Page 191 of Hidden Kingdoms

I couldn’t afford not to.

It was a cruel, destructive energy that had tried to swallow me whole countless times. I had battled with it, my young body doing anything it could to force it out, but it was no use. We were intrinsically linked; there was no one without the other. The greater control I held with it, the more my tormentor used me to wield its powers in ways no child should have to endure.

What he failed to foresee in all his experiments was that the more the shadows bonded to me, the more it tore me from his control.

They bent tomywill, they obeyed my commands and over time—so fucking slowly I almost lost my sanity—they becamemine.

Eero had fled once Blair and I had escaped, knowing he had no way to keep me in check. To stop me from outing his deranged experiments, but I knew how to find him. Delivering myself to him went against every bone in my body, but I couldsee no other way, and it wouldn’t be like it was before. I wasn’t a child he could threaten and terrify.

I’d had time to think over the bargain I would make, knew he would probably come in his neat blue pants at the thought of having me back. The chance to have me willingly under his claws was something he would never pass up, which meant getting what I wanted would be frighteningly easy.

Elodie was a prize he would have done anything to collect, one he would have relished in pulling apart piece by piece until he’d spilled all her secrets onto the dirty floor of one of the rooms he kept especially for such occasions. The fact I had to include her in the bargain, that he would even know her name, made bile churn in my stomach, and a fresh wave of phantom pain twisted through my body.

Larkspur, Oleander, Veratrum.

My fingers itched for the feel of my daggers laying on the bedside table, but I held back for now.

There was no other way, no one else I knew of who had the ability to free her mind without destroying it in the process. Trusting him to do so went against every fibre in my being, but I couldn’t see any other path. I didn’t know anyone who could match him in his skills. If I did, there would be not a single fucking chance I would allow her into his presence.

He could never know the depths of my feelings for her. I didn’t want to imagine the danger that would put her in. I had to put on the greatest show of my life and convince him this was all for the good of the kingdom, because if I slipped, if he figured it out—there would be no way out for me.

Once he found out about her, it would only be the bonds of the bargain and her ties to Incaendium, and now Oraculum, that kept her safe from him.

For now.

Bastian wouldn’t let her go, and as much as she wanted to stay for the answers she was owed, part of me didn’t think she wanted to be sent away, either. I trusted Bastian would keep her safe despite the pent-up anger he directed her way.

For years we had been trying to save the kingdom,to save all the kingdoms, coming across dead end after dead end.

Time was running out as we failed, more people went missing, more lives were destroyed. Bastian didn’t believe she was the answer, but I did. There had been something about her that pulled me in, and it wasn’t a conscious decision. It was a part of me I had no control over. It was how I had found myself outside her room that first night, something had been leading me down those halls. Why else would I have been wandering down the disused servants’ halls?

I don’t suppose it mattered much once I was gone, but I could do this for her.

For Bastian and the kingdoms and the broken people who lived in fear.

If the key to saving them all was behind getting Elodie’s memories back, then it was worth what was coming. Despite the dread that settled inside me like a dead weight, ready to rob me of everything I had built after crawling my way free from his bonds once before.

I threw my head back into the headboard, as the sharp sting of wire slicing into my thighs added itself to the list of agony already bearing down on me. I tried to push it away, to forget that first time when I had screamed in terror as I saw my skin split apart. Throat raw and broken as I suffered in a dark room where no one could hear them anyway.

He always put me back together in the end, after I’d suffered for whatever length of time he deemed necessary.

Until the shadows had begun to do it for him.

Biting down on my lip, I relished the small tear still there from Elodie’s teeth; this was the pain I liked. As Fae, I healed quick—quicker if I wished to—but I had been keeping this one open, pulling at the edges when it threatened to knit itself back together. The flare of pain wasn’t like the others, and as the tang of blood met my tongue, the thought of her was enough to chase all the others away.

Running my thumb across the new edition on my knuckle, a ring I had taken from a box filled with them when she’d left the room, a barely perceptible thread of energy brushed across my skin. I was content with even the smallest connection to her.

I knew there was no point in waiting for a new day, slipping away with the dark was better, so I rose from the dream-tossed sheets and dressed without much thought, taking with me only what I needed. My silver daggers and the underwear I had stolen from Elodie’s drawer.

Was it bad I’d sneaked a few?

I dipped my hand into my pocket, fingers stroking the lace as soft as her skin had been and found I couldn’t give a fuck one way or the other.

I’d considered leaving a note for Bas but thought better of it. There was no real way to write ‘I’ve gone back to the man who tortured me as a child to try and help the girl you hate get her memories back.’

He would find out soon enough.

And hate me for it.

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