Chapter 25
Alaric
I hear the soft moans from behind the wall, and my cock instantly stands to attention. It has only just subsided after she turned me against the stake and fucked me like her toy.
Gods, the humiliation of that moment, bent over and fucked like a woman. Yet the pleasure of knowing I was getting exactly what I deserved? I still do not have words for how I felt.
The moans on the other side of the wall are not hers.
They’re masculine but pretty, and I immediately picture the two handsome gargoyles, light and dark, carved from the same stone.
The princess has two of them back there, and that thought arouses many wicked ideas I had thought long forgotten.
Ideas I didn’t think would occur to an innocent princess.
Apparently she is not so innocent any longer. And if she’s not, I have no one to blame but myself.
The knowledge that they get to touch her now makes jealousy twist like a knife in my guts.
I try to ignore it. I have no right—never had a right to take what I took from her. I know she’ll never let me touch her again. So why waste my energy wishing? I won’t take it from her again. Not like that.
When the three return to the courtyard, both males follow in her wake like they’re bound to her, and she glows with an irresistible power, her skin pale in the moonlight.
I try to shift to get a better look at her, but the three hounds look ready to gnaw my arm off if I so much as move.
They let out long, low growls. Their huge jaws drip with saliva, and they look like they would take great pleasure in it.
The arm would grow back of course, but I’m willing to bet it would not be a pleasant experience.
The princess leans down to pet the hounds, and they turn their heads into her palms like they weren’t just fantasizing about chewing off my limbs a moment ago.
“Thank you. I’ll watch him for now. It’s nearly time for you to get some rest.”
The soft-looking male with pretty features leans close to whisper something into her ear, and I want to drag him away from her by his hair.
She smiles at him. “I won’t decide anything until you wake.”
The three creatures spread wide wings and lift into the air, taking up positions on the walls of the ruined castle while the three hounds move to the gate.
As the sun taints the horizon with pink, a change comes over them.
At first I think they’ve just gone very still.
Then I realize their color has changed. They have turned to stone!
So her new friends are immobilized during the daylight hours. The princess is far from vulnerable, though. She has transformed herself into a fighter. Even her stance has changed as she takes up position watching over me. Her chest out, shoulders back. I wonder if she can see what she’s gained.
“Have you considered what I said?” I ask her quietly.
She looks down at me. “I do not know what reason I have to trust you.”
“Then ask and I shall give you reasons.”
“Why should I listen? You will likely just feed me lies.”
She was always clever. I incline my head to acknowledge her point. “Let us begin with the things you can test for yourself.”
She quirks a brow but does not speak. I take this for as much encouragement as I’m likely to get. “I am like you. I am not of the living. You have seen that much for yourself, but if you doubt still, come, listen to my heartbeat.”
Something flashes in her eyes. “What do you mean?”
I can’t move. “See for yourself.”
She narrows her eyes but moves toward me slowly. When she comes close, she reaches out and places a hand on my chest, right over the place my heart should be. She waits.
She feels nothing. There’s nothing there to feel.
She draws back. “So what? So you have no heart. No surprise there.” Despite her words, she looks shaken and turns away.
I reach for something to say to her. “Would you like to know what made me this way?”
She turns back, her gaze fixed on me. “A monster attacked you? Some curse?”
I laugh bitterly. “You might say that.”
There’s a pause. We watch each other. Eventually, when she still says nothing, I find the words spilling from me in the silence. “I did this to myself for love—for what I thought was love.”
“You did this on purpose?”
“I would not put it that way, no.”
“Explain.”
“Once, a very long time ago, I was a prince.”
She scoffs. “You?”
“A hundred years ago. My kingdom was small, but prosperous. It was time for me to marry, but I refused, unwilling to resign myself to one woman for the rest of my life. And then I heard of a woman so beautiful men came from all the neighboring kingdoms to win her hand in marriage, but she accepted none of them.”
Guinevere sits on an overturned stone, watching me.
“So of course that was a challenge I could not resist. But I was not prepared when I saw her for myself. I already wanted her as a trophy, the way one mounts the head of a slaughtered animal. Once I saw her, I wanted her for myself.”
Guinevere rolls her eyes. “And so you took what you wanted.”
Touchè. Of course she’s right. I shake my head.
“I could not. She would not have me either. There was only one thing that would persuade her to give herself to me.” It’s bitter to remember the way she took me in.
Seduced me with looks full of promise, with glancing touches and whispered filth, never actually giving me what I hungered for.
It still puts me to shame how susceptible I was.
“And when she had me wrapped around her little finger she told me what I must do.”
Guinevere lifts a brow. “What?”
“She wanted my heart—not in the way a lover commits his heart. No. She wanted the real thing. She told me of a ritual that would make both of us more powerful. What she failed to tell me was that in handing her my heart, I was handing her complete power over me.”
“And why are you telling me this? Do you think I will pity you?”
“Have you not worked out who she is yet?”
“Not Melantha?” The princess frowns. “But you said it was almost a hundred years ago. Is Melantha a monster too?”
A laugh tears from me at her choice of words. “Oh, make no mistake, she is a monster, but not like us.”
Her eyes narrow. “And what are we exactly? Who did this to me?”
Has she not worked it out yet? And am I about to damn myself further? “Saw? It was I who did it to you.”
There’s a stony silence while she takes this in. I expect an outburst. To my surprise, she just clenches her fist. “All the more reason I have to hate you.”
I should be glad. I need her to hate me. I need her to keep that fire in her belly to ensure she ends me and Melantha.
“What about Melantha?” the princess asks. “Can she be killed?”
I smile. “She can be, just not by me. Not until I reclaim my heart. Then her power over me ends. While she controls it, I must serve her.”
She stands, pacing only to turn back to me. “But how is she still alive if she is a hundred years old?”
“Because I’ve worked the magic to keep her so.”
“Then stop!”
“Princess, have you listened to anything I have told you? Listen well, because very soon she will start to wonder where I am and will send for me, and I will go to her. I will not have a choice.”
She draws close, standing over me, and her anger flares, but there is also fear in her eyes. “How will you go to her if I have you bound here?”
“It will cost me. I might be forced to tear myself apart and reanimate one limb at a time, but I will do it. I do not have a choice. Your time is running out, princess. Because if I am gone too long, she will grow suspicious.”
“It is all just words. And I will not fall for it.”
“It is the truth. Let me free and I will prove it to you.”
She lets out a little growl of frustration. “I do not trust you for a moment. If you think you can escape your fate, you are wrong. I will find my own way to end you, and until that time, you can rot there for all I care.”
Anger rises in my chest, and I clench my hands into fists behind me, but I can’t get free. Not without the dark magic compelling me to. “Would you just listen to me? I am trying to help you.”
“As you helped me by abducting me and turning me into this?” She gestures down at herself and guilt twists in my guts.
Guinevere rolls her eyes. “So helpful. Please allow me to demonstrate my gratitude.” She turns her back and walks away.
“Princess!”
She doesn’t look around.
“Princess, did you listen to me?”
“Yes,” she calls over her shoulder. “What a mistake.”