Chapter 3
THREE
Seven
He looks like shit.
“Yer look like shite,” Rorrick tells him with a curl of his lips.
Nothing makes Rorrick happier than seeing Christian scowl. Any emotion is good emotion from the tragic prince. That’s what age does to you. When I was first told I’d live forever, I thought it was a blessing.
It’s not. It’s a goddamned curse.
What I’ve lived through is proof of that. I’m half their age, but I’ve spent all my life detaching from the pain .
Each year they grow more powerful. And their minds grow more unstable.
“Give me a hand with her.” Christian passes a limp body to me in the middle of the busy street. Dry blood stains his hands. It’s splattered across his pale neck and jaw, dying his white-blonde hair a shade of deep pink in some places.
A woman passes by, hand in hand with a man, and her laughter rings out, even as she looks at me and the lifeless body in my arms.
Humans don’t see well. A bit of magic wipes away all the ugly things that constantly surround them. In their eyes, the woman I’m holding doesn’t even exist.
When I look down on her angelic face, those other people don’t exist either.
“Damn,” I whisper.
She’s gorgeous.
“She’s young.” Christian hisses, fury lacing his words.
Dark, inky lines crawl up the veins of his neck and jawline, adding to the art of blood and tattoos that already peek out there.
I can tell he’s struggling to keep the darker part of him tucked away safely inside.
“Her fucking kin in the fae lands didn’t have a clue how old she was.
Said she was somewhere between forty-five and ninety.
” His jaw strains as he takes a long drag off of a mortal joint.
He passes it to Rorrick, and the skinny white paper looks even smaller between his enormous fingers. Crimson burns bright across his hard features before he flicks it to the ground and scuffs out the smoke with a drag of his boot across concrete.
Whatever that drug was will do next to nothing for them. They’re too old. Too powerful.
Nothing like the delicate woman in my arms.
“She’s only twenty-three,” I tell them, her smooth, soft features capturing my attention once again.
Two perfect bruises kiss her throat just above the green and yellowing of older bruises that taint her pretty flesh. My thumb brushes back and forth there against her wounds. She’s been hurt. A lot.
I lean my head against hers, and more of her reality flickers from her mind and into mine.
“She had a birthday last week.” I flinch at the next faint image of messy tears streaming down and across her puffy lips.
“No one knew. Her ex kicked her out of the house. She celebrated in the bathroom of a dirty pub with a guy who finished without even making her cum.”
“Bastard!” Rorrick growls with a curl of his lips. “Ever-one deserves a fuckin’ birthday cum-iseration.” His hand jerks off nothing but air, but the smile on his face is the only hint that there’s anything good left in this world.
He’s the good one, and he’s the one with the shortest fuse too. You wouldn’t think it by the scars that pepper his face or the gruffness of his tone, but he’s the only dark one I know that has a heart of pure gold.
I hate him as much as I admire him.
If we’re not careful, he’ll get too close to her.
And it’s not good to get too attached to your food supply.
Especially a supply as powerful as hers. Especially a supply that’s meant for kings.
“She’s too young.” Christian paces the dirty sidewalk, his shining shoes not making a single sound as he goes. His black button up is finely pressed aside from the sleeves he’s rolling up harshly. “I don’t like it.”
I don’t like it, either, but when you’ve been used as much as I have, you tend to not have a fucking opinion.
About anything.
I’m barely even a vampire to most of my kind. I certainly wasn’t raised as one. I was a half-breed number. A forgotten name that even I don’t remember.
Christian put a stop to that though. Rorrick helped. Slightly. When you’re the sons of kings, your voice is heard. And the people they care about, those people are seen. I never realized that until they saved me.
“We have to take her,” Rorrick tells him with a lift of his big hands at his sides.
He’s right. I know he is. Christian knows he is too.
We just fucking hate it.