Chapter 10
TEN
Crymson
I’m a whole damn idiot.
I actually thought I could just look pretty and slip out of this fucking Anne Rice hell!
It’s silent as we slowly walk back through the twisting halls.
My arms are crossed so tightly, it hurts, but I can’t bring myself to lower them from where they’re wrapped around myself.
Neither of us speak, and I don’t think I even have the ability to.
If my voice lifted from my throat, the sobs I’ve held back would overtake my words in an instant.
Seven doesn’t rush me like Christian did. He lets me trudge at his side on steps that feel aimless and numb. I don’t try to calculate my steps. I don’t try to run.
It’s all pointless. So much so that I don’t even realize when we’ve entered the bedroom, and I’m suddenly sitting like an empty shell on the very edge of the most luxurious bed I’ve ever seen.
Seven trails through the room and lights candle after candle until the entire emerald-green walls are lit with a warm glow that should feel calming.
If I wasn’t trapped in a literal nightmare.
I watch him for a long moment while memories of vampire lore flit through my mind. In a feeble attempt, I lift my hands and cross one index finger over the other. I thrust the little hand sign of religion toward him.
He peers at me out of the corner of his eye.
He gives me some attention, but it’s like he’s uncomfortable and doesn’t want me to know he sees me.
Hesitantly, he seems to wait for me to lower the insulting cross.
But I don’t. This could be the only protection I have.
He seems forced to acknowledge my threat.
Pitifully, he looks at me fully with confusion pinching his brow.
“What—what the hell are you doing? Is that a mortal gang sign? Are you in a gang?”
A quiet sigh slips over my lips as I realize the sign of the cross doesn’t affect him in the least.
I know what they are though. Boris has to be...
“Was he a vampire?” I ask, the words just tumbling out of me.
Seven pauses in his work as he opens a small box on a dresser just across the elaborate room.
His dark eyes are big and lined with thick lashes that give him the appearance of a puppy.
He nods without a word.
My breath shakes, but I try to control the thick emotions at the back of my throat.
“And Christian?” I don’t finish the question, but Seven pauses once more, not looking at me as he nods a single, quick confirmation.
I stare at the beautiful man as he lays out gauze and a small tin can. Shadows lick across his sharp features. His skin isn’t pale like Christian’s. There’s a beautiful warmth to this man. It’s an aura that seeps into everything he does. He’s gentle.
You also thought Christian was a good guy, too, and now you’re chained and bloody in his bedroom.
I sigh again at that thought and continue watching the quiet man across from me.
He’s beautiful.
Too beautiful.
“And you?” I ask, afraid of the answer I will get, but I have to know.
“All of us,” Seven whispers oin a tone filled with self-shame.
“But you’re not like them.” I tilt my head at him and wonder if he’s the key to getting me the fuck out of this place.
His head lifts abruptly, and the sharpness of his jaw ticks as he looks at me.
“I’m exactly like them.” The coldness of his gaze sends a shiver right through me. “Unbutton your shirt,” he orders on a voice like controlled violence.
I swallow hard, and I can’t look at him for several seconds. He is just like them. Just like the king. And he’s never going to fucking save me from this.
No one’s going to fucking save me here.
“Unbutton the shirt so I can put this on your back,” he adds in a gentler tone.
My attention lifts to his, and all that fear slowly settles inside myself.
“Right,” I mumble.
My fingers slip across sleek golden buttons. They’re heavy with a weight of possibly real gold. It’s ridiculous. Rich people really are obnoxious even when they’re supernatural.
The shirt slips down my shoulders, and I try to hold it against my chest as I turn away. A white gown hangs on the back of the closed door. It’s long and plain and identical to the ones I saw the other women wearing earlier. I’m going to be just like them …
I feel his gaze across my flesh as the shirt lowers even further. My spine arches as anticipation slips into the room. I feel the fabric slide down to the lace of my panties to fully show him my back.
I just turned my back on an admitted vampire.
And it probably shouldn’t make me wet at the sound of his approaching footsteps.
Seconds tick by like hours as I wait for him to touch me. The coldness of the room shivers along my flesh, with goosebumps rising across my arms. The cold length of the chain between my wrists skims my breasts, and I’m suddenly aware of how heavy my breaths are.
And then, ever so lightly, cold fingers slide slowly down the long length of my spine. A sting of pain shakes through me, but it’s an erotic, conflicting tingling that only builds deep inside with every move of his hand.
“He won’t touch you. Not really,” he says, his words kissing across my shoulder blade while a warm salve covers the wound on my back.
I hiss from the intensity that shoots through me, but it dissolves ever so strangely. It isn’t a numbing cream like human medicine. It’s... just gone. He takes the pain away with the slow motion of his hands.
“I don’t really believe you,” I whisper, a far-off laugh lingering on my words.
“He’s not legally allowed to touch you until Thorn arrives to give you away.”
Thorn?
“Who’s Thorn, and why do either of them care about me?”
I’m fucking no one. I’ve never even filed taxes, for Christ’s sake. I don’t exist to my own government. Why the hell do I exist here?
A pause drifts on for a lingering moment before he quietly speaks.
“He’s your father. Or kin. Some distant relative who forgot you existed until he needed you, I suppose..”
A bitterness drifts through me before it lays laden and sour in the pit of my stomach.
“Oh,” is all I can say.
When I was young, I wondered everyday who my parents were. In recent years, I haven’t considered them at all. I have more important things to worry about than them.
And suddenly I hate them all over again. I hate him . Whoever he is.
There’s too much to think about, but I try my best to sort through it. In this moment, I need all the information I can get.
So, what am I to this creepy Vampire King?
“Am I his bride, then?”
A deep, chuckling laughter tumbles out of him, and the feel of it shivering across my neck would be nice, but I think he’s literally laughing at the idea of me being fit for a king to marry.
“No. No, you’re only a Promise from one king to another.” Just like with everything this man does, his tone carries a warmth of honey that seeps right into me.
“A Promise?”
“Women are... they’re seen as lowers in our world. They’re not... not as powerful. Not as important. But they’re useful.”
My lips part, and for some reason, that gives me even more rage than if I was just a betrothed woman to a disgusting king from a father who never cared about me at all.
“Oh,” I say, the word clipping out with too much unspoken rage that I keep shut away inside myself.
Except.
Nope.
Can’t keep it in.
“They’re mothers and sisters and wives, and your kind doesn’t see them as equals to yourselves?”
His palm lingers on the curve of my waist, and I know he’s done, but I’m not ready to face him.
How could I actually think any of these men have any sort of kindness inside them?
“I didn’t say I thought that. I’m just explaining how life is here.”
“But you don’t oppose it? You just kidnap innocent women from their worlds and bring them here for no fucking reason other than to give them away as playthings for old men!
I’m nothing to you.” Those last words slip out with a hollowness I can’t hide.
Maybe because the men in my life have always made me feel that way.
“I’m not like that.”
I can’t help the scoff that shoves from my lips, and I turn on him then. But his next words slap me right in the face.
“I was born a slave, Crymson.”
Dark eyes bore into mine. His confession lingers in the air between us as he steals away all my anger with a single sentence.
“I don’t have a name. I was a number to the king before ours.
I was Rorrick’s slave for awhile. My mother was a slave woman I never knew.
To top it off, I’m a mixed breed: part fae, part vampire.
I’m literally nothing to no one.” His hands are on his thighs, and I see the lean muscle tone of his arms, his chest, his shoulders.
He isn’t skinny. But he isn’t as weighted with solid muscle like Rorrick is either.
Seven was a slave for Rorrick. A mixed fae slave. And that life wasn’t that terribly long ago for him to ever forget it.
“I’m sorry.” I turn and reach for his hand, and he lets me slide my fingers along his cool palm. I can’t help but eye the sterling silver ring on his index finger. My gaze lingers for so long, he notices.
An uneasy beat of quiet slips in, and I tear my gaze away from the metal that most lore says vampires shouldn’t be able to touch.
“Do vampires have magic?” The speed with which Christian dragged me through the castle is heavy in my mind, but I want to know everything. I need to know what they can do and how they’ll use it against me.
“They do.”
“What kind?”
The short, clipped answer he gave me and the hesitation that he holds makes it clear he doesn’t want to tell me more than he has to.
“Everyone’s different. Depends on the vampire.”
Another vague answer. But I won’t stop pressing him.
“Like what?”
“Uh, Rorrick can shapeshift. Mostly ravens and black cats. If you spot an overfed house cat making too much eye contact, it’s probably him.”
I wait for him to say more but he doesn’t.
“What’s your strangest ability?” I smile softly, trying hard to lure out the information I desperately want.