Bad Fae | romantasy | Bad Fae #1

Chapter Two

Darkness licked at the corners of my periphery, and I felt a tugging on my mind. Something trying to gain entry perhaps. Glamour shimmered around me, and I tried to fight it, but I knew I had no hope.

I had been warned my whole life. They all told me the same thing, those few who'd loved me and the rest who'd hated me. And no matter what I'd done, how careful I'd been, I'd still fallen into the trap.

Never owe anything to a sidhe. Never. It was better to be dead.

Because this Voidsworn didn't need to tell me that I owed him. What I owed him.

I knew it. He'd saved my life.

It was the worst debt to owe; a life. My life was his to do with what he would. To command. To end. To play with. I'd felt the force of the geas slam into place as soon as the last Febren was dead, even if it had taken me a second to recognise it. Geas went beyond a promise. Far more than mere oath. It was pure, unfiltered, primal magic. I understood it with that tiny part of me that belonged in the places of the world like this cursed forest. A geas didn't need those involved to give it permission. It was more powerful than free will.

And it was the very basics of dealing with the fae.

There were three rules:

Never thank them; it implied debt.

They couldn't lie; but they twisted their words expertly.

And never make a deal; the backstabbing bastards would always screw you over.

This Voidsworn saving my life was as much a deal as if I'd asked him to do it. It was irrevocable. Only broken if I was ever in a situation to save his life. And I wouldn't waste any chance to end him. Even if I belonged to him until then.

Because it was his face that had haunted my nightmares for over six years.

It was that night that the command ringing through the geas was trying to force me to relive. He wanted me to remember, he wanted to be sure it was me, wanted to be sure I remembered exactly who he was and what he'd done to me. How much he'd enjoyed it. Just another nail driving home how hopeless my situation was now that I was geas bound to obey his every command.

I glared at him, funnelling all the hatred I owned as the fear and panic started to envelope me, and I was thrust back into the day before it had all happened.

*

Parties at my father's castle weren't unheard of. The man loved to entertain. Loved showing off his grand wealth and status and things to anyone who would suffer his 'hospitality'.

Arrogance.

The notion permeated my very soul. It hadn't just been my mother's birthright from which I'd inherited an unhealthy dose of arrogance.

My father, as king of the human realm of Aclad, thought he was above it all. Above everything and everyone but for the High King himself. Despite knowing full well that any sidhe could snap him with little more than a thought, my father believed himself untouchable.

Because who would dare attack a king?

Attacking a king would be an act of war. And even the deadly assassins of the fae clan of Vodreylia wouldn't be so stupid, would they? So, it would be harmless to invite a delegation of them to his castle under the pretence of peace talks.

In reality, it was a show of arrogance.

It was an equal show of arrogance that the Vodreylians accepted his invitation.

The castle bustled, even though it was hours yet before the sun rose. Servants cleaned, cooked, decorated.

I'd woken early in excitement. I always enjoyed seeing those outside our realm, having never set foot outside the safety of the walls of Arksale, the home of my father's castle, in the eleven years of my life.