The Warlock King (The Kings) (19 page)

The air
in the mansion changed around her as she moved, growing more…
vibrant
. It was as if the molecules were moving more quickly with each climbed step. The closer to the top of the stairs, the more statically charged the air became. There was a real sense of something happening now. It was like lightning about to strike.

The hallway that le
d to the dungeon’s door was lit by torches that sent shadows dancing along the walls. Night had fallen since Chloe had been downstairs in Jason’s secret room.

Chloe hurried through the hall and the massive sitting room beyond. The tapestries swayed where they hung on thick wooden rods. The flames in the hearth
leapt high and crackled loudly, as agitated by the electricity in the air as was Chloe.

She passed the large windows on the right that looked out over the maze garden and the clear glass conservatory ceiling, but now could only see darkness. Lightning split that darkness, startling her enough that she jumped. Thunder followed closely on its heels –
very
closely.

Chloe
recognized the sensation that was gathering. It was like a massive magical tornado, sucking up all of the magic around it. It pulled at the elements, as there were magical properties to the earth, to the air, to water and even fire. It sucked at them, nettling and provoking them until every conflagration around her, both large and small, danced in fury, and the sky spewed electric venom in its rage.

The black hole-like storm
was growing stronger, and Chloe knew well where its center would be found.

Jason’s bedroom.

He’s regaining his power
, she thought as she turned down the hall that led to his quarters.

She should have known that a warlock the likes of Alberich would not remain weakened for long. There was something about him that
had begun understated, unassuming and deceptive in the form of a malnourished, abandoned child with broken bones.

Maybe Lal
ura had known. She clearly cared for him. She’d always defended him. She saw something in him that others couldn’t see. Maybe she had always known other warlocks would never be able to touch the kind of power he possessed, much less match it. Maybe she knew even more than
that
.

Chloe
couldn’t help but wonder who Jason’s parents had been. Who were the neglectful enigmas who had given birth to a magic prodigy and tossed him away?

She paused in the archway of his bedroom. She’d closed the door behind her when she’d left earlier.
Light crackled beneath the door. Wind had picked up on the other side; she could hear it roaring.

Chloe raised her hand, but
hesitated above the doorknob.

Suddenly, the noise from beyond the threshold stopped. The light died down. The breeze that had been moving through Chloe’s hair hushed to a whisper and was gone. All was silent and still.

Chloe could hear her breath in the sudden quiet. It was quivering. She felt Jason’s magic pushing on the inside of her like a caged beast, begging to be set free. And she could feel it on the
outside
of her too – all around her.

So
close
.

“Chocolate.”

The word was spoken softly into her right ear. Chloe screamed and spun, and something inside of her went
snap
. She didn’t mean to do it. She had no control over it when a column of some force shot out from her like lightning. It was a deep, swirling purple and sparkling black like the night sky. She cried out as it ripped itself from her, releasing with a sensation so powerful, it nearly knocked her to her knees.

It felt like picking something fragile up and throwing it across the roo
m after a long and trying day. It was like seeing the bastard who’d sped past and flipped you off on the highway pulled over and getting a ticket. It was like satisfaction and retribution… it was like having an orgasm while your bitter enemy suffered. That’s what the magic felt like.

And it struck Jason Alberich with the sum of this galvanized energy, slamming into his broad, black-clad chest and sending him flying down the hall.

Chloe screamed a second time, more alarmed by what she’d done than by his initial sneaking up on her. Jason landed hard and rolled, coming to lay sprawled on his stomach across the entrance to the hall more than a hundred feet away.

Chloe jolted herself from her spell-casting stupor and rushed down the hall to his side. She knelt beside him as he moaned softly
and attempted to push himself up onto his elbows.

“I’m so sorry!” Chloe cried. “I don’t know how that happened! I mean, I’m not surprised,” she babbl
ed as she took hold of one of his arms and pulled. “Your magic has been itching to find a way out of me all day, but I had no idea I could do
that
. Did it hurt? Are you okay?”

Chloe realized w
hat she was saying. Of course it had hurt! Why was she yammering on like this?

“But it really was your fault, you know,” she added, as if in defense of her strange behavior. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people
like that! And what the hell is ‘chocolate’ supposed to mean, anyway?”

Jason had managed to push himself over and now rested back, bracing himself on his arms as he eyed her with what could only be wonder and confusion. “I was trying to say something innocent so I wouldn’t scare you,” he told her, his voice a tad hoarse as if he’d had the wind knocked out of him.

Which he had.

“Well… it didn’t work,”
she said softly, sitting back a bit to put some space between them. It felt discombobulating to be so close to him, even to be
helping
him just then. This was the man she’d been running from for three months. This was the Warlock King, the biggest threat to her in the world – or so she’d thought. Jason Alberich, the handsome, infamous, and dangerous….

But she was no longer running or hiding; there was no point. She’d taken his magic. It was done. And she was helping him up off
the same floor onto which she’d thrown him because she felt bad for hurting him, because she didn’t
want
to hurt him.

Because she
had serious feelings for him… and always had.

“If you didn’t want to
scare me, why did you pop out behind me in the hall?” she asked, looking down at the floor in order to avoid getting pulled into the endless green of his eyes. There was a whole other world in that green – the things it promised were the kind that made devout old ladies sweat in church.

“It happens
,” he said. His voice was strained this time as he moved beside her, trying to sit up a little straighter. The clothing across his chest was smoking. “When my power comes back, it comes fast and hard. There’s a whiplash effect.”

“A whiplash effect?”
she asked, trying desperately to focus as sudden memory flashes of the dungeon downstairs conjured up
pictures
in her head.

Jason had propped himself up against the wall, and now he allowed his head to fall back against it.
Chloe found her attention straying to the strong line of his chin and the curve of his neck and shoulders.

He closed his eyes and nodded. “Random magic. I channel it into transportation because it’s less painful than g
etting caught up in other spells.” He opened his eyes, green slashes that were more than slightly accusatory. He glanced down at his smoking chest. “Usually.”

“Well….” Chloe slowly stood.

She felt bewildered. She had no idea what to do next. A cocktail of emotions and images swam through her mind. She glanced at Jason’s smoking chest and could only imagine the muscles underneath his scorched clothing.

She swallowed hard and
chanced a brave, slightly wild look into his eyes. His gaze caught hers and held it fast,
strapping her down
.

A
telling warmth began swirling in her stomach.

“For what it’s worth,” she said,
her voice cracking just a bit; she cleared her throat and went on, “there’s nothing innocent about chocolate.”

Jason stared at her as if he were trying to decide whether to glare or grin. The emerald in his eyes glittered like real gemstone.
Arresting.

Chloe shrugged. “Chocolate
….” She swallowed hard. “It’s wicked,” she explained. It was true. Chocolate was like black magic in the form of food. Akyri didn’t need to eat, but when you went around as perpetually hungry as Chloe had for the last several hundred years, you found other ways to feed that empty spot. It was a good thing Akyri didn’t get fat either.

Jason pushed himself up against the wall
until he was standing, and then brushed himself off. He straightened. With a quirk of his lips, he snapped his fingers, and his shoes were enveloped in a ring of light. That light raced up the length of his body, hugging him like a cocoon until it rose over his head like a halo and then vanished.

Now the Warlock King was draped in a perfectly tailored black suit with a black silk tie and shining black dress shoes. His blonde wa
vy hair was smoothed, he was freshly shaven, and he smelled like soap and aftershave. With a smirk, he lowered his hands and slipped them into his pockets. An expensive watch gleamed on his left wrist.

He looked like a million bucks.

Chloe would have been a big fat liar on a cosmic level if she’d even attempted to deny how attracted she was to him in that moment. But she did at least manage to hide it. She raised a brow and asked nonchalantly, “Big date?” Smart-assness was not necessarily in her repertoire, but with Jason’s magic fueling her, she was finding she was capable of all sorts of things. And desires.

“In a manner of speaking,” Jason replied. Then he smiled in a way that forced a
new hot flush into her cheeks. She took a deep breath and demanded, “
What
?”

“You’re coming with me,” said the
debonair king in his expensive suit.

Chloe blinked. “Come again?”

His fiendish smile became a killer grin. He took his hand out of his pocket and snapped a second time. Chloe felt a rush of cool air swirl around her, like fairy’s breath or a menthol-laced breeze against naked skin. She looked down, noticed the same ring of light around her own feet, and watched with wide eyes as it climbed up her body.

When it got to her chest, she closed her eyes
, a little unwilling to see what it was going to leave behind once it was finished doing whatever it was doing.

A few seconds later, the
menthol breeze was gone.

Chloe opened her eyes to the sound of a wolf whistle.
“You clean up nice, Chloe Septeran,” came Jason’s smooth, deep voice.

She
looked down at herself. Shock went through her – partly because of what he’d chosen to dress her in, and partly because of how good she looked in it. “Holy shit.”

Jason laughed. It was one of those genuine, deep chuckles laced with nothing but pure amusement or happiness, and it at once drew Chloe’s attention. She looked up at him, transfixed by the unexpected beauty of such a dark and dangerous warlock experiencing real joy.

“You can dress her up,” he said through the remnants of his soft laughter.

“
Shut up,” she retorted, more than a little shaken.

The red silk gown was form-fitting, floor-length, and bore a slit that ran the en
tire length of her left leg. It was killer. It also felt familiar. She could swear she’d read about someone dressed like this recently… in a romance novel with angels and vampires, in fact. Maybe it was one of Evie D’Angelo’s books.

And her mind was drifting under the pressure.

“Jason,” she said firmly, feeling strange addressing him so personally. “I’ve never worn clothes like this in my life. What the hell do you think you’re doing? Where do you think you’re taking me?”

“
To a meeting of the kings,” he said through his smile. Then his smile faded a little and his eyes strayed to the dress he’d just placed her in. His gaze grazed her shoulders, the long length of her arms, and the curve of her waist. The amusement leaked from his features to be replaced with a combination of very obvious mounting hunger and something akin to concern. “And the queens.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

It was just accepted. It was what w
as done, out of respect perhaps or as a way to show that each of them fully understood how important what they were doing was. This was a drawing together of the most mystical factions of the multiverse. At this table sat the heads of empires so otherworldly, they existed only in the dreams and fantasies of most mortals – and in the nightmares of others.

S
o it was an unspoken rule and an unbreakable tradition that to these meetings, a king came dressed like a king. Men who brandished vorpal swords or sprouted wings or fangs or walked through palaces of ice in their own worlds stepped through the door of the meeting chamber draped in tailored suits, finest silks, and airs of calm that belied the turmoil inherent in running supernatural kingdoms.