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he would hurt himself again. His face screwed up, his enormous fangs on display, and he threw his head back and roared as he arched off the dark stone slab.
    “You need to calm down.” Rosalind reached for him.
    She froze when his eyes snapped open.
    Her breathing accelerated.
    She shook her head.
    He couldn’t be.
    He stared at her, vivid purple eyes flashing wildly as his lips peeled away from his fangs again. Fangs. Purple. Mother earth, she was going to hyperventilate.
    His overlong black hair parted to reveal the pointed tips of his ears and she almost passed out.
    Rosalind shot backwards away from him. Pain erupted in her side, searing her ribs and stealing her breath together with him. Not a damn elf. He couldn’t be a bloody elf.
    She shook her head and huddled into the corner, holding her knees and staring at him as he wrestled with his manacles.
    Anything but an elf. Why couldn’t he be anything but an elf?
    She went back seventy years, to a magical summer’s day when she had been having tea in the garden with her grandmother. It had all been so peaceful and perfect. Endless blue skies. Flowers in full bloom. Butterflies and bees going about their business. A perfect moment.
    Until her grandmother had turned sombre, staring at her in silence and worrying her. Rosalind had asked her what was wrong and her grandmother had looked right into her eyes with ones that swirled like a silver storm and had spoken words that had changed her forever.
    In Rosalind’s future would be an elven prince, and after meeting him, she would die.
    When she had helped King Thorne with his war, she had specifically avoided seeing or meeting Prince Loren of the elves who had been assisting him too.
    She warily eyed the elf in the cell with her. He didn’t bear the markings of a royal elf, ones she had learned about during her research into the species. He didn’t look much like a prince either. She tried to shake off her fear, and her rising panic with it. It was difficult. She had spent her whole life convincing herself that her grandmother had been having one of her strange episodes when she got her wires crossed and thought she was talking to someone else, and now she had the horrible feeling that it hadn’t been the case at all.
    She had seen Rosalind’s future and had spelt it out for her.
    And now Rosalind was locked in a cell with an elf.
    She shook off the last clinging threads of her fear. She had met the elf Bleu without dying, and the fae history books only mentioned one elf prince. The one she had avoided. This male was not that prince. The prince had a calm aura. Not a violent one.
    She blew out her breath and winced as her ribs protested.
    The elf male stilled, his eyes locked on her. They were focused, but not right. He looked lost, a wild beast struggling to comprehend her and his surroundings. He drew in a deep breath.
    He craned his neck, turning his head towards his right arm. What was he doing? Studying his restraints?
    He sank his fangs into his forearm.
    “Stop that.” Rosalind raced across the room to him and stopped short of grabbing his wrist to pull his arm free of his fangs.
    He released his arm and blood bloomed there. His purple eyes grew wilder and black spots formed in them like inky blotches that began to spread as he stared at her.
    He growled in a commanding tone, “Drink. Female.”
    Rosalind’s stomach turned and she shook her head. He snarled in response to her refusal and struggled against the manacles again. Blood crept down his arm, stark red against his pale skin. He spoke in his language, his voice alternating between softness and hardness, between a whisper and a growl. The thick metal restraints cut into his wrists as he frantically fought them, spilling more blood. She couldn’t take it.
    She grabbed his bare shoulders and used her weight to press down and restrain him, her body laying partially across his.
    He stilled.
    She breathed hard, every inch of her shaking, a heady mixture