The Wicked Born

Chapter 17

Tabitha pursed her lips, knowing what was going to come next but hoping to avoid it regardless.

"I knew I would get it out of you eventually." He finally dragged his gaze back to hers, and the look of passion in his eyes sent a chill through her body. Tabitha quickly averted her gaze, suddenly finding something very interesting in the reins gripped between her white-knuckled hands. "I'd have forever to do that once you came back to me. And you did. Isn't that right?"

Tabitha swallowed the lump in her throat while trying to think of something, anything, to say to him to let him know what she really felt.

Nothing.

She felt nothing for the warlock--her attraction when they'd met two years prior never made it past the physical stage, and Tabitha had come to realize recently that even that had at some point withered and died away. Ellias was one of the more handsome people that she'd ever met before, but that was all that he had going for him. He didn't have a mind that interested her; didn't have a life that she cared to be apart of; he was just an easy lay with a pretty face when she was 18.

The day they'd met two years prior, she walked into his tavern--her power trip from killing some of the King's guards right outside of the village yet to wear off--covered in blood and sweat, but with a predatory smile adorned on her features. She ordered the strongest drink the barkeep had to offer, ignoring all of the patrons that swiveled in their seats to follow her every movement. The barkeep looked as if he wanted to shrivel up right where he was and die rather than work under

When she revealed to him her plans to eventually leave his quaint home and return to her life as a nomad, she accidentally let it slip that she intended to find a trusted friend to be in charge of handling her money that was supposed to go to Bexley once she came of age. She finally caved after hours of him begging to be the trusted one. She knew that he did it solely for the fact that she'd have to see him again some day rather than become a permanent absence in his life. She did it for the fact that she had no one else lined up for the job.

She still had the scar on her palm from where she'd made him take a blood oath that he would not abuse the money she set aside of her younger sister. Oddly enough, that long-since healed scar sporadically gave her random pangs of pain within the last year. She never thought twice about it.

"Tabitha," Ellias urged, "you told me that you'd come back. That we would pick up where we left off." She finally faced him and her heart sunk a little to find honest concern in his eyes. Despite all that had happened recently, she felt bad for using him so severely. He wasn't a bad person--she was.

"No, I didn't," she argued softly. She didn't want to be doing it then, but the conversation was long past due. "I told you that since you were the one I entrusted with Bexley's inheritance, you would eventually have to see me again. I know that you thought that reunion may also bring forth the rekindling of a possible romance, but it wouldn't. It won't."

Ellias' jaw hardened, his features growing tight once he realized what was going on. The look in his eyes contorted to something that was almost enough to scare even her--she recognized it as the look that he gave "lesser" beings when trying to intimidate them. She lifted her chin in defiance, not giving him an inch of fear in her heart. "You're done trying with us." His tone was icy cold.

"There never was an us," Tabitha offered in an equally chilling tone.

Ellias barked out an incredulous scoff that was a bit louder than her liking. Her eyes darted to Dacre to ensure that he still wasn't privy to their conversation. She had a gut feeling that the next subject would soon turn toward him, and she didn't want him to jump in. His attention was mercifully still turned forward, but she didn't fail to notice that his right ear was cocked up in the air as if he was trying to catch small glimmers of their discussion.