Captive Wildfire: A Dark Paranormal Reverse Harem Romance (The Accursed Saga Book 3)

by Eva Brandt

  “Why did you suggest her going to see the Alarians anyway?” I asked Delphine. “What do you hope to accomplish through that?”

  “She needs some distance from her father. Louis’s powers might be... leaking despite his comatose state and her mind is vulnerable. A diplomatic mission to see them is safe enough.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed her. If it had been just the fae we needed to see, yes, it would’ve made sense, but we were supposed to meet with an Alarian delegation. She’d spoken with them before, as Lucienne Hastings. They were aware of what had happened to her mind and had agreed to play along, but they had their own agenda.

  No matter what else Darius might be, he was still an Alarian prince and Lucienne’s soulmate, which made her meeting with them very dangerous.

  “You’re pushing her too fast, too quickly, Lady Delphine. Are you trying to test her, to see if she remembers? Because if that’s what you’re playing at, it might blow up in our faces.”

  Her eyes flashed with unconcealed anger and her magic surged over me, angry and sharp. It hit a barrier of purplish smoke, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Make no mistake, Pierce Garnier. We don’t trust you. You’re only here because we need you. Don’t think you get to make all the decisions just because we’ve indulged your little whims from time to time.”

  I didn’t look at Bjorn, focusing on Delphine instead. Fire blazed at my fingertips, my magic instinctively responding to her attempt to deny my place at Lucienne’s side. “I wasn’t aware prioritizing Lucienne’s well-being over everything else could be considered a whim now.”

  Delphine sneered at me. “What you’re prioritizing is your belief that you know better. You might’ve gotten Augustine to listen to you, but you can’t accomplish anything on your own.”

  “That’s my line,” I replied. “You admitted it yourself. Without me, you’re powerless. What do you think you can do against her, against them, if I don’t help you?”

  “We can still do plenty, but Lucienne is a Dame Blanche,” she snapped back. “We don’t want to resort to such methods yet. You can prevent that. Distract her with your cock. She won’t think about the past if she can focus on you, on the present.”

  The implication of those words—that they had considered harming or even killing Lucienne—made me taste bile in my mouth. Bjorn hissed in anger and the presence of his magic thickened so much I could taste it on my tongue, hot and angry, familiar, yet not.

  How had Delphine not sensed him yet? Was he just in my head? Was I simply imagining him?

  I should’ve told Delphine he was there. Maybe she could’ve done something to banish him. Then again, considering what she’d just said about Lucienne, she was clearly no friend of mine.

  “It’s not that complicated, Pierce,” she continued, undeterred by my silence. “Bed her and give her a child. Once she’s pregnant, she’ll forget about her nightmares. You might not be enough to make the memory of them fade away, but your child will.”

  I didn’t know what repulsed me more, the suggestion itself, or the fact that it appealed to me on some level. I wanted to have a family with Lucienne. Mathias, Bjorn, Darius—all of them—they were outsiders. They should have never existed or intruded on our bond.

  But as much as I hated them for taking my place at Lucienne’s side for so long, I couldn’t allow that hatred to twist me into something worse than what I’d already become. I despised Delphine for suggesting it, for not realizing what such a thing would do to me.

  “I refuse to play along with your schemes,” I told her. “She means too much to me for that, and she deserves better. If or when Lucienne becomes a mother, it’ll be because she wishes it, not because of your manipulations.”

  “Your scruples are going to get us all killed, Pierce, including her.”

  This had nothing to do with scruples. I’d left that behind a long time ago, when I’d agreed to live a lie, to turn my own soulmate into a food source just so that we could create a balance in the magic between us. That alone had been an unforgivable betrayal.

  In the world of the Accursed, scruples were for fools. But even so, I wanted to protect what little she had left. I’d already stolen so much from her—her past, her choices, and to a certain extent, even her body. If I took things further, if I got her pregnant as a tool against her returning memories, I might as well put a gun in my mouth and blow my head off. My life, my existence as her soulmate, would be meaningless.

  “You just don’t get it,” I told Delphine. “If you had a soulmate of your own, you’d never ask this of me.”

  “I understand how you feel, but—”

  “No, you don’t,” I cut her off. “You understand nothing. You know nothing.”

  I needed to get out of here, before my temper exploded as violently as Lucienne’s often did. “I’m going to go back to my room now and we’re going to shelve this conversation, permanently. I have no intention of using Lucienne in such a way, so you’d best find another strategy.”

  I didn’t wait for a reply. Turning on my heel, I headed back toward my quarters, feeling like I couldn’t breathe, like I was going to throw up, like I needed to take a million showers or better yet, die.

  “Pierce!” Delphine called out after me. “Come back!”

  I ignored her, knowing that if I faced her again, I’d end up doing something she’d regret more than I would. I’d never fought a Dame Blanche, but the way she’d spoken about Lucienne was now making me ask myself very interesting questions. Did Dames Blanches burn the same way regular people did? How much elemental magic did it take to turn them into ash? I was really tempted to find out.

  By some kind of miracle, I managed to get to my room without destroying anything. It was only when I closed the door behind me and slumped against the wood that I realized I was still not alone.

  Bjorn had followed me, and he was strolling through my quarters, taking in the decor with interest. He stopped in front of a painting and narrowed his eyes at it. “The mystical kingdom of Kerys, with its capital city, Ys. You’re not being very subtle, are you?”

  “Lucienne has never been here anyway, so it doesn’t matter,” I told him tiredly. I didn’t bother explaining that the painting had been a gift from Louis, an inside joke and a threat he used to remind me of everything he could still take away from me if I wasn’t careful. “What the fuck do you want?”

  The incubus turned away from the painting and looked at me. “To keep an eye on you, mostly, and make sure you’re not up to something suspicious,” he answered with a sharp smile. “It looks like it’s a good thing we didn’t drop our guard. I thought the Alarians were bad, but at least they have the excuse of being unfeeling bastards.”

  “Oh, please.” I rolled my eyes at him. “Spare me the self-righteous rhetoric. I know what you are. You didn’t become one of Darius’s inquisitors because you were noble and kind. If you’re going to pretend you’re a nice person, you might as well run along now, because I don’t have time for hypocrisy and lies.”

  “This isn’t about me, Mr. Garnier. None of this is about me, not really. It’s about Lucienne.”

  “But can you honestly say you’ve never hurt her?” I asked. “That you’ve never used her?”

  That was only a guess on my part, a strong suspicion. But I knew myself very well, and I knew how the power of an incubus worked.

  Before she’d lost her memory, Lucienne had been desperate to save her soulmates. Up to a point, she probably still was. It would’ve been so easy for an incubus to use that for his own benefit, to take what she wouldn’t have otherwise given—just like I had, in the garden.

  Bjorn clenched his jaw and I knew I’d been right. I should’ve felt more satisfaction than I did. “You see? We’re not that different, are we? How could we be?”

  To his credit, Bjorn didn’t point out that he hadn’t wiped Lucienne’s mind and replaced her memories with a version of her past that suited him better. But technically speaking, I hadn’t done that either. It
had been her father who’d brainwashed her, although mostly by accident. And while the mind magic Darius had performed on Lucienne couldn’t quite compare to the level of damage Louis had inflicted, it had still existed, and it couldn’t be ignored.

  “So where does that leave us?” Bjorn asked. “You want to protect her and so do we. You’d do anything it takes, and so would we.”

  “Are you suggesting we’re on the same side? Because we’re really not, you know. I fully intend to track you down and kill you.”

  Maybe I shouldn’t have admitted that. I didn’t have a lot of real allies and advantages on my side, and the less my enemies knew the better. But I’d had a shitty day, and anyone with a brain would realize that, considering what had happened, I didn’t exactly intend to gather around the campfire with the men who’d stolen my soulmate and sing Kumbaya.

  Bjorn shrugged, not seeming surprised or intimidated by my threat. “We’d probably do the same, but we have no idea what it’d do to her mind. You do realize Mathias could’ve killed you earlier, right? When he saw you with her?”

  It hadn’t occurred to me at the time, as I’d been a little too busy freaking out over the fact that he’d been able to access my consciousness, but in hindsight, Bjorn was right. Mathias was a very powerful mind mage and I’d been distracted. He could have torn apart my psyche in a heartbeat.

  He hadn’t, and there was only one reason why he’d held back, why he hadn’t destroyed me, although I’d deserved it.

  I dropped to my knees on the floor, hating myself for the display of weakness, but feeling even more exhausted than before. “What do you want me to say, incubus?” I asked.

  “The truth would be nice. You told that Dame Blanche that Lucienne’s well-being is your priority. Were you lying?”

  “No, of course not. It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted, since the moment we first met.”

  I still remembered that day, that beautiful, yet dreadful day when I’d first spoken to Lucienne, then Lucienne Hastings. She’d arrived at our house as Diane’s guest, her friend from university, supposedly. It had all been arranged by Louis, of course, a way to keep an eye on his far too powerful daughter. With Diane having trouble, we’d had to step in.

  But the moment my eyes had met hers, I’d known she was special. I’d felt something slide into place inside me, like the pieces of a puzzle had just come together in a coherent image. I hadn’t known the whole story at the time—I hadn’t found out until much later—but it hadn’t mattered to me.

  She’d been mine from that very first moment, and I’d been hers. “I just want to keep her happy and safe.”

  “You’re not doing a very good job, then, are you?” the incubus pointed out. His words didn’t sound taunting, but like a matter-of-fact statement. It didn’t make them any less infuriating.

  “I suppose you think you could do better,” I snarled at him.

  To my surprise, Bjorn shook his head. “Not really, no. But here’s the thing. Darius, Declan, Mathias, Malachai, and I have been trying to protect her for over a thousand years. We’ve never managed. We always failed, but we lived, loved, and died together.

  “This life is different. In this life, we’re all side by side and you exist. You might have been her original soulmate, that’s true, but that doesn’t matter anymore. Because guess what? You don’t have the history we have with her. The things the six of us have shared won’t just go away because you want them to, because you complain that it’s unfair.

  “So it’s up to you now, Pierce. What is more important, your selfishness and your desire to have Lucienne for yourself, or her well-being?”

  “Your existence isn’t that important to her,” I replied. “I can make her happy. She doesn’t need you.”

  I tried to keep my voice steady, but the words tasted like death and ash in my mouth. Bjorn arched a brow at me. He’d have probably seen right through me even if he hadn’t been an incubus with a direct connection to my mind.

  “Who are you trying to fool? Yourself? Me? It won’t work.”

  At that moment, I’d never hated anyone more than I did Bjorn Lindberg. I got up and glared at him, finding strength in that hatred. “You took everything from me. My life, my power, my soul. And now, you want her too. My future, my last chance. You’re not getting it.”

  Bjorn abandoned all pretense of being anything except what he was, a demonic creature who fed on emotion. “We’ll just have to see about that. If you want war, Pierce Garnier, you’ll have it. We won’t let anything or anyone stand in our way, not even you. Especially you.” He leaned in closer to me, and the bright purple of his magic surrounded us both in a suffocating cocoon. “You’re superfluous now. After everything you’ve done, after the way you’ve betrayed her, Lucienne is bound to realize it. And when that happens, I’ll make sure you live just long enough to see what you’ve lost.”

  “I’m not the one who is going to lose everything,” I snapped back.

  “He’s right, you know. You can’t win this fight, Bjorn Lindberg. You’ve tried many times before. Over and over again, you’ve failed. You might as well accept the unavoidable.”

  Bjorn pivoted on his heel and we both watched in shock as a woman descended from the painting he’d been looking at earlier. Elegant and beautiful, she was still one of the most gruesome sights I’d witnessed in my life. There was a hole in her chest where her heart had been ripped out of her body. When I looked a little closer, I could see her remaining vital organs.

  I didn’t recognize her at first, but that changed as soon as I looked into her eyes. In those deep, dark orbs, I saw her true identity.

  Rebirth was a funny thing. It was like a lottery. There was no guarantee you’d be born with the same gender, abilities, or the sexual orientation you had before. I had no idea how I would’ve been in my first life had I not been killed when I’d been only a newborn, but it was actually strange for a reborn person to look too much like their past selves.

  Louis’s first life just happened to be a woman, Mathias’s aunt and the same witch who’d cast the spell that had doomed us all. I’d never liked him in his present existence. I liked her even less.

  Bjorn looked from her to me, and I wondered what he’d been able to grasp from my mind, from the knowledge I had on her. Whatever it was, he chose not to mention it. “There’s a problem with that concept. Plenty of people keep telling us that, over and over, but the more they repeat themselves, the less inclined I am to believe them. It’s just common sense. If we weren’t dangerous, there would be no reason for you to tell us to stop fighting.”

  “No reason except for the obvious—the fact that you’re hurting Lucienne,” she answered without missing a beat.

  Bjorn twitched, and the moment of surprise and anguish was all she needed to strike. Her figure turned into a blur of white and swept forward, swallowing us both like a cloud of toxic fumes. Not for the first time, I cursed my fate and my luck for forcing me to become the ally of the wrong person.

  My last thought went to my soulmate, to the woman whom I’d lost, loved, abandoned, lied to, and betrayed. Lucienne, I’m sorry. What am I supposed to do now?

  There was no response, and my world faded into blackness.

  * * *

  Mathias

  “You know you don’t actually have to sit here and babysit me. I’m not that helpless.”

  Malachai flipped a playing card between his clawed fingertips and shot me a fanged smirk. “I know. But orders are orders. It’s a shame, but I’m afraid we’re all stuck here.”

  We really weren’t. Being an Accursed came with some perks, and my brief coma hadn’t left me with any physical side-effects. It irritated me in the extreme that Darius refused to see that. “Since when do you follow Darius’s orders blindly?” I asked Malachai.

  “Since he’s relying on me to make sure the two of you don’t die. Besides, I would’ve done it even if he hadn’t asked me to.” He flipped the playing card onto the bed in front of me. It was, p
erhaps unsurprisingly, the queen of hearts. “I think it’s what Lucienne would want if she were here.”

  I thought about my conversation with the Dahud in my mindscape and I conceded his point. It wasn’t necessarily because I was injured. I was still in Darius’s body and that alone represented a problem for us. For the moment, my subordinates had accepted Declan, Bjorn, and Malachai, but Darius was an Alarian prince, the commander of two army corps created to destroy scavengers. The plagues might not be a threat for me physically, but my mere presence could disturb the delicate balance Darius was now relying on.

  And then there was Bjorn. He was currently seated cross-legged on the floor, a cloud of hazy, purple magic swirling around him.

  “I have a bad feeling about this, Mathias,” Malachai said, flipping another card down. “Pierce is far more dangerous than he seems. He’s not just a twice-blessed. This can go so wrong, so quickly.”

  I had a bad feeling too, for more than one reason. As far as I knew, Malachai Braun had never been fond of cards of any kind, but I remembered a different man, someone who’d liked to tell fortunes in tarot. He’d never been as good at it at his wife, but he’d kept her tarot cards with him for years after she’d died, until he’d finally succumbed to the unavoidable as well.

  He didn’t seem to realize he was doing anything out of character. Yes, this was a minor phenomenon, but it would get worse as time passed.

  There was no point in worrying about it now. Malachai didn’t remember everything, so that’d buy me a little time, enough to do damage control with the others. “Of course it’ll go wrong. Everything always goes wrong when we’re involved. But that doesn’t mean we can afford to give up.”

  I didn’t have the right to say that, since I’d been so very close to abandoning them all after the attack on the wedding. But Malachai didn’t know about my weakness and hesitation. It was better for him to think that I was just as strong as the prison of bone I’d once been trapped in, whether he remembered it or not.