CHAPTER 48

The Ra'Voshnik circled his mind, running its claws over Rune's awareness.She needs us. Comfort her. She wants to be young. She is nervous because you left her unanswered. Your missteps are turning her from us.

Be silent.

I will give her the young she desires if you will not.The Ra'Voshnik snickered as Faye's footsteps stopped in the doorway. Rune tensed, holding the leather-bound book in his hands so tight he was leaving indentations in its cover.You're nervous.

Rune ignored the creature, turning toward Faye. "Good morning," he said. His words felt stiff. He wasn't certain what to say to her. It would be best to let her lead.

She tucked her hair behind her ear and said, "Good morning." She glanced past him at the travesty that befell his library. She grimaced and said, "I'm sorry. I didn't know she did this."

Tell her it's fine. Tell her she can have your dusty library if it pleases her.

Faye stepped into his study and the Ra'Voshnik purred, tracking her movements as she maneuvered around the piles of books. She stopped at the first bookshelf still containing tomes. "I can help you flip your books around."

Rune watched her pull the tome free and said, "Your sister did more than flip the books." She turned toward him and he continued with a grin, "She shuffled them. All of them."

Her lips parted as she looked at the book in her hands and the stacks surrounding them. Her cheeks pinkened as her gaze rose to meet his. "Can I help you put them back?"

"I'm afraid my books are in High Tongue," Rune said, setting his volume on a pile beside him.

She did the same and looked up at him.

"Can we talk?"

Yes!The Ra'Voshnik cried frantically for her.

"Of course," he said. Faye continued to watch him, and Rune swallowed, reaching for something to add.

"Would you like to sit?" Rune asked as he dragged the creature into the depths of his mind. Silencing its prattle.

Rune's mind blanked as she walked to the settee instead of his desk and his thoughts ran to the last time they'd sat there. She took a seat on one end with a knee tucked under her and examined her nails in an effort not to look at him.

"I thought you would need space before we started our meetings again," Rune lied as he took a seat on the opposite end. The meetings were pointless. He was searching for a spell that didn't exist. He would need to come up with another solution once he settled on the idea

.

"It's not that." She took a deep breath and her hands fell in her lap as she met his gaze. "Did you have a thing with Sadi? Is that why you don't want to do my ceremony? It's weird?"

Rune blinked, struck mute. Caught off guard by questions he wasn't expecting.

Answer her! Your hesitation looks like admittance. Let me rise if you can't speak to her, the Ra'Voshnik's voice echoed from far below him.

He swallowed and said, "No. I have never been intimate with Sadi."

Tell her we desire her.

Faye studied her nails again and said without looking at him, "I'm not as practiced, or as polished as your other lovers." Her cheeks flushed and she glanced up at him. She swallowed but didn't look away. "If you showed me what to do, my ceremony could be pleasant for both of us."

For the first time in Rune's long life, his face heated.

"That— It…" Rune's words failed him as the Ra'Voshnik roared. Thrashing against the bonds imprisoning it.

He exhaled, "Pleasure is not the reason I refused your ceremony."

Her eyes hardened as tension set in her shoulders. "What other reason do you have to deny me," Faye demanded, anger dripping from her every word.

Matching her venom wouldn't serve either of them. Rune kept his tone even, attempting to reason with the spitting minx. "The ceremony is inherently dangerous. You are stronger than I am."

She scoffed at him, looking him up and down. "I can't be stronger than you. If you want to be cruel, then own it. Tell me the real reason."

"Faye," he said gently.

She leaned forward baring her teeth. "Does it infuriate you that you, the great Shadow Prince, could want an unsophisticated peasant?"

Tension set in Rune's jaw as he said, "I—"

"Don't lie to me we passed that a long time ago!"

"You do not understand what you are requesting!"

"I understand I want a life! A full life and you can't be bothered to—"

"I curse fate for saddling me with such a stubborn creature." At Faye's stunned look, Rune realized his words.

Faye's lips parted as he stood to his full height. He does think I'm his. And he looked furious.

"You think I'm so lowly. Let me tell you, Shadow Prince, you are no joy to be fated to either." Faye crossed her arms waiting for a blistering insult.

"I do not think of you lowly." His voice was hollow as he stared into the blue flames.

Faye's anger ebbed, cooling with her growing insecurities. "What is your hang up if I'm not lowly? Do I not measure up to the list of women before me?"

He gave a low laugh and took a deep breath before turning toward her. "I do not have a list of lovers."

Faye glared up at him. "I need you to try a little harder if you're going to lie to me."

Rune returned to his seat at the end of the settee. "I am not lying to you."

Faye drew her legs up, studying him. He had to be lying. He was three thousand years old. "I prefer honesty to flattery, or whatever it is you think you're doing." Rune exhaled and scrubbed his hand over his face. "Fine, you've taken no lovers. What would you call what we did?"

"Tending," he answered flatly, before adding, "I tended to you."

Dark courts and their bullshit sex games."And how many women have you tended to?"

"Excluding my training and including you?" He asked with a raised brow, setting his ankle over his knee.

This dick was not allowed to be upset with her. "Yeah, I don't need an exact number. Round to the nearest hundred."

He didn't smile, held up his fingers, and answered, "Two. You met Lyssa. You are the second."

Faye could only tilt her head at him and blink. "You were her consort."

His smile was humorless as he gazed at the fire. "And I never hardened her. I would not recommend you mention it. She would likely attempt to have you killed."

He spent more than a hundred years with her. "You did her Ceremony of Blood."

"A potion I took for her ritual forced my body to comply. I brought her across and did not linger in her bed."

Darkness, this man, left her conflicted. If she wasn't the issue, then it had to lie with him. "Are you worried I won't like it?"

He gave her a contrary glance. "I can hear and scent the body's responses. It is not a difficult read."

The most conceited answer she'd ever heard in her life. But it left only one option. He found her lacking somehow. Faye's shoulders slumped. "What's wrong with me? I'm one of two women you've been with. You want me on some level."

"You do not understand what you are asking for. I'm no vampire with a previous life to temper my vampiric urges. Pure Bloods have the Ra'Voshnik. It is a predator in its purest form living within me."

Faye rested her arms on her knees, glancing at the fire. Needing to see anything but him. "I prefer that side of you."

"You would not if you truly knew it," Rune said quietly.

He would believe her if he paid attention when he poked around her head. She leaned into the aggressive presence that longed for her. If he cared to look, he would have noticed it. Faye sometimes wished she could take that part of him and leave the man.

She leveled her gaze to his. "We both know we're not right for each other. You don't have to add me to your list of lovers. I'm asking for my ritual. Close your eyes if you like, just hold me above the Darkness."

"It is not that simple," he countered.

Faye sighed, looking up. Here we go. "It is. Breach me and get off me. That's all I'm asking you to do."

"You are stronger than me. We will require the assistance of others."

Every argument Faye prepared blanked from her mind. He wanted to bring others to perform her rite. She paled, pulling her legs in tighter.

"Not in the bed," Rune said as though he could hear her thoughts. "This is the cost of power. When the woman is stronger than the man, others are needed to hold her mind and keep her from plummeting into the Darkness."

Faye's level of comfort began and ended with Rune. She didn't anticipate having an audience. She's never heard of a Ceremony of Blood being done this way. "Can they see or feel what we're doing?"

Rune canted his head at her like she was the one introducing nonsense into their conversation. "No. A mental tether is created through the minds. Sadi will—"

"She hates me," Faye said without thinking. Her evil twin was definitely not invited.

"She does not hate you."

"Oh really? If I wasn't fated to you, she would throw my ass into the Darkness herself."

The corner of Rune's mouth lifted into a ghost of the smirk he typically wore. "She is my oldest and most loyal friend."

"Friend?" Faye asked. The dark courts defined that as loosely as they did kidnapping.

Rune exhaled, leaning back in his seat. "Familiar call to predetermined mates. Familiar are fated to other Familiar. She came to court after she invoked her blood. I have known her her entire life and never pursued her. I trust her. She has saved my life many times over. She is strong and will do as I ask."

Faye knew Sadi's loyalty ended with Rune. She would protect him and protect her through proxy. "I'm fine with your conditions."

"Are you fine with death?" He asked.

"I think you and my evil twin will be able to hold me above the Darkness."

Rune thinned his lips. "You are risking more than your life. We will both survive your rite, or we will both perish."

"Aren't you being a little dramatic, big guy?"

"My death will have consequences. My court has survived for more than five thousand years, it will fall with me. Lyssa will be challenged for her seat as High Queen and likely overthrown. My brothers are considerably weaker than I am. My younger brother Jareth will be forced to maintain Hell's floor. Is your rite worth that risk?"

Was Faye willing to have some half measure of life because she was unlucky enough to be fated to a broody vampire? The outcome he sought to escape was inevitable and Faye wasn't willing to sacrifice for a thing that would come to pass anyway. "You can't untie yourself from me, and I don't think fate would tie you to me just to kill you. If I plummet, let me fall."

"Spoken like a true Familiar."

"I won't turn into a cat. I don't think I'm Familiar."

Rune rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. "I suppose if it happens now or within the century, it makes no difference." He stood and said, "I will make the arrangements. You will be meeting my court soon." He turned and silently strolled toward the hall.

"Rune," Faye called. He turned to glance at her over his shoulder.

"Thank you."