by Ophelia Bell
“Where is the blade?” she said.
Nikhil nodded toward the bedside table where he had left the dagger the evening before.
Retrieving it, Belah returned to him. “I want to try something. Take a single drop of my blood while I look inside your mind.”
With the point of the dagger, she punctured the pad of her thumb and held it over his lips. At the same time, she closed her eyes and pushed back through his conscious mind, delving again to where she’d found the curses and the dark presence seeking entry. Though Nikhil’s soul had always been a volatile thing—a dark mix of passion, ruthless determination, and a need to conquer—there had always been light among those shadows. Love and kindness had been a part of the man he used to be, and she’d seen evidence of his goodness over the last seven days.
Yet the darkness that surrounded his soul now was complete, and if it weren’t for the particularly inky quality of it, she might have believed it belonged to her brother. Only Ked’s power could have blotted out the light so thoroughly, but she would know if this was his doing. Something about it was distinctly female in essence—a vile, slippery presence that was impossible for Belah to get close enough to before it seemed to slither away again.
She squeezed her thumb, and Nikhil gripped her wrists and held her hands steady while the blood dripped onto his tongue.
The second he swallowed, the blackness fled.
“There is something else … The curses are the least of it.”
His hands tightened around her wrists, and the dark presence inside his mind burst through the barrier of his will and flooded back in with a vengeance, blotting out everything she perceived of his soul.
The malicious force charged at her, ejecting her from Nikhil’s mind. At the same moment, the sound of howling picked up outside, an icy wind blasting through the doorway.
Belah cried out, frantic and terrified at what this presence was, and what it might do to the men she loved.
* * *
Something was distinctly wrong. Belah opened her eyes and stared down at Nikhil. His eyes were narrowed and blacker than she had ever seen and his fingertips dug into her flesh.
In a deep, mocking voice, he said, “Please, goddess. Please grant me the gift of your everlasting love.”
Belah stared in confusion at him as his lips twisted into a wicked grin.
The light draft from the doorway grew to a heavy breeze carrying the sound of swift footsteps and a pair of voices calling her name. She turned to see Iszak and Lukas stop in the doorway. Their eyes widened at the sight of her standing over Nikhil, still gripping a bloody dagger.
Ignoring them, Nikhil grasped her wrists tighter. He yanked her to her knees, and at the last second, he twisted the knife from her palm and flipped it around. He gritted his teeth as it sank into her chest and gasped sharply as the bloody counterpart to her fresh wound bloomed in the center of his own chest.
The pain was nothing to her. The true agony was seeing her old lover’s mind blotted out by a darkness she’d never seen before and was unable to push away. She yelled at her mates again to stay back, but they surged forward, their enraged gazes focused on Nikhil.
Nikhil’s hand flew up, palm out, and a blinding blue light blasted from the center. Iszak and Lukas stumbled back, clutching at their heads, their eyes unfocused.
“Nikhil,” she gasped as she collapsed, scrambling at the hilt of the blade buried between her ribs. “Someone else is in your mind. You must fight it.”
His attention flickered, and for a second, she saw the agony she’d glimpsed earlier when he’d learned of her pregnancy.
“Fight it, whoever it is. Please, fight it!”
The winds picked up and she fell to the ground, sinking into the dark comfort of her friend, oblivion.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Searing pain burned behind Iszak’s eyes. He stumbled and shook his head, trying to regain his bearings. Beside him, Lukas muttered, “What the fuck did we just see?”
Even though his field of vision was blank now, there was still an afterimage of the scene they’d walked in on. Belah’s beauty had hit him as strongly as it had the first night he’d seen her, and the overwhelming warmth of his love for her flooded through him. However, in the afterimage, the figure that knelt before her was not the enemy he’d hated his entire life, but an extension of the woman he knew was his one true mate.
No, it had to be some trick of the spell Nikhil had thrown at them. They’d moved too slowly. When they came in, he thought for a moment that Belah had things under control, but everything went to shit within a few seconds, and Iszak cursed himself for not reacting quicker. He shook the feeling off, focusing instead on trying to shed the magic that had his feet pinned to the floor.
Beside him, Lukas’s hand found his, and his brother’s whisper was loud in his ear. “I don’t care what magic made me just see what I saw. He’s still the enemy, and we can’t stop him alone. Breathe. We’re doing this together.”
Taking a deep breath, Iszak shook off the sense that he’d just laid eyes on an old lover. He forced himself to fill his lungs and blew, willing the Wind to fill the room and tell him where their enemy was. The Wind whispered and nudged at first, pushing them bodily in one direction and overcoming the magic that kept them in place. The resulting whirlwind that surrounded them ripped across his skin and through his hair.
Soon the blindness abated and he could at least see shapes again, though they were blurry. His… lover … Iszak shook his head violently. No, his enemy held Belah’s body over the silver basin in the floor, blood streaming from the wound in her chest. She was still conscious, her bloody hand gripping at the back of Nikhil’s neck and pulling him down in what looked like a kiss.
Still halfway immobilized, Iszak was forced to watch. His lungs worked, but the wind could do no more to the surroundings than it could to a mountain. All the objects that could be moved had been blown into the corners and remained there in fragmented piles. Nikhil himself seemed immune to the wind now, as was Belah in his arms.
The Wind moved him incrementally closer, and he realized that was not a kiss Belah gave Nikhil, but a whispered message, though he could not make out the words.
Whatever Belah said, they were powerful words. Shock and disbelief flashed across Nikhil’s face, paralyzing him for a second, but it was enough for Iszak and Lukas to spring free of his magic.
“Hold him with all you’ve got!” Iszak yelled.
Lukas already had his lips pursed and wind howled from his lungs, pushing Nikhil away from Belah and throwing him against the wall behind the growing pool of blood. Iszak lunged for the pile of ropes beside the wooden cross, grabbed them, and ran to his immobilized enemy. He recognized them as the same ropes he’d used to tie Belah earlier. They would easily hold Nikhil—or so he hoped.
When he approached, Nikhil struggled against Lukas’s wind and let out a cry of protest. Iszak’s stomach did a flip at the first contact of his hand against Nikhil’s neck when he closed his palm around it and squeezed.
“You’ll never lay a finger on her again, you bastard,” he growled, then released Nikhil and quickly tied a noose that he looped around the man’s neck. The entire time, he couldn’t shake the sinking feeling that what he was doing was all wrong. That this was violence against his One somehow, even though a quick glance over his shoulder assured him Belah was still breathing and being tended to by his brother.
It had to be a trick of the enemy’s magic—some kind of self-preservation. He forced himself to tighten the noose around Nikhil’s neck and work on binding him completely. The knots he tied were quick and haphazard, and the tightest he could make them.
When he had Nikhil secured, Lukas’s immobilizing wind abated and the room finally grew quiet. Iszak shoved Nikhil to the ground and grabbed the tail of rope around his neck and pulled, dragging the man over to the bloody cross.
After binding him securely, he joined his brother on the floor beside their bleeding mate.
“Stay with us, Belah,” Lukas said. “We’ve got you. He can’t hurt you now.”
“I couldn’t …” Belah’s breath caught and her eyes fluttered closed in pain. “… couldn’t see what it was … that had him. Something in his mind …” A bloody cough spluttered up from her chest.
“Don’t speak,” Iszak said. “He’s bound with the ropes we tied you with. They seem to be holding him.” He glanced over his shoulder at the man on the cross.
“Won’t … hold him long …” she said. “Don’t let … him go.”
“No. He deserves to die, after everything he’s done.”
“Can’t kill him … only my fire can. What would Asha say?”
“Brother,” Lukas urged from his side. “Her lung is pierced. The bleeding’s stopped, but she’s losing breath. Belah, how long will it take you to heal from this?”
“Need my blood back, first. The blade is tempered with my fire. If I could breathe …” She coughed again, and for a second, her heartbeat fully stopped before restarting.
Iszak nearly panicked before remembering the one part of their mating they hadn’t completed. “We must breathe for her, brother. If we complete the ritual now, the Winds will help heal her.”
“Belah, it’s time to finish our mating ritual,” Iszak whispered in her ear. “The part we would have done, if we hadn’t been interrupted.”
She nodded weakly, turning sparkling blue eyes to gaze up at him.
“I’m ready,” she said with the last breath in her lungs.
“Boreas breathes for us, we breathe for each other,” Iszak said, then inhaled and pressed his mouth to hers. The full magic of the North Wind streamed from his lips into her body. His mouth remained locked onto hers, but around them gravity seemed to forget they had weight. The song in his lungs filled hers with his breath. Around him drifted the notes of Lukas humming their mating call.
Iszak’s breath eventually reached its limit, and it was Lukas’s turn.
Without releasing hold of her body, he leaned back and let his brother take over.
“Zephyrus breathes for us, we breathe for each other,” Lukas said, calling the West Wind before pressing his lips to hers and exhaling, long and slow.
Inside his mind, Belah’s voice resonated, repeating each mantra as her part of the vows.
Lukas released her mouth and Iszak took over again, repeating the mantra with the South Wind and filling Belah’s lungs again. Then Lukas called the East Wind.
Before Iszak could bend to start the process again, she exhaled a long, raspy breath and blue smoke erupted in a cloud, a tiny bit of it leaking from the still open wound in her chest. She clenched her eyes shut, and Iszak watched as the smoke grew dense and bright and swirled around the surface of the basin of blood.
A thin trail of blue smoke extended back to Belah’s wound. As they watched, the blood gradually funneled its way back to her body.
After a moment, her body warmed and her breathing became more even.
“My turn,” she said, and reached up to grab Iszak by the back of the neck. The words of the mantra slipped from her lips a second before they found his and her breath flooded his lungs. Their power mingled inside him and he reciprocated, sending the breath back.
Lukas was ready when she turned to him, and opened his mouth to take hers eagerly.
The wound in her chest closed, and the other bloody marks on her body slowly disappeared. She slid off Lukas’s lap and stood unsteadily. Iszak and his brother were both up in a heartbeat to hold her. She gratefully accepted their arms around her waist and pressed one hand to her belly.
“I fear I’ve lost my son and daughter, but I have this little one to think of now. Can we go home, please?”
“Nanyo was right, as usual,” Lukas said with a chuckle. “But what do we do about him?”
The brothers turned to their captive, and both let out loud curses when they found nothing but an empty cross.
Chapter Thirty
As many times as she reached out for him, Belah could find no sign of Nikhil’s consciousness out in the world. The twisting darkness she’d seen in his mind haunted her. During the few hours of sleep she’d gotten after her rescue, she dreamed of it, of her own mind being consumed by that vile presence the way she had once been consumed by the desire for oblivion. The darkness seeped in slowly, the way the waters of the Nile would when the summer rains began. If a villager fell asleep on the shores of the river, they might be consumed in the night by the waters and the creatures that lived within, lost forever.
She had the strongest sense that the dark presence was something foreign, but it seemed to have been there for ages, completely at home in his mind. Long ago, when she and Nikhil had been lovers, she had sensed a kind of darkness inside him, but it was no more threatening than her own cravings—a mere shadow on his soul that only served to highlight the goodness he was capable of. Especially his love for her.
When he’d plunged the blade into her chest, Nikhil’s eyes had gone entirely black, and she’d lost her view into his mind. Even though he had willingly let her in, begging her to release him from his curses, some dark and sinister thing had pushed her out.
Iszak and Lukas understandably didn’t believe her when she said Nikhil had been corrupted, and likely controlled, by a more powerful force all along. Still, they seemed shaken by their encounter with him in a way that confused her, their previously unequivocal hatred of him now clouded with uncertainty.
They’d returned her to Sophia North’s apartment only a few hours ago. After a long shower, Sophia North had given her a gown to wear and Belah had quickly fallen asleep, exhausted from the wound that was taking far too long to heal. She’d been awakened soon after by her mates, with Erika and Geva in tow.
After Geva healed her wound and assured her mates that nothing was wrong with the baby, the two men remained by her side. The pair of them knew better than anyone that their baby thrived, yet kept touching her belly and singing to her navel as though it were a microphone.
Her brother arrived soon after, followed shortly by her other siblings. The small apartment was soon overwhelmed.
“You shouldn’t be worrying about me anymore,” she said to Ked and her two mates, who continued to hover protectively around her. Her brother rested in a comfortable armchair beside her bed while Iszak and Lukas perched on either side of her, holding her hands.
Lukas shook his head, scanning her body for the hundredth time in the past hour. “I’m not convinced he didn’t damage you in some way, Belah. There was something off about him when I touched him. Why the fuck would you ask us to let him go? He still has Evie!”
“First, I told you don’t let him go. His mind isn’t his own right now. We need to help him. And I know he has Evie, which is why you need to leave! As long as he’s under control of that … thing, she is in danger. I’ll be fine. You two should take my brothers and go get her. My sisters and the Shadows are strong enough to protect me. Go ask your grandmother, if you don’t believe me.”
She shooed them out of the room, and they obeyed reluctantly. Thanks to the marks she’d bestowed upon them, their minds were now open to Belah, and she could clearly see how unwilling they were to discuss the situation with their grandmother. Sophia North was always right, but often gave them answers contrary to what they really wanted to hear.
As she watched them go, she sensed the piercing gaze of her brother and sighed, turning to him. Geva had healed her wounds well enough, but the fatigue she felt ran so much deeper. She needed several nights of rest and intimacy with her mates, but more than that, she needed to understand the nature of whatever darkness had taken hold of Nikhil’s mind.
“Something has your new mates spooked, sister,” Ked said.
“Someth
ing has me spooked. I know you don’t want to believe me, but if you could have been there, you would agree. Nikhil wasn’t in control of his mind when they found me. There was something dark, and distinctly inhuman, controlling him, and it’s been there for a very long time.”
“And there was no sign of it while you were together all those days?”
“Nothing. You can see into my heart well enough to know it’s true. I know his mind well, Ked. It was the same as I remembered it, though filled with sadness and regret. He only ever wanted one thing, and in the end, I gave it to him, but I lost my chance to find my babies …”
Belah inhaled shakily, willing the heat of tears away from her eyes. Whatever had taken hold of Nikhil at the end was pure malice. She had seen him clearly over the last week before the darkness crept in at the end. Then his eyes had cleared again briefly while he held her in his arms, trying to staunch the flow of blood, and in that moment she had given him what she knew he wanted, whispering the words in his ear.
“The female you are keeping with Zorion is not his mate. Her name is Asha, and she is his half-sister—your daughter. You must keep her safe from the darkness that holds you. You must fight for her.”
Ked wrapped his hand around hers and squeezed. “I don’t need to use my powers to know your heart, sister. It’s no surprise that he reverted to the man who once loved you after being with you again. He hadn’t seen you since the night I took you from him. My hope is that his time with you encouraged him to change.”
Belah gently retrieved her hand and frowned at her brother. “I don’t know what I need to do to prove to you it wasn’t him all these years. He shared so many things with me—it was like we’d never parted. The man I spent the last seven days with was not the man who committed all those atrocities. The only thing keeping me from accepting him again was my vow to Iszak and Lukas and my love for them.”
Ked’s expression darkened, causing shadows to creep closer and blot out the early morning sunlight. Belah reflexively pulled her covers higher.
