Heartless Villains (Ruthless Villains Book 3)

Exhaustion washed over me as I stopped in front of the doorway in the middle. Callan’s footsteps echoed from inside the tunnel on the left for a few more seconds before he reappeared in the cavern as well. I saw him moving closer from the corner of my eye, but I didn’t turn to look at him.

“We’re probably far into the night by now,” I said as he walked over to stand next to me.

“Yeah, I think so too.”

“We should make camp here and get some sleep.”

“Agreed.”

“But let’s check these two tunnels first to make sure that nothing else crawls out and attacks us while we sleep.”

He nodded while I took a step forward. But right as he moved to join me, I spoke up again.

“I’ll take this one.” I jerked my chin towards the tunnel on our right. “You can check that one. A hundred strides. Then we turn back. Agreed?”

Before he could reply, I just walked off. I half expected him to throw a force wall at me or to tell me to watch my mouth. But only ringing silence answered me.

Keeping my spine straight, I continued into the tunnel.

I scanned the floor and walls for potential traps as I moved, but all that stared back at me was dark stone and faintly glowing crystals. And the only thing that broke the silence was the sound of my own footsteps. Forcing out a long breath, I tried to get my head back on straight.

After our encounter with those gigantic insects, I felt… off. I didn’t even know how to describe it properly. I just felt angry and bitter and numb all at the same time. And for absolutely no reason.

It wasn’t as if I cared that Callan didn’t trust me. After all, I didn’t trust him either. But for some infuriating reason, it had still hurt when he hadn’t responded back in that tunnel. He must have known what I was planning to do. I needed a massive poison cloud so that I could drive all the insects back at the same time, but with an attack that large, he would naturally be hit by some of it too. Did he really trust me so little that he couldn’t even be certain that I wouldn’t try to kill him with that attack too?

My mind drifted back to those scars on his body. Scars that I had given him. And one of them not two weeks ago when I had tried to ram a kitchen knife through his heart while he slept.

A short laugh of grim amusement made it past my lips.

Maybe his moment of hesitation was warranted after all.

And to be fair, I had considered it. For a moment there when he was on his knees, after all the insects were gone, I had actually considered killing him out of sheer spite. Just to prove him right that he couldn’t trust me. But I had managed to rein in the impulse.

Trailing to a halt, I glanced back over my shoulder. I had reached a hundred steps. According to my own instructions, I should be heading back at this point. But I just needed a little more time to get my head back in the game.

After casting one more look behind me, I continued deeper into the tunnel. In this one, as opposed to the one with the insects, the frequency of the glowing crystals remained the same no matter how far I walked. That hopefully meant that this was the right path.

Right as the thought blew through my mind, the view up ahead changed. Instead of the relatively narrow tunnel that I had been following, it opened up to reveal three more doorways. A scowl pulled at my brows as I stopped halfway to them.

Of course it branched off into more paths that we had to explore. Because why would anything ever be easy? I glared at the jagged stone archways. I knew that the dark mages who had hidden the Enhancer had wanted it to be difficult to reach, but this was starting to get ridiculous. Hopefully, this would at least be the final obstacle.

After giving the openings one last irritated look, I spun on my heel and strode back towards the cavern and the distrusting force mage who should already be back by now.

Since I no longer needed to check the area for traps, my mind started drifting down dangerous lanes again.

I had only been half kidding when I had told Callan that I would be the one to kill him after we settled this war with Eldar. If I hadn’t gotten to know him like this, that was what I would have done without hesitation. But now, things had gotten so complicated.

Callan was… everything I didn’t even know I wanted.

He was lethal and ruthless and just as heartless as me. But he also took care of his own. The lengths he had gone to in order to save Henry had made me realize that, while he didn’t care much about people in general, he would sacrifice everything for the few that he did consider family. And I found that I liked that about him. A lot.

And no matter how much I mocked him and told him otherwise, he was also intelligent and cunning. Which were two more qualities I found attractive. Not to mention that he was just straight up physically hot too. And so damn good with his hands.

He also wasn’t afraid of me. After I left the academy, I had ripped out the kind and compassionate parts of me and turned myself into a lethal dark mage with almost no sense of morality left. That was what it took to survive in the hills of Eldar. If people feared me, they didn’t try to attack me. It was that simple. But it also made it very difficult to maintain any sort of connection with others, because I could never be sure if they were doing something because they wanted to, or because they were too terrified of me to refuse. With Callan, however, that was never an issue.

Tilting my head back, I raked my fingers through my hair and blew out an annoyed breath. Fuck. I hated how much I enjoyed being in his presence. I really liked the way he looked at me. As if I was the only person in the room. And I loved the way he made me feel. Safe, yes. But most of all, he made me feel alive. When I was with him, I felt as though lightning was crackling through my veins.

But I also really needed to kill him.

As soon as our mutual enemies had been dealt with, he would go back to trying to kill me. Callan had always been dangerous, but now even more so. At least to me. Because that bastard had made me fall for him, I was suddenly vulnerable in a way I hadn’t been before. My feelings for him had shifted the power balance in his favor, so when we finally started up our war again, I was pretty sure that I would find myself at a severe disadvantage.

Giving my head a couple of violent shakes, I tried to get all the pathetically weak thoughts out of my head. Hell, I couldn’t keep doing this.

I squeezed my hand into a fist and nodded to myself as I made a decision.

Callan had to die.

Before this war with Eldar was over, I was going to kill him.