Chapter 18
FELORé
Istood in a state of utter shock, unable to move.
It was the aftermath of Alek’s possession. It still thrummed through my body in a thousand ripples. All I could do was stand still and feel.
He’d been inside me. All the way inside me. He’d filled my body like it was an empty chamber, and he was enormous, pressing against the walls. I’d felt the moment he entered me, and all I could think was how that much power would never fit—he was so fucking big.
But then he had fit. And I’d welcomed it. I’d given him the control he asked for. He could’ve done anything he wanted with me, but he did that.
He saved me. Again.
I whispered his name. Or I thought I whispered it. Maybe I hadn’t because he didn’t budge from where he stood with one ear pressed against his bedroom door, eyes vacant as he stared at the floor, listening to the sounds, confirming Neopal was really gone.
“Alek,” I said again, my voice as shaky as I felt. “Do you—?”
He twisted to face me, and I froze.
It was his eyes. This entire time, I’d not seen them turn, but there was no mistaking it. They were a glowing crimson, like two blood moons sunken deep in his face.
“Your eyes,” I whispered. “They’re red.”
He blurted out a chuckle. “Oh, are they, sweetheart? How observant of you.”
Oh, shit. He was angry. I could sense the fury coursing through his veins.
“Tell me, darling, do you have a death wish?” he asked, cocking his head. “Do you have a secret desire to feel unimaginable pain? If so, go ahead and tell me now. It’ll save me a whole lot of energy in the future.”
I gulped.
“And if you don’t,” he continued, easing toward me, the lightness of his footsteps not matching the intensity of his tone, “then why the fuck would you do something so incomprehensibly foolish? And in front of one of his most loyal warriors, no doubt. Do you realize what he would’ve done to you? Do you have any goddamn idea, Feloré?”
My voice was as shaky as I felt as I parted my lips to explain myself, only to settle on, “I-I do.”
“Is that right?” he asked, stepping even closer. “So, you realize how he would’ve carved up your skin like a piece of meat and been applauded for it?”
It was like my mouth was suddenly filled with cotton.
“Do you know what becomes of those humans?”
I scraped my teeth over my lower lip. “I—”
“Because I do,” he said. “I have witnessed the torture and I have heard the screams and he was seconds, seconds from taking a knife to your precious skin.”
I tried to hold his wild gaze, but it dropped to my chest.
“A knife,” he whispered, the words scarcely there as he reached his shaky fingertips toward my sternum. “To this.”
Something was broken inside me because I wasn’t running. I didn’t know why, but it was like I was waiting—electrified and waiting for him to touch me.
It would be a touch that never came because he suddenly winced.
I jumped when he clutched a hand to his side, backing away toward the standing mirror, and oh, gods. How did I miss it before? How did I miss how the side of his shirt was soaked in a big mottle of blood?
He grimaced as he stood before the mirror, delicately lifting his shirt to expose the wound. My heart nearly stopped at what I saw.
Something was not right. Not only was his wound leeching blood, but angry streaks of red were clawing their way from the center, spiraling around his ribcage.
“Shit, that is not, um…” I trailed off, blinking at it wide-eyed. “Fuck, you’re bleeding. A lot.”
He snorted, something about it spiteful as he dropped the shirt to dig into his pocket for a cigarette.
“Why is it like that?” I asked. “Is that from possessing me?”
He didn’t answer, clipping the cigarette between his teeth, attempting to summon fire into his palm, but he was clearly weakened, and no flame would answer.
“Alek,” I said when he still didn’t respond. “Did you know it would do that?”
“Did I know it would do that,” he repeated absently through clenched teeth as he struggled with the flame. “I knew it wouldn’t fucking help, Feloré.”
I tried not to glare, but it wasn’t as if I was entirely to blame. Continuing to scold me was…well, unconstructive.
“But apparently,” he continued, finally summoning a fire long enough to light his cigarette, “I’ve been bestowed not a human man, but a stubborn toddler.”
My eyes narrowed. “A toddler?”
“Do you prefer baby, baby?”
“You know, you can spare me the lecture, Prince of Novithia. You really can. If you’ll be reminded, I didn’t ask for any of this. Just like I didn’t ask for you to possess me.”
His reddened gaze jumped to mine.
“Why even do it, hmm? If you’re going to be such a monumental prick about it, then why not just let him carve me up?”
He stared. The room fell deathly silent as he stared. And I suddenly regretted asking that.
“Why?” he asked, dropping the hand that held the cigarette heavy to his side. “You want to know why?”
My breath caught a little. It was the way he looked in this moment. It was so easy to confuse him with a human with the freckles and the sickly, sullen skin, but this was anything but human. This was pure demon.
He glided closer to me. Quickly. He was moving far too quickly, and I couldn’t back away in time. Then I felt it. An invisible hand gripped my neck.
I gasped, frozen in place as an ethereal sensation leaked down my chest like so much icy water.
“Darling, I know no one who looks like me has ever given you a reason to trust, so I dare not even ask you for it,” he said, stepping closer as the hands snaked everywhere. My chin. My arms. The nape of my neck. “I dare not think for a second that I’m deserving.”
I couldn’t move. He was gripping my neck gently enough for me to breathe and hard enough for me to whimper. All I could do was blink up at him wide-eyed while he moved closer still, unbothered, smoking as his hands controlled me without a single touch.
“You wouldn’t trust the darkness of a nightmare,” he whispered, smoothing an invisible, icy thumb over my cheek. “And you shouldn’t trust me.”
My body squirmed, but he pulled me closer. Tighter into his touch, into the force of his body where the air smelled of ashes and earth and sex.
“But here’s the thing,” he said, his voice dropping a full octave. “I don’t need your trust.”
I whimpered as an invisible hand smoothed through my hair, gripping it by the roots, tilting my head back.
“I don’t need it any more than I need your permission to stand between you and yourself. Every inch of this skin. I’ll fight for every precious inch.”
What was happening to me? My body was aching, clawing to be this close. To be the soul in his arms, melting beneath his ghostly touch.
“I’ll fight,” he whispered. “I’ll lie. I’ll possess.”
He suddenly held my face with both hands. I couldn’t tell where he ended, and the ghost began, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t looking anywhere but into the molten red of his demonic eyes as he hovered his lips above mine and said, “I’ll fucking bleed for you, human.”
I was frozen, unable to make sense of my own thoughts as they slipped by, one right after the other.
I didn’t know what I wanted—what did I fucking want?
But his tongue was skating over his teeth like it was desperate to taste something and the only thought I could grasp was how that tongue had been inside me when he possessed me. He’d been inside me.
My voice was a breathy cry as I said, “Alek—”
He pushed me.
I stumbled backward, grunting when my hip collided with his desk. The ember on his cigarette burned bright as he hollowed out his cheeks to suck hard, like it was the only thing giving him life.
“You’ll sleep in the bed, human.”
It was spoken like a command from a king. And just like a king, he didn’t wait for me to respond.
Without an explanation, without another glance, the future ruler of Novithia was gone, vanishing into the washroom. And I was, once again, left standing in a hazy fog of his seductively sweet smoke.