Chapter 15
The castle grows quieter at night as the sun sinks behind the tall city buildings, and darkness without stars swarms like a veil in its place.
Workers rest in their homes or in little nooks hidden away in the castle.
Alad clocked off work and likely hides in his room to read his romance novels filled with sexual tension and vibrating dildos.
The king fucks whores in his throne room, then stares with no light in his eyes at a room filled with ash, blood and emptiness.
Emmerton is out, leaving me with no irritable distractions while he fucks women, hoping to scratch that itch he hasn’t felt since Typha Hart.
Astin waits for my beck and call, likely slaughtering elemny he considers better than him.
I feel more at peace when the sun sets and darkness covers the sky.
The dense smoke is like a cloak. Some elemny would struggle to breathe as if someone wrapped a blanket around their face until it was hard to breathe—the constant constricting of breaths struggling to escape elemny until they’re choking on air.
I sit on the steps leading to the foyer and stare at the bent, dead trees in the garden and the decayed bushes bereft of leaves.
Ash floats down from the sky, settling on bones, broken branches, and a water fountain that hasn’t flowed since it was built.
Often, King Ragan would gaze at the fountain, telling me how beautiful it would look if the water flowed red from her heart and bled down the river.
I turn away before more bitter memories overwhelm my senses. I’m already bothered as is. The last thing I want is the desire to kill the king without thinking of who he’s tethered to. So, instead, my thoughts drift to my latest hunt.
Wherever I go, I can’t help but think of how much I want to kill that woman. I want to hunt her until the panic sets into her pores, prickles across the hairs on her arms, and the sweat filled with fright beads down her forehead.
I want to hunt her until she knows there is nowhere to run.
I want to play with my food, but can’t because I lack information about her.
It wouldn’t be satisfying enough. Stalking also won’t do me any good without a cause.
I might frighten the poor little flat-chested lamb before I have a sniff of evidence to play my games with her.
I need entertainment.
Sure, if King Ragan lets me kill the smugglers he’s putting on display tomorrow morning, I’d finally be able to scratch my itch.
But he wants to put on a show to prove he’s still this fearless king, yet he looks deranged.
It’s a stupid way to go about it, considering many believe he’s going absolutely mad.
Still, as much as it disgusts me, he’s the king and can do whatever he wants.
Fear and power go hand in hand. When they do, there’s no stopping the ego trip the elemny has when they possess it. Look at me. I have both, and the fright is clear in their wavering, weakening eyes whenever I meet someone’s gaze.
Shit. Who is this woman posing like an innocent poster girl in a teenage magazine but has a mouth like a bloody sailor? And what did she do for me to hunger to kill her with this much conviction?
Since purging the Kingdom of Crystal, I haven’t felt this way about killing. The way the fright trembled through their bones as I prowled behind the elemny who knew I was stalking them. There was so much killing to choose from whenever someone got in my way.
Perhaps it’s the unknown about her. Once I learn more about this Pandora Averis—if that’s her name—I will judge whether I deem her worthy to hunt and kill. I will let her be if she’s a common thief or some pathetic fucking cutthroat that gets off on cheap thrills.
Yet, if she’s tied to this Old Wolf, I will torture her after quenching my satisfying need for a hunt. The thought of seeing the absolute fear in her wide brown eyes. Or the way her plump, full lips will split and crack when I starve her into submission.
Fuck, get it under control, Reen. If you keep thinking about her, you will snap her neck before you can play games.
Resting my elbows on my knees, I gaze out as Walkyer enters the garden. A vibrant smile reaches his lips, and it screams with the excitement of a man who will probably have his heart torn in two when the woman fucks Emmerton.
He makes his thoughts disappointingly obvious, and when he gets in this mood, it all goes downhill from there. The spring in his step, the beaming smile of a man seeing a woman for the first time, and a flutter in his eyes, like the virgin sock fucker that he is.
As I stand, I ask, “What’s gotten you in a jovial mood?”
“Nothing,” Walkyer says evasively.
He’s a terrible liar. The way his eyes darted when he answered my question and the twitch of his lips as he struggled to contain his giddy excitement remind me of a teenager losing his virginity for the first time.
It’s just sex. Getting your dick wet isn’t a revolutionary, heaven’s gates opening, or a symphony of angels’ experience. Even then, most men who fuck don’t know what a fucking clit—
I sigh. Having no hunt is causing my mind to turn into fucking mush, and now I’m doing everything I can to stop myself from thinking about Pandora. I want to kill her, and I am fighting with myself to control the sudden urge.
To stop my thoughts, I stare at Walkyer and consider him entertainment.
“What?”
I arch my brow, and Walkyer must know I can see through his bullshit.
“Okay,”—Walkyer claps his hands together—“this may sound crazy, but I think I’ve found her.”
“Ah. So, you listened to what I said and lowered your standards?”
“No,” he snaps.
“Let me guess.” I grin at his clenched jaw. “She’s a water elemny, like you. She likes drinking water, as you do.”
“Reen.” Walkyer’s clasped hands clench tight until they redden.
“She likes taking long, cold baths, like you. She enjoys the rain and will dance in thunderstorms, just like you.”
“Shut up!” Walkyer points his finger at me and glowers. “It was one thunderstorm, and it was because Emmerton put drugs in the brownies!”
“Whatever you say,” I chuckle.
“And also…I don’t know what elemny she is,” he mumbles.
“What? You met her in the dark?” I give him a playful slap on the shoulder, my grin widening sadistically. “Look, when I said to lower your standards, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Fuck you!” he spits. Walkyer extends his arm in a desperate yet pathetic attempt to clock me in the jaw. Stepping back, I grab his arm, move it away from my face, and shove him until he stumbles to my right. Walkyer collapses on the steps, a red flush burning across his cheeks.
“It’s so easy to tease you,” I laugh.
“It’s why you don’t have friends, Reen,” Walkyer says.
“I never said I wanted friends.”
Silence hangs in the air.
Sighing, I step up and sit beside my younger, romantic, love-struck brother, who falls too hard, too fast. He flinches but doesn’t move away once he realises I won’t annoy him any longer. “Tell me about her,” I say.
“Well…I don’t know much,” he admits.
“What do you mean? Did you not talk to her?”
“I couldn’t. She was in a car with her friends. I just saw her in passing.”
“How do you know if she’s kind? How do you know if she’s caring?”
“Well, I think she’s shy,” Walkyer tries to justify. Of course he does. “But she must still be in the academy.”
“That’s promising,” I say drily. “A twenty-three-year-old crushing on an unawakened student.”
“I’m twenty-four.”
“Walkyer,” I sigh, “it doesn’t make it any better.”
“I know,” he says lamely. “But when I saw her, my heart fluttered. However, I doubt I will see her again. They’re tourists because her friend acted as if she had never seen a prince.”
“They go crazy, don’t they?” I smile tightly. “It’s fucking annoying.”
Walkyer barks a laugh. “It gets tedious.”
As I rise, I place my hand on Walkyer’s head and ruffle his ice-blue hair. “If you think there’s a connection, why don’t you ask the taxi drivers?”
“Pardon?” Walkyer brushes my hand away from his hair and stands.
“Well, you said her friend caused a commotion in the cab. I’m sure many taxi drivers would remember a moment like that and go back through their logs so you can find her.”
“Can I do that?” Walkyer says, his brows shooting up with a desperate look.
“Yes,” I say. “I’ll contact Alad in the morning and tell him to send the details to you so you can find this woman who makes my dear brother’s heart flutter.”
“I hear the sarcasm, Reen,” Walkyer mutters.
“You were supposed to.”