THIRTY-ONE
Crymson
A hypnotic energypulses through me. It feels like my heart isn’t my own but is laced up with his, mirroring the fast pace of each and every hard beat that pounds within him. Since I arrived here, I’ve never felt magic like this. Whatever is in the mysterious Thorn King, it’s powerful.
He leads us away from the watchful eyes of the garden. Trees surround us. The screams from the hunt are long gone. Only a heavy quiet remains.
The alluring Fae King steps closer, his hand coming up slowly to trace the line of my spine from the lowest part of my back all the way up to the nape of my neck.
He’s my father. He’s my father. He’s my father.
Is this what having a father feels like?
I don’t think it is. But I’ve never felt this connected to anyone in my entire life. The moment he said my name, it was like I was suddenly alive in a world where I’ve only ever felt half dead.
Warm fingers kiss across my shoulder blades before he halts that mesmerizing sensation of his hands on my body.
“Who did this to you?” There’s a jaggedness to his deep voice. His fingers slide down the forgotten scars on my back, my lashes closing hard to hold back the wince threatening to cry out. “Did that disgusting man do this to you? Tell me!” he roars so loudly it shakes my soul.
“Stop!” Christian storms forward, and I realize then that I have felt this feeling before. I have felt this dominating energy swirling inside my chest.When Rorrick bit me. “Let’s calm down. Remember why we’re here tonight.” His erratic gaze is held hard against the small contact of the king’s hand against my back. He tells the Thorn King to be calm when the Blood Prince is anything but.
I glance from one psychotic man to the other, both of them total opposites. It’s like standing between the light and dark side of the moon.
And still feeling cold and lost.
“I didn’t think you’d actually find her,” the Thorn King says on a smooth whisper, his gentle fingers skimming over the line of my collarbone to the curve of my jaw. He looks down on me with the strangest light shining in his icy blue eyes.
And then inky spider webs crack across Christian’s handsome face. His steps pound over the dirt until he’s right up in the king’s face.
“You’re going to want to take your fucking hand off of her before I break it off for you.” Barely controlled rage shakes through his lithe body.
A tinge of amusement kisses the corner of the king’s full lips.
“I don’t want to fight you, Little Prince. I don’t want to burn your borders again when they’re so close to recovering.” His calmness is cruel. A fuck-you in the face of rage. “I only want one thing.”
Seven and Rorrick walk up slowly and quietly behind the Blood Prince. Christian’s brows pull with a thin line.
And then all of them look to me.
“No.” Christian’s answer is flat and final. “She’s not a bargaining chip.”
“And yet you were happy to bargain with her when she was just a faceless Promise.Like your mother was.”
Rage ticks through Christian’s jaw. It’s clearly a stinging comment that slices much deeper than he lets on.
“I said no.”
I stand between the two men, and it’s only then that I realize they’re talking about me. The Thorn King wants me. Christian... doesn’t want me, but he doesn’t want Thorn to have me either.
Thorn’s fuck-you smile widens when he pulls his attention away and fully looks at Christian.
“My men and their skeletal dragons are lined within the darkness. Your king is overindulged and underprepared... for everything in life, it seems.” His pause drifts to me, and there’s that feeling again when our gazes lock. “I could take these lands by sunrise. Your people would die. Your women. Their children. All of it would be burned to the ground just like before, and only then would I think that the charred remains would be better than the wasteland of magic that it is now.”
Rorrick looks to Christian immediately, and that single look of alarm is too telling.
The Thorn King isn’t lying. These people—as terrible as their lives may be—they’ll all die. Because of me.
“I’ll go,” I say suddenly.
