“I won’t say a word,” he replied.
CHAPTERTWENTY-FOUR
Theo lay in his room, staring at the spiked ceiling. The only matter separating him from the Kelesian princess was a wall of carved rock. He allowed his hand to rest on the jagged barrier adjacent to his bed, his fingers tracing patterns as tiny specks began to fall like grains of sand.
He had been a savage to her. He had lost his temper—again. He had seen how she looked at him when he changed, like he was one of those murderous beasts.
Even pulling her from that water hadn’t changed it.
He had learned long ago, any amount of charitable acts wouldn’t change who he was. She was right to look at him the way she did—he was born a nightmare.
Theo hadn’t heard a sound from her tonight, not a moan of pain, not a rustle of movement. She had spent so much of her time within Elkron unconscious. Physically, she was lacking, but the glimpses of her mental strength were promising. He saw it in her eyes as she was bleeding on the floor. A memory that made his insides burn and stomach twist.
He had spoken so maliciously. Every time she asked for death, his blood turned to steaming coals, and he couldn’t help it. The thought of her leaving, the thought of her dying... it drove him mad. She begged for a way out, to be free from responsibility, free from risk. It was a concept he could never understand.
He should have protected her, should have run for her the second she sprinted down that tunnel. But that’s all anyone around her had ever done. Protected her, sheltered her, hindering what she could be—what sheshouldbe right now.
If that damned shield hadn’t cloaked her, Theo could have found her sooner, he could have helped her long ago. Instead they had feared her, locked her away, and now look at her.
She needed to learn to protect herself. She was not some fragile soul. She was a mighty weapon of godly descent. It was time she started acting like it.
When he had her pinned to the wall, writhing under his claws, he had attempted to use his own powers on her. Not to maim or kill, just to terrorize. He wasn’t proud of it, but there was too much at stake and she wasn’t cooperating. He had willed a small taste of his magic toward her.
It didn’t work. He had tried again, willing more magic to escape his hands, and still, there was nothing. It was like her body was a mirror, reflecting his sinister power right back into him—she was immune to it somehow. In all his life, his magic had never felt so... powerless. He had tried to identify the cause, smelling her for some sort of potion or enchantment.
There was nothing—only her.
Theo’s magic was something no one understood the limit of, not even him. It was ruthless, making his own company cower from him at times. He had the ability to inject pure terror into the hearts and minds of his enemies. With one touch, he could make their deepest fears come to life inside their heads, or force them to relive their darkest memories. That undiluted terror made trained soldiers shriek like children. Just a single touch, that’s all it took for him to introduce boundless horror into his enemies.
With Helaina, his touch didn’t do a damned thing. Oh, she’d been afraid of him. He smelled that sweet dread on her, he was sure of it. But it wasn’t the same fear that he had driven men mad with, the same terror that made even the most hideous of beasts claw out their own eyes or bite off their tongues in a psychotic frenzy.
His power couldn’t touch her.
Yet when Manos brought Lionel after she passed out, his healing magic didn’t meet a blockade. His power was welcomed within her.
Lionel had stopped the bleeding from her leg and closed the smaller wounds. The deeper punctures remained as Lionel’s assistants applied bandage after bandage, wrapping them impossibly tight to stop the hemorrhage.
Theo had come to the conclusion that Helaina’s abilities were manifesting, trying to sustain their host and prevent harm from coming to her.
Lionel could heal her.
Manos could read her mind without difficulty.
Callum could transport her.
Only his own insidious powers had been barred.
She couldn’t be harmed, but she could be helped by their magic.
He had noticed another cut on her, a vertical laceration from shoulder to elbow.
The pointed rocks must have split her skin when she fell.
Lionel sealed it with one final blinding glow of his palms. “She is very lucky. She was near death. I had to focus much of my energy on the blood loss. The leg is not whole yet. It will need time to mend,” the healer had said.
“How long until she can train?” Theo asked.
Lionel wore a stunned expression, furrowing his white eyebrows, a direct contrast to his dark skin. “It’s... hard to say. She’s still mortal, so the soreness will last a week, and that’s if she’s lucky.”
