Page 47 of Cursed Heirs

“My true potential? As an extinguisher of dark magic?”

He ran his fingers through my hair again, regarding me with so much awe. “Your potential to become the most powerful being on earth. It is a power that will eclipse us all. Elliot Sabre. Me. Even your mother. You’re special. Incredibly so. I felt itfrom you that night you inadvertently put yourself in my path when you tried to save two of my enemies.”

“Two of your enemies… you murdered them… Talon’s parents… you burned them alive and—”

“I had no choice.”

I jerked away from him, then batted his hand away, pushing against the opposite side of the chair from him. “What? You had no choice in murdering two innocent beings?”

He rose from it and I tensed.

Until he flicked his fingers and magically removed his shirt.

And there over his ripped chest were horrific burns and lash scars all over.

He turned and the same plagued his back.

“I didn’t see these last time, in the snow place.”

“I was glamouring them so as not to shock you. You were already on edge with it being our first real conversation and point of connecting.”

He put his clothes back on magically, then turned to face me. “The two of them came for me with phoenix fire and whips coated in holy water. I’d come to speak withyou, and I was a little distracted at the prospect, which they took full advantage of. They ambushed me. I couldn’t fight them off with my regular dark magic after taking so much damage so quickly, so out of desperation I employed black magic.”

“You didn’t need to kill them.”

He was there in a burst of vampire speed, slapping his hands down on either arm of the chair and leaning in. “So young and still learning, darling princess. They weren’t merely detractors, they’d made themselves into my enemies. They wouldn’t have stopped coming. I was prey to them and something they could use to bargain their way into obtaining a seat at the table ofExemplar—their chief goal. I’m seen as anirredeemable monster to beings like them, so they treat me like an animal, just like they proved with the whips and fire.”

I started shaking my head and he leaned in closer, brushing his lips over mine, before whispering at the corner of my mouth, “Don’t concern yourself with that instance, sweet Nephilim. It matters not in the grand scheme of things.”

“I can’t just—”

His eyes bored into mine and I saw flickers of black in them before they disappeared like they’d never been, and his words consumed me wholly instead, “You’ve made your peace with it. You understand why I had to act as such and you recognize how awfully I was treated—like nothing more than a beast.”

“Because of that you lost three years of your life.”

“I did, yes. But not just because of that.”

“Because of my mom?”

“Because I was waiting for you.”

“You were?”

“My acolytes had discovered the location of theHellbornjust months after I was trapped by Sabre and your mother. But I’d given instructions for them not to wake me until you were ready for me.”

“Ready for you?”

“I waited for you to be primed to receive me. Unfortunately, your mother chose to let you go, to allow you to waste away your abilities, and even encouraged it. It wasn’t until the situation became unmanageable that you returned to the path you should have been on in the first place.”

“You scared me. That night in the forest, your comment about magical corruption in my power.”

“It wasn’t meant to scare you. It was intended as impetus for you to grow into your power, to explore it further. Alas, it didn’t pan out that way because of your mother.”

“My mom didn’t—”

“She fed into your fears, supporting your decision to live as human and to forgo your magical heritage. Because after what they term theCataclysm, she lost her passion for her work inExemplarand became disillusioned with it. She no longer wanted that life for you, for you to become her heir to it all. So she used your fears to push you out.”

His words resounded through my mind, echoing all around, infusing me, their truth undeniable. “You’re right.”

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