Page 2 of A Bond so Fierce and Fragile (Compelling Fates Saga #3)

The muddled edges of her consciousness, the mistakes that whichever of Rioner’s guards was doing this to her had made, the impossibility of being back in her childhood home.

Lifting her head and making her stiff legs straighten, she captured her father’s eyes again.

Only now, those eyes were a few shades darker, the golden-brown hair more auburn in the flickering light of the sun.

“Rioner.” Lessia clenched her fists when the king met her glare head-on. “So you dare meet my eyes now?”

The cool laugh he let out should have made goose bumps rise across her skin.

But she was done being afraid of him.

Absolutely fucking done.

Merrick had trained her for this.

She’d decided to walk this path.

To save their realm, whatever the cost might be.

And the king was terrified of her.

She could see it in the slight creases around his eyes—the twitch of the palms hanging by his sides.

He was terrified of the curse and her magic.

A corner of her mouth lifted.

He should be the one to cower now.

Wiping the straggling tears, she let the magic sizzling under her skin burst out of her eyes as she stepped toward him.

The Fae king didn’t move as she locked eyes with him and purred, “Don’t look away.”

“I won’t.” Rioner’s mouth twisted into a cold smile. “But you realize this cellar is filled with guards, don’t you? They’ll kill you before you have time to take a breath if you so much as threaten to stain my robe.”

She made herself smile back at him, trying to get the smell of iron that still filled her nostrils to fade.

It wasn’t real. Nothing of what had just happened had been real.

“See, I don’t think they will. They know of the curse, I assume?” Lessia cocked her head. “I’ve understood you can’t kill me yourself. Perhaps not even order it.”

Rioner’s brows popped up for the smallest of seconds before he caught himself.

“I thought your mind was clear. The guards told me you hadn’t broken yet.

” He began turning away, his eyes still meeting hers over his shoulder.

“They must have been mistaken. I’ll need to find another to help with this mission. ”

“Don’t turn your fucking back on me!” Lessia nearly tripped over an uneven stone as she followed him. “Where are you going?”

Rioner halted. “You’re demanding to know where your king is going?”

Something like unease coiled deep within Lessia’s gut. “Stop playing coy. We’re past that point, aren’t we, uncle?”

A shocked laugh escaped Rioner. “Uncle? That’s a new one.” He waved to someone she couldn’t see. “Her mind has gone. Please take care of her.”

The salty breeze shifted into a worryingly familiar one, and Lessia’s magic faded away with every whiff of iron-tinged stale air.

Sounds she never wanted to hear again drowned all others.

And then… the darkness.

Darkness that engulfed everything—that nearly swallowed the king as he walked toward a thick stone door.

Her eyes widened.

Not to get used to the shadows that danced all around her but because she recognized that door.

Lessia met the eyes of a dark-haired Fae standing guard beside her.

A Fae she also recognized.

The memory of agony had her muscles flex, but she pushed it away, forcing herself to speak up again. “I know this isn’t real! I left this cellar years ago! This isn’t real!”

Spinning around so his robes flew all around him, Rioner drawled, “You’ve been in these cellars for years, Lessia Gyldenberg. I thought I had use for you—something only a halfling could do—but alas… I’ll have to find another.”

“No!” Her greasy hair slapped against her skin as she shook her head. “No!”

This wasn’t happening.

It wasn’t real.

It couldn’t be real.

Focus.

She tried to get Merrick’s voice to give her strength.

“Merrick,” she whispered. “Merrick, please help.”

She needed him to growl at her.

To make her snap out of this nightmare.

“Yes?”

Her eyes flew to the king again.

Then to the dark ones of the male who opened the creaking door.

A choked sound traveled from her chest when Merrick’s passive eyes trailed across her face, then moved back to the king.

“Do you know the halfling?” Rioner asked as Merrick pulled the door wider for him.

“Never seen her before.” Merrick’s eyes didn’t seek hers out again. “Is she important?”

“No. Perhaps you can do me the honor of killing her? I need more space?—”

Her heartbeat slamming in her ears muffled the rest of the king’s words, and before anyone could react, Lessia sprinted forward, grasping at the king’s robe and pushing him up against the wall.

“Merrick would never look at me like that,” she snarled as she gripped his head and forced his eyes to her own. “You can’t fool me into believing this is real.”

“Lessia, no!”

She ignored the vaguely familiar voice fighting to break through the haze of rage.

“You can’t breathe,” Lessia purred softly as her magic sizzled to the surface once more. “The air in this room is gone.”

She couldn’t help the smile that pulled at her features when the king tried to draw a wheezing breath, and when his eyes bulged after only seconds, the grin turned into a humorless laugh. “Doesn’t feel too good, does it? I hear you like to drown your enemies.”

“Stop! It’s not what you think.”

That voice again.

Who was that?

Lessia nearly turned her head, but when the king’s face turned blue, she couldn’t deny herself the pleasure of watching him suffer.

“I think water replaced the air in your lungs. Can you feel it?” she cooed, savoring the fear in the amber eyes as the male shook his head.

“Please!” someone begged, and this time the voice tugged at her heart. “Lessia!”

Tugged so hard her heart skipped a beat.

Frelina. That was Frelina’s voice.

Focus.

She whipped her head around, but the cellar was empty.

Where had the guards gone?

As she brought her eyes back to the king, her question got stuck in her throat.

Soft, bright amber eyes met her own.

Not muddled, hard ones.

Her father’s eyes flooded with tears as he grasped at his throat, the gurgling sound no longer pleasing her but driving a cold sweat across her skin.

“Lessia! Please!” her sister called out again.

Was this another mind trick to stop her from getting to the king?

Focus.

Rubbing her arms, she tried to get her mind to close, tried to force the magic within it away, tried to understand what was real.

As she trailed her fingers across the scars, the letters marking her arm, she reminded herself that the king had had her sister and father.

The letters were real.

They couldn’t create those by capturing her mind.

It’s the same one.

That’s what Merrick had told her.

You and me.

They were real.

Elessia and Merrick.

They were real.

That meant…

Fuck!

Lessia quickly pulled on the magic that had drifted away.

“Breathe. You can breathe!” she urged her father, and when a rattling sound rumbled in his chest, she released a breath, catching him when his knees buckled.

As she pulled one of her father’s arms over her shoulders, her magic burned behind her eyes and she snapped it inward, the way she’d done when training with Raine, Kerym, and Frelina, and upon finding blazing green eyes—the eyes she’d cursed for so many years—she screamed at them to get out, to leave her alone.

And as soon as they flickered, her walls flew up.

The cell vanished.

Only the sound of water remained in the small wood-encased space, and as Lessia looked around, she realized the room they stood in was a ship’s cabin, with the heaving water sloshing against the sides of the vessel.

Her father still hung limp by her side, and as she glanced to her right, she found Frelina, Kerym, and a male who must be Thissian chained to a wall.

Whipping her head around to the other side, her heart stopped.

Rioner actually stood tall there, a lazy smile on his bent face.

And beside him…

Three of the vilest guards she’d gotten to know during her stay in his cellars.

The green-eyed one, the one she believed was named Torkher, flashed his teeth, but when she couldn’t help but show her own back, Rioner slammed a hand into the Fae’s chest as he made to approach Lessia.

“That was quite the entertainment.” Rioner fixed the gilded crown atop his head. “I thought you might kill my dear brother.”

Lessia’s nostrils flared, but she kept her mouth shut, her gaze following the guards who began filing into the rounded room from either side of her, their eyes trained on her and the other prisoners.

“See, you were right. I can’t kill you. ” Rioner’s frosty smile lifted further.

“But I can kill everyone around you. Make you watch them suffer until their last breath. Force you to hear their screams every minute of every day until you’re begging to be able to kill yourself.

I think it shall be quite entertaining as well. ”

“Fuck you,” Lessia snarled, tightening her grip on her father and inching toward her sister and friends.

“Such a mouth on you.” Rioner chuckled as he began walking toward a rounded metal door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, little halfling. And… I think perhaps we start with the other Faeling.”

Red colored her entire field of vision when Rioner jerked his head toward her sister.

But she didn’t have time to respond before the first door slammed shut behind him, closely followed by the other two, the metal clangs telling her they were bolted shut, leaving them all in the little light that shone through the gaps in the planks of the side of the ship.