Page 31 of Blackwarden

Keres

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I collapsed at the guard’s feet after pulling Rosalin and myself through the portal.

I didn’t have the energy to hold myself up any longer.

A second guard collected her limp form into his arms and carried her away.

I hoped he couldn’t hear how my breath hitched with fear.

I wouldn’t have been able to stop him if I tried.

I knew where he was taking her. The same place all the other maidens had been taken, and I wasn’t supposed to care.

“Her majesty has been waiting, Blackwarden.”

The guard slung my arm over his shoulder as he helped me up from the ground. It wasn’t a gesture of kindness, so much as one of necessity. These guards despised me, but they despised a testy queen more. She tended to get rid of those who no longer served her needs.

He threw me into my suite and slammed the door.

I heard the heavy lock click over as I collapsed onto the cold stone floor.

If Bevgyah had requested I be locked in my quarters, I was significantly tardy.

I knew I’d be punished for making her wait.

I’d accepted it when I’d been desperate to imbue Rosalin’s portrait and used too much of my magic, making it take longer for me to recover enough to bring her through before dinner.

I lay on the cold floor, head pounding, body still vibrating from using so much of my shadows.

Every breath was painful, but I needed to collect myself, change into some proper clothes, and present myself to Bevgyah before she became impatient enough to come searching for me.

Rolling to my back, I stared up at the ceiling.

So much of this place felt wrong, the frigid magic rough against my own.

Bevgyah’s palace was nothing like my Gatehouse—a calm warm presence, always lingering at the back of my thoughts.

It wasn’t just being in this place again, it was that I knew somewhere Rosalin was being prepared to be introduced to the Hag Queen, and there was nothing I could do to save her.

A tear burned a path over my temple as I swallowed my guilt.

I’d failed to imbue her portrait. I’d failed to figure out how to break the curse.

I’d failed her entirely. My Rosalin would feel every last fragment of confusion and terror, the pain of her youth being siphoned and what she was expected to do as a maiden in Bevgyah’s harem.

I tried to drag myself from the floor, needing to grasp the post of my bed to support my weight.

When I stood, I had a perfect view of myself in the vanity mirror.

As always, when I passed through the portal, the glamour washed away.

I was the purest definition of Dark Fae.

My black flesh hid the weariness that clung to my bones, but it couldn’t hide the disappointment etched on my face.

Entirely black eyes with silver irises stared back at me.

I hadn’t missed my wings. They drew more attention than I liked, and while flying was incredible, I rarely had the chance as Bevgyah’s consort.

My horns on the other hand, I’d missed. I’d always loved the caution they’d instilled in others.

I wasn’t a demon, but I definitely looked like one.

It was my magic that distinguished me as a descendant of the High Fae.

Shadows and ice, as cold as the world outside Bevgyah’s palace. As cold as the Unseelie Court .

A sharp knock interrupted my self-assessment. I straightened as the lock clicked open and Bevgyah slipped in, her lithe form slinking through my room until she stood at my side. She gazed into the mirror with me, her hungry eyes slipping over my reflection.

Hag wasn’t the best description of Bevgyah.

She was a Hag in the essence of her magic—able to shapeshift and especially adept at curses.

However, she was by no means haggard, as one might expect.

Her pale lavender skin was flawless. She wore her teal hair to her knees in thin braids with imbued charms threaded through them to ward off all manner of Fae magic.

Her perfect face was fake. I knew the truth.

For centuries she’d been siphoning youthful life energy from human girls in order to maintain her beauty.

The real Bevgyah was likely a withered husk of a creature.

It wasn’t her true appearance that made her ugly, it was her heart.

I knew this better than most. After all, I’d been enslaved as her consort for centuries and had been her lover by choice before the Fae Wars.

I’d been a very different male then. Selfish, arrogant, power hungry.

Willing to manipulate for what I wanted.

I didn’t want her crown, but I wanted the power that came with it, and I was willing to do filthy things to obtain it.

I’d met my match in Bevgyah. We were two beautiful Fae locked in a game that she was far better at playing.

“My delicious Blackwarden.” Her voice scraped over my skin like shards of glass. “I do hope you’ve brought me an interesting pet.”

I tried to stand up straight but decided struggling in front of her was probably not the best idea, Instead I shifted my weight to look less like the post was holding me up.

“I haven’t made myself presentable for you, my queen.”

She didn’t seem to care. She turned toward me, eyes wandering over my shoulders.

Her cold fingers slipping beneath the collar of my shirt and trailed down my chest, her other hand snaking through my hair.

My skin crawled from her touch, the muscles in my neck tightening as I tried not to flinch away.

I’d endured her hands for centuries, but it never got any easier.

And I knew, if I showed distaste, she would only make things far more painful.

“I want you helpless.”

Fuck. She’d planned this. The guard that had helped me back to my room had likely informed her I wasn’t able to walk on my own. She hauled me toward the bed by the front of my shirt, and I could do nothing but go with her. I didn’t have the strength to pull away.

“You know I hate it when you’ve been away from me for so long,” she cooed with forced pouty lips.

She’d unclasped my pants before I could push her hands away. I tried to grasp at her wrists and failed as she ripped my shirt over my head.

“On the bed, Gatekeeper.”

“I’m exhausted.”

“Lucky for you, I don’t care.”

She would have what she wanted.

She slid a hand down my pants, nails raking across my sensitive skin.

I jerked away instinctively; muscles tense as I tried to slide onto the bed and further from her.

The weight of exhaustion made me slow. Too slow.

She caught the waistband of my pants and yanked them down my legs in one brutal motion.

I wasn’t given a choice.

I was never given a choice.

She slammed me onto my back, my head swimming.

As much as I hated her, as much as I wished I could die right then and there so I wouldn’t have to endure another moment of her, my body didn’t respond the same way my mind did.

She expected as much. She knew how to touch me, where to kiss me, how to coax me.

My only escape would be to imagine someone else’s hands as hers roamed over my body.

Soft, wavy brown hair brushing across my skin.

Alabaster fingers following the lines of my muscles.

“You’re perfection, but you know that already,” she crooned .

Her hungry fingers scraped across my skin as she straddled me. I sucked in a breath, my body pulled taut with dread, but it betrayed me the moment she sank down, taking me deep. An involuntary moan ripped from my throat, raw and bitter.

I hated her. Mother save me, I hated her. But even worse, I hated myself for how powerless I’d become. How powerless she’d made me. My hands curled into fists at my sides, every muscle rigid beneath her as she moved with relentless greed.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out the sight of her head thrown back; mouth open as she grunted with each rock of her hips. I needed to disappear. I tried to retreat into the quiet of my own mind, but her voice dragged me back every time she gasped my name.

She fucked me until she was satisfied and all I could do was lie there, used up and hollowed out.

“I’ve missed you, Keres,” she whispered in my ear, her hot breath on my neck sending goosebumps down my arms.

She didn’t dare use my name around anyone else. To them, I’d be her Gatekeeper, her Blackwarden. My given name held too much power here.

She left me naked, half hard, and too exhausted to move.

“You’ll be expected to escort me to the revel later.

Dress appropriately,” she said as her hungry eyes raked over my bare flesh.

She slipped back into her gown and straightened her hair.

“You’ll spend the evening at my side and maybe, if you’re a good little Gatekeeper, you can choose a maiden for us to enjoy together. ”

It was always the same. Sex, beauty, and power.

I knew what I looked like. It hadn’t been my choice to wear this face.

Nor had it been my choice to be born into the Blackwarden family, whose shadow magic was powerful enough to activate the portals.

To have a Blackwarden at your side had once been prestigious, but now there weren’t any others left.

I’d been the only one too weak to choose death for my family’s treasonous involvement in the Fae Wars .

But I’d been mistaken.

I should have chosen death, and I’d wished I had every day since. Eternity being fucked by a monster with a beautiful face and an evil heart was truly worse than the void of the beyond.

I usually felt empty after bringing a girl through the portal for Bevgyah to siphon.

But this time? I felt truly destroyed. I wanted to die.

It would be better than imagining Rosalin being sucked of her life before she was sent to the bed of some Dark Fae willing to pay Bevgyah’s exorbitant rates for the enjoyment of her harem.

I closed my eyes, another tear carving a path over my temple as I lay listless and broken.

This was my fault. This was my punishment, and I hated that I had to share it with Rosalin.

She’d done nothing but endure the hardships of a human life, to try and give her sister the life she had lost. She didn’t deserve this, and I didn’t deserve her.

Not after failing to imbue her portrait or to figure out how to break the curse.

No, I was truly worthless.

I lost myself to sorrowful darkness.