Page 90 of His Darkest Desire
“I have accepted your invitation in good faith,” the magus said, subtly leaning back to escape those fingers. “State your business with me, that I may take my leave with all possible haste.”
She chuckled, the sound light but pointed, and stepped around him, circling like a predator sizing up its prey. “Curious that one such as you should possess so much power, is it not? It is quite rare for goblins to wield high sorceries.”
“I’ve not come to be gawked at as a curiosity,” the magus replied.
Standing behind him, the queen lifted several strands of the magus’s long hair, brushing it between her fingers. “You’ve come because I summoned you. Your purpose here is dictated by my decree. By my whim.”
Vex felt his chest, felt his lungs struggling to fill with air. He felt the breath caught in his throat. But he could not draw in more, could not satiate that need.
The magus stepped forward, again escaping the queen’s hold, and turned to face her. “You mistake me for one of your subjects. I am master of my realm, bound to neither king nor queen.”
Again, the queen closed the distance, her lips parting in a grin to reveal perfect white teeth. “Such a quaint understanding of authority. How does one manage to be so grave and yet so naïve?”
“How does one manage to be so sophisticated and yet so presumptuous?”
“A sharp tongue. We shall put that to good use.”
“We shall do no such thing, as I am taking my leave.”
The queen halted the magus with a hand on his shoulder. Keeping that hand there, she strutted around to his back, letting her eyes, half-lidded, dip in her perusal of him. “As ever, my instincts prove correct. You, magus, shall serve as the most interesting diversion.”
Flee, damn you! Escape! Do not allow her to sink in her claws.
But Vex’s pleas couldn’t alter anything. The world around him warped and changed, wrenching him through time and space.
The queen’s bedchamber, unlike the throne room, was dimly lit. The marble posts of her huge bed stood from floor to ceiling, and over it was a glass dome through which the moon and stars twinkled in a clear night sky. The pure silver of the moonlight was tainted by the soft yellow and orange glows of the gems embedded in the columns.
Atop the bed, amidst silk and velvet pillows, cushions, and blankets, reclined the queen. She was bare, her ivory skin on full display—pert breasts, a narrow waist, flaring hips, and long, lean legs. The magus stood at the foot of the bed, clad in a loin cloth. The torc around his neck was engraved with flowing, golden seelie script, its metal deceptively delicate.
Vex raged, but his wrath had no outlet, no release. It could but serve as shield between his consciousness and the pain at his core.
The queen lifted a hand and crooked her finger, beckoning the magus. When he didn’t move, her brows angled downward. That subtle change made her face all the more threatening. “I tire of this.”
The magus stared at her, his crimson eyes smoldering with contempt. “I might have sympathized, had you not brought it upon yourself.”
“Were that tongue not so clever in other ways, I would have removed it long ago.”
“Should you wish to be free of your current frustrations, you need but release me.” The magus’s expression remained hard, unchanging, and defiant despite the situation, but Vex knew what it hid—the fear, the uncertainty. The racing thoughts and lurking fears.
The queen closed her fist. Molten metal materialized in it, forming a thin chain, link by link, that stretched out to hook on the magus’s collar. The metal cooled into polished, gleaming gold. She tugged on the chain, and the magus stumbled toward her, barely catching himself on the bed.
She leaned toward him, her face a hair’s breadth from his. “You shall grant me what I desire, pet.”
And Vex could only watch, helpless to avert his own damnation and prevent the suffering and death that would be wrought because of it. Helpless to right any of the wrongs of the past.
Baring his teeth, the magus growled, “I care not for your desires.”
“Nor for your life,” the queen hissed, coiling the golden chain tighter around her fist. The fury writ upon her face—which typically displayed only indifference or cruel mirth—was a rare sight. “And what of the lives of the misbegotten denizens of your paltry realm?”
A crack formed in the magus’s mask, and a pang of pain and guilt sharper than any blade pierced Vex’s chest.
The queen’s red-painted lips split into a sultry, menacing grin. “Ah. So, you haven’t a care for your own life, but theirs…” With her free hand, she caressed the magus’s face, grazing his skin with her long nails. “You are just beautiful enough a creature for me to offer mercy, my pet. A deal.”
The magus stilled as she shifted her head, nearly pressing her lips to his ear. “Sire my child, and I shall release you. Your realm, and all who dwell within it, shall be left in peace.”
Tension gripped the magus’s muscles, and his claws tore into the bedding as he clutched it in his fists. Vex felt that tension in himself; it was a pressure so great that his heart ceased beating, that his lungs threatened to burst, that his whole being was about to collapse into itself.
No. He wanted so desperately for the answer to be no, for the magus to reject the offer, to reject the queen. Wanted so desperately to stave off what would be—what was—the greatest folly of his life. And yet he knew at heart it would’ve changed nothing.