Page 129 of Black Sea

Her brows drew together in barely contained anger. “What else?”

“ Everything, Nauriel,” I said in a sinister and emphatic and brimming-with-pride tone. I took a step toward her. “I invoked the storm to prompt you to protect me.” Another step. “Commanded the tides to get us to the archipelago.”

Nauriel didn’t move, her gaze dominated by mine. “You wanted to stay there. With me,” she shot back in a breathless rage.

I shortened the distance between us a bit more. “One of my many lies to get you closer.”

A mask of wrath and shame settled on her face. “So even our capture by pirates was your doing?”

The scent of her smooth skin forced its way into my nostrils, challenging my self-control. “I had to take you beyond the borders of the Lands of the East.”

Her memory recalled my hands running over her body in the tub of the thermal baths. “So that I didn’t feel what you had in mind to do to me.”

“So that you were vulnerable,” I corrected her, loading the last word with perfidy. I began to circle her, staying so close that I kept brushing against her. “So that I was your only point of reference in a world you didn’t understand.” I stopped behind her; she was so small compared to me that I could shatter her skull with one hand. “So that you had the illusion that we were equal.” She flinched as I ran my black fingers along the curve of her slender neck and then into her silky hair at her nape. “Oh, and how you let yourself be fooled by everything that was happening around you at my hands, Nauriel.” I slightly pulled her hair, making her shiver as I leaned down to whisper in her ear. “By everything you were told . . .”

I calmly withdrew my hand and repositioned myself before her, even more composed, as her brain connected the dots.

“Roxior,” she gasped, appalled. “When he offered me a life in Rubra with you . . . Those weren’t his words.” She pursed her lips in indignation. “They were yours.”

I grinned cruelly at the memory of how she had truly considered starting a family with me in the Red City. “Even your unjustified jealousy only increased my power over you.”

“What do you mean, unjustified?” she hissed.

“We are mates, Nauriel. Do you really think I can fuck anyone else besides you?” My eyes were drawn to the front slit I had created on her skirt, and my hand began to itch at the urge to slide between her thighs. “When a Master or Mistress asked of me, I just had to cast a spell to convince them they had me in their bed. Exactly what I’ve done with the wives of the various Kings of Men I’ve played over the past nine centuries, making them believe they were pregnant and raising their child until I decided to perish as ruler, take the heir to the throne’s form, and start all over again.”

Nauriel was so bewildered that her breathing grew uneven. “You’ve manipulated everything from the beginning. You’ve manipulated me,” she said, horror-stricken, stepping back as her mind replayed every moment, even by merely stroking her finger with mine, I had affected her actions and choices. “Every feeling of mine, every emotion of mine . . .”

“And all the while,” I replied, my voice steeped in malice, following her so I would not let her put distance between us, “you looked at me as if I were your god and believed me.”

“I trusted you,” she growled, her voice trembling with all her excruciating suffering. “And you betrayed me.”

On impulse, I grabbed her jaw with one hand. “I destroyed you.”

Just like I was.

Angered by that unexpected and unwelcome thought, I focused on the elf’s mouth, tracing her lower lip with my thumb as I remembered how much she’d loved it when I sucked it between my teeth. “And only I can put back together every single piece I’ve taken,” I added in a whisper brimming with dark longing.

I let her slap my hand away with a disgusted face. “Why deceive me? Why not kidnap me and force me to give you what you want?”

“Oh, I could have.” I looked down at her with a mocking half-smile. “But watching you slowly fall in love with me was really fun.” My gaze roamed over her chest, which was rising and falling at an ever-faster rhythm. “I don’t think torturing you would have given me the same pleasure.”

Her face crumpled with rage. “Then let me tell you one thing . . .”

I knew what she was about to do even before the idea had fully taken shape in her mind, but I didn’t bother stopping her.

“You will regret not choosing to torture me,” she declared in a deadly tone.

Then, using her elven speed, she rushed to the desk against the wall and brandished the stiletto over a pile of blank scrolls. A heartbeat later, the cold blade was at my jugular.

Still, the skin did not tear.

Her lips peeled back from her teeth in a snarl, her arm shaking. “Stop using your power and face me like a true warrior!”

“I’m not doing anything,” I said, visibly surprised. I probed the desperation sailing full sail in her eyes. “It’s you who can’t kill me.” She started to shake her head, so I pressed on, my tone thick with malice. “And you know why? Because you are mine.” My roots had dug too deep for her to pull them out with her hatred. “And apparently,” I added with a smile both perverse and ecstatic, “so is your will.”

Shocked and nauseated, the elf stared at the stiletto pressing against my throat, not a single microscopic vermilion drop dripping. Little by little, as tears rolled down her cheeks, fury seized her. Lightning-fast, she switched the hand holding the weapon and, with a desperate cry, aimed it at my heart.

Unimpressed, I raised one hand to block the thin blade, which pierced through bone, flesh, ligaments, and nerves.