If Hella’s magic hadn’t been bound by the infernal shackles weighing her arms down, she might have been tempted to hit the nymph who dogged her every step with a spell or two. Turn him into a eunuch. Elevate him to a soprano. That sort of thing.
As it was, all she could do was glare at him as she paced around the circular room, her anger at a constant rolling boil.
She passed a very expensive looking vase, the sort humans paid millions for, and swiped it from the polished wooden sideboard, turned in one fluid motion and launched it at the guard. He swayed to his right, easily dodging it, and it landed on the pretty parquet floor and smashed into a thousand pieces. Part of her had expected him to at least attempt to catch it, saving the precious object for his master.
Hella reached for a nice crystal sculpture of a man and woman going at it, the temptation to see if he would catch this one and the desire to smash more of Ethyrian’s belongings too powerful to deny.
Her guard gripped her arm before she could grab the statue and hauled her away from it. He twisted with her and shoved her towards the centre of the room. Her prison. She curled a lip at it. She was being held by force by a man she had dumped.
In a sumptuous room that had every luxury imaginable, but it was still by force.
Just this one room put her home to shame. It put every home in the Geneva fae town to shame. She had been in the most opulent of them, attending soirees thrown by the nobles, or peddling them a potion. This room made them look shabby in comparison.
The gold and crystal chandelier sparkled in the candlelight that illuminated the intricately painted domed ceiling of the huge circular room—a painting that depicted a lot of naughty things—and caught on the gilded mirrors that lined the ivory walls, mimicking the two arched windows and the arched doorways.
Between the two windows, there was a large circular mattress covered in colourful silk pillows. Four posts enclosed it, carved to look like trees, their branches reaching and entwining and studded with diamonds. The wood was as pale as her skin, finely grained.
It looked like bones to her.
Hella kept her distance from the love nest side of the room, opting to pace on the side that had been turned into a lounge area, with a chaise longue and two couches made of the same bone-coloured wood and turquoise velvet. She pretended not to notice how the two couches faced the chaise, as if they had been positioned so people could watch whatever was happening on it. She also pretended not to notice that the carved wooden frame that ran over the top of the back of the chaise had two worn patches that looked awfully as if someone had been regularly tied down there.
She pivoted towards the door that was open and drifted towards it, breathing deep of the fresh air that rolled into the room through it as her panic mounted. This wasn’t her home now. She wasn’t going to become part of whatever weird kinky things happened in this room. She would speak to Ethyrian and convince him that he was being unreasonable, and he would let her go.
She chuckled at that, the mirthless, desperate sound bursting from her lips, loud in the thick silence. Her guard tensed and she glared at him when he gave her a look that questioned her sanity. So, she was losing her mind a little. Who wouldn’t when they were being held in a nymph king’s sex den with no way to escape and no real hope of convincing him to let her go?
Ethyrian would keep her here. No matter what she said or did. She knew it in her gut. He had been wounded when she had last seen him, hurt by her rejection and the fact she hadn’t believed his continuous declarations of love, and she had foolishly thought it was over.
But it looked as if the male really didn’t know how to take no for an answer.
And wasn’t above kidnapping to get what he wanted.
Typical king.
She huffed, her strides growing more agitated as her mind raced, as her fingers were drawn towards the secret pocket in her black dress. She focused on her guard as her hand brushed across it and she felt the vial that had survived the brute’s rough handling of her. Maybe she did have a way to escape. Although she wasn’t sure it would work.
Chances were the magic imbued into her restraints would negate the potion even if she could reach it, uncork it and swallow it before her nymph shadow could stop her.
She pivoted at the closed wooden door, not daring to get too close to it. The one time she had moved within six feet of it, the guard had grabbed her and tossed her into the centre of the room, and she had fallen, almost landing on the vial.
Hella strode towards the open door, one that led onto a balcony and revealed a slice of green mountains and too-blue sky that weren’t the product of a spell.
She wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
Her nymph guard had teleported her elsewhere, to a place few non-fae got to see, and even fewer survived to tell tales about.
Lucia.
Realm of the light fae.
The door behind her opened before she could step out onto the balcony and she spun on her heel to face that direction.
Ethyrian swept into the room, looking as good as always in his tight green leather trousers that hugged his long lean legs and a loose white shirt that somehow revealed his honed torso even as it concealed it. Something was different about him though. His long blond hair was held back by a delicate knotted gold band that sat across his forehead and held an oval sapphire above his nose.
His crown.
If she had known the nymph was a king when she had met him all those months ago, she might have rejected his advances and spared herself all this trouble. She had figured him for a noble though, someone with only a little power, not enough to make him dangerous. Throughout history, kings had proven themselves to be a terrible lot, corrupted by their position, expecting everyone to fawn over them and do as they pleased.
To serve them.
To obey them.
Hella wasn’t exactly obedient material. She hadn’t even been able to obey the rules of her coven. She certainly couldn’t be expected to obey one man.
His blue eyes met hers, as bewitching as ever, like a tropical ocean that glittered and tempted, sparkling with flecks of gold. Even now they made her want to dive into them. She had fallen for those eyes more than his impressive physique and his good looks. Those eyes had beckoned her, had been the first thing she had noticed about him.
There wasn’t a male in this universe who had eyes as interesting and entrancing as his.
Hella shut that line of thought down, refusing to let him cast a spell on her again, and reminded herself that he was holding her captive.
His firm, broad mouth curled into an easy smile, one meant to charm and disarm her. He had used that smile on her too many times to count, and each time she had fallen for it, forgetting her anger or her desire to be rid of him and ending up in bed with him.
She glanced at the bed off to her right. One she would not be falling into with him. No backsliding.
“Hella,” he murmured, saying her name in a sexy way that had heat flushing over her skin. “Come, my love.”
He held his hand out to her.
Hella sneered at it. “I’ll do no such thing.”
His fair eyebrows pinched and then relaxed, and he slid a look at the guard. The male dipped his head and left, taking all the air in the room with him as the door closed behind him and she found herself alone with Ethyrian.
“Come,” Ethyrian repeated, harder this time, and his irises darkened a shade.
Warning her that she was treading on thin ice.
He was close to losing his temper. That was the reason he had sent the guard away. Heaven forbid one of his subordinates witnessed her rejecting their king and disobeying him, or what he would do to her as punishment.
She kept her distance from him when he moved a step towards her, her pulse picking up pace as she glanced over her shoulder at the balcony again. A balcony that was high up. She could hear water though. Distant. Muted. If she had to guess, she was in a tower and there was a river somewhere below her.
Could she jump?
She strained hard, listening to the rushing sound, her stomach twisting and knotting as she considered it. The river was probably a long way down. She might not survive the drop, especially if the water wasn’t deep. But then, she didn’t have to hit the water. If she was fast enough, she could reach the vial and drink it before she hit the river.
And what if the potion didn’t work because of her restraints?
Hella swallowed hard at the thought of hitting a shallow river and going splat.
Maybe she could tough it out a little, play along with Ethyrian until she could convince him to remove her cuffs and then she could escape using the potion. One problem with that plan though. Ethyrian would have her naked before she could work her charm on him, placing the potion beyond her reach. Or worse, he would discover the vial.
Her mind raced, thoughts colliding as she looked at him again, as he stalked towards her, all gorgeous glower that heated her blood and made her body remember the good times they had shared. It wouldn’t exactly be a chore to sleep with him until he let her go, but the idea rankled her, had her wanting to strike him and keep him away from her.
“Sweet Hella,” he started.
“There’s nothing sweet about me,” she bit out and waggled the shackles in his face, and it hit her that they were the reason she was mad as hell at him and didn’t want to sleep with him anymore. He had chained her and had her brought here, and that wasn’t the way someone who was apparently in love with you behaved. “There’s nothing sweet about you either, is there? You declare your undying love for me, swear to the moon you will be forever mine, do all in your power to convince me that love is real, and what… when I don’t return the feelings you resort to kidnapping? They make TV programmes about obsessive types like you all the time.”
“My love for you is real. I will make you see it,” he gritted and lunged for her.
She sidestepped and hurried towards the door, placing more distance between them.
“Just let me go, Ethyrian. We can forget this ever happened.” She clutched her dress, keeping hold of the hidden vial.
Could she reach it and drink it? Was it worth the risk? If the spell in the shackles worked on the potion too, she would have sacrificed her only method of escape. As tempting as it was to risk it, she couldn’t. She had to bide her time until she was free of the cuffs. Maybe she could speed that along.
She lifted her hands and moved them apart, snapping tight the chain between the two thick silver cuffs. “If you remove these, it will go a long way towards convincing me that you’re not a psychopath and you meant those pretty words. If you love me, you’ll do it.”
He glared at her, his lips flattening as his eyebrows drew down and he stalked towards her. “If I remove those restraints, you will teleport. I will not lose you again.”
“I can’t teleport. I’m a witch. We didn’t get that nifty perk.” Not technically true. She could teleport. The potion would make it happen. She resisted the temptation to touch it again. “I’ll stay if you release me.”
She would be gone in a flash.
Hella smiled sweetly, the one she had always used on him whenever he had been in a bad mood. It usually worked like a charm, but this time he remained at a distance, glaring at her. Aware that she was going to have to work a little harder than just smiling at him in order to win him over this time, she sidled towards him, her heart thumping hard. She wouldn’t fall for his charms again. She wouldn’t fall into his bed. She would just make it appear as if she was doing both of those things.
“I do love you,” he husked as she drew closer, his gaze growing unfocused as he skimmed it over her body. It sharpened again as it locked with hers and he rocked her entire world on its axis. “That is why I am going to marry you.”
She spluttered.
“I’m sorry… you’re going to what now? For a moment there, I was sure you said marry me.” She back-pedalled. Hard. Placing more distance between them as her pulse skyrocketed.
“I am going to marry you. You are to be my wife.” He smiled at her, as if she should be thrilled by this turn of events and not terrified.
Convincing him to do anything flew out of the window, because she could see in his eyes that he had made up his mind and he was going to marry her whether she liked it or not. She wasn’t getting a say in things, and that really pissed her off. She had to escape. If she didn’t, she was going to end up wed before she knew it, enslaved by a male she didn’t even like.
No. Thank. You.
He wasn’t in love with her, not like he believed. He was obsessed with her, and she had the feeling it was because she had dumped him. Ethyrian had never been the dumpee. He had always been the dumper. She could see that now. He had never even told her that he loved her until she had been breaking up with him. It was obvious now that this was new to him and he didn’t like it and rather than ridding herself of him, she had made the whole situation worse.
Now he wanted to wed her.
If she had let things between them fizzle out naturally, she wouldn’t be in this mess. Her rejection had caused this turn of events, making Ethyrian obsessed with her.
Making him a danger to her.
“You shall be a queen.” He strode towards her, using her temporary inability to move thanks to shock to his advantage, and was only inches from her before she roused herself. He stroked his hand down her bare arm, his blue gaze adoring as his smile widened. “A fitting position for my beauty. You shall take your rightful place at my side and I shall dote upon you. I will even visit my harem less.”
“How generous of you.” Hella twisted free of his grip and walked away from him, struggling for air. “I never would have dreamed you’d place me first before your concubines.”
Concubines she hadn’t even been aware of when they had been together. How many times had he slept with them before coming to see her? After coming to see her? She vomited a little in her mouth.
“My wife will always come first.” He sounded as if that would be the most magnanimous thing he had ever done and she should be falling at his feet and telling him he was too kind—too generous.
She glared at him over her shoulder instead. “I highly doubt that. I seem to recall you always came first.”
He scowled at her, crossed the distance between them and had her arm in a bruising grip before she could even blink. He loomed over her, darkness in his eyes as he stared at her, and her pulse spiked again as his fingers pressed into her flesh. That show of strength was a warning, and he looked close to showing her in other ways that she would do better not to speak to him like that.
Hella tried to break free of his grip, but this time he tightened it, refusing to release her.
“My stubborn wife will learn her place in time.” He lifted his other hand and smoothed his knuckles across her cheek, and the touch felt more like a threat than a caress.
Her entire body locked up tight in response as his hand drifted lower to graze her neck, her legs trembling as she forced herself to hold his gaze, to keep her head tipped up and not let him see how afraid she was. She would escape this.
Sooner rather than later.
In fact, she was thinking right now might be as good a time as any.
She plastered a smile on her face and made herself lean into his touch as he opened his hand and cupped her cheek in his palm. She resisted the shudder that wracked her as he stroked his thumb over her lower lip and his gaze fell there.
“You will want for nothing, Hella, my love,” he murmured, his eyes growing hooded and his breaths shallowing as he continued to stare at her mouth.
“Except my freedom,” she whispered and rattled the chains, reminding him of the fact he had made her his prisoner, stealing her power from her and dragging her to his realm.
And now he intended to enslave her with another band around her flesh, this one made of gold and placed upon her finger, and she had no doubt in her mind that ring would be bespelled too, ensuring she never used her magic against him.
Never escaped him.
He smiled sweetly and caressed her throat as his grip on her arm loosened, allowing blood to flow back into her fingers. He lifted that arm and pressed a kiss to it, never taking his eyes from hers, as if the brush of his lips could take away the pain he had inflicted. She had half a mind to clock him with her restraints.
It wouldn’t get her anywhere though.
The way to disarm Ethyrian wasn’t being violent towards him. It was being sweet towards him. Adoring. As much as it sickened her, she had to pander to his inflated ego if she wanted to get away from him.
“Will you remove them once we are wed?” She lifted her hands and stroked his chest, feeling his heart picking up pace against her palms.
She didn’t miss the press of his erection against her hip as he angled them towards her either.
“Of course.” He brushed his fingers over one of the silver bands. “Although I would not be averse to restraining you in such a manner from time to time.”
She bet.
She stroked her fingers down his broad chest. “And what if I was inclined to restrain you?”
His blue eyes darkened, and not with anger this time, and he swooped on her mouth on a low growl, claiming her lips in a fierce kiss that did nothing for her. Had no female ever offered to tie him up? Maybe she could use his excitement about the prospect of being restrained and at her mercy to aid her escape.
A chained king couldn’t exactly stop her, not if the shackles he wore inhibited his ability to teleport, and she would use exactly that sort of handcuffs on him.
Although, she doubted he would remove her restraints first, which meant she couldn’t conjure manacles that would stop him from teleporting and she would still be in the same predicament. The balcony was looking more tempting than ever. How far below her was the river? How deep was it?
Hella subtly manoeuvred him towards the door to the balcony, kissing him and fisting his shirt to keep him in place. He tensed when a breeze swept around them and she deepened the kiss, fearing he would pull back to see what she was up to.
When they reached the balcony, she pushed him back against the arched stone doorframe, keeping him distracted as she cracked an eye open and scoped things out. Only she couldn’t see a damned thing. The stone wall around the balcony ran at hip height to her and it was solid, not a crack in it for her to see through.
So she broke away from Ethyrian and fanned herself, pretending his kiss had made her far too hot rather than ice-cold and she needed a little air.
She stopped at the wall and looked down, and discovered the true definition of ice-cold as the several hundred-foot drop to the broad canyon below froze her blood in her veins.
Mother earth.
That was a long way down.
Water churned white in the bottom of the canyon. If she didn’t hit the rocky walls, she would probably drown in the rapids.
Maybe the potion would work.
Ethyrian came up behind her and nuzzled her neck, peppering it with kisses as he murmured stomach-turning things in her ear. Maybe going splat would be better than subjecting herself to the twisted things he had planned for her.
“And then my head concubine, Iryna, will be chained on her knees and you and I shall watch as Lesharius, my commander, punishes her with his cock and when you are aching, my sweet, I shall unlace myself and make her swallow my shaft until you are begging for me to plant it between your thighs.” He stroked his hand down the flat of her stomach, edging towards that place.
She was learning something new about Ethyrian every second, and she wasn’t enjoying it. He had never shown this side of himself to her before. She hadn’t even had an inkling that he was this dark and perverse. How long would it be before she was the one strapped down on her knees, being punished by him and his commander?
She swallowed the bile that rose into her throat and made her decision.
Hella turned in his arms and he caged her against the wall, pressing the evidence of his arousal against her stomach. She tensed when he reached for her skirts, fisting them and dragging them up, his blue eyes so bright with hunger that they glowed in the waning light. Cool air kissed her bare thighs, panic lanced her, and she pressed her hands to his chest.
And pushed as hard as she could.
He stumbled away from her.
And she tipped backwards.
Over the wall.
And screamed as she plummeted towards the river.