The Cruel Prince's Wrath

Chapter 20

Prince Ievos had managed to secure all the provisions he would need for their journey West and he had recruited a large enough troop to ensure their safe passage through the human lands. His sister and her friend Reinys had reluctantly agreed to join him on this quest. Ievos was packing up his personal belongings for the journey when his mother entered his room with guards either side of her. He straightened dropping his pack to meet her.

“What is this?” he asked her.

“I have heard some rumours about you telling everyone that you will protect them from me and that you are stronger than I,” she began and moved towards him. Ievos felt that all too familiar fear of his mother when she behaved this way. “You are pathetic, my son, so pathetic you could not even keep the love of a woman,” she spat cutting him deeply and maddening him even more. “I always thought you were far more handsome than that… dragon spawn,” she spat.

“We share the same dragon father, or have you forgotten that?”

“Yes, but your features were more elven, and he looked so much like that… father of yours. But looks aside, he was the better man, was he not? You cannot love someone, Ievos, it is beyond your capabilities. Your soul is as cold as mine is, bitter and twisted. Hateful. Just like mine.” She said and he felt the weight of her words. “No woman would ever love you, desire you for your looks and your body but to love you? No, proven by that slave of yours,” Cauladra continued to taunt him, and his rage boiled over, he conjured his blue fire and was about to cast it upon his mother but suddenly he felt his blood run cold literally. He was unable to use his powers and he was filled with pain. “You need to be put back in your place, son,” she said coldly. “I am and always will be more powerful than you!” she hissed and then one of her guards moved towards the incapacitated prince knocking him unconscious.

When Ievos came around he realised that he was bound and tied to… a rack just as he had been as a child. He tried to summon his powers once more, he could burn through his binds, but it did not come. Fear began to take hold of him, his heart pounded inside of his chest, his heart raced, and he tried to fight his binds and then he heard the footsteps. His mother was coming into this dark dank part of the abandoned castle, it appeared to have been the dungeons and this was amongst other torture devices long decayed.

“I had this… restored, thought it might come in useful since you returned to me so disobedient, and this made you compliant when you were a child, so I thought… lets try it again,” she snarled. “I do not trust you, son, your journey to the West, are they to be my allies? Or yours?” she asked him and then motioned to one of the guards who had followed her, and he moved to the device Ievos was strapped to.

“No! No!” he called, and the guard twisted the contraption, and he was pulled but only a little; just a threat. Ievos’ breathing was fast, and he was sweating in fear, eyes wide as he watched the pleasure on his mother’s face. He fought the tears of fear that threatened to fall from his terrified eyes; if she broke his body again, he would take a while to heal from it, the pain of his stretched muscles and tendons rushing back to him, the aches, and pains in his joints after they had been on the brink of dislocation. He had been a small child then.

“I think I am missing something…” she muttered. “Oh yes! Bring the other rack in and my prisoner,” she said.

“No! Stop it!” Ievos called but silenced when his torturer twisted the contraption and his pleads for cessation turned to cries of pain. When it stopped, he looked to see a second restored torture rack and his mother’s prisoner. She brought through a beautiful red-haired elven woman whom he vaguely recognised.

“This elf arrived a couple of days ago pleading for sanctuary and she was far too honest about where she came from,” Cauladra began as the terrified woman screamed and pleaded for her to stop as guards strapped her to the second rack. “She said she was with the humans and had escaped them, but I see her for a spy,” that was when it dawned on him, she had been the elf Prince Moray had been in love with. She had joined them at dinner in the dragon hall.

“Please! I am no spy, please!” she cried. Ievos knew the pulling of her rack would be far less merciful and she would end up completely broken. He could feel his own mind fragmenting at the prospect of watching another innocent person torn apart. “I have done nothing wrong!” she cried out and then Ievos closed his eyes and controlled his own breathing, it felt as though time around him stopped moving and it was only he who moved at normal rate. His breathing calmed him, and he entered a meditative state having been practicing since he left the dragon kingdom and having also achieved a heightened state when he had been with Tolanda. He drew on those memories and those feelings, forgetting the pain it brought him after and he drew strength from a kiss, from a caress, from a smile. In this state he came to learn that there was binding ritual symbols carved into the rack behind him and that was why he could not use his powers. He could feel something inside of him; something reaching up as though clawing its way through from the very depths of his soul, and it was elven. He could sense it and feeling as though he was splitting himself into two beings, he opened his eyes staring right at his mother who was visibly scared. His hands and feet were freed, and he moved swiftly to the red-haired elven woman and freed her too. She fell against him crying desperately out of relief and he held her. He glared over to his mother.

“You do not touch her again, you harm nobody, none of our people ever again!” he growled and then he threw up his arm ignoring the pain and cast both racks into blue flame.

“Y-your eyes… and… how did you… how did you get free?” Cauladra asked stammering through her own words.

“You do not need to know,” he said but he was not even sure of the answer himself. He was uncertain why he cared for what happened to his people suddenly since he had not cared before. “I am not scheming against you, mother, and this woman is not a spy. We grant her the refuge she seeks; she is our kind after all,” he said and walked out of the dungeons with the red-haired elven woman still clutching onto his arm. Once they were clear of the dungeons, he shrugged her off pushing her to the ground and stomping on her skirts, so she remains there, and he loomed over her. “Are you a spy?” he growled.

“N-no! The… princess cut her own arm right in front of me and then called for guards saying that I did it. I ran and found a secret passage… I escaped, they would have killed me in the most horrible way and then I come here for sanctuary and almost get tortured,” she muttered looking up at him.

“She was not going to torture you; she was going to kill you. She was going to tear your limbs from your body as an example and to strike fear and guilt in me.” he informed her and then he stepped off her skirt but did not offer to help her from the ground he began to walk away but then he faltered. He had been weakened by the binding symbols and by forcing use of his powers and then there was whatever had given the ability to get free. That feeling… like something inside of him that had previously laid dormant. He had accessed it through meditation and yet it felt elven. He wondered why he had all these powers and seemed he was gaining more. He felt himself unsteady and fell to his hands and knees. The red-haired elven woman was at his side trying to help him and he caught a flash of Tolanda and then recalled those memories he had drawn on, the feelings of them were now false and he was enraged suddenly lashing out, he leapt on this woman and pinned her against the wall seeing not this elf but Tolanda though he tried to control himself.

“Do not show me kindness!” he yelled in her face, “do not touch me with those gentle hands!” he added and then released her.

“You are in pain,” she noted, “and not just from that rack, what happened, Prince Ievos?” she asked; she remembered his name, but he could not remember hers and he did not care to ask of it.

“That is none of your concern!” he snapped and looked to her through a condescending sideways glance. “If you want to make yourself useful and pay me back for saving your life, you can be my servant, that is what you were for the humans right?” he asked her.

“Yes, I would be happy to serve you, my prince,” she said looking up at him but then quickly bowing her head.

“You will regret those words,” he muttered and walked away to once again ready his belongings. He refused to remain here another minute and he was determined to begin his journey to the Western dragons.