“You’re broken inside,” she hissed, frustration cracking through her manipulative veneer. “Mother says all dhampirs are. You’re all abominations caught between worlds. Your father doesn’t even claim you. How does it feel to be a royal bastard playing house with a worthless farm girl?”
“Is there a point to this charm offensive, or are you just warming up?” I yawned deliberately.
Her face flushed with anger. Her wrists twisted, testing her bonds. Definitely needed to prioritize that Hexenfänger.
“I have a deadly nightshade,” she suddenly sang, her voice taking on an eerie, childlike quality that raised the hair on my arms despite my best efforts. “So twisted does it grow with berries black as midnight and a skull as white as snow.”
I raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
“The vicar’s cocky son came to drink my tea,” she continued, swaying slightly. “He touched me without asking, now he’s buried ’neath a tree.”
Okay, that was genuinely disturbing, even by my standards, but it was also my opening. As she lost herself in her macabre littleditty, I reached out with my mind, extending tendrils of thought toward hers.
Slipping into someone’s mind is never the same experience twice. Some minds are organized like libraries, others like tangled gardens. Eluned’s mind? Pure chaos. A funhouse designed by a serial killer on acid. Memories didn’t flow chronologically, but seemed to spiral around emotional epicenters. Flashes of cruelty, moments of validation from Arabesque, jealousy toward her twin Amabel that burned so hot it was practically its own entity.
I pushed deeper, careful not to betray my presence as I flipped through her consciousness like pages in a particularly disturbing book.
“You think you’re so clever,” she was saying aloud, unaware of my mental invasion. “Mother warned us about you, about what the Cimmerians did to monsters, but Serafina has made you soft.”
“Uh-huh,” I muttered dismissively, most of my concentration focused on navigating the twisted corridors of her psyche.
There. A flash of Seri, curled up on a bedroom floor, her face a portrait of agony as Arabesque stood over her with a gleaming vial, catching silver strands of stolen magic. Eluned watching from the doorway, not with sympathy, but with envy. She’d wanted to be the one working the spell, not just observing. The memory tasted of bitterness and something else, a desperate hunger for approval.
I dug deeper. Arabesque discussing plans, but frustratingly vague ones. “The crown” mentioned repeatedly, but which crown? Vampire? Shifter? Fae? Frost Folk? Eluned herself didn’t know. She was just another pawn in her mother’s game, although she’d never admit that, even to herself.
While I rummaged through this toxic mental wasteland, Eluned continued her verbal assault, oblivious to my invasion.
“You’re the weakest link in your little threesome, aren’t you? The forgotten middle child. Casimir leads, Koa fights, and what do you do? Make jokes and get in the way?”
I barely registered her words, but I did find something interesting, a festering wound in her psyche. Uncertainty about her own parentage. Arabesque had told the twins different stories about their father over the years, each more grandiose than the last. A demon lord. A dark undead king. A powerful warlock.
But Eluned had overheard something years ago, a whispered conversation between Arabesque and one of her coven. Something about a “human mistake” and “trashy mortal blood.”
Oh, this was too perfect.
I withdrew slightly from her mind, focusing enough on the physical world to note she was still talking, her words growing more frantic as my lack of reaction unnerved her.
“—and when Mother takes what’s rightfully hers, you’ll be begging for mercy, bastard prince. She’ll keep your beloved as a battery until she’s used up, just like her father—”
“Luney, Luney, guess what?” I interrupted, voice lilting with mock excitement. “I know something! Somethingreallygood!” I leaned forward, making sure she was focused entirely on me. “Something about your father!”
Confusion crossed her face, then desperate curiosity. I’d laid the bait, and now she was practically vibrating with the need to know what I’d discovered. I pushed that need, amplified it with my telepathy until she couldn’t resist.
“What about him?” she finally asked, unable to resist.
“He washuman.” I let that sink in for a beat. “Not even a witch. Not a fae. Not a king. Just a man who looked at the twin monsters Arabesque had birthed him, saw a waste of his blood, and walked away.”
Her face froze for half a second before twisting in rage and denial.
“You’re lying!” she shrieked, the enchanted rope glowing as she struggled against it. “My father was a demon prince! Mother told us—”
“Mother lied,” I cut in smoothly. “Like she lies about everything. Your father was nobody. Just some guy Arabesque screwed and discarded. That’s why she’s so obsessed with bloodlines and power. She’s trying to scrub away the stain of her own mistakes.”
I had no idea if this was true, but I knew with absolute certainty it would devastate Eluned. Her entire identity was built on being special, superior, more magical than “worthless” Seri. But if Seri, a lunar witch born of a wolf shifter and sired by an earth witch, was actuallythriceas magical as Eluned?
Nuclear psychological warfare.
“Shut up!” she screamed, spittle flying from her lips. “You knownothing!”
