Chapter 12 #2
Bloodsinger strode past me to a small cupboard. He reached inside and returned with a glass cruet filled with burgundy wine, then kicked out a wooden stool tucked beneath the table. The drink filled a smooth horn, dark and thick enough I considered it might be blood.
He licked his lips after a drink, drawing my gaze to the swipe of his tongue. How could a man be distasteful and desirable all at once?
“You want to think I am lying,” he went on, “because otherwise it means those who love you with such tenderness might be as monstrous as me.”
I slammed my open palm on the table. “You are a liar who seeks justice for a king who attacked my people unprovoked. Now you continue the legacy. I hope you burn in the hells for it.”
“Believe what you will, but consider this—don’t you find it strange your cherished warrior knew me?”
“Stieg.” My heart jolted. “He called you by name.”
“Yes.” His mouth twisted into a snarl. “Who do you suppose guarded me during my first capture? The capture where my father rose through the Chasm to council with warring earth fae, only to be duped and have his heir used in a desperate attempt to heal the dying.”
All gods.
Stieg was ferocious with a blade; he was Rorik’s idol. Adored by many. If he guarded a cell with a child, it would’ve been done at the word of…my father.
I shook my head. “No. What would be the point of taking a sea child? They wouldn’t do it.”
“Fae clans battled for turns before the Great War between our worlds, Songbird. Don’t you know your history?
The desperate will do anything to survive.
” Erik tugged back the collar of his shirt.
I winced. Across the side of his neck, tangled down his throat, across his shoulders were raised white scars.
Some long, others short. Most formed over spots where the body bled most. His voice shifted to something cold. “Won’t they?”
Sick tossed in my belly. I closed my eyes.
“Look at me!” he shouted. I jolted and snapped my eyes open. Bloodsinger rose and pinched my chin between his thumb and finger. “You think your people are innocent, and I do not blame you. How could you know any different when all your life they have painted us as the villains?”
“They wouldn’t do the things you say.” I hated how my voice cracked.
Erik’s thumb brushed over my cheek. “Ah, love. You think your peace was won with gentle morals? We all have a darkness within us, and desperation to survive can reveal the cruelest pieces.”
Breathe. Focus. I wanted to crumble. I wanted to flee to my folk and demand to know the truth. I knew of the land wars that united the realms and led us to the war with the sea. I knew of the bloodlust and the pain every kingdom had suffered.
Was it possible they’d grown desperate enough to keep each other alive that they leeched from an innocent?
Loath as I was to admit it, torturing a young sea prince, then killing his father seemed reason aplenty for the sea to rise against the land for an even greater war.
But he was lying. He had to be. My mother and father would never condone the torture of a child.
Unless—dread hardened in my veins—unless harm were to befall one of them.
Bonds went deep amongst our people. My father could be brutal and beastly if my mother were ever threatened.
She could be the same. No life stood before her family.
I didn’t pull away from his touch. I merely held his gaze. “No matter what I say, you believe your words, so what penance am I to pay, Bloodsinger?”
“For now, I’ll take pleasure in their suffering and desperation to reclaim you.” One corner of his lip curled. “I’ll sleep better knowing they are imagining all the horrors you must be enduring.”
“Horrors you plan to bestow soon enough, true?”
“I’d hate to spoil the surprise.” Erik leaned into me; his mouth hovered over mine. “Let’s just say you’ve become my most prized possession.”
A thousand different ways he could use his blood to torture me rattled through my skull. I jerked my chin from his hold and schooled my gaze on the floorboards.
Erik clicked his tongue. “I’ve upset you. I do hate when you’re upset.”
“You did not upset me.” I didn’t look at him. “You disappoint me.”
He went silent for a long pause. Long enough that curiosity begged me to look. His lips were set, a slight furrow of bemusement between his brows. Horrid and beautiful all at once.
“Disappoint you? Strange response. How might I better meet your expectations as your captor?”
The cruelness of his grin drove a spike through my chest.
I clasped my hands behind my back to hide the tremble in my fingers.
“Call me foolish to even care, but I was kind to you as a child. Now you have twisted that kindness into something ugly.” I scoffed.
“Perhaps it is not you who disappoints me. Perhaps it is disappointment in myself for ever thinking a creature like you could have a shred of a heart.”
My voice came out hushed, small even. A man like Bloodsinger was beyond feeling, yet I couldn’t stop. “Do your worst, Bloodsinger. The heart I once showed you as a stupid girl is gone away where you cannot touch it again.”
Erik pulled me against him. Chest to chest, hip to hip, his vicious eyes bounced back and forth between mine.
“You took pity on a boy because you knew I’d always be a threat. You wanted that threat tamed, so do not pretend you were kind out of the goodness of your heart. Kindness is not free, love. There is always something expected in return.”
I didn’t shrink under his scrutiny, and lifted my chin, our noses touching. “What sort of sad existence have you known to not understand genuine concern?”
“Save your pity and worry a bit more about your own life.”
I yanked my arm out of his grip. He allowed it, but hot rage burned in his eyes. Somewhere, my words had lashed at him. I hoped he bled out from them.
I could not change what was done, but bringing Erik Bloodsinger back into our world was my fault. Whether my people were villains once mattered little in the now. I would pay the price to keep them safe, for I had brought the danger by believing there was something deeper in the heart of a villain.
Bloodsinger believed I’d visited him out of fear of what he would do. I’d never tell him the truth.
I’d been drawn to him like the flow of the sea; even when I’d been a girl he’d sparked some twisted curiosity, some tug to see him. I should’ve resisted, the same way I should’ve had the strength to resist the pull to the sea now.
I flinched when his hand rose. The strike I expected never came. Bloodsinger slammed his palms against the wooden hull, forcing my back to the wall. This close, I could make out the blood pulsing in his throat; I could taste the sourness of his rage.
“Take your vengeance, Bloodsinger,” I said, voice rough. “Your mind is set, so do what you must, but I will never turn on them. I will never be your pawn to hurt them. I’ll slit my own throat first.”
He hesitated, then lifted the tips of his fingers to the heated ridge of my cheek. I turned my head away. The bastard only traced my jaw, almost like he was lost to the dark pits of his own thoughts.
When he spoke, his voice was cold, dead; it burrowed into my bones.
“If only it were so simple, Songbird. You are the perfect, unexpected blade that will cut out the hearts of your folk. They’ll suffer.
You’ll watch. Only when they’re on their knees, pleading, will I give them the death they crave. ”
He was a lunatic. I didn’t fight the tears anymore and let them fall. Not tears of sadness. No, my people had slaughtered the Ever Folk before. They would again. If my death was a price for their continued safety and peace, I’d happily pay it. These were tears of disgust.
“I will never help you hurt anyone I love.”
“You’re mine to use as I wish.” He stepped back and opened his arms. “Face the truth. You belong to the Ever King.”
Bloodsinger turned for the door. My lips parted. He was…leaving me? A man tainted by evil such as him surely played with his food before he tore it to pieces.
The stun must’ve muddled my brain and had the question spilling off my tongue before he left the room. “What do you plan to do with me?”
He paused at the door, hand on the latch. “For now, let you sleep. I don’t want you stumbling on your feet like a fool. I hope you love your father as much as it seems. For you are about to stand in his place at the rack.”
“You’re the fool, Erik Bloodsinger,” I whispered. “You think it will only be my father who comes for me? You’ve begun a war with an entire world. They will tear you apart and pike your pieces along every border of every realm.”
“Well, take that thought and give yourself sweet dreams. For that is all they are—dreams.” He gestured to the small window overlooking the brilliant water.
“Try to escape, and I give you to my crew to do with you whatever they please. Try to toss yourself into the Otherworld, I’ll keep you chained to me at all times.
You understand? Now, sleep, scream, beg—I care little—but accept that you’re mine and you always were. ”
The moment he slipped through the door and locked it behind him, I slid down the door until I met the floor, face in my palms.
Alone, where no one could see my failure, I broke into sobs.