Page 98 of Mantle

“Never!” Ketheron roared.

Corvin snickered and crouched just outside the dome. “You do realize she’s the reason you’re suffering, don’t you?” He tilted his head, voice full of mock sympathy. “You imprinted on her and now it’s weakening the leash I have on you.” He jerked up his right sleeve, revealing a shimmering black and gold circle etched into his skin, two jagged lines cutting through it. It pulsed… then flickered. “This is compromised because of her. Because she made youfeel. Made you question your mission—what you were fucking created for in the first place.” His gaze turned cold. “And those manacles? They’ll keep tearing into you… for as long as you keep defying me.”

“Stop!” I cried out, pushing to my feet, and hating that I was staggering just to manage it. “This is madness! He doesn’t deserve this!”

“He was made for this!” Corvin roared back at me. “And you complicated it! You elicited humanity and a depth of sentience in him that was never supposed to be! Years of work and now I’ve had to go to great lengths to find workarounds to the damage that you’ve done.” He stormed up to me. “I’ll end his pain immediately if you reject his imprint on you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You tell him you don’t care about him, that he’s nothing but a thing to you, a monster, that he’s a broken god only worthy of being enslaved by me—somebody who knows well how to wield power, how to rewrite the supernatural world using said power.”

I looked at Ketheron, grimacing at his physical agony. His eyes were swimming with emotion, more expressive thanthey even were before. He hadn’t just imprinted on me, he’d somehow made me his anchor. His hope through all that he was enduring. If I cut that connection off, it would destroy him utterly. It would also dehumanize him completely. It would unleash an unstoppable threat upon the world and turn him into the very thing he was fighting so hard not to become.

“No,” I ground out. “I won’t forsake him. He deserves better than that.”

Despite everything, Ketheron smiled.

“Thank you… Ariana,” he groaned.

I jolted as a derisive laugh from Corvin sounded through the lab.

“Did you really think I’d put that decision in your hands? The abomination? The weak little cunt who ran from her own power? The fool who refused to act unilaterally and squandered her abilities and greatness instead?”

Ketheron snarled at the insults Corvin was leveling upon me.

Ignoring him, Corvin held the sword up and gazed at it reverentially. “This is now imbued with your blood and your power, mixed with Dark Fae magic that violates free will in the way that the spellcaster can determine very specifically. Seeing as though Ketheron is being held back by the bond he’s formed with you,thiswill work to sever that forcibly.”

“No. Do not fucking touch him with that thing!”

Ketheron roared and fought against his bindings with renewed vigor.

But it didn’t stop Corvin.

He breached the dome and approached Ketheron, spinning the sword in his hand again, getting off on Ketheron’s panicked reaction, him trying to twist away to no avail.

No.This was not happening.

I clenched my fists in the Celestial Suppression Manacles, glaring at the spikes digging into my flesh as they continued todeliver just enough of Ketheron’s stolen blood to try to weaken me, while not making me heave my guts up all over the place like last time.

It was actually frightening how well Corvin had calculated the dosage.

What he knew about me and my power.

He had access to the knowledge bestowed upon him from the Celestial Plane.

Butit was knowledge that they had about True Celestials who were tethered to it.

That wasn’t me.

So, while a lot happened to be the same, there were also things that set me apart.

And I’d been learning and examining those differences in a very intensive way with Cassius.

I’d been caught off guard before when Ketheron’s blood had infected me. I hadn’t been prepared, or had any idea how to handle it, how to save myself without joint effort from my loved ones.

That was then.

I pulled on my power, feeling a shitload of resistance and burning in my veins as I did, Ketheron’s blood fighting against my attempt, trying to nullify it, to snuff it out when it had barely sparked.

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