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 ones
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.
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