Chapter Twenty-five
Eva opened her eyes and locked gazes with the asshole who held her captive. She smiled, and low and behold, felt a spark of fire in her vision. She knew he’d seen it the moment the flicker of doubt crossed his features.
“Did you know, Arach, that Nomads can’t lie?” she asked softly, almost wickedly, because she was letting the strength of her conviction lace her words, and the new idea fueling her mind was like an injection of happy juice.
He didn’t say anything. But then, she didn’t expect him to. This was a new line of conversation, and one that he hadn’t begun. Hence, he wasn’t in control this time. But she was betting he did know Nomads couldn’t lie. The Entity couldn’t lie, after all. That was why he’d done whatever he’d done to Arach, making him powerful enough to claim a queen. That was why she was in his living room right now.
That proof was the beautiful aspect of the nightmare. Every dark cloud had a silver lining, it would seem.
“Every promise a Nomad makes must come to fruition,” she told him, and her smile broadened. “Arach…” she whispered conspiratorially, beckoning him closer.
He moved in. After all, what could she possibly do to him? She was tied up, and he held a wicked sharp knife. He drew close enough that she caught the faint scent of the tainted power that had made him whatever he was. But his eyes remained locked on hers.
“I have a secret to tell you,” she said.
“Do you now?” he whispered, equally quiet in their sudden closeness.
She nodded, her smile broadening into a grin. “My father was a Legendary, yes… but my mother was a Nomad.”
Arach blinked. A second flicker of that unmistakable doubt crossed over his handsome features. And she knew at once that he understood.
“Her blood runs through my veins, Arach. I am of their kind. I am a Nomad.” She gave him just a split second more to digest her words. Then she said, “And I promise you here and now….”
The world grew still, and she felt Arach’s fury flare like a bonfire before she’d even finished her sentence, before he even budged an inch. It was only them, eyes locked, knowledge passing so very clearly between them.
“…that I will never, ever agree to wed you, much less become your queen. Not now. Not tomorrow. Not ten years from now.” She showed him her teeth, and this time she bore fangs of her own, sharp and strong. “Never.”
Eva watched shadows move across the green of Arach’s eyes – and then her gaze slipped to his right hand, where his fingers clenched tightly around the hilt of the wicked blade he held. It was his voice that drew her attention back to his face.
“I see,” he said simply. “I suppose, then, that it’s time I come clean with you as well, Eva. Duplicity is not the only thing Nomads are incapable of. Did you know they also can’t kill one another?” He stepped forward, a single, slow step that echoed ominously in the room.
Now he was inches from her, and she was caught in a gaze that felt like a tidal pool. It was taking her down. “No matter what they do to each other,” he whispered, turning his head so his words brushed against her ear. A chill went through her. “No matter how vicious the blow or deep the pain. There will be no end.” He paused, and she felt him move against her, inhaling softly to take in the scent of her hair. He sighed, moved his lips to her ear again. “Death will not come.”
The blade entered her abdomen with swift, decisive fury, and buried itself to the hilt.
Eva’s eyes went wide. The feeling of the metal slicing through her skin, muscle, and organs was no more than a strange sensation at first, surprising and wrong. The pain came a few seconds later, and as it settled into her, Arach withdrew his dagger – and plunged it into her once more.
She cried out, a strangled and shocked sound, but Arach’s free hand fisted in her hair, yanking her head back to expose her throat.
The truth crashed into her like falling books from a tipped book stack. One after another, they struck her:
He was a Nomad.
The Entity had made him thus, changing him completely. The dragon Arach was long gone. That was why he’d taken her blood. He was a vampire. In this, his first incarnation as a Traveler, he had actually taken the form of one of Roman D’Angelo’s kind. And he would be a vampire until he somehow died and was reborn as some other powerful manifestation of dark magic.
He was like her. She couldn’t lie to him. And he couldn’t kill her. And now that she had poked the bear of his fury and spurned him completely, he meant to prove it to her.
By hurting her just as completely.
“You’re beginning to understand now, my beauty.” He pulled the dagger out again, and Eva’s legs gave out, placing all of her weight on her arms. The cuffs around her wrists bit in deep and cruel. She distantly felt her blood running down the length of her arms.
She heard something metal hit the floor, clanging loudly, but echoing down the tunnel that was becoming what remained of her consciousness. And then Arach’s hand was pressing cruelly over her new, fresh wounds. It whipped her back into wakefulness, ringing another pain-filled sound from the depths of her throat.
His hand moved, sliding none-too-gently across the damage he’d done to her to encircle her waist and lift her against him. Her blood pressed into his clothes, drenching them, and Arach’s teeth scraped in a threat against her throat. “But let me drive the point home for you.”
She saw stars behind her eyes when he thrust his fangs deeply into the side of her neck, piercing her jugular with a violence only pure, searing anger could birth. Eva at once felt her life’s blood rise to his demand and leave her body. Sickness coiled then roiled inside her. Once more, she began to fade.
And once more he brought her back, manipulating her body to the point of conscious pain to deny her any freedom from his punishment. She moaned softly, absolutely and pathetically unable to prevent it.
He laughed against her throat… and drank deeper.