Kissed by a Dark Prince(95)

It was a possibility, and if her speculation was right and Vail was under Kordula’s command, then he wasn’t fighting against his brother, he was fighting on the same side.

Someone moved in the room behind her and she tensed. Vail tensed too and moved away from her, scooting back a few inches, as if he feared Kordula finding him close to her. He frantically pressed his hand to the ruined section of parquet and glared at it. The wood bowed and creaked, and began to repair itself.

Olivia’s heart went out to him. She had seen the demons and fae that Archangel held in a containment facility, and had seen how scared they had been whenever they felt one of their captors would discover they had done something bad and would punish them. Vail feared Kordula would see the scratched floorboards and become suspicious, and she would make him talk somehow.

Olivia didn’t want to imagine how.

Vail threw a desperate look at her and then jerked around, his gaze darting to different points around the room but constantly flickering back to the door Kordula had exited through.

Kordula had tricked Vail and bound him to her, and had probably commanded him to do the terrible things that Loren had spoken to her about. He had been under her spell for forty-two centuries, and God only knew what Kordula had made him do in all that time, and how she might have used him in order to break his mind. He was broken. She could see it in his eyes now as he panicked, fearing the return of the sorceress and her retribution.

“Are you going to kill me?” Olivia whispered, afraid to know the answer to that question but needing to ask it.

Vail’s purple gaze shifted back to her and he shook his head with considerable effort.

“Will Kordula?” That question hung in the air between them for what seemed like forever before he finally nodded.

A sorrowful look entered his eyes and he settled his hands on his thighs, his shoulders sagging again. He mouthed something and she didn’t know what he said, not only because she couldn’t read lips, but because she could tell he was speaking his own native tongue. It was a strange language, with mouth movements far different from English.

“Loren will fight you,” Olivia said and the harrowed edge returned to his gaze, and then he nodded very slowly.

He reached forwards and scratched into the floor.

Kill me.

Olivia’s gaze leaped back to his, her eyes enormous as she stared into his and realised the true depth of his pain and his suffering. The corners of his lips tilted up into something akin to a smile, but it held only hurt and hope.

He wanted to die.

Something terrible dawned on Olivia.

“Was it Kordula’s plan to bring Loren to me and have us bond?” She instinctively reached for Vail and caught his wrist before he could withdraw, holding his fingers poised above the words he had etched into the floor.

He stared into her eyes, blinked once and shook his head.

Her stomach turned, her insides flipping with it.

Vail had brought Loren to her, his fated female, not because he had wanted to weaken his brother, but because he knew that Loren had been seeking his female for so long, and he would need her now to fill the void Vail would leave.

Because he was going to get himself killed somehow.

He wanted death as an end to his suffering.

The doors opened and Vail scrambled backwards, purple gaze flicking between Kordula as she entered and the words he had scratched into the floor.

Kordula raised an eyebrow at his behaviour, came to them and looked down at the words. She scowled at Vail.

“I command you not to communicate with her and this is what you do?” Black and red ribbons twirled around her hands and she raised them. “On your feet.”

Vail rose as ordered, his movements jerky, telling Olivia that he hadn’t been given a choice. Kordula was using her power to force him to do as she bid, controlling him. He cast a fearful look down at Olivia and then his demeanour changed, losing the sorrowful and haunted edge, and gaining a dark and violent one.

His lips peeled back off his fangs and he growled at Kordula, the pointed tips of his ears extending and his eyes flashing dangerously.

“You dare attempt to protect her?” Kordula was on Vail in a heartbeat, her slender hand closing around the front of his throat. She easily lifted him off the floor despite the vast difference in their height and build. The ribbons of black and red that curled around her arms all rushed at Vail and burrowed into his flesh. He threw his head back and cried out, the sound so harrowing that Olivia covered her ears, unable to bear hearing it because she knew that Kordula would turn that incredible power on her before long.

Vail thrashed and snarled, clawing at Kordula’s arms and spilling her blood. It rolled down her bare forearms to her elbows and dripped onto the floor. It turned black and writhed before Olivia’s eyes, like a living thing.