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Kai smiled cunningly. Truth be told, Bonnie had never seen him smile any other way. He was a cunning, stunning creature, principled by his passions and governed by his whims, rooted deeply in causes of vengeance that he found himself unable, and frankly unwilling, to retreat from.
He smiled at her from across the glossy dining table between them. It could easily have held thirty people. Except it was only the two of them, served through a spread of crystal-ware and glass and ruby-studded silver. Every other glass held scarlet blood. The cuisine was otherworldly: pastries so layered and delicate that they desiccated in their hands.
Soups as creamy and thick as a swath of whipped cream. Meat with tendrils of steam curling away from them. There was a blown glass bowl of rolls near Bonnie. They were buttered and flecked with powder sugar. She could tell, just looking at them, how decadent and soft and flavorful they would be. Those tempted her the most, apart from the goblet of blackberries as shiny and brilliant as onyx, dew studded and glimmering where they sat stacked. It was impossible to look at them without her mouth watering. She swallowed, tilting her head to level the most unimpressed look she could muster at Kai.
“I’m not eating anything,” she told him. “For all I know, you’ve poisoned it.” She crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. What she would have liked was to leave the table altogether; unfortunately, the criminal and sociopathic Malachai Parker, vampire and warlock hybrid currently seated across from her, had spelled her to the chair. For some reason she couldn’t fathom – didn’t want to, rather – he was infatuated with her.
Bonnie’s theory was that he could sense the strength and depth of her power (almost unparalleled. If she could somehow control it better, she might find a way to defeat this boy) and was attracted to that, not her. Because she couldn’t believe that someone like him could actually have feelings for another human being.
But then, the little voice in the back of her head whispered, you never thought Damon capable of love, either, and look how much he’s grown since he met Elena, since he met you. He’s a completely different person now, struggling to learn and grow every day. Damon’s different, she argued with herself.
Kai chuffed at her. “Come on. Bonnie, do you really think so low of me that you believe I’d poison you? I’m trying my best, okay? I’m a good friend to have.” He grinned again. She turned away from the flash of his fangs.
“It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve tried to kill me,” she said, forcing herself to meet his gaze again.
Kai stabbed a strip of meat with the tip of his knife and lifted it to his mouth. “Bonnie,” he said, “Bennett. You’ve killed me as many times, if not more than, any attempts I made against you.” He raised his eyebrows as he bit the meat off the end of the knife and chewed, leveling the knife toward her until she groaned. “I’d think we’d be even my now.”
“Oh, please. Why wouldn’t I? You’re a homicidal sociopath. I was just trying to protect my friends.”
He clucked his tongue. “Oh, Bonnie.” He flung the knife. Bonnie ducked low against the table – but he hadn’t been aiming for her – the knife slammed into the wall behind her, right through the portrait of Elena. Or, Elena’s ancestor, rather. A doppelganger, or perhaps the legendary Katherine Petrova, herself.
“Do you honestly think those people care about you? They only ever want you around when they need saving.” His look turned scathing, but it wasn’t directed at her. It was internal. Probably memories of his family. The same family he was bent on slaughtering. And while that wasn’t a family line that Bonnie would mourn, she didn’t believe that he should go around killing innocent people.
“That’s not true,” she said. “They would do the same for me.”
Kai tucked his hands between his knees and rocked forward in his chair. His grin was unnerving. She braced herself – uncertain what was coming, only knowing she needed to steel herself for it. He was doing everything he could to break her, to make her think he was her only ally. She’d played these mind games before; repeatedly. It always ended the same. She would be standing over his corpse and she’d be the last thing he’d see before he died. Condemned for the rest of eternity for the crimes he’d committed.
“Are you so certain of that? Care to make a wager?”
Bonnie snarled at him. The savage sound that ripped out of her mouth startled her; it sounded strangely like Damon, or Katherine, or even Klaus. Something that would step down, descend to the pits of hell and walk unscathed through the fire.
“Are we finally getting to the point of this whole endeavor?” she said, barely civil. She launched forward against the spell that bound her, testing its intensity. Unfortunately, the little fucker was excellent at almost everything he did. The unwavering devotion to keep the spell tight around her wasn’t something she would have anticipated from him. Like it or not, however, he knew her. He’d studied her. He’d prepared for her reactions, and, as he’d pointed out again and again, they had nothing but time here in the Prison World. An alternate reality fitted between the molecules of the world they’d left behind. Here, time did not exist. You were locked in place, unable to move backward or forward, unless you built a talisman, found a link to the Other Side – ergo, Mystic Falls – and summoned enough magic to channel your body through. Bonnie knew she was more than capable. She also knew that Kai was aware of this, and if she ever attempted it, he would link to her, and she’d be the one who pulled them both through and unleashed the fiend on the entire world. She couldn’t be held responsible for that. So, for now, she needed to wait until her friends found a way to get her out of here.
“Bonnie Boo Bear,” he cooed. He flicked his fingers, sending the table flying into the wall, and leaving the two of them separated by empty air. Bonnie lunged against the back of the chair. It tipped and she started falling backward, with a scream. Kai whooshed across the space between them and planted a foot on the chair, knocking it back to the ground.
“The whole point of everything I do is to make you love me. Hopelessly love me,” he added, when he noticed her horrified look. She spat at him.
“How,” she said, lowly, “could I, let alone anyone in this world or the next, ever love you?” Her words dripped with her contempt of him, the unadulterated hatred. She lifted her chin and released a torrent of her magic. It erupted from her body like the boundless fury of a black hole – it absorbed everything in the room into it, funneling straight through to Mystic falls. It stripped the wallpaper from the walls, tore the floorboards off the ground. It scalped the room until it was scoured empty – only an incredibly proud Kai and a disgruntled Bonnie no longer spelled to the chair. She stood in front of him, flexing her fingers.
“Stunning. Did you see that?” he asked, spinning to address the nonexistent people in the room. “So that’s what an angry Bennett witch looks like.” He shook his head. “It’s beautiful. Who can stand to look away?” he said, clapping. “My ferocious queen.”
Bonnie lifted her hands between them. “I am not your queen. I don’t belong here. And as long as I’m stuck here with you, I will fight you. I will fight against you. Until the day I can kill you, and you stay dead,” she continued, stepping up close to him until they were nose to nose. “In case, you know, all those times I’ve killed you before didn’t make it clear.”
She arched an eyebrow at him, then, strode right past him, toward the door. She might be stuck here, true, but that didn’t mean she had to stay with him. This place was a
flawless mimicry – snapshots of moments in time. She could find something that might be useful to her friends. Or her. Something to guard her against his magic.
Kai grabbed her elbow. “Ooh, not so fast, Bonnie Bennett, my little bear.” She spun at him, but just as quickly, he catapulted the two of them against the wall of windows. The panes were frigid cold against her skin, or maybe that was his magic, icing them over. The entire room descended in an arctic blast, so freezing that she shivered. Or perhaps that was from their proximity.
His body was stretched taut against her spine, so close she could feel the individual sections of his body, like an insect she could disembowel and pin to a cork board.
“Strange though it may seem to you, since you despise me so much, I am not the most dangerous thing in here. Really, you’d be safer if you stayed with me than if you wandered off on your own.”
She knocked him off her with a huff. “I’ll take my chances. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen? They’ll kill me? I’ll just come right back to life.” She stormed over to the door and yanked it open.
Kai slammed it shut with a coil of his magic. “There are worse things than death, little witch.”
“Too true,” she said, grappling the door back open. “Staying in here with you certainly would be.” She finally managed to open it wide enough to squeeze her body through. She glanced over her shoulder at him. He had his hands tucked in his pockets, head tipped slightly. He stared at her as if he didn’t know what to say. It was in these brief, transitory moments that she could see the boy in him, see that young fool who’d been fascinated by everything around him, who’d had his innocence stolen from too soon.
Unfortunately for him, Bonnie didn’t want have anything to do with the person he’d become. She slipped through the door of the mansion and ran for the staircase leading to the front door.