Chapter 17

Iwasdrowning.Surrounded by water and unable to escape. Floating lost in a sea of my own helplessness and despair. A sea of weakness, where I was vulnerable and exposed, waiting for someone, anyone, to come along and finally tear into my soft underside and spill my guts. To finally end my suffering.

I had lived for centuries. I was tired. A powerful being reduced to a broken, overused toy.

"Peace," that liquid voice said again, spearing into my brain, soaking through my out-of-control aura and into my raw, overexposed skin.

I shivered. Cold. I was cold. I"d never been cold in my long, long life. I had been alone. I had been imprisoned in darkness, yearning for the sound of another voice, the touch of another living, breathing person"s hand—even if that touch was that of a captor set on using me physically and energetically until there was nothing left.

But cold was new.

"Peace," the voice said again, and I managed to swim up out of the waves of heavy emotion, to get my face above the surface enough to draw breath.

I snapped back into my body, back into awareness, shuddering violently in the embrace of my newest captor. "Fuck you," I hissed, drawing on my fire element only to have it fizzle out like a match in a rainstorm. "I won"t," I bit out, gnashing my teeth and lifting my hands to dig my elongated claws into the water weaver"s perfect white flesh. "I won"t submit to you. Kill me now. Because the moment you release me, you"re dead."

I pulled against the grip on my throat and the hand covering my eyes. My body bowed away from the taller being behind me, even as some traitorous thing deep inside me insisted that I relax, give in, lean back into the power behind me.

Mind tricks and manipulation. I wasn"t born yesterday.

"Let go of me," I twisted, still firmly trapped, my magic frustratingly out of reach. Unresponsive.

It was too much like being bound. Like being tied to the tiny metal lamp or the old musty pages of a witch"s grimoire. I opened my mouth to demand my freedom, but a sob escaped instead, raw and wild, like a wounded animal.

"It"s okay," the beautiful voice whispered against my hair. Maddening. I would gut them the moment I was free, revel in the hot spill of their guts across the pavers. I would—

"I have you. You cannot do harm here…"

I would rain down death. I would rend them limb from limb, set the corpse on fire, and dance in their ashes. I would—

"…even to yourself. I will not allow you to self-destruct."

What? No. That wasn"t…I wasn"t afraid of myself. Ridiculous.

The air burned as it flowed into my lungs. Like I couldn"t quite get enough of it. The irrational fear rose up that without enough oxygen my life"s flame would be snuffed out for good.

I thrashed. The hand covering my eyes lifted and moved lower, to band about my chest and hold me still. I struggled to lift my eyelids, but they were too heavy, held shut by magic stronger than my own.

The water weaver"s magic pressed in around us from all sides, like a weight against my aura, holding me together. Not just restraining me…containing me.

Another sob escaped and my body was wracked with the aftershocks, pain splintering through me like a physical thing, even though I knew it came from my mind.

From my own broken psyche.

Images flooded my mind. Snippets of memory that I thought I had long-since buried. I recalled every time I"d been imprisoned. Every time I"d been used as a bed slave or had my magical powers drained from me. I remembered yearning for touch after so long spent in my dark prison, only to have the witches who summoned me demand that I use my seductive powers to woo enemies and break them, or to service the witch or coven who summoned me.

I remembered a familiar pair of gray eyes looking down at me as I knelt in my spelled slave collar, my own blood pooled around my knees while an entire coven of witches writhed in pleasure, high on my powers. Magic that was dragged from me using blood magic and the bonds of slavery. I remembered how it burned. The power draw. The humiliation. The effort of reaching for my flames again and again with the futile hope that for once it would work and I could set them all on fire. Maybe I would burn along with them until we were all nothing more than ash.

Those gray eyes were so cold and haughty. So sure of their superiority over the cowering animal I had become. Oleander Lovell had the same beautiful gray eyes as her ancestor. And it made me want to vomit every time I looked at her.

It made me want to hurt her. It made me want to hurt myself. Set both of us on fire to purge the world of the Lovell taint that we both carried inside us. Her from her bloodline. Me from my time under their control.

"It wasn"t this witch who hurt you," the fluid voice whispered, slithering through me like a cool, sinuous snake. "This one isn"t your destruction. Perhaps she is your salvation?"

Fear skittered through me at the weaver"s words. A wave that consumed me, that nearly drowned me, blotting out all rational thought. "Salvation?" I choked out, even my voice sounding like I was drowning.

I would kill us both one day, myself and the Lovell bitch. Not because I wanted to. But because she awakened this fear inside me. This weakness. Because as hard as I tried to pretend otherwise…I wasn"t in control. I was a firebomb waiting to go off.

"Shhh…" the voice whispered. "So much resistance. It will devour you alive."

I sagged against the terrible being, all of the fight going out of me, making more of those stupid, human sobbing noises.

If I kept my eyes closed, I could pretend no one saw me. I could pretend I was alone once more in the darkness of my lamp prison, or between the pages of the cursed book. Where no one could see my weakness.

I cried until I felt completely wrung out. Empty.

Then, suddenly the magic lifted, and I could open my eyes again.

I yanked out of the water weaver"s grip, and they let me go, graceful hands trailing over my skin in a mockery of a soothing caress as I moved away.

"Do you have a death wish?" I snarled, putting space between us, then spinning to glare at the being who had dared mess with my mind. With my soul.

The ethereal beauty cocked their head, pale hair falling over one of their sparkling turquoise eyes as they searched my face for something I didn"t understand and didn"t want to understand. "Do you?"

I growled, flashing my fangs. "Don"t you ever fucking touch me again, you disgusting hunk of algae."

One corner of their stupid, perfect mouth lifted in a small half-smile, revealing one long, slender viper fang. "You"re welcome."

That voice flowed over me like a caress. I had no idea how the others could stand it, quite frankly. It made me feel like I was about to lose it and burst into pure flame. "I"ll murder you slowly," I promised.

But it was an empty threat and we both knew it. I had never encountered another being more powerful than me. Never. Until now. And the realization of just how much more powerful was staggering. It brought every single fight or flight instinct I possessed roaring to the surface.

The water weaver just shrugged and moved away to examine a stalk of purple flowers by the defunct old fountain. "You will not harm the girl," they said evenly, that voice as soft and devastating as always. "I will not allow it."

I huffed. "She"s mine. I"ll fucking break her in half if I feel like it. That"s what pets are for."

All that got me was another of those slight half smiles. "I will always stop you," they promised.

I whirled and stormed out of the garden. Smug bastard. I would find a way to eliminate them.

Because there was no way I could tolerate someone knowing all my fears. Even if the thought of having someone to control me was darkly seductive in its own way.

What if I really couldn"t hurt myself or the others? What if I could let myself go and know that at the end of the day the water weaver would always catch me before it went too far and I destroyed everything?

But that would require trust. Which was the one thing I no longer possessed. Especially trust in anyone who held any sort of power over me.

The desire rose up in me, stronger than ever before, to dominate, to hurt. To exorcise this darkness that seemed permanently woven into my soul.

I suppose we"d see if the water weaver lived up to their promise.