He was fairly certain he would rather wish to cease to exist!
So, he kept a force of Dark Magic surrounding him as he evaded their efforts to find him. He didn’t think of it as running from them but rather simply staying free until he could find a way to accomplish his plans.
He was pleased with his efforts thus far. He had given them a merry chase, almost doing circles around them as he used his black magic to disguise his scent. He was nearly impossible to track.
He thought of Gaiscioch—Gais, who was nothing in the end but a mad fool. Gais had become obsessed, and that obsession had ruled his actions. Now Gais was dead. It was what Pestale had planned for the Seelie traitor all along. He had just been biding his time, but then the Seelie Fae put an end to him.
Pestale felt so much above what Gaiscioch had been. His goals were clear-sighted and not driven by obsession. While it was of paramount importance that he free Morrigu and his two remaining brothers, he would not give up all for them.
It was as simple as that. He would do what he could—he would leave no avenue untraveled, no corner unturned in his efforts to free them—but should a choice have to be made, he would always choose self-interests first.
If he had to choose between his freedom and theirs, he could and would forsake them.
He’d often thought about himself in this wild Human Realm where so much was put into two categories—good or evil—and had concluded that he was not evil. The Seelie Fae had labeled him as such, but he’d decided that his actions were reasonable. He was, after all, a superior being, a Royal, and just as humans destroyed insects that annoy, he had the right to do the same—and there were so many he considered them no more than insects.
However, a complication had definitely arisen. That complication had begun the moment he had seen her and had grown into a yearning he had never known was possible for him to feel.
She had stood there in the midst of a screaming horde of humans during the close of Gais’s war two days ago. Her flaming red curls blew around her stunningly beautiful face. Her magical aura and her delicious scent wafted to him on a wave of something emanating from her—was it emotion?—yes, he felt the vibes of her uncontrolled emotions, and he couldn’t look away from her.
And then he saw the child—a boy on the ground—and the Dark Fae creature, one of his own in fact, retreating from her. She didn’t take the time to chase and kill it. Instead, she said the child’s name and bent to him.
He watched as she enacted the Féth Fiada and rendered herself and the child invisible to the crush of people running in all directions. Although a Dark Fae, Pestale was a Fae, and the Féth Fiada had no effect on him.
He frowned, wondering why she had not given chase to her enemy—the Dark Fae who ran for its life. As a Seelie Fae, she should have run the creature to earth, yet she stayed with the unconscious boy.
The beauty intrigued him. In fact—he could not look away.
He stood unblinking as he watched her, mesmerized by her loveliness and the force of her ‘emotion’, a thing he did not possess. He saw the grace in her lines and her movement. He saw her vitality. There was purpose about her, an aura that glowed with her essence—and he knew h
e had to have her.
He drank in the vision of her alabaster skin, which was perfection, and her lips—damn, but he immediately wanted to kiss those lips right then and there. He wanted to scoop her up and make her his own on the spot.
A short cry escaped her, and the sound of her voice thrilled him as she repeated the child’s name, “David,” while she stroked the boy’s face. He thought of her touching him like that, stroking his face, and even two days later he could recall how his hard-on had throbbed for her.
People had been milling about, but no one saw the two on the ground. The driver of the car that had hit the child was looking around himself like a man crazed. He had seen the boy go down, but there was no sign of him. He repeated over and over, “He ran right in front of me …”
Pestale watched a tear roll down the beautiful Seelie Fae’s cheek as she laid hands to the child’s many wounds and heard her say, “Forgive me, my Queen …” as she clearly broke the Seelie Fae rules and healed the child.
He immediately wanted her for himself. Here was a Seelie Fae who did what she wanted regardless of her queen’s wishes. He liked that a great deal. He didn’t know her name, and he didn’t know how he would find her, but her image played with his mind. She was the one—the one he knew he had to have for all time … or until he wearied of her.
However, he had to keep on the move for his scent to stay disguised. He had seen both Danté and Breslyn just the night before, and he was certain those two would be difficult to evade once they figured out how he was disguising his scent.
She was a princess. He had seen the gold torque around her neck with the etchings of her Seelie House—Nimrough. And although at the time he’d had to make his retreat, he had decided beyond all doubt that he would find her and make her his own.
He had shifted away, keeping the pleasure her scent gave him in his memory. He had shifted away, but her face was there …
From that moment on, he had thought of her constantly. Even when he took his pleasure with the pretties he had taken to his bed, he thought of her …
He sighed to himself. The humans were a source of sexual relief, but he needed more; he needed the redheaded Seelie princess, and the time was coming when he would search her out and take her.
He thought of his father, the Dark King, whose powers were untold. His father could put an end to all of this and imprison him with the blink of an eye, but he knew the Dark King could not be bothered to leave his precious world, where he and his Crystal evolved together. So much for interference from them!
It amused him that Chancemont considered himself the hunter—that he, a Royal Prince, should be the hunted.
He wanted to stand and fight the Milesian and display his exceptional warrior skills, for he knew himself to be a worthy opponent. However, he meant to pick the time and the place and the method. Then he would lay the Milesian low … him and that young Seelie Fae prince whose woman he had killed.
Yes, he’d killed her with the Death Sword, and he had no regrets about it.