MATURE FANTASY** He is a predator who thought he captured an ordinary girl... but her mind is sharper than any of his claws.
Ariana lives in the shadow of her monstrous father in a world barely held together by a treaty. Until her lands are invad...
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I was suspended in a strange state of alarm. Waiting to feel something foreign, but it did not come. Instead, Clause was torturing me with the unknown while he lazily examined my hand.
Edda breathed out heavily beside me. She was staring at Clause with dark, dangerous eyes. The way she looked at him was as if that moment was personal to her, like she knew the Sidhe King before me. Had she wanted me to be in such a predicament, had she foreseen everything and guided me down that path in an attempt to eliminate me for the treacherous act against the leader superior I had committed?
Landin shifted his weight in his seat, and it creaked with the movement. He had drawn his sword moments ago and nearly ended the agreement which kept us safe while we were in the Sidhe lands. Was he in on it with Edda? The both of them did not see me as being fit for leading the Bavadrin people for what I had done to my father.
I looked back at my hand and the Sidhe holding it. He wanted to kill me. I knew it in my blood to have been true.
No.
The thoughts and feelings racing around in my mind were not my own, at least not exactly. Clause was drawing them out, growing small insecurities into something significant.
A smile grew on his handsome face while a frown solidified on mine.
"Please stop. I can make my own decisions without your input." My words were spoken through clenched teeth.
Clause withdrew his hand and with it the foreign thoughts. I failed to suppress the shudder moving through me. Nausea brought the taste of acid to my mouth. It was extraordinary, the impact of his touch. Had he been able to read my thoughts? Forcing a steady breath, I tried to keep the panic from taking over.
"Very interesting," he commented while I shook with the feeling left behind. It felt as though his power had slithered around me. It glided over my skin, tightening and releasing. The sensation was revolting.
"What is?" Edda asked, sounding curious. It was the first time she had spoken to the Sidhe King.
Though Clause replied to her, he kept his eyes fixed on me. "Everyone always accepts my influence as their own, for it stems from your own insecurities. No one has ever recognized it as foreign the way you just had."
I had no response, for I still did not quite understand what had occurred. It was seamless, his influence. There was no odd feeling, nothing that let me know he was doing anything until he finally withdrew.
"She knows who she is," Edda stated.
"Indeed, she does," he agreed.
"What exactly did you do?" I asked when the nausea within finally subsided enough that I did not fear hurling when my mouth opened.
He reached for the wine before him without looking at it. "What do you know of what I can do?" The wine swirled in the glass before he took a sip of it
I glanced at Edda, unsure how best to answer, so she answered for me. "She knows you can affect others with conjuring abilities, lessening them or igniting them."
