Page 43 of Blackwarden

Rosalin

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The name he used wrapped around me and squeezed, like the most glorious embrace I’d ever been blessed with. This was my name.

But how had he known it?

He took a step back, the muscles in his neck tightening.

There was something so familiar about the way he looked at me, a desperate ache in his expression.

I knew him. I had to have known him before coming here, but pulling the memories forward was.

..painful. Searing white light lanced behind my eyes as I tried desperately to remember, but I couldn’t push through the agony.

He glanced over his shoulder at the door before grabbing a silk robe off the back of a chair and holding it open for me.

“I need to get you out of here.”

I slipped my arms into the sleeves and wrapped the fabric tight around my nakedness.

Before I was able to do anything else, he lifted me back into his arms and carried me from the room.

I pressed my face against his neck, trying to hide from the world, from this place, from everything.

I wasn’t sure I’d survive the memories of Bevgyah’s hands, the ropes she’d tied me into position with.

The way her mouth felt on my body. Instead, I focused on the way he kissed the top of my head, how warm his skin was against mine, his familiar scent.

I knew as soon as Bevgyah found out he’d taken me down from the shackles, we’d both be in trouble.

I shouldn’t have touched him. I shouldn’t have looked at him.

I definitely shouldn’t have kissed him. And I shouldn’t have been in his arms at that very moment.

He ducked into his own suite and set me down on the edge of his bed, glancing around the space with wild eyes.

“I don’t know where to take you.” He ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it wild around his horns and over his shoulders.

I tried to sit up straight, but my whole body ached, and I slumped over, losing my fight against the pain. He was there in an instant, warm hands helping me lay down at the foot of his bed where I curled in on myself. A moment later he was covering me with a blanket.

“I have to get you out of the Unseelie Court.”

I don’t know when I started, but I was crying again, squeezing my knees to my chest. I just wanted to die. It seemed so much easier than this life I was living, that I didn’t seem to have any other escape from.

The bed moved, and then the blanket before he tucked himself against me.

I was too tired and broken to push him away, and even if I could, I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

If there was one person in this place that I wanted near me, it was him, but I still couldn’t understand why.

What was it about him that was so comforting? So familiar?

“I failed to protect you.” His voice was soft beside my ear, smoothing over the rough shards of my nerves. “I’m sorry.” His voice caught with anguish.

I turned toward him, not realizing how close my face would be to his. I swallowed hard as I gazed into his silver eyes, desperate to ignore the need boiling inside me to close the distance between our lips .

“Why are you helping me? She’ll punish you again. Why would you do it knowing that?” I took a shuddering breath, squeezing my eyes shut to focus my thoughts. “She’ll hurt you. Why does she hurt you?”

His fingers slipped through my hair. I craved his touch, pressing my face against the palm of his hand. I felt like I wasn’t close enough to him as I turned and wrapped my arms around his chest and nuzzled into his neck.

“I need you to remember,” he whispered into my hair. “Because I can’t...”

He tightened around me, and I glanced up at him. His face was pinched with pain, his breath shallow. I pushed back; fearful I’d hurt him. After an agonizing moment, he pulled himself up, leaving me cold where he’d just been lying beside me.

“I won’t be able to go with you,” he said as he started looking for something in his wardrobe. “It’s the only way. I’ll have someone else take you away from here.”

As much as I wanted to stay wrapped in a blanket at the foot of his bed, I struggled to my feet and stumbled toward him. I didn’t make it far before he turned to catch me from falling over my own clumsy feet. He drew me against him, tucking my head under his chin, strong arms wrapping around me.

“I’m sorry I don’t remember,” I said with a quiver in my voice.

“It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault. Please. It’s my—” He stiffened and stepped back from me. “Fuck.” His eyes went wide. “She’s here.”

The hair rose on the back of my neck as he pushed me toward the door that led into his bathroom. Once inside, he clutched both my shoulders, glaring at me with glowing silver eyes.

“I need you to stay in here. Please. No matter what I say or what she does.” He was turning away before I could protest.

I was about to push out of his bathroom after him when Bevgyah barged in, and I had a dreadful view of her fury from the bathroom door left ajar.

It made me burn with anger the way she treated him.

Really, the way she treated all of her “precious pets” as objects with which she could do whatever she wished.

I clutched the doorknob with more force than I’d intended as she struck him across the face, throwing his head to the side.

“Where is she?” she shrieked. “Where have you taken her?”

Bevgyah’s eyes were wild as she looked around his room, holding on the blanket at the foot of his bed a little longer than I liked.

“Who are you looking—”

She struck him again.

“You know who, Blackwarden.”

“What makes you think I’d hide her from you?” His voice was so calm. Far calmer than it had any right to be. I don’t know how he managed to keep his tone so even with the way Bevgyah stepped closer to him, digging her sharp fingernails into his hair and yanking his face toward hers.

“You can try to weave around my questions, but I know your ways.” She kissed him before she slapped him again. “Try to protect her all you want. You will fail. And when I find her, I will destroy every scrap of her soul.”

Why did she treat him this way? What had he done to deserve this?

“You knew what you did when you marked her. You happily condemned her.”

A shiver writhed down my spine as my fingers reached for the mark at the base of my neck, the memory of Bevgyah’s rising anger when she’d noticed it.

“You knew what you were doing,” Bevgyah sneered as she stepped closer. “Beg me for her life on your knees, Blackwarden.”

I struggled to watch. It was the revel all over again. And again, there was nothing I could do but watch her hurt him. I was helpless. I covered my mouth to hold my anguish inside, searching half memories and foggy thoughts to find something that could save him .

He’d told me to remember. Remember what? There was nothing in my mind but fragments of another life and terror of this one.

He kneeled before Bevgyah, defeated, his arms limp at his sides as she yanked his face toward her by his horns. Why didn’t he do anything to stop her? He should have been strong enough to fight back, but he didn’t.

His wings sagged behind him revealing tight toned muscles and.

..from this angle I could see what looked like silver markings that snaked around where his wings met his shoulder blades.

I knew those tattoos. I’d seen them before.

I knew I’d seen them before. Delicate serpentine dragons that danced down his spine.

A piercing headache flashed behind my eyes, and I squeezed them shut.

So many things that were only half there, but I needed to remember.

“Have you lost your will to live?”

“I haven’t had it for quite some time, I assure you.”

Bevgyah leaned down closer to his ear. “I plan to make her suffer, bleed, and die before you for this,” she said with a breathy voice. “I’ll make her beg for death before I’m finished with her.”

He didn’t move, a beautiful black statue that came with a flash of a memory. Serpents on either side of stone steps. I racked my brain. There had to be something there. Something important that I could remember. The foggy edges of a place, black walls and golden light. A delicious green apple.

“Has life been so horrible at my side, Blackwarden?”

He didn’t answer, and I suspected it was because whatever he’d say would have been unfavorable. True, but definitely not what the queen wanted to hear.

“I’ve tried so hard to tame your arrogant heart. Perhaps this hasn’t been an appropriate punishment?”

Arrogant heart... There was a smirking face, beautiful, with dark eyes and pale skin and black horns. A hand reaching to take mine.

“Why is it you never do as I ask?” she spat .

“I’ve done your bidding for five hundred years, Bevgyah. Perhaps you’ve forgotten.”

Five hundred years? He’d been her prisoner, her consort for five hundred years ? This was how he managed to stay so calm. As horrifying as it was to think, he was used to her torture.

“I forget nothing. That’s why you’re here!” she said.

“There’s one thing you’ve forgotten, Bevgyah.” His voice held a silky tone; it curled around me and pulled my hand to the doorknob again.

I knew that voice. There were faces. So many faces in golden frames. A man sitting across from me at a table. Two delicate black glass egg cups in front of him.

“You gave me a choice, death or to submit as your consort, but after five hundred years, I can choose differently.”

Bevgyah didn’t move.

The air seemed to freeze in the room. What was he saying?

“You would choose death now? When you’re so close to having your pathetic human lover?”

“I would choose death over spending another day chained to you .”

Thick silence clung to everything as his words settled into my bones.

The sound of a blade being pulled from a sheath scraped across my consciousness as Bevgyah’s lips curled into a snarl.

She would kill him.

And I would watch him die.

He took a sharp breath as she pressed a dagger to his throat.

“I should kill you. All the hardship you’ve caused me. Your traitorous heart, your unfaithfulness. You thought you could outwit me, could fool me into stealing my crown.” She shook her head slowly. “I should have killed you long ago, you wretched beautiful beast.”

“Then do us both the favor,” he said, his voice even and fearless.

I channeled his bravery. If he could be fearless in the face of death, then I could too .

I stepped from the bathroom.

Bevgyah’s eyes snapped to mine, a fury so thick burning in them my knees felt weak. A wicked smile crept across her flawless face.

“I knew you’d found your little plaything,” Bevgyah said as she looked back down at him, pressing the blade harder against his throat, a dark trail of blood running over his Adam’s apple.

“Please, don’t hurt him,” I begged, but words weren’t going to save him.

“I can do whatever I want with him,” she said as she took a fist full of his hair with her other hand and jerked his head, the dagger slicing into his skin a little deeper. “He’s mine, and he will always be mine.”

“I’ve asked for death, Bevgyah,” he said with a deep contempt staining his words, leaning into the blade at his throat. “Kill me.”

“Keres, no!” The words slipped from my lips as I took another step closer.

His name seeped through me, hot and perfect, and with it my memories came flooding back all at once with blinding, painful ferocity.

The Gatehouse with its dark hallways. Volunteering in place of my sister.

Renee. Keres, the stubborn, gorgeous Dark Fae.

The frustrating brazier outside my suite.

The ever-changing mural. His soft, decadent lips.

His boring breakfast of two eggs and toast. The book of children’s fairy tales.

The delicious weight of his body. His laugh.

A green apple. His silky soft skin beneath my fingers.

The surprise in his eyes when I’d asked a question he knew he couldn’t answer.

The single tear that had slipped down his cheek before he’d brought me through the portal.

Keres.

My head felt as though it would split in half, my knees trembling beneath me.

I’d spent eight days with him. Eight maddening days.

They had been both the most terrifying and the most amazing days of my life.

I spent those eight days breaking down his walls to find a very different Keres than the one I’d first met.

Perhaps it had all happened too fast, but standing here, watching Bevgyah hold a knife to his throat. ..

I remembered everything.

“I love you, Keres,” I whispered through the pain in my skull.

The room went dreadfully still.

Like melting ice, Bevgyah slowly shifted back from him, taking the dagger with her. She shook against whatever force it was that held her.

“What are you doing?” she said with a shrill voice. “You can’t use your shadows on me! I own them! They’re mine! You are mine!”

Keres rose from his knees, wings spreading wide like a magnificent, midnight dragon.

His hands were fists at his sides. I risked stepping closer as Bevgyah fought against whatever invisible force held her in place.

But it wasn’t invisible. Shadows crept around her legs and snaked over her skin to wrap around her wrists and neck.

They pooled between her and Keres, thick like muddy water—the same shadows she’d used to restrain him at the last revel.

Keres took a smooth step forward and ripped the dagger from her hand as if she’d been turned into stone.

“May this thaw your fucking cold, dead heart, Hag.”

And he plunged it into her chest.