Haunted by the King of Death (26 page)

The secret tears in her eyes burned hotter as she tried to shed her phantom form but found she couldn’t, no matter how hard she fought it. Her limbs tingled each time, felt as if they would go solid again, but then the cold returned, driving back the warmth.

She fought her rising panic but fear that she would never turn back ran through her, too fierce to deny or control.

“Isla,” Grave whispered and advanced a step towards her, and then another.

As he drew closer, the tingling in her limbs returned, stronger this time, and she focused on them, willing her body to shift back from the phantom world and into the mortal one. Warmth teased her fingers and she felt her toes as she wriggled them, and the tears that burned in her eyes fell onto her cheeks as she looked down and saw her blue leathers and boots.

Grave reached for her.

She backed off a step.

He lowered his hand to his side and she wanted to say something to explain her actions, but she wasn’t sure what to say. She was afraid that if he touched her, it would sway her from the path she knew she needed to take, one that was going to hurt but that was necessary.

She had to save him.

It was clear to her now that she couldn’t fight the demon prince. Her phantom nature would devour her again, the drive to have her revenge allowing it to consume her as she sought enough power to defeat him.

In turn, the phantom world would devour Grave, and she wasn’t sure he would come back from it next time.

Gods. She looked into his blue eyes and fought to hold his gaze, to put the love that showed in his to memory so she could cherish it and would have the strength to do the right thing.

She loved him, with every drop of her blood, and that meant she had to do what she could to save him and give him the strength to protect his family from the demon prince. She would do that for him, and entrust him with her own vengeance, allowing him to carry it out for her.

She would stop them both from fading.

She had wanted to do things her sister’s way, but there wasn’t time. They had been close, intimate recently, but it hadn’t stopped her from turning phantom or Grave from turning incorporeal. Restoring their bond through intimacy was going to take too long.

The demon prince was closing in on his family, might have captured the one who had lived in the mansion already. She had to act now. No matter how much it hurt her.

“Isla,” Grave whispered, half plea and half warning.

She drifted to him, cupped both of his cheeks in her palms and pressed a soft kiss to his lips.

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled back when they slipped straight through her, a frown marring his handsome face as he looked at her ghostly form and then into her eyes.

“Do not,” he snapped but it was too late.

She glanced off into the forest and disappeared, reappearing in a clearing in the trees. Pain spread across her back, so fierce she couldn’t breathe, and the sound of his roar tore apart the night, sending birds from their roosts above her.

Isla looked back towards the house, towards Grave, aching to go to him.

He had to know she wanted nothing more than being with him, that she loved him, and so he had to know why she was doing this and that it wasn’t goodbye forever.

It was only goodbye for now.

She would return to him.

Once she had made things right.

Once she had saved him.

G
ods, Isla hoped she was doing the right thing.

She was still over two hundred metres from the black tower where it reached high into the dark grey sky of Hell and already her skin was crawling with insects. The thought of placing herself at the mercy of the mage turned her stomach. It had been churning since she had chosen this path, and she had been close to throwing up more than once.

The mage wanted one night with her.

She had been close to going through with it before. Her nerve wouldn’t fail her this time. One moment with the mage was a price she could pay in exchange for giving Grave the strength he needed to defeat the demon prince, and stop them both from fading. Once it was over, maybe they could find a way to move past what she had done. She hoped.

The thought of sleeping with any male other than Grave repulsed her, but she had spent her entire journey to the tower thinking of alternatives and nothing had come to her. They didn’t have time to strengthen their bond, so the only way of fixing their problem was the mage, and he had already set the price for his services.

It was only one night.

She blew out her breath as she neared the tower.

The gates creaked and began to ease open ahead of her.

Isla bravely walked forwards, her eyes fixed on the arched doorway of the tower as it was revealed to her. She could do this. Grave would forgive her.

She marched into the black tower and followed the twisted staircase upwards to the next floor. The sensation of insects under her skin grew stronger but she didn’t allow it to frighten her or shatter her resolve. She turned at the top of the steps and strode across the curving corridor and into the central circular room, her eyes never straying from the mage where he lounged on his throne, his pale skin a sickly hue under the light of the green crystals growing from the black stone walls.

“You have returned,” he drawled, the left corner of his mouth curving into a wicked smile and his green eyes raking over her. He sighed and skimmed the palm of his right hand down his bare chest. “As beautiful as ever. What do you want with me this time?”

“We had a deal,” she said, not allowing her rising nerves to show in her voice. He would detect them in her, and she was damned if she would give him any power over her.

She was a warrior.

A phantom.

If anything, he should be frightened of her.

His smile stretched wider but darkness shimmered in his eyes. “We did, but I recall someone breaking that deal.”

“It was not my choice to leave.” Hopefully he would buy that, because she hadn’t exactly fought Grave when he had saved her from the mage’s bedroom.

She sidled closer to the wretch as he perused her, his gaze lingering on her chest and then her hips before slowly returning to her face.

“I want to remain corporeal.” She dropped her voice to a whisper, ran her eyes over him in return and played up to his ego by teasing her lower lip with her teeth, as if she felt attracted to him. Wanted him. She wanted to retch. That was what she wanted.

He leaned back a little more, looked down at himself and then back at her, his green eyes gaining an interested edge. “We can work something out.”

“So the deal is still on?” Hope soared, despite what she would have to do to fulfil her side of it. “One night for one century?”

He shot that hope out of the sky with a slow shake of his head.

“I want more… you… bound to me.”

Her first instinct was to step back and tell him where to go, but she somehow managed to remain rooted to the spot, her face a mask of pleasantness as her insides churned with a dark need to lash out at him and shove him away.

“You want me bound to you?” She couldn’t quite bring herself to believe she had heard him right. “But I am bound to the vampire… so I cannot bind myself to you.”

The way he smiled at her again made her skin crawl and the look in his eyes said he didn’t view her bond with Grave as a problem.

He was going to break it to forge one of his own with her.

The thought of shattering her bond to Grave left her feeling as if it was shattering her heart right that minute, tearing it to pieces inside her chest. The mark on her back shimmered with heat and she clung to it, afraid of losing it and her connection to Grave.

She couldn’t do it.

“If I break the bond to the vampire, he will be free of you.”

Free of her?

“He will no longer be affected by our bond?” She couldn’t believe that, but gods, she wanted to and she needed to hear him tell her that she had heard him right.

He nodded.

Her heart tore her in two directions and she wavered between them, fighting to find the right path to take. If she left now, Grave would still be in danger of turning incorporeal when he fought the demon prince, or might fade before he could even slay the bastard to protect his family, leaving them in danger.

If she took the mage’s offer, she would no longer be bound to Grave and would instead be bound to the wretch in front of her, a slimy excuse for a male, but once she was bound to him and Grave was safe, she could take another path.

She could kill the mage.

It would kill her too, but she would gladly pay that price for Grave’s freedom.

Isla stared at the mage, dread pooling in her stomach, weighing her down. Gods, he repulsed her, and the thought of being bound to him was too much for her to bear. She couldn’t do it. She would find another way, another mage, one who would ask less of her in return for his services.

There had to be one somewhere in Hell or in the mortal realm.

But it would take too long, and Grave needed his strength now, needed the power to fight the demon prince, protecting his family and avenging hers.

Her heart leaped into her throat as the mage was suddenly right in front of her, filling her field of vision, and she didn’t have time to react before his hand was against her forehead. Fogginess streamed through every inch of her, gathering heaviest in her mind, and she blinked slowly as she wavered on her feet.

“I fear I must take the decision out of your hands, my sweet.” Those words wobbled in her mind, slippery elusive things that she struggled to grasp as darkness encroached.

Decision?

She slumped but strong arms caught her, lifted and cradled her.

She slipped into the black abyss.

Green light shimmered around her, whispered words chanted in a foreign tongue, and a strange sense of lightness ran through her body, as if she was floating.

Floating.

In the darkness of her mind, she saw ghostly transparent hands stretched outwards from her and lowered her gaze to find a flowing white dress dancing gently in a breeze she couldn’t feel.

“Isla,” a male voice whispered softly into her ear and tears stung her eyes but she wasn’t sure why she wanted to cry.

Cold swirled around her and she sighed as it caressed her skin, a comforting embrace that she had missed.

“Isla,” another male said and she frowned this time, a sense of danger and sickness running through her. Disgust. Hatred.

She flicked her eyes open and the owner of that voice loomed above her, his tousled long dark hair falling down around his cheeks and green eyes bright with desire.

“You are awake.” He smiled but she felt only cold, shards of ice that cut away at her insides, cleaving open the empty space behind her chest. “Good.”

He eased back. A wise move. Hunger rose inside her, fierce and demanding, and she wasn’t above using the mage to sate it. Mage.

She frowned and fought to remember what had been happening and where she was. Her eyes shifted from him and slowly took in the room, and as they ran over the tall rectangular windows that lined the curving black wall, revealing a strange fantasy world of sunshine and snow-capped mountains, the cold that had been spreading through her dropped ten degrees.

Mage. Tower. It was all coming back to her now.

Isla shot up into a sitting position and the mage practically leaped from the bed. Afraid of her?

The answer to that question became apparent when she looked down at herself. White dress. Pale limbs. She could see the green silk bedclothes through her body.

A phantom again.

Grave.

A sharp rush of tingles shot through her limbs and she reached for the connection to him, fearing her current phantom state would be affecting him too.

Nothing.

Those tingles became a thousand shards of ice that pricked her skin.

She looked to the mage on her right for the answer. He stood abruptly and moved back a step, distancing himself from her. He feared her now. With good reason. In this form, she was more powerful than he was, able to battle and overcome the damned spells and enchantments he had used on her before, even with the green crystals that grew from the walls between the windows and threaded through the black floor enhancing his powers.

Sickness brewed in her stomach. What had she done?

She tried the connection again, reaching for the mark on her back, but nothing happened.

Isla glared at the mage as he dared to move a step closer to her again and reached for her. She ducked away from his touch and drifted to the other side of the bed, keeping enough distance between them that he couldn’t touch her.

He sighed. “We had a deal… but I will give you some time to grow accustomed to it. There is no rush now you are no longer bound to the vampire.”

Hope sparked in her chest again and another path opened to her.

The mage had broken her bond to Grave, but hadn’t forced her into one with him while she had been unconscious and at his mercy. He had waited, no doubt wanting her awake so she could participate in whatever twisted ritual he had devised as their mating ceremony, but it had been a bad move on his part.

If she could escape now, she would escape a bond with him and she could go after the demon prince, could unleash Hell on the bastard without fear of affecting Grave.

Relief beat through her, so strong she felt giddy. Everything had fallen into place so perfectly. She was stronger as a phantom, and Grave would be stronger without his bond to her affecting him. Together they could fight the demon prince and defeat him.

“Of course,” the mage drawled and rocked on his heels, and she didn’t like the look on his face, the smug one that rankled her and made her feel she had missed something. Something terrible. Something he was going to take pleasure in revealing. He smiled slowly. “The vampire being free of your bond means that right about now he should be turning incorporeal.”

Her stomach dropped and cold swept through her. “No.”

It wasn’t possible. He had said that Grave would be free of her and no longer affected by their bond.