Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Scarlet Temple, Blood Kingdom
Lanlin
I prowl toward the majestic Scarlet Temple, summoning my moths like a crescent moon at my shoulder, along with my rats who scurry in the shadows.
I feel exposed without Devil stalking at my side, but my demonic lion bodyguards are forbidden to enter the sacred quarter of Sheut, the Temple Precinct.
My eyes glow with rage.
The long, straight avenue is lined with giant stone sphinxes with ram heads. Their bodies are carved with frenzied scenes of Bloods both feasting on and sacrificing Blood Lovers: sex, pain, and death.
I thought that it was symbolic of the Scarlet Temple’s duality of assassins and courtesans.
I was wrong.
What else have I been wrong about within my own kingdom?
“Who knew that Dove would taste…like mine?” I lick across my fangs.
This is the first time in three years that my fangs’ pain has dulled.
I shudder, chasing after the delicious nectar taste.
Dove’s blood is coursing through me like an explosion of magic — pure life.
I am flying.
My eyelashes flutter, and I press my gloved hand to my chest.
Is Dove in my heart forever now?
“Such beautiful wings,” I mutter, buzzed. “Would he fly with me? Like a beautiful, large moth. I always thought that Relius and I would…”
I shake my head, trying to clear it.
For the first time in my life, I am filled with sunlight.
Yet the night feels more alive than it ever has. I can hear the soft shuffle of the ibises settling in the temple courtyards, a cat jumping between the roofs, and the pulsing hum of the crickets beneath it all.
Thousands of animals, birds, and insects, all under my command, are just within this Temple Precinct.
I take a deep breath of the cold air.
The aching hunger is quietened within me, but a new hunger has been awakened.
One for the fae’s blood.
Pinning Dove down and drinking from him was like drinking sweet heaven.
On my fangs, is Dove truly a Shadow God descended to my nighttime court to be hunted by us monsters?
I growl.
If I was good — like my dear Omega appears to believe — then I would protect my heavenly fae.
But I’m not.
I’m the monster prince…king…assassin.
Instead, my fangs ache to desecrate the skin of his fair neck again.
The best thing, however, is that as much as he looks good, he isn’t either.
It’s why I feel this connection to Dove.
Death bringer calls to death bringer.
My Blood Lover was glorious in his defiance, despite the darkness of his despair.
I licked up his tears along with his blood and both were delicious.
If I could only trust that Dove’s wickedness, which I smell underneath his sweetness, wouldn’t be used against me. Yet he’s addictive enough to be worth the risk.
Guilt churns in my stomach.
I speed up toward the Scarlet Temple, which is painted red like it has been dipped in blood.
When the priestesses rush out, attempting to stop me, I simply flick my wrist.
Shadows whip out, knocking them flying back into the stone sphinxes.
I crash through the cedar front doors with a splinter of wood.
The temple has a high ceiling and endless rows of polished stone columns. It is freezing and dim inside with no windows, only oil lamps spluttering in niches along walls that float with red ribbons. It’s like being inside a heart.
My nose scrunches at the intense aroma of lotus oil.
I clench my gloved hand, remembering the sensation of touching my Omega, after Nebet lied to me my entire life that I couldn’t.
Did Nebet fear the power that I would hold when a bond formed? Fear the beautiful Ankh symbol on Freya’s even more beautiful skin?
When I carried Freya back to our chambers, she didn’t want me to put my gloves back on, fascinated by the feel of my fingers.
“Keep touching me,” she murmured.
I stripped her, until she laid stretched naked on my covers.
Then for the first time, I experienced skin on skin.
I drew across the canvas of Freya’s skin, but I didn’t paint her a bloodied scarlet, transforming her instead into a sweating, writhing mess.
I could be more than death.
I summoned snakes, which curled around her wrists, holding her in place.
Freya’s eyes widened. “Are they poisonous?”
I circled my Omega’s breasts, thumbing her nipples, before I leaned down to murmur against her ear, “Only to my enemies. Now, don’t move.”
When I ran my hands down Freya’s sides, she spread her legs.
“Don’t stop touching me.” Freya’s gaze caught mine and held it.
Did she know how much that meant to me? To touch? For someone to want me to touch them?
“I won’t.” I painted Freya’s skin with repeated hieroglyphs — the Ankh, the symbol of forever love.
I followed my fingers with kisses, up and down Freya’s body, worshiping her body for hours.
I made her come in ways that I didn’t know were possible.
I watched Freya’s expressions, each moan, bite of lip, and twitch, memorizing them. I hoped that I would have an eternity to learn every one of her reactions and what she needed from me.
Finally, exhausted, I ripped off my clothes.
Then I whispered to the snakes to thank them, ordering them to release Freya.
No longer did I flinch from fear at Freya’s touch or my own nakedness, as we slept cuddled together in bed.
Yet when Freya woke up, it was as if something had shifted in the night.
As if she was no longer my bond mate.
As if she knew what I had done to Dove and there would be no more sweet nights of touching…and possibly, I would have no knot…if I didn’t bring him back to the nest by the end of the night.
I didn’t imagine that I would need to call a healer for him when I brought him home.
By my blood, I am canceling those barbaric Hunts. No more Shadow Humans will die for sport, while I am king.
Should I have known that there was more to the training in the Blood Lover’s Guild than singing, dancing, and looking pretty?
I thought that Dove would be chosen in the Hunt by a respectable elite, who would cherish him for his special blood, while allowing him to spend his ruts with his soulmate. I still wanted to see him; apart from Aurelius, nobody had been interested in becoming friends with me before.
If my fangs hadn’t pulsed with pain every time that I even glanced at a Shadow Human’s neck, I hadn’t been starving with thirst, and if my knot hadn’t brought me to my knees with agony every rut that I spent alone, then I would have looked closer at how Blood Lovers were being used in my kingdom.
I’ve failed my own Blood Lover.
I clench my jaw.
I’ve failed my Omega too because breaking up the two soulmates shattered them both in a way that I didn’t expect.
Yet was I wrong to test the type of fae Dove is?
Now I know how loyal Dove is. How brave. How strong his love and friendship are.
The Shadow Human who Dove tried to protect was lucky. Well, he would have been.
I’ve also learned that Dove is a rebellious schemer.
Have I met anyone with his level of earnestness before? Devotion? Commitment?
Certainly, not within the Blood Court.
I thought that I had in Aurelius…
My chest twinges.
I’ll make it up to Dove.
I swear on my blood that I will keep my deal with him and make this right. I have already made plans to return that Shadow Human’s body, who Dove wept over, to his village with honors. I shall build him a shrine in our room.
Will Dove forgive me then?
My shadows wrap around me like smoke.
Will Dove forgive me, if I kill Nebet for him?
Nebet has spent years carving into me, calling it taming the beast. No matter what I have done, I haven’t been able to prove that I’m not the monster they all fear.
What if I stop trying?
Because this time, Nebet used the iron Night Sky Blade, my mother’s own weapon that she took from me, to carve into my fae like he was one of her blood sacrifices.
Like Dove deserved to bleed out for the sins of King Daire.
My twin has been missing for years. Threats to Lazarus can no longer control me.
I tilt up my head, before marching across the smooth sandstone floor toward the inner sanctum of the High Priestess.
I shove aside the ribbons that flutter across the archway and enter the small, shadowed chamber. My eyes sting with the thick clouds of honeyed frankincense that rise in thick coils through the too still air.
Nebet and Ruin are both whispering together in front of a small, raised stone shrine to the Void Devils in the center.
Fear catches at my heart at the sight of the shrine.
I have spent more hours than I can count kneeling on aching knees with my bat wings forced out into a stress position by Nebet’s ribbons, worshiping the very gods, to whom my twin was going to be sacrificed.
Everything began with the Void.
Everything will end with the Void.
As soon as I stalk toward Nebet, the ribbons on the walls snap out protectively, wrapping around my wrists, waist, and ankles, dragging me up into the air.
But I’m not a child anymore.
I transform to smoke, slipping between the ribbons. I land behind Nebet and Ruin with a growl.
Neither look around at me.
“You taught me too well for that to work,” I snarl.
“I didn’t call for you.” Nebet’s ribbons weave around me, until she waves a dismissive hand and they flutter back to lie against the walls.
“I didn’t ask you to kill my Omega’s soulmate.”
Finally, Nebet turns with a sharp smile. “You’re welcome.”
I smile back with dark satisfaction. “He’s not dead. I bit him. Claimed him as my Blood Lover.”
Ruin chuckles. “Our captive beast here does like to try to prove he’s still independent. I miss his good, obedient brother. Now, there was a sweet Blood who—”
“Speak about my twin again,” I say through gritted teeth, “and they shall be the last words on your tongue because I shall have ripped it out.”
Ruin’s leathery face pales.
He leans on the shrine behind him. “There is feisty and then there is simply unhinged.”
“I crossed that line a long time ago.” My gaze flicks to Nebet. “It’s how you like me.”
She nods, before demanding, “Why are you here?”
“I have bonded my Omega.” I rip off my glove, throwing it onto the floor to show off my Ankh mark.
Nebet gasps. “You dared…?”
“Then just imagine what else I would now dare. So, call off whatever assassination attempts you are scheming for either the fae or the wolf. I know you have them planned.”
“I am the Chief Priestess. You don’t command me in my own temple.”
“Swear a Blood Oath that no Scarlet Temple assassins will harm them,” I persist.
“Only if you assassinate Aurelius.”
I freeze.
Alarm shoots through me. My heart speeds up.
Was this a trap all along?
Nebet knows me better than anyone. Better than my own family did.
She raised me.
Did she intend to allow these two new people into my nest close to me, only to hurt them, make me fear for them, then force me into one final assassination?
I ball my hands into fists. “I won’t. Relius is my best friend.”
Ruin snorts. “The Shadow Dragon King hates you.”
“Let him. He’s still my—”
“You killed his brother.” Nebet sways closer to me.
“And because of his brother, my entire family died.”
“Exactly. You’re enemies.”
I shake my head.
Nebet’s long fangs extend.
She reaches out to grab me by my hair and drag me closer. “Na?ve outcast, clinging to a dream because Aurelius was the only one who gave you a single kind word. And that was only because he didn’t know just how much of a monster you were.”
“Maybe.” I duck out of her hold, smoothing down my hair. “But a single cup of water is like a well to someone who is dying of thirst in a desert. You don’t resent the cup of water but rather, the desert.”
“Do you still believe, beast, that your heroic friend meant the terms of his peace treaty? That after making you suffer for years, he suddenly was prepared to give up his Omega to you?”
Stop talking…
My heart is beating too fast.
I have thought through a million different possibilities. I don’t want to believe any of them.
“If you hadn’t been focused on saving that foul fae of yours,” Ruin waves his hand, “then you’d have seen the truth.
” He walks forward, circling me. The hair on the back of my neck rises.
“There have been reports by the Shadow Humans of a giant Golden Dragon flying over the kingdom during the day, heading for Sheut. Perhaps, it is no more than superstitious nonsense. After what happened to White Lotus, everyone is on edge. Yet what if Aurelius always intended to lead an attack against us, while our defenses were down…? Wipe us out like they did the fae?”
My pulse is roaring in my ears.
“He wouldn’t,” I insist.
Surely, he wouldn’t.
He’s not his brother.
“He’s the reincarnated Emperor Hadrian. The destroyer of realms. Let me show you what will happen if you don’t save us from him.” Nebet’s hand snaps out, pressing against my forehead before I can pull away.
I fall into the vision.
Instantly, I am wreathed in a world of shadows, blood, and bone. The air is filled with screams and the roar of dragons.
Then the realms are reduced to ash.