His steps halt instantly, and the man following at the king’s side stops on a dime. There’s a tragic sadness in the king’s glinting gaze when he meets the anger in my features.
“I—”
But then I see him.
From just past the Thorn King’s big black wings, I see the one man I never want to come face-to-face with again in my entire life.
Boris’s smile is spread across his full cheeks, and it feels manic when his smile is pointed my way. Vomit stings up the back of my throat. And then he’s walking toward me.
“Shit,” I whisper so vacantly I don’t even realize I’ve said anything at all. “I have to go!”
“What?”
My heels stagger over the dry dirt. Hard shoulders jar into mine. The smoke grows heavier. A voice calls out over the large crowd, but I don’t stop moving for a single second.
Even when the announcer’s words finally register in my mind:
“The Vampire’s Hunt has just begun!”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Christian
I madeher a promise that I’d more than enjoy hunting her if she ever ran.
It looks like I’ll get to keep that promise.
TWENTY-NINE
Crymson
There’s a poundingfear inside me that pushes me to run faster. Screams of women far off in the distance only intensify that fear. I avoid the region of trees to the right where those cries of agony and roars of pleasure become louder and louder.
But the smoke is thicker on this side of the castle. It burns through my lungs with every heaving breath I take. Tears stream down my cheeks, and I clench my lashes hard to fight off the clouds of dust that are growing denser by the second.
I can’t breathe. I can’t see. And yet, I still run.
My foot catches a deep divot in the dirt, my ankle hitting the ground as my heel breaks off somewhere in the dust. Pain shoots through my foot with an unsteadiness that drops me to the ground, hard.
“Pretty Pet,” he whispers through the thick air that crawls across my skin, his voice carrying unnaturally in the dark. “Pretty Pet, I warned you not to run.”
With flinging hands, I wipe off the sticky feel of his eerie voice creeping across my flesh. I stand weakly and search out the cruel and taunting Blood Prince.
He’s as deadly as the dark fae these people fear. And I don’t know what he’ll fucking do to me if he catches me.
The pain doesn’t register. Faster and faster I run until I can’t see a thing around me.
“Crymson,” he hisses. “There was only one rule.” His voice carries like spiders crawling up old walls. “You broke the rule... And now I’ll have to break you.”
The hard booming of my heartbeat threatens vomit that’s building at the back of my throat. Tears stream down my face, but I no longer know if it’s from the suffocating smoke or something else.
And then it happens.
A hard body collides into mine. The sob I’d been holding on to catches free from my lips, and he never lets me go. I’m flung through the darkness at a speed that hurts my neck and limbs when I move against the force of it all.
So I don’t. I cling on to the monster I was running from just seconds ago. My arms wrap around him with a sudden exhaustion that I didn’t even realize I had in me. The warm smell of timber and evergreen interrupts the fiery air when I lower my head to his neck. I let my wet lashes close.
For a single second, peace drifts over me.
