15. Casimir

15

CASIMIR

A pprehension gripped me as the scholar reached out toward the Huntsman. The man had become something beyond cursed. Something touched by magic so foul, it could affect even creatures of smoke and shadow like Ruhl and myself.

Yet, if memory of my history books served, in Aneiran society his regiment’s original duty had been ceremonial at best. Their job was merely to protect the queen’s “innocence” by enabling her to participate in royal hunts, all without her ever needing to do such a supposedly masculine thing as hunting. Barely more than muscular surrogates, Huntsmen were never taken to war or valued for more than their skill in tracking game.

From the look of it, under the current queen that had changed. The Huntsmen were now tasked with doing her dirty work—including executing a princess accused of the queen’s own crimes.

Except this one had disobeyed. He’d spared Gwyneira.

And for that mercy, he’d paid dearly.

Snarling, the cursed Huntsman rocked again, still pinned by the demon’s foot yet trying to break free. That he was even still capable of moving at all was horrifying, given the extent of his injuries.

The witch who had destroyed my nation was a monster, yes, but even she hadn’t cursed a fatally wounded man to never die.

At least… not like this.

Pushing aside the irony of my own situation—seemingly immortal, never dying because of a vampire witch’s bite—I frowned. The gods had brought mercy to me, and that mercy’s name was Gwyneira.

In our own way, perhaps we could be a mercy for this man too.

Drawing a steadying breath, Byron began chanting in a low, barely audible voice. In only a moment, I felt the stirrings of his magic in the air.

Curiosity drew me a step closer to his work. His power was intriguing. Unquestionably Erenlian, yes, but closely aligned to the princess’s gifts as well. I’d felt the resonance of their abilities when I was aiding him in bringing her consciousness back from wherever that horrific spell had cast her. Indeed, I’d barely left his side during all those dreadful days when she lay unconscious, her body unable to be moved for fear of sending her once again into a seizure. So I’d had ample opportunity to study them both.

His determination and power throughout that terrible time had only increased my respect for him. If anyone could help this creature, I suspected it would be the scholar.

Continuing to whisper under his breath, Byron twisted his magic around the Huntsman, seeking an opening in the dark spellwork that gripped the burned man. In my mind’s eye, I tracked his progress. My years of training with monks in my home country had made my perception a matter of more than mere sight. The power wrapped around the Huntsman was like a scaly black ribbon, covering him from head to toe, impenetrable.

Or… almost.

Byron spotted the opening in the spell at the same moment I did. In my mind, I could see his gifts dive into the weak point like a needle made of light. The Huntsman lurched, and then his struggles against the demon pinning him to the ground ceased for a moment.

Satisfaction coiled inside me. Progress, then.

Never ceasing the spells he whispered under his breath, Byron watched the man intently. His eyes darted back and forth like he was reading a wealth of history from the ribbons of spellwork. What had been done, perhaps. What the man had suffered.

A low, rumbling growl started deep within the Huntsman’s chest.

Horror hit me. That wasn’t a growl.

That was laughter .

“Got… you.”

A woman’s voice emerged from the Huntsman’s burned throat, her tone filled with contempt and glee.

“The queen,” Byron gasped. He stumbled as suddenly the thread of his power jerked deeper into the Huntsman, as if someone held the other end of a rope and was using it to drag him forward.

Gwyneira started toward him. “Byron?” Dex caught her before she could come closer. “What’s happening?”

Digging in his heels, the scholar fought to keep from being pulled toward the Huntsman. “Can’t… Trap.”

He lurched forward another step. Lars grabbed him as if to hold him back.

But the pull on his magic only grew stronger, making both men fight to keep their feet.

And then the princess cried out. Stumbling, only Ozias’s grip on her kept her from crashing to her knees.

“What the fuck is this?” Clay demanded.

My eyes flew between them all, my sight and my magical perception alike racing to track what was happening.

And my blood went cold.

In my mind’s eye, the light of the princess’s magic glowed bright. When we first met, her power had been so deeply under wraps, I hadn’t even perceived it, and had she not worn her diamond pendant marking her as a witch, I may never have even known. But with all she’d suffered and survived, her power had only grown, until now it was as brilliant as winter frost in sunlight, shimmering and radiant but with a ghost of a dark shadow twisting through its core.

But that wasn’t what froze me.

A radiant beam of her power stretched out, and it wasn’t alone. Another light was with it, bright like a star and recognizable too.

The scholar. Their two gifts met like a bridge, merging together so intricately, I would swear they were as close as any two people could be in this life or any other. I wouldn’t know where to begin in separating them, if I even could.

But that was the problem.

The trap inside the Huntsman was pulling on Byron’s gifts, trying to drain his power. But because of this beautiful, breathtaking connection between them, it would soon grab hold of the princess too. Even if it didn’t, to drain one of them would be to drain the other.

And kill them both.

Instinct born of years of training propelled my power to reach out quickly. I couldn’t fully see the shape of the trap within the Huntsman. But I could see the black ribbons on its surface that were trying to consume Byron’s power and absorb it into that horrible spell.

The hell it would.

I strode forward, distantly noting Lars stumble when I pushed him aside so that I could grab Byron’s shoulder.

I would apologize for my rudeness later. Right now, there wasn’t a moment to waste.

My magic flowed through the scholar, burning with the light of my ancestors’ angelic gifts, bright and gold like the sun. But the spell fought back, snapping and snarling like a fanged snake, determined to inject its poison into my abilities as well.

Rage and fire suddenly surged toward me from one side, nearly startling me into ceding ground to the poisonous spell. Dark and deadly like a flow of lava from beneath the earth, it barreled toward my power. This wasn’t the spell.

It was the demon.

The antithesis of my own abilities.

Opening my eyes, I gasped out, “Demon, what are you?—”

The demon snarled, his fangs bared. He stood on the other side of Byron, one massive hand gripping the scholar’s opposite shoulder. On the ground, his tail still held the Huntsman down, while the vicious claw at the end of one wing pierced the cursed man’s shoulder, pinning him to the dirt.

“Focus, angel,” the demon snapped.

Holy gods.

I balked at taking orders from the creature, but it also had a point. Even now, the trap was gaining ground.

Closing my eyes, I scanned the battle before me. I’d just regained my abilities as a vampire, and part of my gifts was tied up in the fight I now faced. Coming close to the demon’s power could weaken me once again, doing untold damage to me and the others. But if I did nothing?—

A cool sensation swelled in my mind, coming from behind me. Frost and crystalline light, as radiant as a winter goddess but laced with shadow.

Gwyneira.

Her power flowed around me. The pain of the demon’s gifts abated as if a soothing balm now separated us, allowing us to act without harming each other.

How in the gods’ names was she doing this?

“Hurry,” the princess gasped.

Details were irrelevant.

I would never fail her.

My magic raced across the surface of the spell, seeking a way to dislodge its grip. Nearby, the demon growled, the sound hungry and savage like a predator intent on destroying its prey. “Mine. Don’t touch mine. ”

The threat reverberated through his magic. His power followed, tearing into the curse like his magic had claws.

The trap shuddered.

I took the opening.

Using my magic like a knife, I sliced at the spell, carving away piece after piece that tried to reach the princess and Byron. Over and over, the curse tried to fight me, but the demon’s power was there every time, shielding my flanks, burning it before it could strike at my back.

Time lost all meaning. My awareness of the others around me slowly faded away. There was only the curse, only the battle. Only the princess who was somehow aiding me even as this horrific magic tried to consume her and the scholar whole.

Again.

I could feel my fangs pressing into my chin, as long as they’d ever been. My heart had long ago stopped beating. No matter what I did, Gwyneira was always in danger. Always on a knife’s edge, a hair’s breadth from tipping into darkness. It was enough to drive one mad.

I’d relish the moment we removed the queen from this world and protected Gwyneira once and for all.

The trap faltered. Its grip on the Huntsman lay in tatters, the black ribbons of its presence nothing but fragments now. I didn’t relent, striking at each one, slicing at them while the demon’s magic burned every fragment left in my wake, until the last hung like a threadbare strip of aging fabric before my mind’s eye.

The queen’s cold, contemptuous snarl filtered through my mind. “You still won’t win.”

With a shriek, the last ribbon of the spell flew apart and evaporated like smoke dissipating in sunlight.

Leaving nothing behind.

I shuddered, withdrawing my power carefully, and opened my eyes. The princess stood nearby. Byron too, and both were alive. Across from me, the demon glared at the Huntsman like he was daring the spell to return.

A rattling gasp left the cursed man. Pain was etched deep on his burned face. The agony of the dying.

But gratitude mingled with the anguish in his eyes.

An ache throbbed through me, one that had nothing to do with the spell or the queen.

I knew that look only too well. The look of the dying, grateful to be released from their pain. I’d seen it on so many faces in my own country when I ended their suffering because it was the only thing I could do.

“Thank you,” the Huntsman whispered to the princess.

Gwyneira nodded. “Please. Where can we find our friend?”

His body shuddered again, his gaze moving away from her to turn toward something in a distance that only he could perceive. “Eliantra. There are mines hidden by magic in the hills south of the village, ten miles west of here.” A ragged breath made his chest shake. “Look for a dead tree. And then a pond. The entrance… is there.”

His eyes started to lose focus. “Forgive me, princess. I shouldn’t have left you to die.”

Gwyneira shook her head. “You left me to live, Huntsman . There’s nothing to forgive.”

Despite his pain, a smile drifted across his burned and ravaged face. “You will be a good queen.”

A rattling breath escaped his chest.

And then he went still.

I looked over at Gwyneira as the last of his heartbeats came to an end. Tears shone in her eyes, and my soul ached for her.

I knew this pain too.

Pushing to her feet, she turned away. “We should go.” Without another word, she walked away from everyone.

Her men glanced at one another, some unspoken communication passing between them. But I didn’t bother attempting to follow it.

Not when I suspected what she was telling herself right now.

With a brief nod to Ozias and Dex, I followed her. “Princess.”

“I’ll just be a moment.”

“I’d rather you weren’t.”

She stopped, but still she didn’t look toward me. “What?”

My mouth tightened as I came up beside her. “If I may?” I gestured to the rocks beside the road.

Confusion furrowed her brow, and frustration was there too, but she followed me all the same. Once the rocks were between us and the others, leaving only her mate and possibly the demon able to hear our words, I continued. “Might I ask what you are thinking now, princess?”

She looked away, not meeting my eyes. “We have more important things to worry about right now. Niko needs us to?—”

“Princess.”

She fell silent. “It doesn’t matter.”

My eyes narrowed. On many occasions, her stubbornness was arousing. But this was not one of them. Now, it only served to hurt her, and therefore I couldn’t let it continue. “Then allow me to guess. You blame yourself.”

“No, I—” She shook her head but didn’t continue.

Indeed.

“Do you know how many of my people I killed?” I asked her.

That drew her attention, making her look up at me in alarm.

“Hundreds. Possibly more. I stopped counting after a time because I couldn’t stand the pain of that knowledge any longer. But that’s how many of my friends and servants and citizens were turned or left to suffer by the witch. I tried all I could to save them, but even with all my magic and training, I couldn’t change a thing. Those who’d been turned were monsters, and their victims…” I shuddered even now at the memory of their cries. “They were clinging to life. Bleeding out on the city streets or left to die in macabre displays made by the vampires for sport—all with the blood of the turned smeared on their lips so that they would only rise again. In the end, granting them true death was the only mercy I could bestow.”

I reached out, taking her hand. “You feel that you did the wrong thing, letting him die. That perhaps you could have found something, done something, that would have changed his end. But waiting only would have prolonged his suffering, and the outcome would likely have been the same. So let me say, from one ruler to another… I understand. I’ve felt that too. But this was mercy, princess. Not murder. I saw that magic. I felt the viciousness of that spell. I know for a fact there was nothing else you could have done.”

Her eyes closed. Gently, I pulled her closer, wrapping my arms around her and comforting her in the agony I knew so well.

Moments slid past, and then she drew back, looking up at me. “You’re not breathing.”

“I’ll be fine.”

She was already pulling her hair aside to expose her beautiful neck.

I stilled her hand and shook my head. “I will not feed from you, princess. Not when you need all your strength to recover from all the ordeals you only recently survived.”

Her intent to argue was clear on her face, and I placed a finger to her lips. “I will feed after we rescue Niko. Trust that I have ample experience withstanding a little bit of hunger after thirty years on my own.”

She hesitated, but after a moment, she nodded. “I’ll hold you to that promise.”

My lip twitched. Gods, it was so easy to love her.

Footsteps came on the gravel beyond the rock shielding where we stood. From the sound, I suspected it was Ozias. Given how quietly he could move, he likely only made noise to give me some warning he was there.

It was a thoughtful gesture, one I could respect and appreciate.

“Little mate?” he murmured when he stepped around the large boulder.

With a smile to me, Gwyneira went to him. He drew her into his arms, his much larger body wrapping hers in a hug that couldn’t have been more gentle and careful than if she’d been made of glass.

She was so precious to us all.

“We need to go,” she said as if responding to some unspoken reminder. “I know.”

He nodded, saying nothing. Arms still around her, his eyes rose to me.

His head bowed in a solemn gesture of thanks. I nodded once in acknowledgement.

Keeping her close, Ozias turned and started back toward the others. I trailed after them, noting the new pile of earth and stone beside the road and that the Huntsman’s body was now gone.

Buried by Ozias’s gifts, I suspected, and thus placed out of view so that Gwyneira would no longer be confronted with what her stepmother had done.

As ever, I found myself grateful she had these men.

Some of them in new ways now.

I studied Byron as the others prepared to head out. Did he know his power had become so inextricably intertwined with Gwyneira’s? Did she? Their magic was like two trees that had grown together so closely, there was no way to separate them any longer.

A cold feeling swelled in my gut. That was the problem, though, wasn’t it? They really couldn’t be separated.

Not without killing one or both of them.

Byron started to turn as if feeling the pressure of my attention, and with vampiric speed, I looked away. It was just as well my heartbeat was still from hunger. It wouldn’t have helped anything for Gwyneira to hear it pound.

Because my beloved was a vampire. A precious, beautiful, intoxicating vampire unlike anyone I’d ever known. But that also meant she was immortal, or damn near as close to it as anything even vaguely living could be.

But Byron wasn’t. None of her giants were, not as far as I could tell. Before, that had been a source of far-off anguish I knew she’d feel some day. But now…

My cold horror only grew. I respected these men. Cared for them even. I would never willingly harm them.

But now everything had changed. And if anything happened to Byron in all the battles ahead of us, if a stray arrow or knife ended his life…

Gwyneira looked back at me, a question in her eyes like she’d seen something on my face that gave her pause. Drawing on every scrap of royal training I possessed, I buried my horror swiftly and offered back a smile.

It changed nothing. Her curious expression remained.

Desperate, I turned away. Gods help me, there was no choice. I had to wait for my moment and act with the same horrible determination I’d possessed when my nation fell and death was the only available version of mercy. I’d be as careful as I could be, of course. But I still had to find a way to break this bond between them, even if doing so might kill Byron.

Because if I didn’t, then the only woman I would ever love might die.