His tone was low, dangerous. The air in my lungs vanished as the predator inside him reared its head.
I slapped my hand over my mouth, throwing the virelthorn back before I lost the opportunity to do so again.
Vaeron surged forward, rough fingers wrapping around my wrist and yanking the vial free. His grip turned bruising as he held me, lifting the glass to the sky and seeking its contents.
“What did you take?” he snarled, attention ripping back to me. A wild darkness bloomed in his eyes as he gripped my jaw and forced my mouth open with brutal hands.
Adrenaline flooded my veins as I flashed into a long-ago vision, the past, present, and possible future braiding together until I didn’t know whether the glacial irises staring into mine were real.
I screamed, clawing at rough fabric, trying to rid myself of the monster holding me hostage.
On the fringes of my sight, one of the warriors barged up.The wagon dipped as he joined us in it, his bulk blotting out the sun. “What the fuck?”
“Hold her, she’s trying to kill herself,” Vaeron snapped, his fingers digging for the back of my throat.
He’d kissed me that morning like it meant something; now, he handled me like nothing more than a creature bred for culling.
I bit down with all my might. Hot, metallic tang flooded my mouth, and the Issaraeth jerked back, scraping more skin off his fingers in the process. “Fuck!”
The other male gripped my shoulders, pinning my arms at my sides. “I am not trying to kill myself!” I thrashed like a feral thing, fury choking every syllable.
The Issaraeth examined the wound I had given him. There wasn’t a flicker of care that I’d committed an act of violence in my conscience. With my mate, everything I’d once been drowned in a deluge.
When he looked at me again, all emotion was locked away behind a wall of glass. “What did you take?”
“Nothing,” I snapped, spitting out his blood. More dribbled down my chin, but I was helpless to swipe it away.
“Do not lie to me,” he hissed, his knees hitting the floor on either side of my thighs. With the warrior at my back and the Issaraeth at my front, I was utterly trapped. The two exchanged a glance before my mate returned his attention to me. “What was in here? It certainly wasn’t any potion I have given you.”
My magic surged, ready to aid me in flinging him off, then fell back, my head going fuzzy and world disorientating. I blinked, and the clouds parted for the briefest of moments.
I lifted my chin in defiance and shut out the strange, foreign sensation with its claws in my mind. “It does not concern you.” So much for our peace. The moment he suspected I was goingto kill myself, the kindness he had shown me disappeared completely.
Had the tenderness ever been true? Or had it been a method of control, of manipulation, like what I had tried to do to him?
A growl rumbled in his throat. He leaned closer, but instead of pressing his lips to mine, they curled back over his teeth. “Anything to do with you concerns me. Whether you like it or not.”
“Yes, because I am yourduty. You capture Seers and drag them back to your sister like a good dog.”
He jerked back like I’d slapped him. Rage and a hefty measure of hurt flooded our bond before turning off like a watertap. That icy coldness in his expression hardened into something that rolled a shiver of fear down my spine.
Then, the air in the forest gathered. The Issaraeth’s chest expanded.
My eyes widened, and I snatched for my magic, racing to plug my ears. A collar of white snapped around my neck and shoulders—the warrior preventing me from protecting myself. From securing my autonomy away from the mate who sought to steal it from me.
“TELL ME.” The Command broke through the barriers of my mind, leaving shattered shards of me in its wake. My spine locked as my mate’s magic wrapped my soul in a barbed net, pricking me until the pain stole my breath.
On the last of it, my confession fled. “I ate virelthorn leaves to suppress my visions.”
Truth spoken, the Issaraeth’s power loosened its grip. As did his soldier’s. A sob wracked my chest, and I slumped forward, wrapping my arms around myself. I refused to fracture in front of the males. But it was no use.
Neither spoke, the only sound around us my soft, jagged weeping.
“How long?” my mate rasped, his voice ragged as it always was after wielding his power on me.
Again.
“A long, long time,” I admitted, not looking up. Because what was the point in concealing the facts now that he knew I consumed it like it was my one true religion?
