“No,” Jadren replied, keeping his tone easy though his gut curdled with unease.
“Excuse me?” His mother’s brows and tone arched alarmingly. “I believe we made an agreement.”
“Do you truly want to discuss this here?” he inquired silkily, gesturing at their audience.
Her brows lowered, drawing together, and she flicked her fingers at their avid witnesses. “Leave us.”
They did, with the alacrity of minions well-versed in avoiding the ire of their liege wizard. In a moment, it was only the three of them in the room. Seliah had calmed, her magic settling into the reflective brightness of moonlight on still water, curiously soothing to him, even though he wasn’t drawing on her magic. She glanced at him, caginess in her amber gaze before she lowered it, lush black lashes like lace against her golden skin.
“You promised me,” Lady El-Adrel hissed at him. “Are you reneging on our deal because you believe you have the power now, having gotten what you wanted? Because I warn you, there will be consequences.”
“No, Maman,” he answered, keeping his jaw relaxed and the edge out of his tone. “I’m requesting a bit of decorum. It’s rather unseemly to insist that your son submit to your experiments on his bonding day. What of observing the traditional celebrations?”
She considered, and—for a fleeting moment that would have filled him with glee, had he been a happier, more optimistic person—she wavered. He caught it the moment she saw through his ploy, expression icing into her true face, the one she wore while indulging her most primal interests. “Ah,” she breathed. “I see. You’re not afraid for yourself, but for her. You’ve never cared in the least for traditions or celebrations or really anything that matters to advance this house. This is why you could never be my heir, Jadren: you’re simply not… enough.” Her glittering black gaze slid to Seliah, who tensed warily, her skin palpably chilling, her magic going silver sharp.
He could use that, all that brilliant, potent magic now at his disposal. There was a slim chance he could take his mother by surprise, since his father wasn’t present to amplify her magic. Possibly, just possibly, he could incapacitate her long enough for them to get away.
But he wouldn’t be able to kill her, not with her resistance to death that he’d inherited from her, along with her cruelty, madness, and inability to empathize with anyone.
“Try it,” she invited silkily, seeing it in him, both of them knowing the other obscenely well, with all those far-too-intimate sessions over years upon years of torturous experiments. With a sense of crushing defeat, he realized the profound mistake he’d committed. Seliah was right. He should have gotten them out of the carriage and taken the risk in the wilds with the spirits and the hunters.
He’d failed. Worst of all, he’d failed more than himself this time. Despite all his promises, he’d failed Seliah. Perhaps his mother was right about him and always had been.
His mother read the defeat in him, cold lips curving in satisfaction. “I knew you didn’t have it in you.”
“Leave Seliah out of it,” he begged. “I’ll double my commitment.”
Lady El-Adrel raised a brow. “Such devotion. I swear I never thought I’d see you care about anything this much. I do believe this emotional investment could lead to the breakthrough I’ve sought.” The brow lowered. “I already have your full cooperation until I decide I’ve exhausted all avenues. You can’t double that. The familiar will provide the magic to sustain your recoveries, so I expect exhausting my ingenuity will take a very, very long time. Come along now like a good boy.”
She glided away and he turned to follow, utterly defeated. Seliah’s hand vised on his and, reluctantly, he met her demanding amber gaze. “The laboratories?” she hissed, alarm in every icy, moonlit line of her.
He shook himself free of her grip. It wasn’t as if he was going to access her magic, familiar or not, and he obviously couldn’t provide comfort or reassurance. “There’s no way around it,” he told her dully. “The only path is through at this point. Endure and survive.”
“That’s it?” she whispered harshly, trotting beside him in his victorious mother’s wake.
“That’s all there is.”
“I never thought you’d accept defeat so easily.”
Seliah’s assessment, so like his mother’s, burned like salt carelessly caught in the lip of a wound that couldn’t be closed. He set his teeth. “Which only goes to prove you don’t know me at all, poppet.”
“You promised this was the way to survive, the only way. Was that a lie?”
He stopped. Faced her. She looked ravishingly gorgeous, her hair curling wildly without the weight, the light black silk gown clinging to her slender shoulders, revealing those delicate winged collarbones that enticed him to run his tongue along those lines and sensitive hollows. The silk flowed over her breasts—surprisingly full even without being trussed up and given her underfed condition—and snagged on her hard nipples alluringly. He’d been careful not to look at her nakedness, since it hadn’t been her own wish to be thus revealed, but his mind had eagerly assembled a complete image from the fragments gathered by his peripheral vision, and the sight of her slim, perfect body, like a tawny flame in the midday sunlight, haunted him. She would forever star in his sexual fantasies.
At least he’d have that. Dark arts knew he could never have her, not that way.
Her gaze accused him now and he had no sufficient reply. “It was and is the only way to survive. Take comfort in the reality that you have no choice.”
“Comfort?” she echoed incredulously. “You can’t be serious.”
“Deadly serious,” he answered bleakly. “There’s a restfulness in surrendering to the inevitable. Fighting takes a lot out of you. Give in and eventually it will be over.”
She gazed at him for a long moment. “You’re right. You’re not at all who I thought you were.”
And so, he mused, despondently facing the realization of his worst expectations, I’ll lose this, too, the regard of the only person I’ve met whose good opinion mattered to me. With the possible exception of Gabriel Phel. And didn’t that just figure? The Phel family had a knack for this sort of thing. He produced a thin smile. “Then I’ll take my own comfort in the knowledge that I did warn you. Not my fault you didn’t listen, poppet.”
Her amber eyes firing, she opened her mouth to retort, but his mother—ironically enough—saved him from whatever justifiably scathing assessment of his courage and character Seliah had been about to level on him. “Now, Jadren!” his mother commanded. “Don’t make me use the chains.”
