Chapter 12 #2
My phantom controller stopped me in front of Alek, and I peered up through my lashes. I could see myself through his eyes. I looked like the most subservient slut possible. I looked like I wanted him to nail me into the wall.
He stared, that same bored expression on his face, but something about it was labored. He didn’t twitch, but his throat bobbed. If I hadn’t been where I was, I would’ve missed it.
Fear struck my heart.
“Would you like control?” the king suggested. “Say the word, and he’s yours.”
Alek’s gaze flicked to his father. No more than three seconds after he held out a palm, I grunted when the webbing encasing my body suddenly tugged in his direction.
I was struck with a need to vomit, like my body was being disassembled, then yanked through a pocket in time by way of a thousand tiny shreds of flesh.
Then I was his. I could feel myself under his command, and panic hollowed my chest.
“Please,” I begged, and it wasn’t his doing. It was mine. My mouth was working. “Please, don’t. It’s not right. You know it’s not—”
He silenced me. With a gentle curl of his fingertips, he took the words from my mouth, leaving it dry and empty.
It was different from the way his father had done it. My mouth didn’t get sealed shut. It was as if he’d coaxed my very words. Called to them, took command of them, then replaced them with a lingering echo of…calm.
Alek parted his lips to speak but interrupted himself with a rough cough that lasted and lasted like whatever it took to maintain this magic was draining him further.
“I see you’re feeling ill, son.” The king gestured toward me like I was a warm stew in a bowl. “Might I suggest touching him like he asked?”
Alek cocked his head down at me, his strange copper gaze wandering over my face. My heart sank.
This was the prince of Novithia. The heir to the most powerful kingdom stood before me, and he was sick. He could use my body to heal himself within minutes, and it didn’t matter that it would kill me. It wasn’t like they gave a shit about my tiny, two-person family or my insignificant life.
I wasn’t even a two-person family since Landry left. I was nothing.
“We’ll let you play,” the king said, signaling to the soldiers. “Enjoy.”
“No need.” Alek’s gaze was hard as he addressed his father once more. “This is not the one.”
The spell seizing my bones vanished. I crumbled to the floor, air burning my lungs as I blinked hard, flexing my fingertips. They worked. My body was my own again. It was as if the spell had never been there to begin with.
The king halted, slowly swiveling around. It looked like it pained him to ask, “And what’s wrong this time?”
Alek swiped his hands together. “Nothing against him. I simply don’t find myself with attraction toward him.”
My eyebrows lifted a little as I searched his profile. What? He was a virgin demon—one who had never eaten—and a lack of attraction was the reason?
The king murmured a few inaudible words under his breath, scrubbing his hands over his face. It almost looked like he might yell, then he huffed out a dark chuckle. “Do you have any idea what I’ve gone through? What I’ve done for you?”
Alek picked a piece of lint from his shirt. “No, but I’m positively certain you’re about to tell me.”
“I went into the villages for you. The villages, Alek.”
“So…congratulations? My condolences?” Alek shrugged. “I don’t know what that means.”
“The villages are disgusting. And I went to four of them where I sifted through dump after dump, tasting the most mediocre filth imaginable. And against all odds, what happens? I find you a diamond.” He thrust a hand toward me.
“I find you a human that will dissolve on your tongue like candy. Any vultus in this palace would fight you for it.”
I glowered at the king, then at every soldier who eyed me. A part of me wanted to tell each of them the specific ways in which they revolted me, but I forced myself quiet. Meanwhile, Alek was studying his nails, like he was unbothered to even listen.
“His essence is infinite, son. There is a well inside him that is never ending. And not only that, but he just fucking tastes good. A diamond is shackled before you in a sterling chain, and you’re not ‘attracted’? What does that even mean?”
Alek lazily lifted one shoulder. “I felt nothing when I first saw him, and I felt nothing during your little puppeteering just now. The body wants what the body wants.”
“The body wants what the body…” The king trailed off, his eyes huge as he shook his head. “Gods, with such privilege you’ve grown. My first was a fifty-seven-year-old field worker, dying of syphilis.”
“I am well aware, Father. We are all so well aware of your excruciatingly noble sacrifices for the greater good of the kingdom. How can we ever repay you?”
The king glared. “Have you considered that what your body wants is impossible to find? You’ve not been out there. It doesn’t get more ‘attractive’ than this. Most of them are not fit to breathe our air, let alone suck our cocks.”
It took every inch of my body working together to keep myself from finding something to stab him with. This was how they thought about us. Of course, it was. Not fit. Just the scum they used for food.
Alek raked his cold gaze over me. He switched languages as he asked, “This is your idea of a diamond? You can’t polish a lump of coal and expect it to shine.”
Vultaen. He was speaking Vultaen. In all my years, I’d not ever heard it spoken so handsomely, with elegance, the words stringing past his lips like a delicate hymn. He probably assumed I couldn’t understand, as learning it was against the law for a human, but I could understand every word.
“Just like you can’t go slumming in the fleabag district,” Alek continued in his noble dialect, his words as cruel as they were lovely, “and expect to find a diamond.”
The king blinked for a moment, then responded in the same noble dialect, “I don’t understand you.
I’ve brought you human after human, and they’re either too tall or too boring or too ‘expressly average’—remember that?
Now, I bring you the epitome of unique and you’re still not pleased. What do you want?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Father. For one, not to be able to count every one of his ribs.”
The king flicked a sidelong glance down my body.
“When was the last time he ate?” Alek asked. “Think it was this decade?”
The king frowned as I sat up a little taller. Something about it had hope beginning to bloom in my chest. He really wasn’t attracted to me? It made sense. He hadn’t twitched.
“Like I said,” the king argued, “he’s from the villages. That’s just how they look.”
“Like starving vermin?” Alek’s nose scrunched. “Is there supposed to be something sexy about that?”
The king’s jaw ticked. “It’s nothing that can’t be fixed. We can feed him full meals every day for a week.”
“You can’t fix his eerie eyes, Father. They will forever haunt my dreams, and not in a good way.”
“Oh, for crying out loud. Then don’t look him in his eyes, Alek. Fuck him from behind.”
“So crass,” Alek chuckled. “You do recall, this is my first. It’ll be recorded in history. Celebrated amongst the masses. It must be memorable.”
“Well, we’re quite past that, aren’t we? On account that you’re dying.”
I flashed my gaze to Alek, half-expecting him to deny such an accusation. But he didn’t. And suddenly, I saw it. The hollows of his cheeks were too deep and there was something not quite right about the smear of purple beneath his eyes.
Shit. He was dying because he wanted his first to be memorable. From the sounds of it, perfect. The perfect human. He was willing to sacrifice his life for it.
“You need a human,” the king urged, thrusting a hand toward me. “I’ve brought you a human. Get it over with.”
“But I can’t even get it up for him.”
The king groaned, eyes rolling to the ceiling.
“Come on, you should know my tastes by now.” Alek’s smirk was cruel. “You should know better than to bring me someone who looks so very poor.”
My gaze lowered to the floor beneath me. To hell with him. To hell with the whole royal fucking family. As if I even needed another reason to hate them. If I ever got the chance, I’d burn this place to the ground.
“I’ll take a human when the human is worthy of me,” Alek said, switching back to our shared language of Novithish. “Guards. Unchain him.”
I tried to keep my expression neutral, but I couldn’t help but glance at the king.
His jaw tightened as he looked to me, disappointment etched all over his features, like this was somehow my fault. It was nearly satisfying. I had to bite back a smirk.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Alek said, snapping his fingers as he pointed the soldiers to the floor where my chain was bolted, “I’ve just picked up an interesting read. I’d love to enjoy it with a hot bath.”
The soldiers dashed forward as Alek started toward the washroom, but the king held up a palm, halting them all instantly.
Something sparkled behind his cold eyes. It was almost wicked. His voice was a little more singsong as he said, “Not so fast.”
Alek gave him a bored, ireful look, but something about it had me standing on alert, fight or flight. “What now?”
“I wonder if perhaps you’re being too quick to dismiss our guest, when maybe all you need is a little time with him.”
My brow creased. Time. No.
“I’ll make you a little deal,” the king said. “He stays in your room with you for two weeks. If you’ve not warmed to him by then, I’ll butt out of your life. But I bet you will.”
Panic cycled through my body as I widened my eyes at Alek. Say no, say no, say NO.
“No,” Alek said, and relief washed over me. “As much as I would love for you to butt out of my life, this would be a waste of my precious time. I can promise you, I won’t warm to him.”
But the king only grinned and something about it curdled my stomach. “Son, you are more na?ve than I realized if you thought you were getting a choice in the matter.”