Free Dark Prince's Desire by Jessa Slade

enchantments contained within flesh and bone.
    He forced himself not to look at Yelena, but for once he could empathize with the Queen’s relentless craving.
    Because what would he not do to have the tigress again?
    Despite his best efforts to pretend she was safely elsewhere, Yelena stepped ahead of him, the golden shimmers in her spiderling silk flickering like sunlight. “I want all beings to have the chance to walk freely in the world.”
    “Yelena.” A chill swept down his spine. It was one thing to speak such absurdity to him. To say it to the phae Queen was an invitation to mayhem.
    He was even more perturbed when the Queen finally raised her head from her hand and silenced him with a cutting gesture. “Freedom for all? Do you know what happened when last the phae walked the earth?” She rose from the throne, and the red robe unfurled around her into giant butterfly wings.
    Yelena stood her ground. “I heard you fought a war,” she said. “And lost. I’d think you wouldn’t make that mistake again.”
    The Queen’s eyes brightened to scarlet. “The mistake of losing?”
    “Of fighting,” Yelena corrected, making Raze choke with her temerity. “The world has come a long way since then.”
    Sharpened teeth flashed in a smile. “You must think I know nothing of what goes on in your realm.” The Queen shook her head in mock dismay. “Such naivety from a creature born with fangs and claws.”
    Yelena shrugged, her hands lifted to display empty palms. “My claws are not out now.”
    “That makes this easier.” The Queen raised one hand as if she would reach out in return.
    A glacial cold swept into the throne room. The rose-petal walls blackened as power drained from the sustaining illusion.
    Without wasting a shout of warning, Raze leapt.
    The flash of formless magic was strong enough to strip flesh from bone as the disrupted energy that had moments before sustained the rosy illusion arced across the space. As he aimed himself at Yelena, Raze noted dispassionately that the spread of the blast was wide enough to have clipped him where he stood; the Queen had not minded if he was caught in the backlash.
    Indeed, perhaps she would have found him a convenient casualty.
    He slammed into his wereling in a plume of breath that froze on the icy air despite the plasmatic wrath—neither flame nor fluid—that unfurled from the Queen’s fingertips. He rolled Yelena to the floor, wrapping around her to take the worst of the salvo.
    The magic flayed the tunic from his back, and his shoulders burned but he stayed hunched around her. The Queen let out a howl that stung the glowing whirlwind into a twisting, wrenching rage.
    His own magic was too far away, left behind with his blood in the carved wards locking the portals. Regret burned worse than the skin on his back.
    Suddenly, saving the phaedrealii seemed less vital than saving this one wereling.
    He stared down at her, curled so close he could count the striations of gold in her eyes. “Bite me.”
    Those eyes widened. “What?”
    “I need you.” He kissed her, hard and fast enough to startle the tigress.
    She nipped him, just a tiny sting, but he felt the verita luna rise at the threat. Changing shape couldn’t help her though, not this close to the Queen’s fury.
    He swiped his finger across his bloody lip, winding his phae trickery with her natural body magic. He didn’t have much, but he scattered the shreds of his tunic in a veil around them. The unwoven spiderling threads, reinforced by his enchantment, caught and deflected the Queen’s blast, the filaments flaming incandescent before withering to ash.
    They had only moments before the frail barrier was incinerated.
    He rose, yanking Yelena to her feet. “Run. Change and run.”
    “Not without you.”
    “I can’t—”
    The petal wall behind them, already shriveled from the withdrawn magic, crumbled dryly around a multi-jointed fist. “Come,” EveStar said calmly, as if the throne room