Unchained by a Forbidden Love Read online

  “He is no one to me,” she said and his expression didn’t lighten.

  If anything, it grew darker, as if he could read her thoughts and knew that the one Bleu had spoken of meant everything to her though.

  Instinct made her move a few inches away from him, a trickle of fear running through her that shocked her. As an elf, she possessed keen instincts, ones that could often warn her of danger before it presented itself, saving her from coming to harm.

  Only once in her lifetime had she felt such an urge to move away from a male though, and then that male had meant to harm her, had ambushed and intended to rob her on the path between her home and the village one evening.

  Did Eirwyn mean to harm her?

  She steeled herself and steadied her heart. He wasn’t like that, had never shown any sign of being the sort of male who would strike a female or even a male. She was just jittery because of everything that had happened and on edge because she feared he would discover why she had suddenly grown distant and would be upset enough that he informed her parents.

  Her parents would probably respond by shutting her in her room for months on end and stopping her from being able to leave.

  They had reacted that way after she had wandered to the borders of the free realm to find Fuery forty-two centuries ago, hiring a sorceress to place a barrier around her rooms that would prevent her from teleporting out of them.

  At the time, she had been too distraught to think about leaving again.

  This time, it would drive her mad.

  She made polite conversation, not hearing her own words as her mind churned, formulating a plan that had her heart beating harder, a trickle of fear running through her veins but excitement too, mingled with hope that gave her courage and strength to do what she had wanted to for over four thousand years.

  She was going to cross the border.

  Because she needed to find Fuery.

  She needed to see with her own eyes that he was alive.

  CHAPTER 4

  It had been the third time he had seen Prince Vail.

  Fuery didn’t remember much about their first meeting. Not how he had found Prince Vail’s location, or his arrival at the small countryside cottage in rural England. He had only fragments of the time he had spent with his prince and commander, scattered pieces that felt more like a dream than memories.

  Hartt had assured him the meeting had happened, and Fuery was inclined to believe him since he definitely recalled his friend coming to find him, and taking him back to the guild.

  A lingering sense of warmth returned whenever he thought about seeing his prince again for the first time, a sensation that had built inside him during his time at the cottage. He had felt safe.

  Home.

  He hadn’t experienced such a feeling in a long time, and it disturbed him now, because home was an impossible dream.

  He couldn’t turn back time to when he had been another male, one free of the darkness.

  Untainted.

  Prince Vail believed it possible though, and Hartt held on to that hope like a male possessed, or possibly obsessed, had spoken of it to Fuery more than once since that first meeting, encouraging him at every turn.

  Fuery had no such hope, but he also didn’t have the heart to tell his friend he was dreaming, and that reality was a far darker beast, one without mercy and light. There would be no saving himself.

  He doubted Hartt would listen even if he did voice his thoughts.

  His friend insisted he continued what he had started with Vail, allowing the male to assist him by attempting to bring him back into touch with nature in the hope it would lessen the burden on his soul and clear some of the darkness from it. Vail’s connection to nature was strong. Despite the darkness he still held within his heart, Vail had a stronger connection to it than his brother, Prince Loren, the ruler of the elves.

  Fuery’s own connection to nature was so severely diminished by the darkness that it was almost non-existent. He couldn’t remember how it had felt to be connected to it, to feel life flow through his veins and light fill his soul, and to take pleasure and comfort from being surrounded by pure, untainted nature in all her glory.

  The garden of Vail’s mate, the fair witch Rosalind, was beautiful, filled with colours that Fuery found dazzling, almost breathtaking, and Vail was convinced that it had helped him fight the darkness and claw his way back towards the light.

  But Vail had retained his connection to that nature.

  The same nature that had rejected Fuery, left him alone in a dark world without her light to guide him.

  Hartt had taken him back to visit Prince Vail twice since that first meeting, convinced that it was doing him good and that it would help him as it had their prince, and eventually nature would begin to welcome him again, would open her arms to him once more.

  Fuery wasn’t so sure.

  The sensation of home he had experienced during his first visit was fading with each subsequent one, like the light in him. It felt weaker with each trip to the cottage, and the calm and peace he had felt on first spending time with Vail in the garden surrounded by the trees and flowers, and the endless blue sky, was slipping away with it.

  There would come a point when he would feel nothing again, when visiting his prince would give him no benefit.

  Would Prince Vail and Hartt suffer when that happened? Would it pain them to know that there was nothing they could do for him?

  Would they give up on him?

  Like he had given up on himself.

  Gods, he didn’t want to disappoint them, even when he knew it was inevitable, so he went to see Prince Vail whenever Hartt wanted it, and he would continue to do so until they both realised there was no saving him.

  It was no hardship for him.

  The cottage was a beautiful place, nature condensed into a small area that made it feel like a bubble, a haven, a place removed from the world. He could see why Vail benefited from it, but he was sure it wasn’t only that stunning pocket of nature that was restoring his prince’s light.

  It was the beautiful witch who lived there with him.

  His prince’s mate.

  Mate.

  Darkness stirred in his veins at that word and crawled through his soul at just the thought of her, and it whispered at him to stay away from Prince Vail and that cottage.

  Stay away from her.

  He didn’t need to be around females who belonged to another, and didn’t need a mate of his own either. He didn’t want a female in his life, despised how other assassins at the guild brought them into his damned home and paraded them in front of him, or how Hartt would sometimes make him speak with female clients. He wanted nothing to do with them. Mates. Females.

  He closed his eyes, drew down a shuddering breath and held it as he wrestled with his darker urges as they rushed through him, stirred to a frenzy by the path his thoughts were travelling.

  Pain shredded his insides, anguish ripping at his heart. Memories flickered and his veins went as cold as ice. His claws lengthened, razor sharp and itching to tear into flesh, to spill blood and cleave bone as the darkness surged in response, a need to lash out flashing through him. He needed someone to take out this aggression on, to satisfy this terrible dark need to purge the pain from him.

  Fair Rosalind danced into the black abyss of his mind and he snapped his eyes open as his breath gushed from him.

  Never.

  He would never hurt his prince’s mate.

  He would never harm a female. Not again.

  Rosalind had been kind to him, sweet and caring. She had taken care of him whenever he had visited, knowing when to show herself and speak with him, and when to leave him alone with her mate as he struggled with his black urges, on the verge of losing himself to the darkness.

  He had come close to losing his fight against it the last time and had left before Hartt was due to come for him, muttering some sort of excuse, although he didn’t recall the exact words he had used. Scattered o
nes had filled his mind, a collision of excuses that had fought to be the one to leave his lips. He might have muddled them, because Prince Vail had looked confused in the heartbeat of time between him speaking to the male and somehow teleporting.

  That teleport had drained him, left him weak and shaking, the black tendrils of the dark beast that lived inside him snaking over his vulnerable body and seeping into his heart.

  It was always dangerous to attempt a teleport. All of his powers were unpredictable, but teleporting was the biggest drain on his strength, because he had to force it to happen. It had been a long time since he had been able to control a teleport too. The only time he managed to teleport, it was because he was desperate for some reason, driven by a base instinct to escape that ruled him.

  If his powers failed during a teleport, there was a danger he would end up somewhere that might kill him, or worse, would be lost in the infinite darkness that waited in the space between disappearing and reappearing. That space was cold now, like ice, and stabbed at him with frozen needles that punctured his flesh and dug deep to chill him whenever he passed through it. It was tainted by the darkness inside him.

  Darkness that was growing stronger by the day.

  Nothing Vail did would change that.

  He needed to stay away. Hartt would press him to return, and Prince Vail would be upset if he stopped visiting, because both of them wanted him to get better. Both of them needed to believe they could save him from the darkness before he was lost.

  He couldn’t risk it though.

  As much as he wanted to be there, as fiercely and desperately as he wanted to believe they could save his black soul, he had to stay away.

  He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he did something to Rosalind.

  It would break him.

  Every inch of him tensed and stilled as a sensation went through him, a feeling that something wasn’t right and he needed to leave.

  It was a feeling that often struck him now, and one he knew the root cause of even if he didn’t want to acknowledge it.

  He looked back in the direction of the guild, aware of where it was, always aware of it, no matter how far he travelled from it.

  It was the same sensation he had whenever he was in that building now, one that stirred whenever Aya was staying with her mate, Harbin, in his quarters.

  His home was beginning to feel like a prison.

  A nightmare.

  He shook it off and focused back on his work, scouting the lamp-lit black cobbled streets below him as he crouched on the dark pitched tiled roof of a two-storey inn in a large town near the borders of the free realm. Mountains rose beyond it, forming a steep barrier between the free realm and the land of the dragons. A final outpost for fae, travellers and mercenaries.

  The last town.

  Beyond the mountains, the valleys were deep and numerous, with only a handful of villages nestled in a few of them, none of which welcomed travellers or those outside the dragon species. Not unless they had gold anyway.

  The sky glowed dim amber in that direction, the fires of the Devil’s lands burning hot, and his sensitive ears picked up the distant sounds of the black earth cracking and splitting as the lava broke to the surface, forming new valleys and mountains.

  Fuery chuckled low in his throat.

  He had half a mind to venture there, to pit himself against the strongest male in Hell.

  The chance of him winning was slim, but gods, it would be a glorious way to go. If by some miracle of the gods he won, he would take his place on the black throne and rule the strongest realm in Hell, legions of demons at his command.

  A fitting role for a creature like him.

  Whatever evil and darkness lived inside the Devil, it beat within him too, a drum that he marched to and embraced. He bent it to his will and wielded it like a weapon.

  A blade more devastating than any made of metal.

  Voices dragged him back to the town, ripped him from his fantasy of ruling Hell and bloodying claws and fangs on the battlefield as he swept across the lands like a black shadow with an army at his back, subjugating all who didn’t fall to his blade.

  He gritted his teeth and screwed his eyes shut, and fought back against the whispers in his mind, the ones that urged him to go through with it. Fight the Devil.

  Rule Hell.

  No.

  He had been a protector once. He had fought to defend his homeland, and its people. He had been good.

  He opened his eyes and stared at his hands, at the long black claws his armour formed over his fingers. They flickered between clean with the town people blurry beyond them, and drenched in blood, glistening against a gory backdrop of carnage.

  He had been good.

  He breathed through it, each inhale and exhale making the timing shift, so his claws were clean for longer, and the sight of them bloodied grew shorter, until it was only brief flickers and then faded completely.

  His claws were clean.

  But not for long.

  He forced his focus back to the town again, watching the people coming and going along the street far below him, a wraith in the darkness. They were unaware of him, the oil lamps that jutted outwards from the haphazard black stone and plastered buildings on the main thoroughfare stealing their night vision, making it impossible for them to see him.

  He scanned each male for a tattoo on their neck, one that would identify them as his mark.

  When he had checked everyone present, he moved on, heading towards the main square. He leaped the gap between two buildings, landing silently on the sloping tiled roof, and kept low as he skulked across it. At the edge of the building, above the square, he squatted and waited, his eyes scanning the busy gathering below.

  His mark would be here.

  The intelligence given to Hartt said they always attended this gathering each lunar cycle to sell wares. He just needed to find the male, get them alone, and dispatch them.

  A lone female dressed in a dark green ankle-length dress with gold detailing on the bodice crossed an opening in the square, a heavy basket tucked between her arms, her brown hair tied in a high ponytail that swayed with each step.

  He tracked her, a memory threatening to stir, just beyond his reach.

  His eyes dropped to her neck.

  Widened.

  A pentagram.

  The mark.

  Sickness washed through him and he stumbled backwards, landing on his bottom on the black tiles and almost rolling right down the pitched roof. He shoved his right hand out, bracing himself, his arm shaking as he stared at the female.

  A female?

  A collision of fear, agony, grief and self-loathing was swift to crash over him, transforming into a churning dark and malevolent tide that rose and consumed him before he could even think about trying to stop it. It dragged him down into its oily depths until he felt as if he was suffocating, about to drown.

  He lifted his right hand from the roof and brought them both before him, his vision wobbling as he stared at his black armour. It flashed away to reveal pale skin marred with crimson. Blood that had crept beneath his claws. Stained them. He scrubbed at his hands, picked at his nails, but nothing he did made the blood go away. His breaths shortened, coming in sharp bursts as his heart rushed faster, sending his mind spinning as he sank deeper into the darkness.

  He had to get the blood off his hands.

  His head ached, throbbing madly as he rubbed his hands together. It wouldn’t come off. The faster he tried to scrub it away, the thicker the blood grew and the more frantic he became. He shook his head as he shoved one hand over the other, despair engulfing him as it only smeared the blood and spread it, so it covered all his hands and began travelling up his wrists.

  He watched in horror as it formed tendrils that crawled and writhed over his pale skin, consuming more of it, and the blood on his fingers turned black.

  Darkness.

  He snarled and pushed at it, shoving his hands down his arms towards
his wrists, desperate to get it off him, to purge it somehow before it swallowed him.

  Eyes landed on him, a sharp sensation that had his head whipping up and locking gazes with their owner.

  The female.

  He needed to kill her.

  He growled, shook his head and scurried backwards on his hands and feet, forcing himself away from her. Broken memories overlaid onto the present, transforming her into another female.

  A beautiful female.

  Drenched in blood.

  He twisted away from her, planted both hands to the tiles and retched, tasting metal as his body heaved violently, as if he could purge the darkness that way.

  He couldn’t let it take control.

  Not a female.

  Never a female.

  His entire body shook, wracked by cold and pain that came in waves, each stronger than the last, crashing over him. Had to run. Had to leave. Couldn’t let it take control. Never a female. He staggered onto his feet and into a fucked up teleport that had jagged black tendrils stuttering around him and ice chasing over his skin and ended with him landing hard on his side.

  On the roof of the guild hall.

  He grunted and rolled down the steep black pitched roof, hit the left tower that flanked the main entrance, and spun into a fall down the three-storey height of the building. He hit the cobbled street on his front with another grunt, fire sweeping through his trembling body, lancing his bones and threatening to steal consciousness from his grasp as it stole the air from his lungs.

  Several of the people who had been walking along the main street of the small town gasped and stopped, and backed away from him when he vomited again.

  He pushed himself up on shaking arms and stared at the puddle on the black stones.

  Blood.

  He swallowed hard, sweat beading on his skin, cold and sticky. More flashes of the female covered in crimson filled his mind, and he roared as he tried to shake them loose, tried to spare himself the pain. He muttered a prayer beneath his breath, a desperate plea to the gods to set him free of the torment, to make her go away. He pushed onto his feet and growled at the people staring at him, flashing his bloodied fangs.