Page 167 of Bedeviled

Eislyn steps in close, liquid dripping down her jaw, and she slaps my face.

My head whips to the side, though I hardly feel the sting of contact over the continuous pain in my shoulders. And as I lean my head against my strung-up bicep I begin to laugh.

Eislyn is no more than a power-hungry fairy with a brittle fucking ego. What a doomed, foolish combo. She’ll make a mistake soon enough. Then I will have my vengeance.

I continue to laugh as the fairy moves around to my back. I can no longer see her, but I hear the sound of a chair being dragged over.

It creaks as Eislyn steps onto it. Then her hand finds my hair and none too gently she jerks my head back, until I’m staring up at the ceiling.

It’s only then, as I watch her lift that vial to my lips again that I realize how well and truly fucked I am. In this position, any liquid poured into my mouth will go straight down.

I jerk my body back, but the chains shiver and do little else. I’m far too tightly bound for any real leverage.

“I vow to you,” Eislyn says as I try unsuccessfully to wrestle away from her grip, “I can do this all night. I have bottles more of this that I can feed you if this doesn’t take. But go ahead and make it hard on yourself.” The glass lip of the bottle touches my mouth. “In fact, I will be honest, my king,” she says, bringing her face in close to my ear. “I enjoy watching you squirm.”

She dumps the entirety of the vial into my mouth.

I choke on the drink, and fight though I may, some of it slides down my throat.

“That’s it,” Eislyn coaxes. Her hand moves to my neck and she strokes it as though helping the liquid down, and I vividly imagine peeling her skin from her still living flesh. All I can do, however, is fucking imagine, because I am as helpless as a babe.

I sense the exact moment the serum takes hold. I feel it like a spark alighting on tinder. Whatever magic lay within that potion, it sparks again and again inside me, potent and uncomfortable.

Eislyn’s hands slip from my throat and hair. She steps off her chair and comes around to my front as I roll my neck, her gaze assessing.

“How do you feel?” she asks.

Vaguely ill.

The potion is still sparking in a dozen different places in my body, and it’s making my trapped magic churn in the most uncomfortable way.

I can feel some of the liquid sliding down my chin and neck. I level her with a look. “Angry.”

She ignores the comment and instead scans me over.

“Now that you’ve poisoned me,” I say, “are you going to let me down?”

Eislyn scoffs. “I already told you, I didn’t poison you. I gave you an elixir, a powerful, coveted one.”

Funny, I feel none of the power she’s promising. In fact, it has been many, many years since anyone and anything has made me feel this powerless.

“Don’t pout, my king,” she says, assessing me. “It is so very unlike you.”

“You don’t know who I am,” I say back. Not an accusation. Merely the truth.

“Oh, but I do. I all but created you.”

“Funny, I have different memories of the people who birthed and raised me.”

She shakes her head. “Who do you think coordinated the marriages between your ancestors? Two hundred years I spent arranging powerful spouses for your lineage.

“So you bred my line like fucking horse stock.”

“I did.” She appears openly pleased. “But look at you,” she says. “The pinnacle of my efforts. What a specimen you are.”

“I take back what I said,” I admit.

The fairy’s eyes sharpen with curiosity.