

The harsh stink of creosote drifted on the air, and Yelena stiffened. In this unadorned place, there were no established illusions to drain of power. Where was the frail EveStar pulling the energy?

Like the twinkle of the
verita luna
that appeared at the extremities, Yelena saw a glint between EveStar’s fingers. The
phae
wasn’t taking energy from her surroundings, but from herself.

“Get out of the way, Raze,” Yelena snapped. She’d had enough of the
phaedrealii
hurting him after all he’d sacrificed.

He turned toward her, and she saw an angry denial already forming on his lips. But the distraction was all she needed.

EveStar’s hands burst into flames, her long fingers dripping fire. Her twisted hair blazed up as she threw the fireball straight past Raze.

But Yelena was already in motion. The
verita luna
—held in abeyance long enough—caught her in midleap. The fireball caught her too, but only scorched along her tail when she shifted direction, cat-quick. She shoved Raze down, big enough in her tigress shape to stun him before she spun on her singed tail to bound the other direction, drawing EveStar’s fire.

The
phae
burned like a torch, but her scream was angry, not agonized. “You cannot have him, wereling! He belongs here.”

Yelena flexed her muscles to leap atop a boulder only to have it burst under her as EveStar’s napalm struck near her paws.

She went down hard, the breath knocked from her, but she forced herself to roll behind one of the largest fragments and cringed when that too exploded, leaving no protection between her and EveStar. How much of herself could the woody
phae
burn up?

“Elaeagnacia!” Raze’s shout pierced the crackle of flames.

From the startled, entranced expression on EveStar’s face through the smoldering bark, Yelena guessed he had spoken her true name. Damn it, she didn’t want to feel sorry for the murderous
phae
just because EveStar hadn’t heard her name in so long she’d obviously almost forgotten it.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Yelena jumped toward another boulder for shelter. Despite its sturdy granite appearance, she didn’t feel as protected as when she was behind Raze.

“Don’t do this.” Somehow, his gentle cajoling carried more clearly than his shout as he edged toward the other
phae.
“As much as the court needs me, it needs you too. Douse the fire, Elaeagnacia.”

The shimmering flames that had blackened EveStar’s pale hair ebbed but didn’t go out, the fire still licking sullenly along the twists. “The wereling must die first. Her aura touches everything around her.” The
phae
shuddered. “And she changes all she touches.”

“But the magic will always be here,” he soothed.

The fire in EveStar’s hair flickered lower yet.

Until a chilly laugh reignited the blaze and made Yelena’s fur stand on end. Colder yet, a voice asked, “And does
your
magic rise to her touch, Prince of Bones?”

A dust devil spun up from the strewn rubble, and the Queen stepped from the center. Despite her festively colorful robes, her previously luxuriant hair was pulled back in a grizzled, yellowed halo to reveal the bony shape of her skull, and her eye sockets were blackened out, emphasizing the sulfurous yellow glare of her serpent-slit irises.

Worrisome enough, to Yelena’s mind, until a phalanx of dark warriors emerged from the maelstrom behind the Queen. The menacing flex of their black wings sent a draught across the plain that fanned the flames on EveStar, who whimpered.

Oh, very bad, indeed.

The black trench coat flapped around Raze, making him look as fearsome as the Wild Hunt’s soldiers. He pushed his sleeves back and folded his arms over his chest, taking a wide, dominating stance. The geas scars gleamed silvery-white. “My Queen,” he said, though his tone said, “What the fuck?”

The Queen’s gaze flicked to Yelena. “They say a cat has how many lives?”

Lacking a voice box, Yelena settled for a hiss and flattened her ears.

Raze gave the Queen an unamused smile. “Nothing compared to ours, but I am sending the wereling on her way to live it.”

The Queen tapped at the black lines on her whitened lips with a long, sharpened fingernail. “I think I would rather take her life—all her lives, however many remain—as mine own.”

Raze stiffened. “I thought we agreed to end the disturbances of the sunlit realm in the
phaedrealii.
”

“Once more,” the Queen said with a long sigh. “For old times’ sake.” Her reptilian gaze narrowed on Yelena. “It will take me a while to consume all this one’s passions.”

“No.”

At Raze’s blunt word, the dark hunters surged forward as one, but the Queen held up her hand. “You want to seal the court, but many of the portal wards have been broken. How long will it take you to lock them again? In the meantime, how many
phae
will wander out and be lost to us?”

His jaw tightened. “I did it once. I can do it again.”

“And this time I will help you.” The Queen’s voice was as smooth as her glide as she approached him, one yellowed fingernail flicking at the ammolite studding the rolled-back cuff of his sleeve, though she avoided the bared geasa. “With the addition of my power, you can lock the portals forever. All I ask for in return—” she redirected the point of her nail “—is the wereling.”

Raze hesitated, and Yelena saw the longing in his eyes. Everything he’d wanted for so long, finally within reach...

She crouched to spring.

His gaze shifted to her, and she realized his longing wasn’t for the court at all.

He whirled and plunged his hands into EveStar’s guttering fire. The
phae
wailed and batted at him, but his bared forearms were buried in the blaze, red and yellow tongues licking at the leather.

“The portal, Yelena!” He pointed at the old lichen ring that had suddenly flushed a wild green. “It’s open. Go!”

She leapt.

But not at the ring. She aimed to knock him down again, to smother the flames burning away the geasa he’d carved into himself, one of which must have previously locked the gate now open beside them.

But he anticipated her move and with a strength she’d known was in him but hadn’t truly believed, he caught her and thrust her toward the unfurling portal. She yowled at the touch of his burning hands, and she scarcely caught his murmured words, “Yelena, I wish—”

Whatever he wished was lost in the rush of hunters’ wings fanning the inferno around him into a blistering roar.