Bound By Fate: A Novel of the Strong (34 page)

Given his human half, he was slow, as always, to heal.

And, in this case, he was even slower to forgive himself.

It wasn’t often that Kellen was caught off guard.

But Arman had surprised him.

That was for godsdamned sure.

Kellen had never for a moment suspected that the assassins would be of Vimora blood.

But he should have known.

There was just too much at stake.

Especially now that Kellen knew which path the Tenn had chosen.
 

He had seen it in the daemon’s eyes.

And now that Toran battled for his future downstairs, Kellen would battle for his own.

After all, he had promised his mother he’d do so––a promise she had extracted from him with her dying breath.
 

He was heartened to know now that he hadn’t failed.

Even as he knew this, the memory of that awful night played out with vivid precision in his exhausted mind. His mother’s naked, bloodied body, her skin flayed raw to the bone. The bloody rags with which he had tried to clean her. Her pleading, tearful eyes as she uttered the last of her words.

Take the faine’s life, son, to someday reclaim your own. Your past and your future, your just rewards, should he choose heart over throne.

What those cryptic words had meant, he thought he’d never understand.
 

They had been uttered, after all, decades before his true nightmare had begun.

Before they had been taken from him.

Regardless, he had done what his mother had commanded. Barely just past being a child himself, Kellen had pulsed the young faine out of Venn Dom, and had left her for dead.

An act that had haunted him for centuries.

But, as it turned out, he hadn’t killed her.

Kellen had saved her.

Now, it all made sense.
 

As soon as he had seen the stone Arman had proffered to Diogo the night before, Kellen had recognized it for what it was:
a chance to find his past
.

Though his wife had been long dead to this world, with the scrying stone in hand, Kellen now had the means with which to find her in another. While his heart ached knowing he could never bring back the babies they had lost, he could see he now had the opportunity to
find
a new future with her…

All thanks to the Tenn and his faine.

Toran’s thunder concussed the air just before an eerie silence descended like fog on the castle.
 

Moments later, shouts rang up from the great room floor below.

Ignoring the chaos, Kellen tensed forward as Diogo finally made his move. He watched as the daemon tiptoed towards the chamber of the faine.

Biting back a grimace, Kellen rose silently to his feet.
 

From the chamber’s open doorway, Kellen watched as the Elder made his way quickly around the bed and into the bathroom. Quiet as a cat, Kellen followed. Just as Diogo reached for the female’s hairbrush, he sprang inside.
 

Grabbing the back of Diogo’s head, Kellen slammed the daemon’s face down against the basin.

Diogo yelped, his venna lashing out like a whip to protect its host. Kellen grit his teeth against the pain, the weak venna in his veins warring with Diogo’s own. As always, it felt as if he’d been doused in boiling water before being plugged into the socket in a wall.

It was a good thing Kellen was both younger, and stronger, than the daemon.

He was also more determined.

“Make another sound, and I’ll slice out your tongue,” Kellen whispered, his knife poised tight against the daemon’s cheek. “Do you understand me?”

Diogo nodded, inadvertently nicking his skin against the blade. A single drop of red plopped wet against white marble.

“Now, control your venna, old man,” Kellen continued. “Do it, or it’ll end badly for you. I’ll gut you where you stand like I’ve gutted the others before you.”

Diogo’s venna subsided to a low-voltage hum.

“What are you doing here, Kellen?” Diogo managed to hiss.

“You have something I want,” Kellen answered. Flattening his body against the daemon’s back, Kellen reached his hand around and patted his palm over the front of the Elder’s trousers.
 

“No!” Diogo begged, instantly aware of what Kellen was after. “Do not do this!”
 

Finding what he sought, Kellen dug two fingers inside Diogo’s right front pocket and pulled out his prize.

He raised his hand level with Diogo’s gaze. Opening his palm, he revealed the silvery pink scrying stone. “I thank you for your cooperation,” he murmured as he slipped it into his pocket.

“Please, I beg you!” Diogo cried. “Join with us, and we’ll share the stone!”

“No need to share,” Kellen laughed. “I’ve just taken it from you. Now, what did I say earlier?” He fisted Diogo’s hair at the back of the Elder’s neck, his blade hand itching to plunge his steel into the Elder’s spleen. Remembering his pledge to Toran, he resisted.

Diogo babbled bravely on.
 

“I’ve seen how you’ve fought for years,” he cried. “I’ve seen how you’ve raged against your father, against the powers that be! This is your chance to remake Venn Dom, to destroy the Tenn. Arman and I can promise you power, the territories you’ve conquered, anything you want…”

“There’s nothing more you can give me,” said Kellen.

“But the faine,” Diogo cried as he began to struggle anew. “I must drain her.”

Wrapping his arm tight around Diogo’s neck, Kellen yanked the daemon’s body up and away from the vanity.
 

“Unfortunately for you and your master,” Kellen answered, “that’s just not going to happen.” Kellen spun Diogo around. With his knee to the daemon’s groin, Kellen pressed his thumb and forefinger hard against Diogo’s jaw.

“Open your mouth.”

Downstairs in the wreckage of the great room, Toran blinked rapidly, trying to process what Merus was trying to tell him.

Something about his venna…

“His venna is eager to claim his bride!” Arman cried as he pulsed into the room. Dressed in dark, flowing robes made electric blue by the tinge of his venna, he was accompanied by a hieratikos, the daemon priest charged with performing the sacred ceremony binding the Tenn to his queen.

In the wake of their entrance, the door to the great room crashed open, and a stream of daemons rushed inside, some carrying tools, others pushing wheelbarrows full of heavy stones. Their progress was stopped near immediately by the pile of destruction barring their path.

“What the fuck is this?” Toran pushed Merus away. Mind clear and venna soothed, his hypersensitive senses could feel Liv’s presence across the ‘els, safe and sound in Vegas. She’d gone to be with her witch. Calmed by this knowledge, Toran stood tall, determined to put this bullshit behind him so he could go deal with his faine.
 

To bring her back home where she belonged.
 

“You know what this is!” Sarai screamed from where she stood pressed against the wall out of the way of danger from falling debris. “I refuse to give you what you want until that door is fixed and the faine is locked away!” She jabbed a finger in his direction. “You will make this right before I spread my legs for you!”

Before Toran could open his mouth to point out she was out of her godsdamn mind, Arman laughed. “Let the faine go! We don’t need her anymore!”

Toran whipped around to face his uncle. “What the fuck?”

Marching over with the hieratikos in tow, Arman accused with barely restrained delight, “I can feel your weakness. You’ve drained away your power between the thighs of your faine.”

What the hell is the old fool talking about?
thought Toran as he gazed upon the wreckage wrought by the force of his temper. They were lucky the castle still stood.

He felt stronger than ever.

“Though, I have to say, you put up a hell of a fight,” the old daemon said. “I didn’t think you’d prove to be so strong
.
Which makes my victory so much more delicious.”

Before Toran could offer a word in answer, Arman lunged forward to grab Sarai’s arm. He swung her around until she collided hard against Toran’s body.
 

“What is this, uncle?” Toran cried as he tried to push Sarai away. Skin crawling at the feel of another female’s flesh against his own, Toran tensed to pulse to his faine.

His muscles… and his venna… failed him.

Toran found himself trapped in a nightmare. He could only watch as a dark magic filled the room, its weight pressing down his limbs like wet cement.

There was no escaping its grip.

“Priest!” Arman shouted when he had Toran right where he wanted. “It’s time to bind the Tenn to his fated bride… now.”

Locked in place with Sarai pressed hard against the line of his body, Toran was caught inside the vice of a spell so powerful, it felt as if it was crushing him alive.

How the hell did his uncle have this kind of magic?

“Clear this room!” Arman shouted to the few remaining workmen who had been brave enough to stay to watch the show.
 

“All but you,” he said, pointing a crooked finger at Merus. “You will stand as witness to this union.”

“The fuck I will.” Merus launched himself towards Arman, no doubt hell-bent on nullifying the old daemon's powers with his considerable own. Merus’s body was tossed like a slab of meat against the wall.

“You… will… watch,” Arman commanded, his lips dripping with menace. With a wave of his hand, magic leapt from his fingers to grip Merus’s face, pinning the daemon's eyes wide open.
 

 
“What the hell is this, Arman?” Toran struggled to speak, every breath made even more difficult by the cloying heat of Sarai’s body plastered tight against his own.

“It’s funny,” Arman said without the barest hint of humor, “how one can obtain the power one needs to get things done… for a price.”

“You purchased the Sorcieri’s magic?” His suspicions confirmed, Toran’s heart convulsed with the stabbing pain of his uncle’s betrayal before quickly evening out to a steady beat of revenge. Despite the spell’s near-complete control over his every muscle, Toran’s body throbbed with violence, his venna straining to escape the enchantment’s grasp. “You dare betray me?”
 

“Oh, my dearest nephew,” Arman laughed, “I don’t dare do anything that hasn’t already been decreed by your precious little prophecy. All I’ve done is take extra measures to ensure that you do not fail, measures that protect my path to the throne.”

“Your what?” Toran managed to gasp before his breath was choked away.

Again, Arman laughed.
 

Toran could do nothing but watch as Arman sauntered toward where he and Sarai stood, paralyzed together. With another wave of the old daemon's hand, a groin-high altar appeared before them amidst the dust and debris of the damaged castle.

The tips of a hundred black candles burst into vivid blue flames.

“We do this now.” Arman’s lips tipped up into a wicked smile.

As if shoved from behind, Toran found himself falling forward, pinning Sarai beneath him against the lush velvet structure, his boots on the ground, her skirt pushed high around her waist. Her most intimate flesh was pressed bare and ready against the fabric of his jeans.

With Sarai’s breath hot against his neck, Toran panted in panicked disbelief, his muscles straining to escape from between her thighs.

The priest began to chant.

A sizzling sensation flared against his skin as, wherever his body touched against Sarai’s, his clothing began to dissolve away, baring his flesh against hers.
 

Toran felt himself inexplicably… thickening.

“Stop this now, Arman!” Toran’s heart thundered against his ribs. His vision wavered. Electric pinpricks of blinding blue light blotted out all sight as the darkness Toran had felt within him came awake with a howling fury.

The venna that rose up now to claim the female beneath him…
was not his own.

“What have you done, old man?” Toran bit out, his cock pressed hard and eager against Sarai’s cleft. With a wanton whimper, she arched against him, his shaft pulsing in answer. Biting back a shout of frustration, Toran flexed his muscles tight, battling to win control over the evil that now impelled him to spill his seed. “My venna…”

“I have flooded you with the venna of Elden––Elden you have betrayed by your unforgivable behavior with your faine,” said Arman as he walked slowly around the alter as if discerning the most advantageous vantage. He settled for right beside Toran’s left shoulder, just opposite the still-chanting priest. “I have infected you with venna that I now control by spellcraft.”
 

“I will kill you for what you’ve done!” Merus’s words cut through from across the room, his voice hoarse and strained as it fought to escape the clutch of Arman’s magic. “You’re behind the ambush… the assassins. You’ve set my brother up for death.”

“Kellen means nothing.” Arman waved a dismissive hand. “Only my end game matters.” Bending low, he grabbed Toran by the hair. He pulled Toran’s head back to look him in the eye. “Here’s your chance, son. Your chance to have everything… at least for the briefest moment in time.” Spittle flying, Arman’s eyes were those of a madman. “
Now that your strength has been taken, and your future is spread wide before you
, say that you forsake your faine. Say that you claim your bride.”

“I will not,” Toran ground out.

I will do what’s right… for me.

“Take this gift I have given Venn Dom!” Arman continued as he released Toran’s head with a violent shove. “The Vimora deserve a king!
Do not allow her to make you weak.
”

Toran strained into his fury.

As a faine, Liv may make him weak but, gods help him, he lived to be lost in her wetness, lost in his weakness.
 

With the memory of their one night now lodged inside his soul, with her beside him––gods, with her body alive and moving beneath him––Toran refused to accept a life without her.