6. Aurelia
“This is enough, you really don’t need to?—”
“Oh, hush now,” Henry said, his wrinkled hands pushing a fur-lined cape into my hands. “Julie worked on this with you in mind.”
He was kneeling at my feet like he always did, but as the quarter-human aged, I couldn’t help but feel pity for him. His aging knees were no match for the cold castle floor.
The vampires in the palace deserved my wrath. They were good-for-nothing heathens who only cared about a fresh blood bag and their ring-stacked fingers.
But not the humans. Not the people my mother had welcomed into this family with open arms.
They came here based on a promise. A promise that neither my father nor I could deliver.
I wished to kneel down and help him to his feet, but Father would see my inability to take this poor old man injuring himself to gift me with something I didn’t need as an insult.
If anything, taking things from a man like Henry should have been an insult. A real king would have showered his followers with presents instead of accepting them. He should have celebrated his only blood heir being married off.
But instead, he used it as yet another way to make money.
His eyes burrowed into my back, a reminder to keep my mouth shut. He might be more lenient with my attitude when we were alone, but if I so much as even looked at him the wrong way while in front of our people, there would be hell to pay.
I was tempted to refuse the gift again, feeling almost disgusted at adding another to the mountain behind me…until I felt something hard hidden inside the bunches of fabric. His deep brown eyes met mine with a silent message.
He was pleading with me to take it. And for me to be silent.
A dangerous lick of curiosity ran up my spine. And here I thought the only thing keeping me entertained would be the silver-haired guard.
The same guard who had yet to be assigned to me, even though I had already asked.
Per the head guard, they were letting the new arrivals get situated, so instead of having her by my side, I had Melia and one other random guard I had never seen in my life.
The need to open the cape was almost unbearable.
“There are others who wish to see the princess,” Father interrupted, his voice breaking the connection between us. Right.
My eyes wandered to the line of our people waiting to see me. It ran down the stairs and out into the hallway. All of them coming to wish the late queen’s daughter a happy marriage.
When will this stop? At this rate, I would be here for hours before we even reached the end of the line.
That was what happened when you never turned anyone away for years, then subsequently focused on trying to bring in as many people to our family as possible.
If I had half the power Mother did, I would have been able to put a stop to this. We had no need to accept these gifts. Most couldn’t afford them, not after the taxes my father forced on them.
But Henry…I looked down at him once more, remembering his young age when I was a child. He had been so carefree back then, but after so many years, his skin had started to wrinkle, his hair grayed, and once again, he was missing teeth, but there were none pushing in to replace the lost ones.
He was dying right before my very eyes, and I had barely noticed.
Father had never wanted him here, but Mother had insisted. Humans, vampires, even witches were allowed to be a part of the family in her eyes. They all had a place. Even if they never so much as acknowledged Krae.
“Thank you, Henry,” I said with a smile, holding out my hand for him. Fuck, Father, I wouldn’t let the old man suffer. It was embarrassing and cruel. “I have not forgotten the day you were accepted into our family. Thank you for your continuous love and support. I can’t tell you how much it means to me.”
His smile caused a burst of warmth to spread across my chest, but just as he was about to reach his hand out to grasp mine, guards were at his side.
“Be carefu?—”
“Next,” Father called as the guards pulled the old man away with far too much force for his brittle bones.
I bit my tongue, not caring about the splash of metallic-tasting blood that spread across my tongue. I turned to the pile of gifts, shooing Melia away as she tried to grab the cape. Anger exploded inside me. It was mine to handle. I could deal with my stepmother stealing any of my other gifts, but not this one.
If they thought I couldn’t see the small pile they kept for themselves off to the side, they were fools.
“Leave this one for me,” I whispered to her. “It’s special.”
And like a good little princess, I stood back in my assigned spot and greeted the next person.
But it was obvious that this one wasn’t like the others. I hadn’t seen him over the line of people, but as soon as he made it to the front, the anger rolled off him in waves.
He was a younger vampire, maybe not much older than I was. His brown hair was slicked back, and he wore a clean suit.
He didn’t have a gift in his hand, nor was he looking at me. He was just looking at Father.
“The queen would have never agreed to this,” he said, his words causing everyone in the room to silence.
“Excuse me?” Father asked, raising his brow.
“Her mother wanted her to marry for love,” he continued, his voice getting louder with each word. “You think we haven’t heard rumors of what the prince does in his free time? Think we don’t know that this is some power play?”
This was not the type of entertainment I wanted. The guards were frozen, unable to make heads or tails of what was happening. No one had dared to talk to Father like this before. He also hadn’t given them the signal to move in and cut off his head.
He was just…watching. His face showing none of the anger I knew must have been broiling underneath his skin.
“I can object to my own wedding,” I said, rolling my shoulders and moving closer to him. “But I haven’t. Half the family saw me accept him?—”
“We saw him disgrace you,” he said, cutting me off. “And Krae. The attempt at a blood bond has never been taken lightly. We worry for you, princess. We, just like your mother, only want what?—”
Guards were at his side in seconds, wrestling him down and forcing him to his knees. Another one came up in front of him and painfully forced a gag in his mouth before tying it in place with a knot at the back of his head.
There it is. My gaze traveled to Father, who was already looking at me. It hit me then.
He knew I hated this arrangement. He knew I would do anything to get out of it.
That bastard wants to see if I would shame him in front of the entire family.
It was a test. And there was only one way to pass it.
I tilted my head to the side and raised my brow as if asking him, What’s the holdup?
The slightest smile pulled at his lips before it disappeared completely. He stood, holding out his hand, only for a diamond-encrusted gold sword to be placed in it by a random guard.
Most kings didn’t like to do the dirty work themselves and instead had their right hands do it. But Father wasn’t like most kings.
Father liked to send a message.
The sharp sound of the sword flying through the air was all the warning we got before it sliced clean through the man’s neck. I forced myself to watch as the light left his eyes and his head fell to the floor.
A rotten, dark feeling blossomed in my chest. It held tight on my throat and threatened for blood to pool in my eyes.
I blinked it away.
“A little dramatic, Father,” I muttered under my breath, aware that he and half the room could hear.
“What else does my princess deserve on the day of her engagement?” he asked, a light teasing to his tone that shouldn’t have been there after brutally murdering one of his own family members.
“Gifts,” I said, and gave the nervous line a smile “Who’s next?”
It had taken us hours to get through the people that had arrived. For most of that time, the guards had left the vampire’s dead body bleeding out on the carpet as a show of what would happen to whoever else decided to intervene.
After a while, they moved it, but never cleaned up the blood, even when it started to stink.
Just another reminder of how different it was now that Mother was gone. She would have never let it happen.
But she also would have never let you get married.
Unfortunately, the man had been right. And for some reason, he, and I guess others, saw it as their duty to try to save the queen’s only daughter from a life of misery at the prince’s hands.
Though only one dared to actually stand up to him and try. And his death was enough to put a stop to all other mentions of it.
After that, it was all smiles and congratulations. The line continued, and so did the gifts.
But there was one thing about the vampire’s words that caused disgust to settle in my stomach.
It was all for the queen. They did it because they had a duty to the queen.
Not me.
If their duty was to me, they would have protested the situation I was in long ago.
But yet here they were, lining up in droves just to show how excited they were for my marriage, ignoring everything else that came before it.
The first thing I did when I was dismissed was to carefully take the cape and hidden object with it to my room before the stepdevils could take it. For good measure, I left the rest and even told the demon spawn to pick whatever she liked.
After all, I’m the one lucky enough to get married while the bitch herself never even got so much as a second glance.
Now that comment probably did more harm than good, but fuck was her face worth whatever punishment might be awaiting me.
The cape was heavy in my hands, the weight just adding to the excitement of seeing what was inside.
I had waited for some time. Even though I was locked up in my room, there was no telling when Melia might just pop in for a visit. But when it was time, I slowly peeled back the layers, and then when I saw the folded-up paper and what was written within, my heart dropped.
May my love for the queen set you free.
The note was written in elegant handwriting and attached to a vial of shimmering liquid I knew all too well.
The queen. Always for the queen, abitter voice said in the back of my mind.
But louder was something far sweeter.
It was for Father.
Henry was truly the one who decided to protest. Maybe that’s why the next person created such a fuss.
I had spent too long on his gift, looked at him too kindly, for Father to just overlook it.
It was poetic. The villainous king’s downfall is a mirror of the late queen’s.
How he even got this past the border of the palace grounds was beyond me. If there was even a rumor of it, he would be done for.
I leaned closer, inhaling deeply. It smelled fresh, like…river water. I couldn’t help the laugh that burst from my throat.
The image came to my mind easily. The old man, furious at the king for the death of his beloved queen, kept this bottle in the river on the far edge of the property for months, maybe even years, to hide the smell of magic within.
He would no doubt be disappointed with what I decided to do with it.
Father was one route, yes, but the most pressing thing was not his control over me.
It was Prince Icas.
I had learned how to deal with Father over my lifetime. I created a sort of comfortable life, even among the hell the stepdemons put me through.
But there was no way I would allow myself to be taken by Prince Icas.
I didn’t have what they needed to fulfill their wish. To put an end to Father’s rule. I didn’t have hope.
I had desperation. And that was much stronger than hope. It had a bite to it.
The hope had been siphoned away from me, year after year, until nothing was left. I could fight Father…but I would never win.
At best, I would be locked in my room until Prince Icas decided to take me back to his palace.
At worst…I shuddered to think of what it meant to be at the receiving end of my father’s rage.
It wasn’t anything new, but the fear of him keeping me on the brink of the craze was enough to cause my entire body to freeze.
I couldn’t do it…not again.
With a shaky laugh, I held up the potion as it glimmered in the setting sun. There wasn’t hope brewing in my chest—it was something colder. Something crueler.
With this, I could change it all. It would hurt like a bitch, but it would make even Krae proud.
“You better fucking work.”