Tempted by a Rogue Prince (11 page)

“No?” The female voice dripped with confusion but it speared the darkness like a bolt of lightning, shocking him to his core.

Vail’s eyes shot open and he stared at the blonde witch, his chest heaving as he struggled to breathe normally.

“You said no. You talking to me?” She looked around the cell. “Or a ghost?”

His breath left him in a rush, he tipped his head back and sagged against the cold stone. “A ghost.”

Her gaze intensified, boring into him. He refused to look at her and wouldn’t answer her if she dared to ask him what had been happening in his head.

She resumed her pacing, moving closer this time, and the scent of her blood yanked the whole of his focus to her. He flicked his gaze down to her. She clutched her arm to her chest still.

“Come,” he said, his tone hard and commanding, and she arched an eyebrow at him. He didn’t care if she thought him rude. Her blood scent was pushing him too hard, shoving him towards the brink, and he couldn’t afford to lose himself to the darkness right now. He needed to plot, and that meant he needed her healed, and preferably out of his cell. “I will heal you.”

She shook her head. “I would rather take my chances with septicaemia. It’s less likely to kill me.”

Vail growled at her, grasped the chain that fixed his arms to the stone block above his head, and pulled on it with every ounce of his strength. He needed to heal her and he would heal her, whether she liked it or not. He had to do it. He had no choice in the matter. The need to heal his female ran deep, drove him mad and demanded he comply. It didn’t care that he couldn’t reach her. He didn’t care. He had to reach her somehow, or convince her to come to him.

He had to heal her or he would lose his mind.

He arched his back and grunted as he pulled harder, straining against the thick steel chain and the cuffs that held him.

He would heal her.

His female bled because of him. She bled for him. She had given her strength to him and now he would take care of her.

The metal cuffs bit into his wrists but it didn’t stop him. Nothing would. If he couldn’t break the chain, then he would claw at the stone until it gave way.

He went to turn onto his stomach.

“Stop that.” The witch rushed to him, her hands flying towards his shoulders, and abruptly halted with her palms only millimetres from his skin. The chain between her restraints swung back and forth, close to touching him. She hesitated, fear making her eyes sparkle, and went to pull back.

“My female bleeds,” Vail whispered, transfixed by the red line across her wrist. It was ragged and still seeped blood. The need to lick that blood away, to seal the wound and heal her, tore at him. He jerked his chin, lost in the scent of her and his need to heal her. “Come, Ki’ara. I will not hurt you.”

She hesitated still.

A strange sensation, one forgotten so long ago that it felt new to him, stabbed straight through his heart.

Not a physical pain but an emotional one born of her rejection and her evident lack of trust where he was concerned.

Vail withdrew, settling on his back. He could understand why she refused to place her trust in him. He had done nothing to earn it and he didn’t deserve anyone’s trust, least of all hers.

The witch surprised him by moving her wrist closer to him.

He eyed her hand, a wild feeling growing within him and unsettling him with insidious whispered words. She was going to touch him. He couldn’t let her touch him. His throat tightened. His lungs squeezed.

He couldn’t let her touch him. He had to drive her back and keep her away from him. His fangs lengthened. A snarl crawled up his throat.

Vail used all of his will to swallow it back down and forced his fangs away. She meant him no harm. He needed to heal her.

She meant him no harm.

She would not touch him.

His eyes flickered to hers and they echoed his fear back at him. His female feared him. He would give her reason to believe him capable of good as well as evil, of kindness as well as cruelty.

He drew in a deep breath, savoured her scent, and held back the darkness as he swept his tongue over the wound on her wrist. The rich taste of her blood bloomed on his tongue, a thousand flowers that exploded into a meadow and instantly constructed a vision of nature so perfect and peaceful that he warmed right down to his marrow, as if the sun caressed his skin and not her pure azure gaze.

But the darkness would not be denied. As the taste of her faded, it swept across the land, wilting the flowers and blackening their stems, stealing all beauty, colour and life from his perfect vision of nature.

Vail bit back a growl and turned his face away from her, fearing he would tear into her flesh with his fangs if he remained near her.

“Leave me,” he snarled and sensed her withdraw.

The distance that opened between them ripped at him, causing a fierce ache behind his ribs and a yearning for her to come closer again, to ignore him and sit with him. He needed the warmth she brought with her. He needed the calm that she awakened in him.

He needed her away.

Cursed witch.

She had cast her spell on him somehow and already he was falling deeper into it, snared in her trap but not incapable of escape. He could still break free of her charms. No witch would control him, never again. He knew how to break their spells now. He knew how to free himself.

He would kill her.

No. Vail squeezed his eyes shut and his heart throbbed. Little Wild Rose was his ki’ara. She had healed him. She had shown him tenderness, compassion, and care. She belonged to him.

He belonged to her.

He clawed his hair back and growled as his fangs lengthened.

A witch had told him such a thing before. The words taunted him, echoing around his mind in her wretched voice. He belonged to her now. He would do all she bid.

He had shown her tenderness, compassion and care. He had healed her. He had thought that she had belonged to him.

He had ended up belonging to her. A slave. A sword. A whore.

Little Wild Rose would do the same to him if he gave her the chance. She had cast her spell, had taken the first step by tricking him into believing her to be his ki’ara.

Just as Kordula had done.

He dug his claws into his scalp and the sting of pain gave him something to focus on while he untangled the threads of past and present, slowly regaining his sanity.

Two huge demon males stopped outside his cell. The same two who had taken him before the king. The same two who had taken pleasure in stripping and beating him, teaching him a lesson in humility he had refused to learn.

He bared his fangs at them and hissed.

They eyed him with surprise, frowned at the witch where she stood behind him, still holding her wrist to her chest, and then exchanged a glance.

Vail schooled his features, unwilling to give anything away. They would know from his condition what had transpired, but he couldn’t allow them to suspect it went beyond an offering of blood to heal him. He would never allow them to know that Little Wild Rose was his fated one.

“She gave him blood,” the smaller of the two said in the demon tongue. “Should she be punished?”

Vail barely suppressed the growl that rumbled through his chest at the thought of these demons harming Little Wild Rose purely because she had sought to help him. The king had clearly ordered him healed and by her hand, and she had done just that. Only she had chosen a more merciful method of healing him, one that hadn’t provoked a violent response or pushed him deeper into madness.

The larger demon seemed to consider the other one’s question and Vail almost lost his grip on his temper. He wasn’t sure he could retain it, or his grip on his sanity, if they punished her. He didn’t think he was strong enough to bear feeling her pain and knowing he was the cause. He wanted nothing to do with a witch, but the instinct that said she was his mate and under his protection ran deep, controlling him and overriding the need to keep her away, replacing it with a desperate desire to pull her closer and shield her from the world.

Judging by how calm she was, unafraid of these demons as they considered punishing her, she didn’t speak their language and knew not what they were discussing. He was glad of it. If she had feared, he might have lost his head and threatened them. He couldn’t allow them to think he had any feelings for her, because he knew they would report it to their king, and their king would use it against him.

The big male grunted. “King Bruan said for the witch to heal him. I say she has done just that. I do not think we mention her methods to him though. He might punish us for not watching her.”

The smaller demon opened the cell door and beckoned to her. She cast a glance down at Vail before gathering the chain between her cuffs into her hands, walking past him and out into the corridor. The larger male took hold of her arm and Vail had to clench his jaw in order to silence himself and stop himself from warning them not to take her from him, and not to lay a hand on her.

The two demons spared him one last glance before locking the cell door and leading the witch away.

V
ail closed his eyes, locked his senses onto the witch and tracked her through the dungeon. The squeak of a metal door opening and closing brought him relief. They had taken her to her cell. She would be safe there for now.

He pulled his focus away from her and pinned it back on everything that had happened, able to look at things more clearly now that the witch was no longer present.

His mind ran in circles, leaping from one moment to the next, patching together the snippets he could recall from the times when the darkness had gripped him. With each pass, things grew clearer, but his focus began to slip back to the witch. He couldn’t smell her anymore. He could only feel her, and her emotions were as turbulent as his own. Fear stood out amongst them, potent and powerful. Why was she afraid?

He needed to know.

The bond between them was quiet, but it fascinated him. He had never felt anything like it. It was as if a part of him that had always been missing was suddenly there, filling a void in his soul and completing him, even though he knew he was far from whole. If this was a trick, it was a powerful spell behind it. He felt physically altered by the exchange of blood, could strengthen the link by nurturing it, coaxing it closer to the surface of his skin, until he swore he could feel her near him and smell her sweet scent of nature again.

“Little Wild Rose,” Vail whispered and reached for her without thinking, needing to sense that she was there at the other end of the bond and that this confused and concerned her as much as it did him.

“The demons said the king wanted you healed again so he could speak with you.” The male voice intruded into his thoughts and shattered the link he had fostered between him and the witch.

Vail looked off to his left, across the corridor to the incubus. The male rubbed at the thick dark beard coating his jaw and his green eyes gained a wary edge. The swirls, dashes and spikes that formed the lines of his markings along his forearms flared in hues of dark blue and dirty gold. The male feared him.

He recalled the incubus speaking with the witch, saying things about him. He narrowed his gaze on the male. An incubus was no match for an elf. It would have been wise of the male to hold his tongue rather than dare speaking to him.

The incubus sat beside the bars of his cell, leaned his bare back against the thick grey stone wall and rested his arms on his knees, his skin pale against the black jeans he wore. Vail noted that he wore the same cuffs as he and the witch, but was given more freedom than both of them. There was no chain holding the two cuffs together.

Vail stared at him, assessing his build and his physical appearance. Judging by the male’s long, shaggy dark hair drawn back into a thong and his unkempt beard, he had been a prisoner for some months, if not years.

“Don’t even consider hurting Rosalind.” The incubus’s markings began to change, obsidian and crimson chasing back the other hues, alerting Vail of his anger.

Vail snarled at him, flashing his fangs and warning him that telling him what to do with his ki’ara would end in his death. No doubt the incubus wanted her for himself. She belonged to Vail now though, and he would allow no male to touch her.

He paused.

Rosalind?

Was that her name? It was familiar. He searched his memories of their times together, caught a fragment of a moment when she had shouted at him that her name was Rosalind.

It was pretty. A fair name for a fair witch.

Vail caught himself and growled. Even the most black hearted of witches had fair sounding names. It was all another trick, a method of luring him into believing her weak and vulnerable, in need of his protection.

“Chill,” the male said in a flippant tone, one that drew another growl from him. “I’m not interested in the witch.”

Vail didn’t believe that for a second. He glared at the male. The incubus held up his left hand, revealing a gold band around the ring finger. The male was mated?

“I figure that since we’re stuck across from each other, maybe we should get to know each other… because you look like a man with somewhere to be and I have somewhere I need to be too.” The incubus lowered his hand onto his knee and twisted the gold band around his finger with his thumb, a distant look in his eyes. “The name is Fenix. I don’t suppose you like being called Mad Elf Prince so your name would be?”

“Vail,” he said, surprised that the male knew of him yet didn’t know his true name. Had history forgotten it? Was that all he was to the world now—the mad elf prince? Vail shook those questions away and focused on the male across from him. Incubi were strong and possessed an ability to teleport. The male could be useful in an escape. “You are mated?”

“Yes… and like your little bond with the witch… it’s complicated.”

Vail wanted to deny that he had bound himself to the witch, but failed to see the point. Incubi also had the ability to sense emotions in people, to influence desire and manipulate feelings. That ability and his position in the dungeon, directly opposite Vail’s cell, had given the incubus enough clues to piece together what had happened between him and the witch. If the incubus felt protective of the witch, perhaps Vail could use that to his advantage, playing on his feelings to convince him to be of service during an escape.