Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
Crymson
It’s still dark in the halls as I make my way from the second floor to the first. A warm blush of color kisses the horizon through the arching windows, but dawn has yet to crawl across the dark skyline. My bare feet pad over the cold floors, and not a single soul stops me as I storm the castle.
Delilah slithered off into the night, closing her bedroom door across from mine with a firm finality like she didn’t intend to be getting up anytime soon.
The lucky bitch.
Meanwhile, I’m stuck digging up old secrets this kingdom has probably been plotting since before I was even a toddler.
What on earth does the King of Thorns want with me?
And why, why did he not just tell me the truth?
Why hide it? Why act like you’re my fucking friend when you’re very obviously plotting something right in front of my face? !
I shove open the kitchen doors, and for a moment, my gaze locks onto the infirmary door directly across the room.
After a long moment of thinking of him, I turn away and push through another door–one I haven’t yet adventured through. Not because I’m afraid or because it’s off-limits but more because . . . Carver is strange and alluring and standing before him feels dangerous and magnetic all at the same time.
I shouldn’t go to the King’s brother for this information. But he’s the first one who greets me with a sinister smile when my feet step down from the stone steps and land in his domain.
“I knew you’d come eventually,” he whispers as he turns away from a black-clad desk and faces me.
Big wings adjust with a shifting flap behind his lean shoulders as he stands.
He doesn’t come forward though. He leans there in the darkness of the room, watching me, waiting for me to make the first move.
His office—you know, the dungeon—is clean and polished, the floors gleaming with a sparkling effect like black water beneath my feet.
A chandelier of golden candlelight hangs overhead.
The desk is at the center while a grand bed rests farther back in the corner of the room.
Large portraits hang in a line on the wall nearest me, and for a moment, I’ve forgotten the bubbling rage that was boiling in my chest. The first painting is of a man and woman, tall and elegant with fine attire and large wings that seem to span from one side of the frame to the other.
The wings are just as detailed as the painted crowns on their heads.
Strokes of shadows and lights play against the sheer height of the black leathery wings. It’s a detail of power.
The next is the same couple but with a young man standing between them: their son. Thorn. His smile is boyish, and the shining thorns that typically pierce his body aren’t there. Smooth bronzed skin and sleek wings are all I can see.
My footfalls are quiet as I step closer to see the next one, and the woman radiates with color in her cheeks.
The sharp points of her ears are clad with gemstones.
Her long gown is a soft blue color, and the wings at her back are less emphasized now and more delicate as the focus of the portrait seems very clearly directed at the glow of light haloing around the curve of her blooming belly. Her hand rests protectively there.
Then, nothing. The stone wall is barren and empty, and that detail alone feels like a story of art, but I don’t understand it.
“Is she your mother?” I ask, feeling like the woman with the inky black hair is more familiar to me than I know.
His voice vibrates across the wall, and his nearness startles me when he speaks just over my shoulder.
“She is. Was,” he corrects on a whisper.
“Why are there no more?” I ask, gesturing to the emptiness of the wall before us.
I peer back at him, and those bright watchful eyes dance across my face.
“Because no more exist.”
I blink up at him and the quietness that lingers like a ghost around his words.
“She was taken by the Blood King just after that portrait was done.” He pauses, his lips pressing together in a firm line before speaking once more in a haunting voice that might forever stain my memories.
“When they realized she was with child . . . he cut me out of her belly and left me in the dirt to die.”
My lips part, but no words come out.
“Thorn found me wailing into the night. I was bloody. Dying. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for him.”
I swallow hard.
“What do you mean?”
“Fae magic is a tricky thing. Mischievous even when it’s well intended.” Long fingers brush against my hair, and he slips a lock back behind my ear as he looks at me with manic interest . . . or maybe it’s amusement, I can’t be sure. “Do you know what a soulmate is?”
“A binding of two hearts,” I answer almost immediately, and I can’t help but remember the letter of my name that mars the skin of a few vampires I know.
“Clever girl,” he whispers, and his praise kisses goose bumps across my skin.
“Are you saying Thorn somehow made you his soulmate?” A small teasing smile pulls at my lips, but he just shakes his head slowly.
“No. Not exactly.” He pauses, thinking for a moment.
“He bound us, and in return, the magic made him a monster.” A monster.
That’s how the vampires spoke of the man cursed with thorns.
“My soul is forever bound to your King. Whatever he feels, I feel.” Those long fingers skim down my jawline and drift against the column of my neck, making me shiver from the lightest touch I’ve ever felt. But fuck, do I feel it.
“When we were younger, I used to hate him. I hated the magic that saved my life and ruined it all at the same time. He was an epic warrior. And every scratch that carved into his body, I felt. Every wound. Every broken bone. Every fucking pain that man endured was given to me.” His heated words are spoken slowly with a dripping rage that he carefully contains.
With a single step, his body is aligned with mine, and his head tilts down until his lips hover just over mine. “Until there was you.”
My lashes flutter as I taste his soft-spoken words against my tongue.
“Me?” I echo on a whisper, not able to pull away from his nearness and hating how badly I want to lean into the ache that’s blooming in my chest.
“You, Crymson Vaine.”
“What am I to the Thorn King?” I ask, and his fingers lift one by one until he’s tilting my head up for himself.
It’s a test of sorts. I don’t move an inch.
He waits. He gives time and consideration for me to pull away from him while my heartbeat counts every second he leaves pressing between us.
I never do pull away. And he brushes his lips across mine ever so slowly.
It’s a chaste kiss. Something I didn’t realize how badly I wanted until he took it back.
My lashes flutter as I lean in further, but the heat of his body isn’t there.
He places a safe but small amount of space between us.
His tongue slides slowly across his lips, tasting me long after I’m gone.
“Ask him yourself,” he tells me with that taunting smile of his playfully pulling at the corner of his sinful lips. Then he tilts his head and looks to the door.
I pull back immediately when my eyes meet the brooding darkness of the King’s gaze.
“Please, don’t stop on my account,” Thorn says with a lift of his hand.
He folds his arms back in place against his solid chest as he continues leaning against the arched doorway, watching me and his brother and oh, my god, why did I kiss him?
My feet shuffle, and all the anger I held for this man just moments ago is now fumbling awkwardness, but I try to steel my spine and pretend to remember why I came here.
Why did I come here? Why is Carver so enigmatic? Why can’t I think when he’s around? Why is my mind so hazy and filled with lust and need and , , ,
“Am I bonded to you?” I ask, and suddenly, I find that rage I’d lost in the darkness of this room.
Carver’s lazy smile pulls into a full smirk.
“Now you’re asking the right questions.” He circles me with taunting steps. “Ask some more, Crymson. Ask him.” He juts his chin toward his brother like it’s all a game and I’m just a piece the two of them are toying with.
I turn, though, and face Thorn. He doesn’t move, but there’s a softness in his eyes where normally there’s none. And so, I do. I ask him.
“What am I to you?”
He takes a single step and lifts his hand to me, but I shove him away.
“Answer the question.”
“Crymson, just trust me,” he says in a disgustingly gentle tone.
“You want me to trust you? I don’t even fucking know you!” My words climb the walls and shower around us.
“She’s got you there, brother,” Carver adds, and the glare the King shoots him is deadly.
“You can trust me,” he says, ignoring his brother and ignoring the taunting circle the man encloses around us as he prowls the shadows.
“You pretended to be my kin or my fucking family or whatever when you know, you know how badly all I’ve ever wanted was a family! How fucked up is that?”
Silence bleeds into the space that separates us. I left men who cared about me to come here. Seven is hurt because of him. Because of his lies. My heart hurts with every beat it takes, but I step forward and get right up in his face before I lose the nerve.
“If you’re not my family,” my words clip out with shaking violence, “you’re nothing to me. And I’m leaving.” I shove past him, but with one big hand, he clamps a hold of my wrist and pulls me back to him.
“Crymson, wait,” he pleads, and I’ve never seen so much desperation in one man’s eyes.
Fuck that desperation.
“No! You’re nothing to me!” and I pull away, bumping into Carver and thrashing against the hold his brother has on me until I can’t breathe.
The panic sets in. Memories of survival claw at my mind.
Sweat and fear consume my body in a flash flood of too many feelings.
His eyes dart across my face with realization.
Then he lets me go.
But not before he says the quietest, saddest words . . .
“Crymson, you’re my soulmate.”