Tempted by a Rogue Prince (10 page)

Not a prince. Not a prince. Not a prince. She looked at the incubus, willing him to say anything other than the inevitable.

The man smirked, his placid cool grey markings giving nothing about his feelings away. “I warned you, but no… you just had to go healing the mad elf prince. He’s killed thousands. He’s warred with his brother for millennia. You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t kill you now you’ve given him what he needs to restore his strength.”

Rosalind shot to her feet. “You bloody well did not warn me. You said he was dangerous. You didn’t say he was a damn prince!”

If he had, she probably would have kept her distance from him. She would have blindfolded herself to work on him. She would have done something to stop her fated future from playing out and ending in her death. Her throat closed and she breathed hard and fast, fighting her rising panic.

Blood. She had given him blood. What if the demons hadn’t fed him for a reason? What if they had been keeping him weak to stop him from breaking free and slaughtering them all?

Her gaze fell back to the elf prince and widened. He was already looking better. There was colour to his skin beneath the blood and dirt, and she could no longer see his ribs or his bones. The man was putting on muscle right before her eyes.

Mother earth.

She backed away from him and shook her head. What had she done?

The incubus’s words rang in her mind.

This elf prince had killed thousands.

It didn’t frighten her, not as the incubus had intended. Perhaps she was mad too, but all she could think about was whether this elf prince could tell her how to cope with what she had done and the nightmares that plagued her, showing her killing those witches and demons, tormenting her until she felt she was losing her mind.

She couldn’t judge him as the incubus did. She had taken lives too now. Each life haunted her. Each soul tormented her.

The elf snarled and thrashed against his bonds, his actions growing in their violence and causing the manacles to cut into his wrists and spill blood. The chain holding his ankles burst free of the stone and she took another step back, fear pounding through her. He was growing stronger. If he broke the chain holding his wrists, nothing was stopping him from killing her.

He suddenly stilled.

She breathed hard in the silence, staring at him, amazed by how quickly he had regenerated. He was perfect now. From the slight points of his nails to his honed, powerful body. Every part of him had healed.

All from a few drops of her blood.

His eyes snapped open and he snarled through his regrown fangs, “What did you do to me, Witch?”

He didn’t remember.

“I gave you my blood,” she said and his expression darkened dangerously.

“No… why… why would you do that to me?” The wildness that had been in his purple eyes when he had been lost in whatever madness gripped him was coming back again and her magic wanted to rise and protect her.

Rosalind held her cut wrist to her chest and kept her distance, ignoring the sting in her heart. “You asked.”

He hissed at her, his pointed ears flaring back against the sides of his head through his overlong blue-black hair.

“What have you done?” he snarled and flexed his fingers, his claws growing into deadly points. His fangs lengthened. “What have you done?”

Rosalind had had quite enough of him. She stomped across the cell, towered over him and shoved her hands against her hips. “I did exactly what
you
asked of me.”

He panted hard, his muscular chest heaving, and looked as if he was going to lose control or pass out. Rosalind hoped it was the latter.

“You told me I was this ki’ara thing and asked for blood.” She jiggled her left foot, a nervous trait she had never quite gotten under control, and waited for him to explode.

“Would not… never… curse your sorcery… I will not let you bewitch me too!” He bucked off the stone slab, holding the chain of his restraints in both of his hands and pulling on it. The thick metal cuffs bit into his wrists as he tugged, rubbing them with each attempt he made to break the chain holding him to the slab. A red line formed and then blood bloomed.

“Stop it. You’re hurting yourself.” She was damned if he was going to damage himself and undo her hard work. The demons would demand that she heal him again and she really wasn’t in the mood. She would probably tell them to go to Hell and then she would have to take a trip to the rack for her insolence.

Rosalind reached for his wrists.

He sucked in a sharp breath and instantly stilled, his purple eyes locking on her cut wrist and his colourful markings flaring over his body. “You are bleeding.”

“Duh!” she snapped. “You asked for blood. I supplied. Remember?”

He stared at her wrist, a pained look entering his eyes, and jerked his chin, his voice distant as he murmured, “My female bleeds. I will heal her.”

Rosalind froze. “
Your
female?”

His eyes shifted to meet hers, dark and possessive, filled with fire that scorched her. “
Ki’ara
.”

Hers widened as it dawned on her that he hadn’t been calling her a sweet name to get her to comply with his requests, or even because somewhere beneath his witch-hating exterior he liked her.

No. Not at all.

He had been calling her by a special word, one reserved for a person who was one in around seven billion.

His fated female.

Rosalind suddenly had an urge to see what all the fuss was about fainting fits.

Her legs buckled beneath her.

“Oh. Dear.”

V
ail stared at the witch, filled with conflicting feelings that threatened to tear his slender grip on sanity away from him and struggling to process the urges running through him. A wild need to reject what had happened, and her at the same time, combined with whispers that warned she was out to harm him, but the strength of that need to shove her away was nothing in comparison to the power of the other urge he felt as he gazed at her cut wrist.

A potent, commanding and controlling need, one darker and more powerful than his desire to distance and protect himself, ruled him.

A need to protect the female he instinctively felt belonged to him.

Had been made for him.

He laughed at that, a short bark that drove the witch further away and had her tucking her wrist to her chest and looking at him with blue eyes that announced she thought him insane.

She was right about that. He was mad. Mad because of a witch. Mad because he had vowed to kill all her kind. Mad because of her and his desire to protect her.

The sweet, soft scent of her blood drove him mad too. He stared at her wrist, his regenerated fangs itching to tear into her flesh and bring her pain, to make her suffer as he had, even as he ached with a need to seal the wound and heal her.

He couldn’t get to her though, and she seemed reluctant to bring her wrist to him so he could satisfy that dark urge to steal her pain away.

Her dishevelled ash-blonde hair bounced against her slender shoulders as she began to pace. The chain of her restraints jangled with each frantic step that carried her across the width of his cell. He could feel her unease, could sense her confusion and doubt, and her fear.

He knew he was the source of all those feelings within her, and that he was powerless to take them away. She had every right to doubt him, to believe him insane, to not trust him. He vaguely recalled attempting to bite her. The sound of her pained cry had driven into the twisted mess of his mind like a spear, shattering the madness’s hold on him and dragging him back to the present.

To her.

Gods. Why?

Was she his?

Or was this all some ploy by her, a trick or a spell, something she had cast upon him while he had been vulnerable, just as Kordula had?

He snarled at that, his fangs dropping and his ears flaring back against the sides of his head. No sorceress would ever bewitch him again. He would kill any who tried.

The witch stopped and eyed him, her fair eyebrows dipping low above those crystalline cool blue eyes. They held him transfixed, entranced him before he could look away, and a strange calm flowed through him, carrying away his agitation and his pain, leaving only peace behind. He hadn’t felt such a thing in millennia. He had forgotten what it felt like to be at peace.

It shattered the second silver stars sparkled in her irises, dancing among the blue, reminding him what she was.

“
Witch
,” he growled.

She huffed, turned her nose up at him, and resumed her pacing. “A witch who just healed your arse, and don’t you forget it.”

How could he forget it? Her blood ran in his body, a heady wine that intoxicated him. No doubt it was working a spell on him for her, luring him deeper under her influence, placing chains on him that would bind him to her and hold him faster than the ones that bound him to the slab.

His gaze flickered to her wrist. Although, he might have bound her to him. He could hear her heartbeat and it no longer matched his.

Vail flexed his fingers, unable to stop the restless twitching as his thoughts turned troubled and his mask of sanity threatened to slip again.

The witch stopped.

Stared at him.

He pinned his gaze onto the ceiling, focusing on it and trying to shut her out together with his driving need to heal her.

To keep himself from asking her again to approach him, he began a mental assessment of his body, detaching himself from the world at the same time so the memories of his injuries and how he had sustained them remained at bay.

His feet were no longer broken. His hands were strong. His bones were mended. His flesh healed.

His knees. He shifted his legs, bringing his knees up, and his eyes widened when cool air washed across his backside.

Vail quickly lowered them, opened his eyes and craned his neck. A strip of black material lay across his hips. Other than that, he was naked.

He glanced at the witch’s knees. Pale, a little knobbly from kneeling on the hard stone, and very exposed. The hem of her black dress was ragged. She had torn the strip that covered him from it, and deep inside, he felt grateful for her kindness.

He didn’t know how to process that either.

He forced his gaze back to the ceiling, trying to let it all flow into him and not fighting it. If he fought it, he would lose his grip again. The darkness would surge within him, and gods help him, he didn’t want her to feel that in him.

Vail closed his eyes.

The witch risked a step closer. Rather than triggering an attack, her proximity soothed him.

Gods help him.

The scent of nature swirled around him, adding to her calming effect, and flowed through him, chasing back the darkness. He wanted to embrace it, but couldn’t when it all stemmed from her. His Little Wild Rose.

She was a witch though. A fickle, deceiving, sorceress. He would never forget that.

No matter how deep he fell under her spell, he would always remember that she was a witch and he would never forget the cruelty her kind were capable of.

He squeezed his eyes shut and distanced himself from her, shutting down every physical response and every emotional reaction to her proximity, each betrayal by his own body and heart.

He refused to crave the touch of a female capable of controlling him, of hurting him and using him as another had. He would guard his heart to protect what little sanity he had clawed back over his months of wandering Hell and cleansing himself by killing her kind.

He didn’t want to be mad. He chuckled to himself, the mirthless and hopeless sound loud in the heavy silence. He didn’t want to be ruled by rage and a desire to deal pain and death and destruction.

He didn’t want to feel driven to seek his own end.

Not anymore.

Now, he wanted to get word to his brother and warn him of the Fifth King’s plans.

To do that, he needed to escape this place.

The witch’s blood that he could still taste on his tongue, could sense flowing through him and repairing his damaged body, had gifted him with the strength he needed. The hunger that had ravaged him, depleting his strength and making it easier for the madness to grip him, was gone.

But the blood she had given him had also strengthened his connection to her. Lost to his madness, he had not only instigated the bond between them but he had completed it in a way. They had exchanged blood now.

That troubled him, but his broken mind didn’t react to it in the way he expected. The beast didn’t rise. The darkness didn’t swell within him. The memories of her giving blood to him didn’t merge with those of Kordula forcing hers upon him.

His heart remained calm.

That troubled Vail most of all.

The witch began to move around his cell again, shuffling steps that spoke of the fatigue he had seen in her eyes and in her drawn expression whenever her strength slipped and her anger at him faded. Whenever she drew near to him, warmth flowed over his tired body, offering comfort that threatened to unsettle him.

But it was the smell of her blood that tugged hardest at his darker emotions. The constant subtle scent stirred memories, a swirling tempest of violence blended with something more terrible. Something more dangerous.

He curled his fingers into fists and clenched them, battling the surging tide of memories, of hands that stroked and lips that caressed. Those memories became ghostly sensations before he could find the way to stop them, the brush of fingers and tongues across his flesh, and he squirmed under their attention, tried to shift his body away from them. Hands grasped his shoulders, pinning him in place, claws digging into his skin. Hot breath skated across his cheek and tickled his ear. Whispered words that were more a threat than a sensual promise, alarming him.

No. He shook his head, frantic as fear rose to clog his throat and his lungs constricted. He writhed, uttered a silent plea to leave him alone, to use another for pleasure and give him peace. The phantom hands and lips danced lower, caressing his stomach. The breath washed over his navel, a purr of approval now. A hot palm closed over his groin.