Chapter 17

A sharp sting on my cheek wakes me up with a jolt, and I jerk awake to find myself away from the comforts of my bed. It takes me a long moment to understand where I was, and remember what happened.

“Finally awake, aren’t we? You are truly such a princess, swooning at such a time.” The mocking voice said, and I quickly placed a name to that hateful voice.

I was placed in some sort of a cell. Granted, this prison looked a little too large and a little too spacious for prisoners, but it was still a cell alright –considering that there was a large metal gate where the doorway for an exit was supposed to be. Fluorescent lamps lit the entire place, and it seemed entirely empty, save an uncomfortable looking bed tucked in the corner. There was a symbol on the drapery of the bed, and I squinted enough to recognize the symbol of my own kingdom.

I was in the prison in my own kingdom.

Before me stood the vampire that I had heard but not seen all this while. He was dressed impressively –true to his position and title –with a crisp casual shirt and jeans. He even had a cape that made him look like Dracula Junior, and with that grin showing his fangs off, there was no asking where he got inspiration for his appearance from.

“Linus.” I greeted with hostility, but I guess that was super overrated, considering his disappointed look. If he was looking for something more from me, then he wasn’t getting anything more. I was trying to stay alive to save my kingdom, damn it; not be some stupid self-sacrificing heroine.

“Took you long enough. I was afraid Kain wouldn’t survive enough to see you awake again.” Linus replied gruffly, and he side-stepped just enough for me to spy my escort directly behind him, slumped on the floor in a pool of his own blood.

“No!” The air rushed out of my lungs in a gasp, and I nearly choked. “Kain!”

Kain raised his head, and I saw his tired eyes lighten up just a little bit. His face was too pale, his lips white like paper. He was hunched on the floor, as if he had gone through more than a stake through his abdomen, but a wave of immense relief crashed over me when I saw his smile.

“What have you done to him?” I demanded, trying to get to Kain’s side, but realizing only then that my hands and legs were bound in shackles that was probably specially made to resist vampire strength. I should have known, shouldn’t I?

Linus only smiled menacingly, eyes of baby blue shining in sadistic victory. How could those pretty blue eyes ever hold such intense evil? How could that face of perfection hold such disgusting cruelty? How could those sharp features…

Wait. I took a double take at our captor, and realized he looked distantly familiar. No, it wasn’t the fact that I’d seen him in my kingdom, standing over my father’s throne right before I was carted out. No… his face reminded me of something, of someone…

“Oh, dear darling, don’t worry. Kain won’t die just yet. He’s quite persistent, you know. That little bugger just doesn’t die when I want him to. I tried it so many years ago, and look where he ended up –protecting you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, a chill in my spine. I remembered what Kain had done moments before he was staked and I fell unconscious. Kain had… summoned fire and water. Kain had summoned elements to his will. No vampires could do that… except Linus. But Linus was a Dragos, so that explained his ability. What about Kain?

“I was the one who made Kain have his little ‘accident’ that lost his memories three hundred and fifty years ago.” Linus grinned, as if terribly proud at his doing.

“It… was you…?” Kain breathed, pained eyes going to our captor as he struggled to sit up.

“Yes. I brought stupid you to the edge of our kingdom and pushed you off the cliff. You must have rolled all the way into Lucifer territory. I should have known pushing you off the cliff into a forest full of wood isn’t going to kill ‘Precious Darling Kain’. I should have put a stake into you first.” Linus turned slightly so that he could see Kain’s stricken face.

“How could you? You’re my…” Kain wheezed painfully, cutting his words off as his eyes darted to me suddenly.

“I’m your what? Say it, Kain. Let me hear the admittance.” Linus urged, grinning widely as his eyes landed on me too, as if knowing something that I didn’t.

“No!” Kain finally pulled himself to sit up, and I saw the amount of burns and scratches on his body. The hole in his abdomen had healed, but he must have lost a lot of blood in the process, for he was white as sheet. “I gave up everything when I chose to protect Seraphina. I have nothing to admit. You are nothing to me, Linus, except my enemy.”

Our Dracula-inspired captor laughed exactly like the villain he was portraying himself to be.

“It’s not that easy, Kain. Do you not feel the powers of the elements back at your fingertips? You’ve ignored them for so long, and now they scream to come back to your embrace. They scream to be wielded by you, to destroy. Come on, I am waiting. Destroy me, won’t you? Destroy this kingdom, with Seraphina in it.” Linus baited, stepping closer to my already-prone escort. I didn’t know what they were talking about, but I knew enough that Linus was going to cause Kain more harm.

And I wasn’t going to let that happen. Not under my watch.

“Stay away from Kain, you asshole! You want me; you have me. Let him go!” I strained against my chains, which had my arms pulled above my head, my legs pulled at shoulder width apart.

Linus, like any villain, took attention to my desperate cries, and turned to me. I breathed a sigh of relief to see that he wasn’t going to torture Kain more than he’d already done, then steeled my face to not betray my emotions, glaring at the Dragos royal.

“I can’t, darling princess. Kain means more to me than you think.”

“I’ll do anything you want.” I blurted out before I knew what I had said. “Just let Kain go.”

I have wanted to do this in a long time. My mind whispered in victorious satisfaction. I have wanted to give up all that I have for love. For Kain. I couldn’t do that before. I can now.

“No.” Kain’s gasp was shocked, and I struggled not to look at his wide deep blue eyes. Oh, how those eyes reminded me of the ocean and the waves crashing onto the shore.

Linus grinned, stepping closer and placing a hand cupping my cheek gently, in a move that was almost sensual. I struggled not to puke and tamed down a disgusted shiver.

“Anything?” He asked softly in a voice so low and deep it would have meant to be sexy, if not for the fact that he was my captor and I was in chains.

“Anything.” I confirmed, refusing to look into Kain’s eyes. He has spent so long trying to protect me, and I could do nothing for him in return. It was time I finally stood up and repaid Kain for his love and devotion, his desire and ability to protect me.

“Then moan.” Linus said, right before he leaned his face in, and started trailing kisses from my cheek towards my earlobe. That sickening bastard nibbled my earlobe for a little, licking in a sensual manner that was meant to turn me on. I became doubly disgusted instead.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried my best to focus on pleasurable thoughts instead of the fact that Linus had his lips all over me. The warm, soft moisture trailed down from my ear to my neck. It stayed there, and a slick warm tongue licked the sensitive skin there. I shuddered, but kept silent to push back a groan of disgust.

“No, Seraphina!” I heard Kain’s desperate protest, and imagined him fighting his own weakness to come to his feet. I remembered how I first met him –all bloodied and close to death. He was close to the death blow to be delivered by his master, but he had looked at me and smiled.

“Moan.” Linus growled, his lips still pressed against my neck. The deep guttural voice made vibrations against the sensitive skin of my neck and I shivered, fisting my hands. His hands moved away from my shoulders, down the my sides and stopped at my waist, right below the hem of my shirt and began to push them up.

“D-Don’t…” I whispered with fear as his hands reached further upwards. I hadn’t been touched so sensitively before… and I didn’t want to be touched by Linus. Not like this.

“You smell nice, Seraphina… I understand why Kain would fall so stupidly for you.” Linus breathed against the wet skin of my neck, bringing a chill in my body that was deeper than the surface wind. The chill set deep inside me, along with the fear as Linus’s relentless hands reached my bra, and crept to cup my breasts through the soft material.

I whimpered softly.

“P-Please… No…”

“Oh, I intend to do more than just touch you, Seraphina. I don’t know why I’m so surprised though. I should have expected Goody-Two-Shoes Kain to not have touched you. Yet, why your Marchand fiancé haven’t touched you is beyond me.” Linus spoke close to my neck, breathing more breaths across wet, sensitive skin. He had found my artery, and was poised for a strike with his fangs. The tension wound up in me so tight I was afraid I would burst. When would he sink his fangs in… and drink me in?

He stroked my breasts through the material, and my knees nearly buckled, if my legs weren’t chained tightly to the wall.

“I promised… Lorcan and Dante.” I distantly heard a furious voice in the background, beneath my pounding heart. “I promised Seraphina.”

There was a large blast of heat that singed close to me, but it was over as quick as it came. Linus’s presence on me disappeared and I opened my eyes wide in shock at the sudden interruption. Linus was standing a few steps to the side, facing Kain while my escort stood facing me –or where Linus’s back would have been if he stayed. I looked down, and found the floor right in front of me charring and smoking. Kain’s blue eyes were filled with a fire of anger that I’d seen only once before –when he caught me and Lorcan in my room.

“I will protect her. I promised everyone that.” Kain declared, and despite all of his injuries, here he stood, turning to face Linus. He knelt on one knee in a quick movement and pressed his palms flat on the floor. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I definitely didn’t expect when a vertical column of water exploded from the ground around Linus.

Then Kain raised one hand towards where Linus was supposed to be, trapped in the water column, and I felt a cold blast of wind make towards where the activity was going down. I watched as the translucent water turn a little more opaque, and it slowly flowed less and less, till everything was ice.

Kain didn’t even look at me, pointing his upraised hand at my bindings. I felt more than saw a slice of air make towards my shackles, and I felt the pressure pulling me upright against the wall fall away. I dropped to the ground, and Kain destroyed my manacles around my wrists and ankles.

“Run, Seraphina, when you can. Find Ren and run with him as far as you can.” Kain said lowly, still not looking at me as he slowly straightened up. What moment of silence we had was broken when a gloved hand exploded through the wall of ice. Everything began to melt, and I saw a large fireball make upwards towards the air.

“I can help.” I offered. “I’m not going to leave you here with him. He hates you for some reason, and I’m not going to let him get you.”

The menacing laugh started again, just as the ice wall melted back into a big puddle of water, revealing Linus as unscathed as he had been seconds ago.

“’For some reason’, she says, Kain. Poor girl, what she doesn’t know!” Linus raised a gloved hand, and the Earth beneath our feet shook. Kain jumped back with agility that he shouldn’t have with his injury as the floor turned to mush at his feet.

“Keep her out of this!” Kain replied angrily as he made a pushing motion towards me. A gust of wind so strong made me stumble backwards away from the elemental fight ensuing between the two vampires. I didn’t know how Kain could control these elements so well, but it was obvious he wasn’t going to hold back against Linus. The questions could be asked later.

“You mistake yourself, Kain.” Linus said as he dodged a fireball with vampire speed, but almost missed a sharp end of an icicle Kain threw at him. “It is not all about you. It is actually about the fact of the two of you together. You should never have gotten close to her. You should never have been goody-two-shoes, and maybe you would have ended up on my side of the war. The winning side.”

“Dragos will never win. The fire of Lucifer will overthrow you.” Kain dodged a vine exploding from the floor, and sent a fireball lobbing over his shoulder.

“Not before I break their precious crown princess first.” Linus was still smiling victoriously, but I saw the beads of sweat that was beginning to form on his forehead. Even in Kain’s disadvantaged form, he was posing as a problem to Linus. I stood stupidly at the side, close to the gates, and watched for an opening where I could come in.

I looked around, trying to find some sort of a weapon that could end Linus’s life, but all I could find was remnants of chains and elements that were summoned. I looked towards the bed, and found my answer. Wooden legs –perfect as stakes.

I stayed by the walls of the large cell, avoiding more fireballs as Linus summoned wind to barrel them away as if he were playing air-tennis and the balls were made of fire. Neither men seemed interested in keeping track of me as I made a mad dash towards the bed, ripping a leg off.

“Seraphina!” Kain’s call of my name had me looking up, and I rolled away just in time as a fireball almost caught me. Linus flashed a grin over his shoulder, as if very satisfied by the close call that almost took my life, and returned his attention to Kain.

“Your girlfriend isn’t very smart, Kain. If she thinks she can save you, then she is horribly mistaken.” Linus mocked, but Kain turned the water flooding on the floor into steam and mist, allowing a fog to cover the area. I understood that my escort was doing his best to keep me hidden from Linus’s line of sight –to protect me from Linus’s target –but it also meant that we were all blinded by the same mist.

I heard footsteps, and saw brief flashes of light which I would infer as fireballs flying. I could only pray that there were no fireballs making my way as I clutched on to my make-shift stake, and made forwards.

“Seraphina…” My name ghosted in the mist, and I stopped. Where the heck was I? That name that called me sounded like Kain.

“Seraphina… Run.” I don’t have to be told twice. I picked up my pace again, but changed direction when the voice came to me from the right. I was trusting my instincts here, trusting my senses to tell me that there were no fireballs making towards me.

“Seraphina, come. Run towards me.” The voice urged me on, and I put more effort in it. Kain. I just need to get the weapon to Kain… I trust his skills as an ex-fighter and my escort to put it between Linus’s ribs. We would be free, then we will get my kingdom back. This must not be how he planned to regain my kingdom, but Linus had attacked, and we needed to fight back.

“Bingo.” The voice was so much different now that I was closer, and arms closed over me. The chill set inside me again, and I saw enough to see gloved hands holding on to my shoulders.

“NO! Seraphina!” Kain’s voice –his actual voice –came from the other side of the mist, and a large gust of wind picked up. The mist dissipated quickly, and the truth settled on us. Kain stood at the other side of the cell, close to the gates, and here I was, wrapped in the embrace of Linus; my stake wedged between us.

“Oh, how easy it had been… ‘Seraphina, come. Run towards me.’” Linus said again, in the same voice, and I realized it was his voice I had been heeding so far. His voice… that sounded exactly like Kain’s.

“H-How?” I asked, as the fight came to a standstill, for I was back in Linus’s mercy.

Linus looked at me, then at Kain. Then he threw his head back and laughed.

“You are stupid, Kain. Your weakness is always there. You love. You have a heart, and that’s why I decided you should go. You love her enough to protect her from the truth, but you’re stupid to think that it’s going to protect her. It’s going to hurt only her, darling boy.”

I looked up fearfully, the chill finally reaching my heart and souring it. “What truth?”

“It is the only way I can keep her with me.” Kain admitted, and I heard resignation in that voice. Was that it? Kain was giving up?

“What truth?” I demanded, fear adding to my volume.

“It is the only way you tear her apart. But I should have expected it from you. You love. What else can I say?” Linus ignored my demand, grin growing wider when he saw my escort visibly slump his shoulders.

“Love is not a weakness, Linus. Love gave me strength.”

“What truth? What is going on?” I asked stupidly again, since they were both ignoring me. What are they talking about? How could Linus sound exactly like Kain? Why did Kain act like he knew Linus well? Exactly what was going on between the two vampires that I didn’t know?

“Love gave you strength and you put it in  all the wrong places. If you put that love in Dragos, you wouldn’t be standing there, defeated. If you put that love in me and your family, you would be standing at my side, proud and ruling.”

Kain shook his head sadly. “If I put that love in Dragos, I would only have killed myself long ago. I once loved you and our family, Linus. But I lost memories of it, and none of you wanted those moments back. I loved our parents, but they didn’t love me enough to get me back. You… you hate me enough to throw me off the cliff.”

It sank in. Our family. Our parents. How Kain could have been beside Linus, ruling if he loved his family.

“You are a fool if you think the Lucifer princess loves you back. You are merely her escort.”

Kain’s sad eyes looked at me. “Then I am a fool. She once let me go when she knew of my heritage because she loved me enough to let me run away. She promised me that she would give me a chance, despite her already having a fiancé, a lover.”

“Then she is as big a fool as you. But the fool has woken up, hasn’t she?” Linus’s arms around me tightened. “You know who Kain is now, don’t you, Seraphina? The truth that you’ve been missing all this while?”

I knew… and I remembered. With Kain’s words of how I’d let him go, I remembered it all. How my mind had been entirely blank. How anger had been the first emotion that took over me. How I’d fallen to my knees afterwards and claimed him in my tightest farewell embrace.

How he’d walked away without ever looking back.

“You are… Dragos’s royal prince. You are Linus’s brother.”

Kain winced at the second title more than the first, but Linus laughed. “Bingo.”

I bit my lower lip and did my best to stop the tears. My fingers lost clutch of the makeshift stake, and it clattered noisily to the floor. Kain’s pain-filled eyes begged for me to understand his position.

Suddenly, everything made sense. Every word that was shared between Linus and Kain. Everything made sense; why Kain meant so much as a prisoner to Linus, why Kain had been so shocked to the core when he realized it was Linus who pushed him off the cliff.

I’m your what? Say it, Kain. Let me hear the admittance.

Brother. Kain hadn’t managed to say it, because Kain never wanted a brother like Linus. A brother who threw him off the cliff and made him  lose his memories, his life as a prince in the Dragos kingdom. Linus threw him off the cliff, and Kain ended up as a fighter in the Pit, only to be discovered by me, and taken in as my escort.

“Seraphina… please…”

I closed my eyes, finally taking in how similar they looked. No wonder I thought Linus’s baby blue eyes were familiar and reminded me of someone. Kain. They had the same black hair, the same sharp features.

“Again. You lied to me again. How can you keep doing this?” The same sting of betrayal swept through my heart. He had done it once… how could he repeat his mistake? All the while… I, the Lucifer Crown Princess, had been working with the prince of Dragos to take my kingdom back. I remembered Lorcan’s first greeting to Kain. He’d told Kain to return to his brother. Linus.

I’d put my trust in the wrong person.

“I only wanted to-” Kain began to make up excuses for himself, but I wasn’t going to take more.

“Go away, Kain. I can’t believe you lied to me again. You did it for forty years. A few weeks more wouldn’t hurt, right? Because I lost my memories; you thought you could have me back? I loved you!”

“And I love you! I am sorry I didn’t tell you about it sooner, but I never meant to hide it from you forever!”

“When, then? After everything?”

“After you have Lucifer back. I would tell you about my heritage, right before I depart to end myself.”

I lost will. How can such a man who claimed to love me, a man who has shown me such love in his eyes, betray me like this? And this wasn’t even the first time.

“I see you couple need a down-time.” Linus observed, as his arms around me slackened. “Very well. Let poor Seraphina reel from the fact that her escort and love is actually Dragos. Not just any Dragos, but the son of Dagon Dragos, grandson to Drake Dragos. Let us leave her alone, brother.”

“No!” Kain exclaimed as Linus’s presence behind me disappeared, and I saw him behind my escort, holding on to the arms of my escort while Kain fought against his restraints to get to me. What could he say? What could Kain say to make me feel better? It was obvious that Kain knew everything; right from the start. He knew he would be keeping his heritage a secret from me again.

“Go away… Let me think, Kain… Dragos.”

Adding his surname –his real surname –hurt him so much he actually winced, then lost will to fight. His shoulders slumped, and he stopped struggling against Linus. His brother.

“If… that is what you wish, princess.”

Linus was wise enough to stay quiet. I watched as he dragged my precious escort out of my cell, locking the door behind him, and the pair of Dragos brothers walked away.

I slumped against the far wall, now freed from my shackles, and freed from the enemy –for the moment.

I thought about Kain, and how I’d let him go the first time. I thought about how he never looked back. And I thought about how he found me again, only to lie to me and lead me on for a second time. I should have known.

Still, it hurt my heart. It hurt me so much.

How could he…

I hugged my knees and cried.

When Linus brought him out of the cell, Kain never looked back too.

Kain never did.