Page 156 of Amethyst and Iron
“Stop!” Ariana cried, struggling to her feet. “This is madness! He doesn’t deserve this!”
“He was made for this! And you complicated it! You elicited humanity and a depth of sentience in him that was never supposed to be! Years of work and now I’ve had to go to great lengths to find workarounds to the damage that you’ve done.” He stormed toward her, making me snarl at the aggression in it directed at her. “I’ll end his pain immediately if you reject his imprint on you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You tell him you don’t care about him, that he’s nothing but a thing to you, a monster, that he’s a broken god only worthy of being enslaved by me—somebody who knows well how to wield power, how to rewrite the supernatural world using said power.”
She looked at me, grimacing, hating my pain.
She cared.
She really wanted to help me.
Emotion swam in my eyes, threatening to take me over.
“No,” she told Corvin, resolutely. “I won’t forsake him. He deserves better than that.”
I smiled and managed to eke out, “Thank you… Ariana.”
But then Corvin laughed in that cold, sadistic way of his, telling her, “Did you really think I’d put that decision in your hands? The abomination? The weak little cunt who ran from her own power? The fool who refused to act unilaterally and squandered her abilities and greatness instead?”
I snarled at his awful words to her.
Corvin held the sword up—Valkrith—and spoke, “This is now imbued with your blood and your power, mixed with Dark Fae magic that violates free will in the way that the spellcaster can determine very specifically. Seeing as though Ketheron is being held back by the bond he’s formed with you, this will work to sever that forcibly.”
“No. Do not fucking touch him with that thing!”
I roared and fought against the manacles.
But Corvin breached the dome and approached me with the sword.
I saw Ariana struggling against her predicament, trying to overcome the Hellfire confining her as well as the weakness he’d levied upon her.
I started as I saw her manage it, her manacles shattering.
She looked out at me and winked.
I returned it.
She thrust her hands out and breached the Hellfire itself. Her power swirled and she actually managed to not just push it back, but to destroy it.
Corvin felt the high-level magic she was invoking. “No! Not possible!”
He lunged at me and drove Valkrith into my gut.
“Stop!” was the last thing I heard, Ariana’s scream echoing off the walls.
And then all that existed was pain.
“Ketheron?”
I blinked back to the immediate moment to see Sylas standing before me, his hands on my shoulders, as he gazed at me with great concern.
My lip trembled.
His care bled into me.
It clashed against what I’d experienced all over again from that memory.
