Kiril kept his gaze on Balladyn. He didn’t dare look at Shara, because if he did and saw her fear, he would lose his precarious hold over his control. “You’re referring to Rhi.”
“You all had her fooled,” Balladyn said with a laugh. “But soon she’ll see the Dragon Kings for what you really are.”
“He loves her,” Shara said.
Balladyn pushed the blade deeper, and the blood ran faster down her neck. It was only Con’s hand on Kiril’s arm that kept him still.
“So you want to hurt us,” Con said with a shrug. “Or do you want to find something we’ve hidden? I’m confused.”
“I’m going to do both,” Balladyn stated. His gaze slid to Kiril. “First, you’re going to feel what I felt. You’re going to watch someone else destroy your woman, as you Kings destroyed Rhi.”
“Rhi wasna destroyed,” Kiril said quickly to stop whatever it was he had planned for Shara.
Balladyn made a sound at the back of his throat. “If you believe that, then you don’t know her as you think you do. Nor do you realize how deeply she loves. She loves with everything she has, holding nothing back. She gave all of herself, and what did she get in return?”
A dark mass seeped up through the stones in the floor and surrounded Shara. She jerked helplessly the moment the mass touched her. Balladyn released her and stepped back. Kiril watched in horror as the black mass suspended her above the floor.
Her eyes were wild with terror. Their gazes met, and he saw the regret in her red depths just before she was thrown against the far wall, her screams filling his head.
“Nay!” Kiril bellowed as he tried to go to her, only to be held in check by the damn chains.
Con rushed to Shara, but before he reached her, she was tossed against the ceiling. Kiril looked at Balladyn to see his homicidal grin just before he disappeared.
Kiril lost what little control he had as fury and trepidation filled him, sending him into a fit of despair to get free and get to Shara.
*
Rhi lay on her back basking in the sunlight, her hand twirling leisurely in the brilliant rays. How she had missed the sun. Never again would she descend into anything to do with the Dark. It didn’t matter who asked for her help.
Even if it was him.
A large hand smoothed down her hair, a hand she knew well. Rhi turned her head and looked at her lover. He smiled down at her as he covered her body with his own. No one had ever loved her as he had. And no one ever would.
She wanted to ask him where he had been. She wanted to know why he had turned away from her, but none of that mattered right now. Not when he was in her arms again.
Her fingers delved into his long hair. Normally he kept it trimmed much shorter, but he had grown it out for her. How sexy he looked with his long hair. Whether he wore it in a queue or let the silky locks graze his shoulders, he was by far the most gorgeous male to ever walk the earth.
She gazed into his eyes the color of—
“Hello, pet.”
She jerked at the hated voice that had entered her dream. Rhi tried to turn away from Balladyn, to get back to the place with her lover, but it was gone, vanished. The pain from the jagged floor dug into her legs and ass. Rhi searched for the light that was inside her, the light that made her Fae. It was what had kept her going, but she feared it was dead now.
“Look at me,” Balladyn demanded.
She kept her head down, though not by choice. It was too hard for her to lift it to glare at him. The Chains of Mordare were sapping her of every ounce of strength the longer they were on her.
“What? No sarcasm?” Balladyn taunted. “Is the light gone, pet? I thought you would’ve held out longer. Perhaps you aren’t as strong as I thought you were.”
Rhi wanted to remember her hatred of Balladyn even after she became Dark. He would be the first one she killed. No longer did she deny what would be her fate. She accepted what was to come, but there would be consequences.
Dimly, she could hear screams from somewhere else in the dungeon. It was a woman, and by the fear and pain in the cries, Rhi knew exactly what was attacking her. It was the same thing that had attacked her.
A male shout joined the female’s screams. Rhi wanted to feel sorry for them, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel much of anything.
Balladyn leaned close. “You’re weak, pet.”
She couldn’t even bring herself to come up with a response. He was right. Balladyn had always been right about her, about everything. Hadn’t he been the one to tell her it wouldn’t work between her and her lover?
“Give yourself to the dark,” he whispered seductively. “Let go of the pain and the past. Become who you were meant to be.”
Meant to be. She was meant to be guarding her queen. She was meant to be doing everything she could to annoy the Dragon Kings.
She was meant to be in the sun.
“No,” she said, though it came out more like a mumble instead of the shout she’d intended.