I’ve always been able to see his cracks.
“If you don’ have anything truthful to say, maybe keep yer fuckin’ mouth shut,” I growl back at him. The rumble of my growl jostles Crymson in my arms and I immediately shift, trying to make her more comfortable. The green dress splits around her legs, the silk like water over legs that sport far too many scars. The color of the fae. Beautiful and yet another thing that puts her in danger here. When the King sees her, he won’t be happy. I suspect it was a choice on her part to wear green. The fire inside her heart matches her hair. The magic though. . .
We haven’t discussed what had happened. I’ve felt fae magic before, but I’ve never felt whatever kind of magic she wields. It was almost fluid. . .undetectable, until it was already affectingme. She’d sat there, confused, as I’d flailed around the room, completely out of control. Even Christian had been respectful of her, nicer than I’ve ever seen him.
And yet now he talks as if she means nothing.
Seven doesn’t say a word as he walks beside us. His head is held high, and I don’t blame him. The taste of her blood is in my mouth, but the taste in his is a mix of blood and the sweet release she’d coated his tongue with. Jealousy has never hit me so hard as it does at that thought. What I wouldn’t give to taste her cunt, to lap her up as she convulsed against my tongue. Fuck, I’d give a lot. So much so, I’m hardly thinking about the evidence we’d left behind, evidence the King will find when the Thorn King finally shows up and presents Crymson to him.
We’re all fucked.
Christian opens the door to his room and leads the way inside. I follow after him, Seven coming in last and making sure the door is securely closed behind us. Crymson is limp in my arms, her soft breaths slipping out as she sleeps. Her hand still rests against my chest inside my shirt, flesh against flesh, like a fuckin’ proposal. I may as well carve out my heart and hand it over to her. I’ve never been so achingly desperate to be touched by a woman before. Not like this.
Without waking her, I move toward the bed and gently lay her down. I try not to howl when her hand slips away and she nestles into the plush blankets instead, only barely restraining it. I’m tempted to climb in behind her and tuck her in close to my body, but Christian stands there with his brooding expression, his eyes dark with thoughts I can’t decipher. Fuckin’ bastard. Always so cold and quiet. The complete opposite of his father in almost every single way.
Sometimes I think that’s on purpose.
“We should leave her,” Seven says, finally breaking the silence. “Let her rest.”
I study her, take in the spread of her red hair across the pillow. Her cheeks are a little more gaunt than when she first came here, but she’s still just as beautiful. Despite this situation, despite the hopelessness of it, she’s still stoking her fire.
It’s going to kill me to see that fire smothered out.
“I’ll watch over her,” I volunteer. When the other two look at me, I shrug. “Just in case.”
Christian raises his brow. “Don’t tell me you’ve fallen in love with her.”
I’m not! I don’t say it. But my silence says more than words could have. It says all about how I was a fool and fell for the King’s Promise.
I meet Christian’s gaze and his face flickers with emotion so fast, I almost miss it. He schools his features once more into the cold mask before turning and striding toward the door. Neither of them say anything else.
But that silence speaks, too.
EIGHTEEN
Crymson
The groundI stand on is charred and potholed, nothing left to tell me where I am. No greenery survived, whatever fire took it, leaving nothing but ash behind. Bright red pools spill across some of the blackness, here and there, inconsistent but still obviously blood. I see no bodies, but something tells me there were a lot of them. When I look up, I can’t see the sky. It’s completely shrouded in smoke, and the moment I realize it, my eyes begin to burn. A tickling starts in my lungs that forces me to cough, my hand going up to cover my nose and mouth in the hopes of keeping the ash and smoke away. It doesn’t work.
In the distance, I can make out charred skeletons of what used to be trees. They’re spindly and reaching, remnants of a time where ash and sparks never touched them. Monuments of death. With no light save for the few small fires around me, they fade into darkness only broken up by floating embers.
“Hello?” I call, looking for evidence I’m not alone. I shouldn’t be out here. I don’t even know where here is. “Is anyone here?”
My voice echoes with a strange reverberation, as if it bounces around in my skull after I speak.
“You shouldn’t be here,” a voice answers from behind.
I whirl but still only see darkness. No one’s there. I appear alone, but something tells me I’m far from it.
“Where is here?” I ask, searching the darkness and finding nothing. An awareness unfurls in my chest and my eyes focus on a particular point within the darkness, just past the skeleton trees. “Who are you?”
“The realm between sleep and awake,” he answers.
It’s not a voice I recognize, and yet, it feels as if I know it. Whoever this man is, something beneath my skin reaches out toward him, desperately wanting to see him, but he never steps into the low light of the flames. I’m not even sure he’s in the darkness.
This feels a little bit like Seven’s magic, but this feels infinitely more powerful.
“How strange to meet you like this,” he hums. The darkness shifts and I focus on it. “I was told you’d be beautiful. You look. . .” His voice cuts off. “Are they not feeding you?”
