Claimed by the Prince of Darkness

Ruelle watched Ezekiel bring the bowl of soup toward her, and her stomach turned over again. She could still feel the sting on her lower jaw from when he had grabbed her face. She said,

"I need cold milk. My stomach won't be able to digest without it."

Ezekiel stared at her, the spoon paused mid-air. He didn't blink. There was a patience in his eyes that frightened her more than his anger ever had, as though he had all the time in the world to wait for her to come around.

"It is good that I have everything prepared for you," Ezekiel said, and he smiled.

His smile was the worst part. It didn't belong on the face of someone who'd just killed people whom she held dear.

"One moment. I will be back."

He straightened before stepping away from the room and the darkness in the corridor swallowed him.

Ruelle didn't move at first. She didn't dare.

Her hands and legs were bound in rope, jute biting into her wrists every time she shifted but she wasn't tied to the chair. Either Ezekiel had forgotten, or he believed that even if she ran, she wouldn't be too far to be caught. She didn't dare to get up right away because if she were to trip and fall, it would only remind the halfling of how she wasn't completely bound.

Ruelle didn't know how many hours had passed since the harbour. Since she'd disappeared. With her heart pounding, she tried to calm her breath as she heard footsteps approach the room.

Ezekiel appeared in the doorway with a glass of milk in his hand. He crossed to her and brought the glass to her mouth. "Drink."

Though his voice was warm, it wasn't a request.

She drank because she'd decided to play compliant. Defiance hadn't worked earlier, so she took two sips before turning away. Her eyes drifted to the lantern hanging in the room. She asked him,

"What time is it?"

"Why should time matter now?" Ezekiel smiled. "You don't have to worry about Sexton anymore. Or your family. Or anyone else." His expression softened. "You only have to think about us."

Ruelle doubted that telling him to let her go for her happiness, for her own good, would work. It was hard to reason with a person who was delusional. Reason required a shared reality, and Ezekiel had built his own. In his world, she loved him and only needed time to remember it.

He then continued, "You won't have to worry about anything once we're gone. I'll take care of everything."

He reached for her hair, fingers hovering, then smoothing it back from her face with a tenderness that made her skin crawl. He continued,

"I know this place isn't suitable, but it's only temporary. I've already planned where we'll go. Far away from here, where no one will disturb us." He smoothed another strand of hair from her face. "We only need to remain here a few more days."

What was he waiting for?

The lantern light dimmed for a heartbeat and the air thickened.

It was the snow. He was waiting for the ice to melt. Waiting for the ships and boats to begin to move again. And from what she remembered, the snow was predicted to melt by the fourth day.

But there was something else that had been gnawing at her, through the shock and the grief and the cold. Something she couldn't shake. Lachlan had gone down in front of her. Blood spreading beneath his head before she could do anything. But Dane, how could he die?

"How were you able to take my appearance?" she asked. The question slipped out before she could stop it, but she didn't regret it.

Ezekiel's expression shifted at her question. He asked, "You think becoming you was difficult? I've watched you long enough to know how you move. How you speak. How you look at people when you're trying not to show what you're thinking. Taking your face was the easy part."

Ruelle felt her skin prickle by his words alone. To think all these months they have trusted and believed him. But something fell off as if he wasn't telling the entire truth and she stared at him with suspicion.

"Are you sleepy?" he asked. The change in his tone was so sudden it made her flinch. The rage had drained out of him like water through a crack, and what remained was that patient, tender thing he always liked to show. He set the glass aside and said, "It is night, after all. And you must be tired from sitting for hours now. Let me take you to the bed."

"I am not sleepy."

It was night already? It was near to noon when they were at the harbour.

Her chest was beginning to ache from the anxiety and the pounding of her heart that hadn't stopped. The rope burned against her wrists as she shifted, her skin raw beneath the fibres.

"The witch you killed," she said, forcing herself to meet his eyes. "Was she the one who helped you with everything?"

Ezekiel pulled another chair from the side, the legs scraping across the stone with a sound that left her on edge. He brought it to a stop directly in front of her, close enough that she could see the way the lantern light pooled in his eyes, and then he sat down.

"There are so many things to talk about, aren't there, Ruelle?" He said her name like it belonged to him. "To think we had to be apart. I was wondering why the voodoo wasn't working when I didn't hear any news. But then I found out later that you are a fellow witch."

Ruelle's eyebrows furrowed at his words and she stated, "You are a halfling..."

She saw him nod, and the nod was slow, almost pleased, as if he'd been waiting for her to catch up. He confirmed,

"I am a halfling. But I have traces of witch lineage that came from my father. But now that I think about it, all of it makes sense. I have traces of witchcraft, and you are a witch. A carry forward from what the past lives held." He paused, letting her catch up with what he meant. "Do you understand what it means?"

She understood exactly what he wanted it to mean, and she'd rather swallow glass than give him the satisfaction of saying it. She instead said,

"That we could be siblings for being the same."

The flash of anger in his eyes was instant before he laughed. Leaning forward, he placed his hand on either side of her armrest and replied,

"It is our destiny to be together. I am meant to protect you."

She had thought of tricking him but it was hard to think when her blood was roaring in her ears.

"A person meant to protect me wouldn't keep me like this," she said, and her voice was low and sharp as broken glass. "You are no less than Harold Belmont, who saw me as an object."

Ezekiel's hand had swept across it in a blur of motion, and the glass exploded against the rocky, uneven wall. Milk ran down the stone in pale streaks, dripping onto the floor where the shards glittered.

He was on his feet, pacing back and forth in front of her. He took a deep breath before exhaling and turning to her.

"I was the one who was protecting you in Sexton!" His voice cracked, raw with a fury he couldn't contain. "I had to manipulate one of your tests because you almost failed! Because you forgot to write the rest of the answers, you missed the questions. I did everything I could in my power by getting rid of that Clifford girl so that you could live in peace!"

Ruelle's breath caught in her throat.

For a moment, she was back in Sexton, standing outside the examination hall with the paper in her hands. Several sheets had been stuck together. She hadn't even realised there were questions she had missed until it was too late. And the instructors had already been looking for any excuse to fail the Groundlings.

All this time, she had thought it was sheer luck that she had passed the test.

June Clifford… no matter how much they didn't get along with her, death wasn't the solution.

"But what did you do?" he went on, his voice rising, his hand shaking. "You went to live with Lucian fucking Slater! I wanted to get you out of the terrible state your father made you live in, but your stepmother put Caroline in your place after promising you to me! I have done nothing but ardently love you."

Ruelle sat very still, her face turned away. What her stepmother did was wrong. But at the same time, she was glad that was how things had turned out to be.

She couldn't forgive him. No matter his reasons, no matter the twisted love he dressed his crimes in, she could not forgive him. The loss and the pain were still fresh, still raw. He had indirectly turned her into a murderer, the murderer of many and the weight was suffocating her. Ready to bury her in the ground.

And beneath the grief, she felt spite.

At the same time, her eyes dropped to his hands, where he pulled out a vial from his pocket. It was a small, colourless glass, and he pulled the lid free, which gave a soft pop that echoed in the room. He continued to speak,

"I have always held you dear to my heart. And if you find this difficult, I could always help you."

Ruelle felt her vision waver and she squinted hard, fighting to keep him in focus. The lantern light seemed to smear across the walls like wet paint and for a moment, her head felt too light, then too heavy. She questioned,

"What is that vial?"

She heard him say, as if from very far away, "If you want a window in this room, I will give it to you."

And in the blink of her eye, there it was. A window on the wall where there had been only blank, black stone. She heard him speak, "If you look closer, you will find a bird chirping."

And just as he said, a little bird came to sit on the windowsill. She was hallucinating. "And if it is Lucian Slater..."

When she looked back at Ezekiel, it wasn't Ezekiel she saw.

It was Lucian.

The face she'd been longing for, aching for, holding onto like a candle in the dark since the moment the harbour had turned to chaos. The sharp line of his jaw. The pale, watchful eyes. The mouth she knew, the hands she knew. Her chest squeezed at the sight of him, a hard, sudden constriction that stole the breath from her lungs before she could stop it. But her body didn't care what her mind knew.

This wasn't him, she told herself. This was a trick. A trick that had possibly been used on Brother Dane.

She saw him step forward, his hand reaching towards her face. His voice like Lucian's, which was low, but it lacked the depth she was used to.

"I love you so much, and I will do anything for you." His hand moved to her neck. She felt his fingers brush the place where the soul bond had been, the mark that bound her to Lucian. He said, "I will have this mark replaced. There are spells for it and then you will be mine."

Ruelle tilted her chin up, meeting those borrowed eyes, and questioned,

"Don't you think it is pathetic that you have to rely on his face to make me listen to you?" She caught the twitch at the corner of his lips. She continued, "Even though Lucian and I aren't married, we are bonded. We have consummated, and I no longer—"

SLAP.

The blow came so fast she didn't expect it. Her head snapped to the side, and for a moment the world went black. The side of her face erupted in heat, a stinging bloom that spread from her cheek to her jaw, and she tasted blood, where the skin of her lip had split against her teeth.

"I am sorry," Ezekiel apologised, his hand touching her face, to which she jerked away. "I am sorry. Why are you intent on making me angry, Ruelle? Look what you made me do."

She wanted to spit the blood in her mouth directly into his soft, pleading eyes. But if words could pull out such action from him, she didn't know what other things he could do this very instant.

"I know you need some time," he went on, his voice dropping into that low, soothing register, "but you shouldn't try to rile me with lies when I am being patient with you."

Ruelle didn't answer. The bile was rising in her throat, and she swallowed it down. If her hands had been free, she would have clawed his eyes out. She would have hurt him. She would have done damage and savoured it. But they weren't free. So she sat still, her cheek burning, her lip bleeding, and she let the silence stretch.

"Did you...use that vial at the harbour?"

Ezekiel put the lid back on the vial, turning it over in his fingers. He tilted his head, considering the question, and when he spoke, there was something almost teacherly in his tone.

"You must be wondering how a mere halfling overthrew a pureblooded vampire. No creature is above another. And if there is, trickery is more powerful than any kind. Sometimes even a human can be the most powerful one in the room. I was."

He walked towards the lantern and stared at the burning flame before continuing, "The family who took me in were vampires like any other proud night creatures. They wanted a plaything for their child, and I would take the burnt end for everything. I was constantly used as a blood source, and there were days I thought I would almost die. But one day, I burnt them all until there was nothing but ash and dust. No one suspected the human child," he chuckled.

Ruelle stared at him with caution. She held his gaze and said nothing, because there was nothing to say that wouldn't bring his hand across her face again.

Ezekiel stared right back at her. He then turned and walked back to the spare chair, lowering himself into it with a sigh that sounded almost weary.

"When someone is vile," Ezekiel explained, as if reading the question still hanging in the air between them, "they need to be brought down from their high horse. So I used the vial to change his perception for two seconds."

Miles away, the compass Ruelle had given led Lucian to the abandoned carriage.

It stood at the edge of the road, its door hanging open, its horses gone. The snow around it lacked any boot prints or drag marks. On one side of the carriage's inner wall, there was blood smeared that belonged to Ruelle.

Lucian's hand reached for the now dried blood, his fingers tracing the lines. He stared at the amount of blood that had trickled down and something behind his eyes went very quiet and very dangerous.

The corruption soon crept out of him, moving towards the carriage before biting into the wood and metal until there was nothing but dust on the ground.

He turned away from the empty space where the carriage had been and looked down at the compass.

The needle spun before pointing to a new location.

He stood there wearing death like a second coat. The blood on his face had dried, and in other places it was still wet, dark and gleaming, streaking down the column of his throat, soaking into the collar of his shirt until the fabric clung to his skin. The blood belonged to the humans he'd been interrogating that morning, ones who had drawn him away from home.

If it had been another time Lucian would have taken his time with them. But the corruption inside him had broken loose, and what remained was something the council feared.

He hadn't interrogated the humans but torn through them. What mattered right now was that the compass in his hand was pointing at a new location.

"I thought compasses like these were supposed to point at the living," Edward said with a frown. He'd joined the search the moment word reached him, and he stood now at Lucian's side. His eyes were fixed on the compass needle as it spun and settled, spun and settled, restless as a living thing. "Father must be able to find her sooner than this thing."

Minister Carnifex, who was with them, murmured, "But it has been a few hours since word reached His Majesty, and there has been no word so far. The compass was made with blood. Hence, the arrow points to where the person's blood has been. It seeks wherever her blood has been left. Old or new. Ezekiel must have sent the bloodstains in different directions."

Edward's frown deepened. "How many places are there?"

Carnifex didn't answer. The problem was that Ruelle's blood had been spilled in more places than anyone would have guessed and his gaze shifted to Lucian.

Lucian's usual calm composure was broken and replaced with obvious unkempt anger. Some of the men kept their distance. The smarter ones stayed well behind him, close enough to follow orders but far enough to maintain distance.

But Lucian didn't seem to care. He only looked at the compass, and the compass only pointed, and the blood kept appearing in places it had no right to be.

"We have sent word to block the roads," one officer reported, his lips pressed into a thin, colourless line. "And the men are looking through the forest. But there has been no sign of them."

"Then look harder," Lucian said. He had already sent Zhenya after Ruelle's scent. The trail had split twice and vanished both times.

"Sire!"

Another man approached, half-running through the snow, his head bowed, his breath coming in ragged white gusts. He dropped into a bow that was more instinct than ceremony. "We have gathered all the witches!"

Lucian looked up from the compass.

"Bring them to Brackenwell," he said. His grip on the compass tightened just slightly that the metal groaned and he then released it. It was the next obvious destination.

Soon the group travelled to the place where Ruelle's house once stood. The townsfolk mostly stayed inside their houses, not daring to step outside.

The witches had been gathered in the town square. Guards flanked them on every side, torches held high, the firelight catching the fear in their eyes and throwing it back in shades of orange and shadow.

Lucian dismounted from his horse in a single motion and the snow crunched beneath his boots.

"Who knows how to use a location spell here?" Lucian questioned, having no time for chit chat. The gathered people looked at one another. Heads shook and eyes dropped, and no one stepped forward. "The one who helps me will be pardoned from being torched."

"I—don't know," one of the women stammered. She was young, perhaps thirty, her hands wringing together. She lied, "I need to feed my child."

"Shut up unless you want to burn right this instant," one of the guards snapped, stepping toward her with the torch raised. "You are witches. Each one of you. There is no reason to lie!"

Lucian watched them with eyes that held no patience left to spare. It wasn't fury that lived in his gaze but something darker. He remarked,

"If you don't, then there's no reason for you to be alive." He raised his hand. "Pour."

The guards broke from their lines, and the buckets came with them, which carried kerosene. The smell hit the square before the liquid touched the ground, settling over the gathered witches like a shroud. They poured it in a wide, deliberate circle.

The kerosene spread across the frozen ground in dark, glistening ribbons, soaking into the trampled snow. The witches shrank back, but there was nowhere to go. The ring closed around them, and the torches burned brighter, as if sensing what was coming, one witch tried to escape.

The witch's appearance shifted as she ran. She made a dash out of the circle and for one wild second she almost made it. But a vampire caught her. The witch's scream was cut short as the vampire tore the witch's head off her shoulder and threw it back into the circle.

Another witch tried to escape, but Lucian caught hold of the witch's hand, twisting it.

"If you didn't want to live," Lucian said, and his voice was soft as falling snow, "you should have said that before."

Lucian's fingers closed around the witch's neck and tore the windpipe and flesh in a single, terrible motion. The witch dropped to his knees, his hands flying to his throat, but there was nothing left to hold the air in or the blood back. He spluttered and gagged, his mouth working soundlessly, his eyes wide with a confusion that would not have time to become understanding.

"Me! I know the location!" The shout came from the circle. An old male witch pushed forward, his face ashen, his hands raised. "This place is a non-magic land! We need to move away for the spell to work!"

Lucian looked at him briefly before nodding once.

The old witch was pulled forward, stumbling over the snow, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps. He was dragged out of the square, past the ring of kerosene, out toward the edge of town.

Lucian turned to the guards, and he ordered, "You can kill the rest."

"Yes, Sire!" the guards responded, and the sound of their boots on the frozen ground was the sound of a door closing.

The witches began to plead and scream. Some threw themselves at the edges of the circle only to be driven back by the torches and the blades. It was neither cruelty nor indifference. It was simply that they had ceased to matter the moment they'd failed to be useful.

He walked to the place where the old witch was marking the ground.

"Ezekiel Henley," Lucian said, and the name came out like a curse. "Ruelle Belmont."

But after uttering the names, the witch's lips trembled. He looked down at his markings, then back up at Lucian, and the dread in his face deepened. He informed,

"I am not able to locate either of them. Let me retry it again!"

But even after five minutes, the answer was the same as the location spell had failed to find them.

"It is useless to rely on this witch," came Edward's frustrated voice.

"Ezekiel took her to a non-magic land," Lucian realised and his jaw clenched.

The old witch's eyes dropped to Lucian's hand, to the compass still clutched there. He asked, "That compass in your hand. Is it blood-bound? Dead ground prevents magic from being cast into or out of it." He then looked back at the pureblooded vampire and said, "But that thing is different. If the blood is already bound to it. Dead ground can't sever a connection that was made before she entered."

Ezekiel hadn't merely hidden Ruelle. He had chosen somewhere Ruelle couldn't use her own abilities and no witch could reach her through theirs.

The compass needle trembled and turned once again. Lucian looked in the direction before he mounted on the horse before he made a move. However many direction Ezekiel had left Ruelle's signs, he would exhaust every one of them.

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