Page 109 of His Darkest Desire

His heart stuttered, his claws bit into his palms, and his stride faltered.

He could feel her in the bedchamber. Could feel her shattered heart, her grief, her pain. It was inextricable from his own, caught in the same storm. But everything inside Vex had been touched by his indignation, scalded by it, tainted by it, and he could not separate it from the other emotions.

Though his anger was not directed toward Kinsley, he could not trust himself to protect her from it.

Just another failure to add to the tally.

Vex forced himself onward, climbing the stairs and entering the library. Wrath thrummed in his bones, stronger with each thump of his heart, and the creeping shadows thickened along with it. His body could not contain all his magic, not with the torrent of emotions inside him.

Growling, he strode along the shelves, raking his gaze across the books that filled them. This was a fraction of his old collection, but these tomes held thousands of years of knowledge and wisdom.

Heat crackled through his limbs, and the internal pressure swelled.

A ragged roar ripped out of him. Vex’s arms lashed out and swept the books off the shelf in front of him. The tomes fell heavily around his feet.

Once the floodgates had been opened, he could not shut them.

Wordless cries of rage and frustration escaped Vex as he cast more books into the growing pile. Pages flapped and fluttered, thick volumes thumped on the floor, and parchment tore.

A forceful wave of his hand blasted magic at the next section of shelves. Books tumbled from their perches to land in a heap. Vex’s claws raked paper, leather, vines, and wood—but something inside him yearned to rend flesh, to spill blood.

Why did she not tell me?

Why did she condemn me to…to hope?

“Magus…” Flare intoned from behind Vex.

Shoulders heaving with his ragged breaths, Vex paused. His wings, which had emerged unbidden, sagged and shook with the same tremors that coursed through his arms. The shadows were closer now, thicker, shrouding much of the library in darkness.

“Please,” whispered Shade. “This is not you.”

Vex’s teeth ground together, and he balled his fists again. “But it is. No more fantasy, no more illusion. I see all this”—he waved his hand at the shelves, at the fallen books, at everything—“for what it is. Nothing.”

“You do not mean that,” said Flare.

Vex snatched one of the few remaining tomes from its place. Subtle arcane energy coursed beneath his fingers; this was a book of spells, bristling with residual magic. “All this knowledge, all this power, and what has it won me?”

He turned toward the wisps. Flare and Shade were a pair of tiny blue flames against a backdrop of impenetrable blackness, both uncharacteristically dim.

That vinelike rage wound tighter still in Vex’s chest, constricting his lungs, his heart, his soul. He brandished the tome, stepping toward the wisps. “Everything for which I toiled, everything I built, dreamed, and desired, it has all amounted to naught.”

Flare’s ghostfire intensified. “You must not say such things, magus.”

Vex clutched the book, claws piercing the cover. “I shall not shy from the truth. What has power and knowledge availed me? None of these books protected this realm and its people from the queen and her golden host. None of these spells stopped the slaughter. No artifact repelled her curse, and no tincture can break it.”

He spread his arms. “Gaze upon my power, my kingdom! My ruin.”

“Your words are overly harsh, magus,” said Shade, moving closer to Vex.

The library shuddered as a wave of magic flowed from Vex. “All I have cherished has met doom and damnation. For a fleeting moment, I dared believe that would change. As ever, my folly sows woe to be reaped by those closest to me.”

“You are not yet defeated,” Flare insisted. “Hope is not lost.”

I am your darkness. Your cloak, your protection.

Rage boiled in Vex’s blood, tinged with the sour tang of helplessness. Arcane energy radiated from him, raw and unbridled. The cottage groaned as magic shook its beams and stones. Books and baubles rattled on the shelves, bouncing out of their places to fall like scree in a landslide. The tome in his hand buzzed, generating its own heat.

“My mate cannot bear children,” he growled. The illusory shadows closed in around him. Sorrow and pain twisted in his chest, adding their piercing chill to the crushing grip of his fury. “This realm is my tomb, my eternity. Your eternity.” His voice broke into a rough rasp. “Kinsley’s eternity. The queen damned my mate centuries before she ever existed.”

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