Page 99 of To Charm a Dark Prince

He sneered down at her, looking for all the world like the villain everyone had made him out to be. And perhaps he was. “If you refuse to listen to my words, I will show you. You will come to see the error of your ways—you willbegme to restore the Crystal when all is said and done. That is, if you survive the treachery and the carnage that is to follow. Tell me, my poor, sympathetic firefly—what will you do when you see Avalon consumed by violence? Reduced to ash and bone by squabbling forces? Will you come crawling to me, begging for forgiveness? Begging for me to save the world again from your foolishness?”

“I—I don’t—” She still wasn’t following along. What did he mean? What was he going to do?

“You have been in this world for little under a week, and you think you know better than I how it should be run? You wish me to be the monster that all others see in me?” He lifted his clawed hand toward the Crystal and clenched his hand into a fist. The room shuddered like there had been an earthquake. “So be it.”

Something cracked. It sounded like an iceberg rumbling and giving way. She staggered as the room rumbled again.

It was the Crystal. A dark cleft formed in it, straight down the middle. The crack quickly began to glow a brilliant, opalescent white. It was too bright to look at. “What’re you—”

His clawed hand grabbed her around the throat and yanked her closer to him, using his considerable height to loom over her. “I will rebuild it. Soul by soul. Elemental by elemental.”

“Mordred, I—”

He wasn’t done. “I shall give you a head start, my dear, for I wish you to see the horror that you have unleashed. But pray that when I find you—and I will—I show you the mercy of a swift death.” He threw her again, toward the door. “Nowrun.”

The chains holding the Crystal aloft groaned and snapped. Lightning shot from the crack in the Crystal, hitting the wall next to her. She screamed and ducked. “But—but what about you?”

His furious expression flickered briefly. When another one of those bolts shot from the Crystal, he threw his cloak up, the blade-like sections of fabric turning to iron. The magic simply hit him and bounced harmlessly off.

Right.

That.

He smirked. “Run, firefly.”

Without any chance to stop and consider what she had done—okay, what Mordred had done, but because of her—she turned on her heel and ran as fast as she could, barefoot, up the stairs. The glowing light from behind her was growing brighter, not dimmer.

Breathless and panicking, she realized too late that she had made a wrong turn. She was on a balcony overlooking the sea, some several hundred feet below the cliff. Turning to go back the way she came, she watched as a beam of that bright and shining light shot down the hallway, destroying several pieces of furniture and sending several of the iron guards flying.

She ran, hearing wreckage and disaster behind her. Something kept ringing in the air that made her ears ache.

She ran as long and as hard as she could. Down the stairs, around the corners, running past the confused guards that were all scrambling to defend the keep without knowing what was happening. Luckily, her frantic exit was the least of their concerns. She didn’t stop until she got to the edge of the forest, turning to see what was happening.

Light—opalescent, and every color and none at the same time—was streaming from every window in the castle. There was a rumble in the ground beneath her. She nearly fell over, staggering to catch onto a tree as it shook harder like an earthquake.

It didn’t make a sound, the explosion. It didn’t even really look like an explosion at all. Somethingshifted, the force pulling inward and then shooting out in a ring from the castle. A wall crumbled and fell, crashing off the cliff into the ocean.

And a blast wave was rushing at her, invisible but distorting the air like the summer sun on hot pavement.

Gwen threw her arms over her face as the force smashed into her, sending her tumbling backwards.

It might have been fine if it weren’t for the rock she smacked her head on.

* * *

Mordred stared at the wreckage that was once his masterpiece. The shattered Crystal had fallen into the pool of shards, sending them scattering and covering the ground around him. Many of them had likely been pulverized in the collapse, sending their magic careening out like all the rest.

Reaching down, he picked up one of the still-glowing opalescent shards between his claws. He would rebuild. It would not be so difficult, now that he knew what he was doing. But the problem would be the elementals that were now free. They would seek his death. And while magic could not harm him, there were many ways to kill a man that were perfectly mundane.

He was ageless. But not immortal.

Gwendolyn.He sighed. He should have killed her. He should have imprisoned her. He was confident in his ability to conquer Avalon a second time. But it was a risk. And he should not be in the business of taking them needlessly.

He had not thought he had a heart left to break. But there it was, in ruins, like his Crystal.

Turning from the smashed Crystal, he headed up the stairs. His guards were picking themselves up from the ground. Some looked as though they had been blown to bits in the explosion—as had most of his furniture and the windows. He had heard the sound of crumbling stone. It would take time to rebuild.

But he had more important matters to attend to. Heading outside, he lifted the gate to the stables where the hounds slept. Eod came out, tail between his legs, looking up at him with his ears flat to his head.

---