Chapter 11 TEN
Alaric
Something in me snaps when she laughs in my face. Little brat. I would have been gentle with her. I would have done it quickly.
She wouldn’t have felt a thing.
Well now I’ll make goddamn sure she feels every single moment.
My hand tightens on her slim throat. I’m cutting off her air. So much the better.
Then she can’t eat at me with her words. Her useless questions.
Did I dream Melantha would bed me now her father is dead? Not exactly, but I’m ashamed of how close she cut to the quick. Still stinging, I tighten my hand around her pretty neck.
I don't know why I haven't ended this yet. It's not as if I have a choice. Melantha has given orders, and thanks to the curse I brought upon myself, I'm nothing more than her slave.
Once again I'm forced to play the cur when once I was a king. Well this dog still has teeth, and I’ll take a bite of what I really want before I slink back beneath my mistress’s feet.
Guinevere’s weak nails dig into my dead flesh, and I wish she could hurt me more. There’s nothing left here of the man who used to inhabit this body. He died long ago when I gave up my soul. Is it any wonder I have become a monster?
She struggles still, and though her strength is no match for mine, I must admire the tenacity that drives her to fight me even when she knows she will lose. I admire and curse it.
“Did you think…she would let you have me?” the princess grinds out through gritted teeth. “Is that what she promised you?”
A harsh bark of laughter erupts from me. “Do you think I could not take what I wanted?”
The arm I have about her waist slips as she struggles, and my fingers graze the underside of her small breasts.
They are rounder and softer than I am expecting, suddenly full and womanly when one summer ago she was nothing but a child.
Her firm ass butts against my groin, and unbelievably I feel a stirring there.
“Oh so that is what this is?” She jerks in my grip, but I won’t let her go.
It’s not what this is, but if she insists on taunting me, why should I not take whatever I want from her?
Hungrily, I grip the delicate linen of her chemise where it rises above her corset. I tear it down the middle.
Guinevere lets out a squawk of outrage, but I simply yank on the rope holding her hands behind her back.
She lifts her heel and stamps down hard on the toe of my boot.
I ignore the dull pain and grab hold of the rigid boned corset.
With another rough yank, that too is torn, all the way to her slim waist.
I take a grim satisfaction in the little whine of fear she makes when I close my hand around her naked breast. I’ve never heard her afraid before. The sound is not as sweet in my ears as I had hoped. Not when a cold twisting of guilt stabs at me even as I paw her pale flesh.
My cock rises to full thickness as I squeeze her roughly, savoring the plump feel of her, certain I’ll never feel such sweet, supple skin in my grasp ever again.
As pure as the skin on her face and neck is, there is no softness like the untouched flesh of her breasts.
Virgin flesh, now sullied by my monstrous touch.
When I remove my hand a smudge of dirt from my fingers remains, marring the pretty white of her skin. I’m both appalled and incredibly aroused by the sight of my mark on her flesh.
Struggling, she tugs to be free of me, twisting and kicking. But now that I’ve started, there’s no stopping.
Years of bending the knee, of debasing myself before Melantha, have bred an anger in me that the princess’s ignorant defiance has loosed. Since I can’t have my revenge on her stepmother, I will slake my frustration on her.
There’s nothing she can do to stop me.
I push her roughly against the nearest tree. Tharrok whickers softly in alarm. He’s right. There are monsters out here. And I am the worst of them.
She cries out in protest as I push her against the rough bark, yet the princess doesn’t scream. She doesn’t cry.
I thought she would cry.
I take a fistful of her skirts and pull them up. The skin here is just as soft and perfect as the rest of her. Her bare legs are pale in the moonlight, her ass is as plump and delicious as her tits.
Freeing my cock swiftly, I spit onto the rigid shaft. I’m thick and throbbing as I bring the head to the tight slit between her legs.
She whimpers quietly as I push home. Her snatch is tight—impossibly snug around my swollen flesh. I haven’t been this excited in decades.
My cock aches with the need for friction and release. I force myself deeper into her virgin cunt.
“I hate you,” she spits at me as I withdraw and thrust home again.
I hate myself too—for using her this way. For letting myself become this. For sinking further and further under the control of the witch who seduced me.
The hate pools together with the lust, with the pleasure that rises at every violent thrust.
She’s stopped protesting now. Instead she takes it silently, stonily.
That is far, far worse.
The deed is done. I may as well have slit her throat already, may as well have plunged my hunting knife deep into her breast. This cold statue is nothing like the stubborn princess I stole from her dying father’s bedside. How quickly I’ve stamped out the fire that made her blaze.
Her fire frustrated and confounded me, but it lit up that dismal keep so brightly that I’ve never been able to look away.
My hand is threaded in her hair. Her face pushed roughly against the tree bark.
With a growl of frustration, I realize my cock has grown soft. I slip from her body, unable to maintain the erection which only moments ago was aching torment.
I blink when she laughs.
Guinevere wipes her scratched and bleeding cheek against her shoulder and glances down at my limp cock. “Is that all?”
Fury chokes the words from my throat. “Was my sword not sharp enough for you, princess? Did it not cut you?”
She straightens, ignoring the fact her dress is rent in two and her breasts are still freed to the cold night air. “Do you call that a sword?”
Advancing on her, I pull my blade from its scabbard and hold it to her throat. “Oh, if it’s a sword you want, perhaps this will satisfy you.”
“Go on. Do it. There’s no possible way you could do any worse than you have done already.”
Her words cut into me as surely as my sharp blade pierces a monster’s heart. I have done that to her. Ripped everything from her and added insult to injury. Grasping at power when I’m really at Melantha’s beck and call. Pretending at a virility I’ll never have again.
I should turn my blade on myself, but I know from bitter experience it will do nothing. I am undead. I cannot die. But she…
Even now her father is dead or dying. She may as well join him in whatever afterlife awaits. Why prolong this? Melantha’s order is as good as done.
I press my blade more firmly to her skin, but hesitate.
Guinevere’s lips press together in a thin line. A trickle of deep red blood drips from the cut I’ve made.
I search within myself for the blind compulsion, the push that drives me to fulfil Melantha’s command, to drive the blade home.
It isn’t there.
I think back to the queen’s words—Make sure that she does not return. Bring me the heart by morning.
I don’t have to kill her to complete my task. She said only to bring her the heart. Could I substitute another heart and fulfil the command?
At that moment, something passes across the face of the princess. Something hard and defiant. She lifts her chin and lurches forward, plunging my blade straight into her breast.
I snatch my sword back, but the damage is done.
Her eyes bulge. Crimson blood spurts from the wound.
There’s no way for her to survive it. Not out here. Every minute she bleeds freely out here is a call to every beast—every monster in the woods. And being eaten alive as they fight over her would be worse than a swift, merciful end.
Shutting my eyes against the pain in her face, I plunge my sword straight into her chest again, deep into her center where her still-beating heart pulses in its final spasms.
Her red lips part in a silent gasp.
Then she leans forward against the thrust, glaring at me, forcing it deeper still. “Pathetic.”
Shaken, I tug my blade free. The princess collapses, and for a moment I’m frozen, staring at the evidence of what I’ve done. Blood froths at her mouth, bubbling from pretty lips.
I didn’t have to kill her. She could have lived. But her impulsive nature saw to her own downfall better than I had the heart to.
I drop to my knees, wanting at once to hold her and offer her my own neck. As I lean close to check if the deed has been accomplished or not, she draws in a final fractured breath. “I will haunt you in the next…life…kill you and your mistress.”
I hope she does. Hope to the gods she can.
Suddenly I know what to do. While the last warmth seeps from her broken body, I thrust my hand deep into her chest, through the gash I’ve made. Her flesh tears further. My arm is washed in her red blood, but there's nothing clean about this act.
My hand closes around her fluttering heart. With a swift twist, I yank it from her body and stare at the bloody pulsing thing fluttering in my palm.
I speak the words that will turn her from this into the curse that I walk, into a creature of night, of darkness. I call down the curse in her too.
Am I making the right choice? Most likely not.
I’m making a selfish choice, yet again. A desperate choice.
But there is no one else who can end this curse for me.
Her body gives one final shudder. Then it is done. Too late to turn back or regret my decision.
I sit in silence, clasping her heart in my hand until the blood stops seeping from her cold body. The body which will never be warm again.
The heart retains a faint warmth in my palm as if to remind me what I’ve stolen from her. Even as I watch, it turns from luscious red to a dull, dead gray as the last of the blood drains from severed arteries.
Though she no longer needs it beating, her heart is no less important to her now that my spell has turned it into her phylactery.
When I drew down this curse on myself and became a lich, I cut my own heart from my body to perform the ritual. But I made the mistake of handing it to Melantha. Little did I know the power it would give her over me.
If I had guessed then at her true nature, I might have guessed whatever plans she had for me would not be for my benefit, but I was blinded by her beauty.
Melantha wants me to give her the girl’s heart too—proof I have done what she sent me to do. If I were to give her this heart, she would know instantly what I’ve done, and she would have power over Guinevere in the same way she has over me. That can never be allowed to happen.
Traditionally, the phylactery is kept in a box, buried in a secret place, hidden to preserve the unnatural immortal state of the creature bound to it. The princess’s chest is already knitting closed, the unholy magic which made her a lich stitching her back together as if I never harmed her.
Impulsively, I plunge the heart back into the empty cavity of her chest. I don’t know if this will work the way I hope. There’s no real way to know. Only a desperate chance I must take.
She lets out a long moan, though her eyes remain closed. A last congealing drop of blood clings to my hand as I pull it free of her body. Under my gaze, the gash closes, leaving only the traces of a scar. No going back now.
Unlike me, she will be free of Melantha’s control. I may have stolen her future, but I can at least leave her with this—a chance at freedom. A chance at revenge.
I straighten, taking a last look at my grim handiwork. She cursed me with her dying breath, not knowing I am already cursed.
Will she do as she promised and hunt me down? Will she find a way to end it?
Not that I deserve her pity, I don’t. But perhaps her hatred will serve me as well. Perhaps hatred can cure me from my cursed love.