Page 41 of WarBride

Ruvaen laughs. “Ah, that would be clever, wouldn’t it? And I won’t deny, the thought had crossed my mind. Just in case, I had this sent for . . .”

He reaches into the front of his heavily embroidered tunic and produces a vial of some black liquid. It is so black, in fact, it seems to draw the light from the room itself, reducing the world around it to shadows. There’s an undeniable pulse to the atmosphere, and it takes me a moment to realize it’s my own heartbeat suddenly loud and oppressive. Otherwise all is silent, but more than silence. Like darkness is the absence of light, so this silence is the absence of something far more profound. The absence ofsong.

“Here, my friend,” Ruvaen says. The sound of his voice seems to break a spell that held the room momentarily captive. “Take it. Use it. Slaughter that brute for me once and for all.”

I glance at Taar. He’s looking at the vial with an intensity of focus that unnerves me. It reminds me, in a sickening, twisted way, of how he’d looked at me last night. Hungry. Ravenous. Lustful.

“You know I don’t partake of virulium,” he says, his voice strangely rough.

“Not as a rule, no. And I certainly wouldn’t recommend it for frequent consumption. It plays hell on the innards.” Ruvaentosses the vial casually. Taar chokes on a breath, but the prince catches and twirls it in his fingers before holding it out again. “Indulge just this once. For my sake.”

Releasing his hold on me, Taar crosses his arms and braces his stance, as though preparing for resistance.

Ruvaen rolls his eyes. “Lurodos is sure to use it. And if he does, he will rip you apart.” The droll smile which had played across his mouth all this time slips into a more serious expression.

Taar draws a long breath. “I don’t need demon magic to take down my enemies.”

For an instant—an instant so brief, I have to wonder if I imagined it—Ruvaen’s face pinches into something else. Something withered and gray, something sickly and frightened. Something so utterly different from the glorious fae prince, they hardly seem capable of sharing the same world, much less the same face. He blinks, however, and the image is gone. Did his glamour waver? Did I just glimpse the truth of Prince Ruvaen behind the magicked illusion?

He slips into Noxaurian, his voice urgent. He even rises from his chair, steps around the fire, and approaches Taar, brandishing the vial. Taar only moves to put himself in front of me, but otherwise is as stone, arms folded, shoulders set. Ruvaen says something that sounds like a curse and waves a hand to indicate me. “And what of your little pet?” he demands, switching to a language I understand, possibly in a bid to woo me to his side. “You know what awaits her if you should fail. Surely you must care something for her wellbeing or you wouldn’t be risking your life like this. Do you want her in Lurodos’s clutches? There’s nothing I can do to spare her, not even for your sake, Taar.”

“It is my honor to protect my wife,” Taar answers evenly.

My pulse jumps. This is so . . . so ridiculous! So ludicrous, so surreal. Can it truly be happening? Why does he call me hiswife?We both know that’s not what I am.

Ruvaen’s teeth clench, his pale eyes flashing fire. “I need you to win today.”

“I will. But I will do it cleanly, without tainting my soul.”

“And if you fail?”

“I will not fail.”

Ruvaen curses again, bitterly, in multiple languages. Then with a sigh, he tucks the vial back into the front of his shirt. Immediately that pulse ofnon-music vanishes, and I breathe easily once more. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” the prince says. With that he turns to go, striding past the fire, shaking his head.

Before Ruvaen makes it to the tent flap, Taar calls after him, “I require a gown for my wife.”

My heart turns over in my breast. Gods, I wish he wouldn’t keep saying that word.

The prince looks back, his gaze once more raking over me, no longer admiring so much as speculative. “Very well,” he says. “I’ll consider it your last request.” The next moment he is gone.

Immediately Taar turns away from me and begins strapping on his right bracer, as though nothing had happened. I watch him, questions brimming, uncertain where to begin or if I even should begin at all. Finally I say, “What was that?”

He casts me a look from under his heavy brow.

“That . . . that liquid. That dose Ruvaen tried to give you.”

“Demon’s blood,” Taar answers. He says it so easily, like it’s the most obvious thing. Yet, at those words, I feel as though the non-song which had filled the chamber echoes hollowly in the back of my head. “Drawn from the Rift, which tore an opening to Ashtari, the Seventh Hell. Dark magic of the foulest kind.”

I stare at him blankly. Is he jesting? Surely he doesn’t really believe in the nine hells and the demons that rule them.

“Noxaurians take the brew,” he goes on, his voice even, emotionless, “to augment their prowess in battle. But it turns them mad. If they do not succeed in killing within an hour, they themselves will die. Horrifically. The darkness burns too hot and liquifies their innards, which then runs in black streams from every orifice. Take too much, and the same will be your fate—but only after you’ve slaughtered everyone in sight. Friends, allies, enemies. The bloodlust of virulium does not discriminate.”

I lick my lips. “You speak as though you know it well.”

He does not look at me. Instead he draws the second of the two blades from his belt, the mate of the one he gave to me. Holding it up, he tests its sharpness on the tip of his finger, not even flinching when blood wells. “Some of my riders have chosen to use it,” he says, speaking as though to himself rather than to me. “But it . . . changes you. In ways you cannot predict. Those who have sampled virulium once find they are compelled to take it again. When they do not have it, they think of it all the time, hungry for another taste. I . . .” He lowers the blade, turning it over slowly. The citrine jewel at its hilt glints like a winking dragon’s eye. “I do not want to end up like that. So I will not take it, and I’ve forbidden my people from touching it. Some defy my orders, to their own destruction.”

There’s something about the way he says that last part, some heaviness and pain. He lost someone to the demon’s blood. Someone important to him. He doesn’t have to tell me—gods know, he doesn’t owe me any explanation. But I find myself wondering who it was. Whoshewas.

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