?“Why,” I demand.
?Pausing near another column shrouded in shadows, he looks back and his ice-chip eyes spark with flecks of silver.
?“Because I told you to.” Nothing about him fluctuates.
?His aura does not spike, his magic does not rage, his true form does not try to take over his body. But my soul wishes to heed, nonetheless. His primal nature more dominant that mine. More dominant than almost Varian’s.
?It makes me. . . nervous.
?Then he tilts his head and it disappears. “It’s in her best interest. She needs it, because I’m suspecting something, and if I am correct in my assumption then what I’m doing with her will no longer work for what she needs to help her in the end.”
?For some reason I remember Callahan’s question at the forefront of my mind from earlier in the night.
?Would you hurt Mavyn physically if she gave you consent and it meant it helped her in the end?
?This is a puzzle I can’t currently solve. A game of chess already in play but I did not begin it with all the pieces already on the board.
?“She also,” he adds, “wants you to be her true first. Not that she’ll admit it, but she’s had feelings for you from before when your bone witch started talking about you two to each other. I can see what part of her soul wants.”
?Then he’s gone and I’m left in disarray.
?What the fuck am I supposed to do with that information?
?I scoff at his ghost and fist my hands. She couldn’t possibly still want that. I tried to kill her without a second thought before we had actually even met. Then after I had tried doing as she wished. I believed she was nothing, but part of me could never quite erase her from my mind.
?Still, I hated her because she was a vampire and therefore considered weak. Even when she faced us at every confrontation, rolled her eyes at us at every battle. I hated her for the way she seemed to dismiss everyone and for how she seemed to care about nothing. I hated her for how much she made me think about her. I hated her for how much I wanted her to submit to me.
?Then I had seen her in a state where I would have believed Esmirra’s description of her.
?Hands positioned before her, bloodred aura surrounding her, and a voice that calmed the monsters within the darkness of me.
?I had prayed for the first time to gods who have only ever been silent. Begging them that she was it. She was who Esmirra described. She was my Mavyllora.
?There was a moment right after she opened her eyes. She had lifted her lids and her lashes fluttered and I was the first thing she saw. I pleaded then. Waiting for my soul to recognize her and for fate to click. Those milliseconds felt like eternity, and when nothing happened I hated the gods for always being silent.
?But all she saw in that moment was hatred for her. And when she burned down my rooms my hatred – not for her but for circumstance – renewed because I didn’t care about my belongings or the relics or those ancient books. I cared about the letters Esmirra would deliver from a girl with pale pink eyes.
?I hadn’t realized it before the first attack from the rebels, but my hated for her shifted. I no longer hated her because she was a vampire – even though I knew she couldn’t be one after that attack – but because she wasn’t mine.
?Shadows making out her body in tones of dark gray with those burning eyes. She had felt like a kind of power you would worship. Ancient divinity. A god you paid to in blood, not anything as frivolous as flowers or wine.
?Then, I hated that she let everyone look down on her when she was anything butnothing, but I stopped hatedher.
?Yet, all she saw was hatred itself and directed at her.
?So how could she still want me?
?I deserve her hatred. Not her trust in being the first male she consents to be with. Especially when she has all the trauma of her past. She explicitly told us the details of what that fucking devil did.
?You can’t even say it’s taking her virginity because that was already taken when she was a child.
?I strain to keep control over my blood as I can imagine her in that position. Her small child’s body under his. I’m tall at six foot six and tower over her nearly fully matured body, but Darian’s father – who is twin in physical appearance – is seven feet tall.
?I don’t think I would have ever been able to survive anything she went through.
?She can’t want me. Whether it’s consciously or not.
?I inhale and hold until my lungs burn before slowly exhaling. Then I turn back towards the poison drop and cont –
