Page 3 of Fated In Ruin
“I could force you to help me.”
“You could.” I agreed. “There’s nothing stopping you.” But my stomach clenched at how helpless I’d been, locked beneath his dominant power. I never wanted to feel like that again.Never.
“I don’t want to,” he admitted softly and somehow, I thought he was telling the truth. “I want you to see Ravok as a threat to everything we both value, and help me willingly. I want us to work together, Vicious, as we once did.”
“Like with Tyrell?” I needed to keep him talking, let down his guard, give me an opening.
“Yes, like Tyrell.” His wary expression shifted toward relief. “But Ravok…he’s like nothing you’ve ever faced before, a monster with voracious, endless appetites. But you’d only have to get close to him long enough to destroy him.”
“With my magic?”
“Your magic is…” he cleared his throat. “It’s not only your blood that is precious. The magic flowing inside you is every bit as powerful a weapon, and in you, the first female born of your bloodline in a thousand years, that magic runs strong. I assume that is why your mother bound you, when you were very young?”
A small, delicate flame cupped in two chubby hands, a deafening roar of sound, Angel’s blue eyes, wide with terror…
I looked away, guilt gnawing at my stomach as greedily as I chewed my lower lip. “There was an…incident. I was too young to understand much except I’d done something terribly wrong. Mom cried the entire time, telling me it was for my own good, and somehow, Silas never found out. He would have killed me.” A blatant lie, because the truth was much uglier, but Malachi looked down at me with a softer expression than I’d ever seen from him and the truth hit me.
We hadn’t kept anything from Silas.
My father had known, because he’d told Tyrell about my powers.
How else would I have ended up in that little red book? My secret written down in black and white for Malachi to leverage? I cut my spiraling thoughts short. Plenty of time later to worry about how I got into this mess. Now was the time to figure a way out.
But the candelabra felt too heavy for me to lift again. I’d been fighting for so damn long, and it seemed like the battles never stopped. They only got bigger.
I couldn’t decipher Malachi’s expression, but I swore the shadows in the corners of the room darkened as he asked, “Your life with Silas…was harsh?”
“I was his eldest daughter. I was expected to…” Unbidden, my throat dried up; my next words got stuck. “Like my mother, Angel was sweet and beautiful and pampered. I was none of those things. At White Chapel, everyone served a purpose, and mine was not to look pretty.”
“Silas and your uncles taught you to fight?” Something glimmered deep in his pale brown eyes, pity, maybe. “To hunt vampires?”
“They did. My training began when I was seven and continued until we went on the run. Angel was too young to learn, but I…” I cleared my annoyingly dry throat. “My skills have served me well, despite how I came by them.”
What the hell was I doing?
Telling this asshole secrets I’d never told another living soul? I was supposed to be spying on him—killing him—yet here I was, blabbing away like some amateur.
“Have you ever used your magic?”
“Not since I was five.” I squeezed my fingers tighter around the heavy candlestick to stop them from shaking. “I expect it’s grown stronger these past twenty-some years.”
“We need to find out.” For the first time since I’d met him, Malachi looked unsure. “Put down your weapon and I will remove the blocking spell, but only for one minute. That should be sufficient to get a read on your magic before I replace the block. I will surround you with a shield of glamour, just to be safe.”
“Good plan. Then I’ll only incinerate myself and not your fancy castle.” I cocked my eyebrow at him, but set the candelabra on the floor with a dull clunk. “So. You planning to do this in here, or…?”
Beyond the main hall was another equally grand room draped in sumptuous velvet curtains and decorated with relics—a gilded chalice from some long-lost empire, a cracked shield and a sword from a forgotten battle, ancient books stacked neatly in towering bookcases that reached to the ceiling. This entire castle paid homage to Malachi’s ageless sophistication, a hidden refuge where he could plot in solitude, filled with the spoils of a hundred battles won, a hundred kingdoms conquered.
“Outside,” he decided. “There is a walled garden which will offer some shelter, and my glamour should be enough to contain your power.”
Notwillbe enough, and I dipped my head to hide my smile at the uncertainty in his voice. No, his glamour most certainly wouldn’t be enough, but who was I to tell the all-knowing Malachi Draven what to do?
2
MALACHI DRAVEN
Iwas taking a gamble on Evangeline, but I’d run out of options.
Even now she was plotting a hundred ways to kill me, all of them slow, painful and creative enough to make me rethink my entire plan. Not that I had any other choice.
