Priest and his Anarchist

Prologue

priest

I remember hearing my parents' hushed whispers in the kitchen one night. I would have been five or six. They were worried that they’d never seen me smile. They thought I had no emotion. Numb. Dead inside.

But they don’t know how much I hate Luna Nox.

Goose bumps pebble over her flawless skin when my knuckles graze the base of her neck. She is younger than me. She looks it. Dressed in an ivory sundress that would give the Devil blue balls, she embodies everything I hate.

Innocence for one.

Hers, there for my taking. And take it I did.

She stiffens as if recalling my touch. The way it felt when it was good, and how addictive it was when it wasn’t.

“Why would you do this to me?”

I don’t answer, retracting away from her. Conversations I’d overheard as a child echoing through my brain.

Especially one where Mom mentioned my uncle Daemon, her twin. He’d been the first Lost Boy. She only found out about him later in life, after meeting Dad. I knew little about him because anytime she talked about him, I wouldn’t listen. It wasn’t Uncle Daemon that caught my attention. Halen had said it multiple times in the past, so it didn’t faze me. “You’re an actual sociopath, Priest….” Maybe.

So the fuck what.

It wasn’t that.

It was when my father whispered… “He’s a Hayes.”

At that time, I didn’t know what the fuck that was supposed to mean. I learned later what it meant and who he was talking about.

Humphrey Hayes. The first Hayes and creator. Would he be happy with how it was now, considering how much the organization had changed? He’d built an army, choosing ten founding members and a vision that could only be seen by those chosen. It started small, a defiant act against the system. To create a legion who wouldn’t bow to a government, or any criminal organization. A fearless army of weapons, clothed in the flesh of men who’d ensure to take every robust sector of the world.

Things hadn’t changed over the years, including how my father led. He was the most decisive leader we’d ever had. But that was an issue because he also married my mother. He moved and changed rules for her, accommodating her and others.

Was I angry that they stopped killing the Swans and that women were allowed deeper into the society now?

Nah.

I had every intention of changing it once I took the gavel. Because girls like Luna Nox don’t belong here. They never will, and when I take the gavel, they’ll soon find out.

“Priest…” Luna whispers once more, and I immediately look at her. So small and lithe, desperate and needy.

Leaves rustle against the wave of nature’s lungs among the distant sound of music. It does nothing to distract my thoughts. There is one thing I can’t scratch, no matter how hard I have tried throughout the years with her. Never now, never then.

Blood dribbles between her fingers where she’s clutching her side. “Answer me. Why?”

Using her arm, I force her to her feet. It takes her less than two seconds before she loses her footing and stumbles against a tree. Ignoring her complaints, I continue dragging her through the forest, over fallen logs and dying leaves. Four more steps, and we stand outside my dad’s car, the full moon glaring down at both of us as it breaks through the shadows.

She bounces off the passenger door when I shove her forward and slides to the ground. Her hair matches the color of the night. Sinful, dark, yet alluring.

Blood sprays my face when she coughs. “I’m going to die, Priest.”

Carefully studying her face, I kneel low. I fucking hate her eyes. They remind me of my soul. “Good, Madness.”

The nickname flows over her face, and her cheeks fall.

“Don’t call me that!” she sneers, and it’s the first time I’ve seen an inkling of something more on her. Something fierce.

“What, Madness?” I tease, the swell in my chest deepening my smirk.“But isn’t that what you are?” I drop my head to the side, memorizing every detail of her features.

Her baby-soft cheeks dimple when she smiles, and her lips are so fucking perfect they almost have me slipping.

“Pure madness?”

“No!” A deep blush powders her cheeks as she draws in her bottom lip.

I pull her up and unlock the car with the key in my pocket.

“I just?—”

The way she tries to calm herself is fascinating. With each inhale, her chest swells. With each exhale, it deflates. So human. I try to lose myself on the Cupid’s bow that dips in the middle of her lips, but it’s useless. I’m hyperaware of everything around me, like the fluttering of her heart against my chest. It was a sad melody. One you’d play at a funeral.

“Would you rather I call you Lunatic?”

“Fuck you!” She chokes on a whimper. “Is what they say about you true?”

“What?” I ask, wondering if she’ll say what she’s really thinking. She probably won’t. I’ve known Luna since we were kids. Her father is part of one of the ten founding families my ancestor had chosen, but one of the ten that aren’t important. It is the three that are.

Hayes.

Malum.

Vitiosis.

They are the three who continue to run the Elite Kings Club from the vanguard without the disguise of being under anyone else. People still whisper the EKC in fear, only when it comes to the three, they don’t whisper at all.

They run.

My fingers find her chin as I force her eyes back on mine. Fuck, but they are weird. A concoction of lavender and gray, a complete mix between her mother, who has lilac, and her father, who has blue.

She looks like a fugitive who’s been exiled from another dimension.

Like Madness.

I trace her bottom lip and force her mouth open with my thumb. “Don’t like the truth, hmmm?”

Her doll-like features fly to mine, turning my blood to ice and my heart to stone. “It’s not the truth.”

She’s fucking madness. Complete and utter madness.

I shove myself away from her and open the passenger side. “Get in the fucking car.” She’s barely in when I slam it closed and round the other side.

Vaden’s voice stops me as my hand lands on my door handle.

“You sure about that?”

Keeping my back turned to him, my lip twitches. “You second-guessing me?”

Vaden is always the reasonable one of us. Having the Vitiosis bloodline, he resembles neither his cold, feared father nor his sunny, witch-like mother. He is his own self.

A poised poster child for insanity and control.

“Not second-guessing, no.” Vaden chooses his words carefully as gravel crunches beneath his boot. “But she’s Luna. She’s not disposable. She’s one of us.”

“Barely.” I am not unhinged. I remain the one always in control, yet tonight, insanity has left its mark on me.

Snowflakes drift down from above, disappearing on my warm skin. We don’t have much time. The sun will soon rise when not even your shadow can hide. “Go back to the party, Vade.”

“I’m coming.” He doesn’t wait for my answer, rushing to the passenger side and disappearing into the back seat. I wait a moment, thinking over my options. I don’t have many, especially when it comes to my best fucking friend. Even though I have two, War is a lost cause. Too obsessed with my sister to be loyal to anyone else, but Vaden is still pure. For now. Because there will be no saving him when the time comes, and the time will come.

“Fuck.” I slide into the driver’s seat. Mom gave strict orders about tonight and how she didn’t want any bullshit. She didn’t say anything about Luna being a fucking klutz.

Luna coughs from the passenger seat, resting her head against the window.

Vaden whistles from the back seat. “Well fuck me, damn…”

Tapping the car into reverse, snow kicks up from my tires when I turn the wheel, sliding out of the parking of Riverside Elite University. Cars sprawl out all over, guarded by security at both gate entrances. I don’t know why I thought this was a good idea. It’s messy. Unlike me. But she pissed me off—they pissed me off.

Luna coughs again. Clutching her stomach, she flips around to face me. “Priest, I’m going to die.”

“Maybe.” I shrug. “At least I’ll be the last thing you see.”

Her eyes stay pinned on mine, and that same tightness in my stomach returns. It’s not that I care. I can’t. It’s because tonight didn’t go as planned.

“You don’t have the gavel yet. You’ll be in trouble for this.”

“What part of me makes you think I would care?” I’m bored with the conversation, but I’ll entertain her. It’s the least I can do, considering she has my ancestor’s dagger sticking out of her ribs.

“I didn’t say you cared. You’re more like the pied piper…” Her words die out faster than she ever will.

“How so?”

I’ll write her obituary.

Luna Nox Rebellis. Daughter of Eli Rebellis, Elite King, daughter of Lilith and Kyrin, Brother of Kiznitch with Midnight Mayhem, an adult circus family that she would have been a lot safer being a part of. She spent her last breath begging for her life.

“Because you lure people to their death.”

“I don’t sing, Madness…” I drive us down the dark street of Elite Boulevard, slowing beneath snow-covered trees that bend over the cobblestone road.

“No, but you lie…”

“Lie?” My brow quirks. Okay, now she’s got me fucked up. “How’d I lie?” She’s curled into a ball, her lips bloodstained red, and her ivory dress a virtue of deceit.

“You told me I’d always be safe.”

I choke on my laugh. “That’s not what I meant.”

Vaden’s gaze heats the side of my face, and I know he wants to say something. I pull up the brake, leaving us idling in the middle of the drive.

“You sure about this?” His question is to me, but I know he doesn’t care that she hears. She’ll be dead by the end of the night.

Have I thought about this moment before? Yes. Many times, but it lacked something. The very excitement of my imagination. The things I would do to her… “No.”

“Why?” There’s no desperation in her question. No fear she is going to die.

“Because I hate you and you should have run.” I focus on the dark road ahead.

Vaden taps at my chair. “Let me out.”

“I was running!” she cries, but her throat tightens around the words, and a dribble of crimson spills between her lips. “I ran fast.”

I lean my seat forward and swing the door open, moving out of the way for Vaden. He disappears down the driveway, heading toward the castle.

Inside the car, the warm, metallic scent of iron mingles with the sweet fragrance of sunflowers. I tilt my head until my lips brush hers, and the moisture of her blood stains my mouth. I draw my tongue over my bottom lip, her familiar touch too potent to ignore. It always has been. “Did you? Or did you run slow because you wanted me to catch you?” My knuckles glide over her exposed breast, igniting hellfire.

“Priest, please.”

“Please, what, Madness? What are you begging for?”

“Don’t kill me.”

“Tsk tsk…” My fingers catch the back of her head as I bury my face in the crook of her neck.

She is everything I hate.

Because she is everything I created.

I can feel myself waver as she fumbles with my belt buckle. I have two options here. I can kill her, get it over with, and toss her out, or I can fuck her. And then do the above.

My hips thrust into her touch, and I sink my face further into her neck. “Remember that I hate you even when I fuck you.”