Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
Crymson
My palm is sweating in Christian’s cold hand, but I can’t bring myself to let him go. My nerves are a tangled mess buzzing around my racing thoughts. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to step outside. I don’t want to see him again.
I don’t want any of it.
The moment the door opens, all that anxious energy disappears, and is replaced with sudden confusion. Ash tinges the hot air. Smoke drifts in and clouds my sight as we step out into an unbearable heat.
The garden is a dirt path. Hard soil and dry dust kick up around my black satin heels. The smoke clears, and then I see why.
The word starlight echoes through my thoughts with every moment anyone here has repeatedly said it.
Because starlight doesn’t exist for these people.
Delilah’s voice is loud and clear in my mind:
The Thorn King burned our borders as a reminder to us...
Burning embers flick through the air while a cloud of smoke looms overhead. If there’s sunlight or moonlight, either one, they’re covered by a sky of eternal flames.
“It’s Armageddon,” I whisper, frozen where I stand.
Christian’s steely eyes lift to the crimson sky before looking back at me like he has just revealed a dark secret he never meant to tell me.
“Wasn’t always like this,” Rorrick murmurs. “Starlight used to bathe us in the magic of the heavens.”
“H—how long has it been like this?”
“Ever since I can remember,” Seven whispers ominously.
“What causes the flames?”
“Depends who you ask about the curse.” Christian’s thumb brushes back and forth against my knuckles, and I hate that I’m thinking about how he refused me just moments ago in an end-of-days moment like this. “My father blames the Thorn King’s dark magic. And the fae... they blame us.”
I’m mesmerized by the flow of the smoke and flames that move overhead like a storm angering a deadly sea. I feel every dip and roll of the heat.
But suddenly, I feel something else prickling across my skin.
The most alluring man parts the dense crowd.
It’s his wingspan that people step aside for; a look of awe and fear overtakes their faces as he passes by.
Enormous black wings rise up from his shoulders; beautiful, sleek wings appearing dipped in stark ink and forbidden magic.
His stare is so focused on me, it becomes unnerving.
A slash of black paint shimmers across piercing blue eyes, and there are strange points that pierce through his bronzed skin.
The prickling points of what look like several small black diamonds frame his eyes.
They veer down the column of his throat on both sides and even kiss the backs of his big hands—hands that also appear dipped in ink.
Thorns pierce from his skin like a disease...
I swallow hard as he comes nearer. Christian’s frame is tense. Protective. He takes a single step in front of me. His hand extending forward long before the mysterious, handsome man ever gets here.
The stranger doesn’t take the prince’s offer of introduction though. Daunting pale eyes study the prince’s hand but blatantly disregard the offering. Instead, he lowers down. He kneels to one knee with his head bowed so intently, I think he’ll kiss Christian’s shining black shoes.
But it isn’t Christian he’s bowing to.
Two big hands grasp mine, his heat burning across my flesh as he presses his temple to my knuckles. Sharp, glinting thorns prickle over the back of my hand.
“My kindred,” he whispers like a prayer, his words inciting a frenzy of nerves to fire all through my body. “I’ve waited for you longer than you know.”
My wide eyes meet Christian’s, our stares colliding over the man worshiping down at my feet.
“Thorn, how generous of you to give my father such a—” Christian’s pause lingers in the air as his attention heats across the flesh of my breasts, my lips and eyes, “Delectable gift.”
Tingling fury ignites inside my unsteady heart. How dare he look at me like that? He has no right. He will never have me. Therefore, he should not be allowed to make me question what he truly wants.
What I truly want.
I wanted to escape. I—I still do. He’s just confusing me.
The Thorn King stands slowly with his height towering over me and making me feel small between himself and Rorrick just behind me.
In my heels, I barely come up to his hard pectorals.
His skin is warm, the opposite of my pale features.
The long length of his dark hair is a stark contrast to my fiery red.
His features are sharp like Christian’s.
Royal in that way. Half of his hair is pulled up away from the hard angles of his face, and white bones decorate through the thick, messy braid that lines the top of his head.
He’s alarmingly handsome... but I don’t see a resemblance between myself and the Thorn King.
He isn’t the ugly, cruel man Delilah painted him to be either.
It’s a strange beauty he holds. He also shares that with Christian: a deadly attractiveness that you know will get you in trouble.
.. and yet, you dive right in anyway for just a chance to be near them.
Another man with dense, dark leathery wings looks from me to Christian before he quietly says something over the king’s shoulder.
A sharp sneer presses to the Thorn King’s lips.
A low chuckle vibrates through his big chest, the strange black diamonds accentuating his thick neck shift as he laughs.
Thorns ... they don’t look like thorns though.
They’re too pretty, glinting in the fiery light of the evening.
“Yes.” His arrogantly sly attention finally slides to the Blood Prince. “ She’s not his yet .”
“It’s Prince Christian,” Christian introduces himself casually.
The Thorn King seems to have long forgotten the prince is even there when he brings his piercing gaze back to me.
“Care to take a walk with... dear old Dad?” The smirk on his handsome face is alarming with his heavy attention suddenly on me.
With the inky line across his eyes, the jagged gems protruding from his skull, and the sharp points of his teeth, he looks every bit the monster Delilah warned me about.
“Actually, the hunt is about to commence,” Christian says, his hand pressing low on the small of my back, his body lining up perfectly with mine.
The Thorn King’s gaze dips to that small contact between me and the prince, and I see the calculations in his eyes.
“Yes. Well, we won’t be long.” And then my hand is in his, and he’s pulling me away.
Christian’s body lurches, but he’s stopped abruptly.
“She’s fine. He’s not going to hurt his own daughter,” Seven whispers calmly.
But when I look back at them, Seven’s hand is pressed hard into Christian’s chest, Rorrick’s glaring attention following me every step I take, and nothing—absolutely nothing—feels fine in this moment.
Especially me.
Once we’re several yards away, I pull my attention back to the Thorn King.
He looms over me, the soft leather of his wings hanging overhead.
His warm hand lightly cradles mine like he’s worried he might break it if he puts an ounce of pressure on my skin.
With patience and care, the cruel king guides me through the haunting smoke of the gardens.
“Do you like the Blood Prince?” he asks abruptly.
My lips part, but I’m hesitant to say the wrong thing. I don’t want to put any more tension between the already hostile kingdoms. Do I lie? Or do I give him a vague answer of honesty?
“Not... not really. He’s an asshole, if I’m being honest.”
His rumbling laughter is warm and tingles across my body in the strangest way.
“I do agree,” he murmurs. “Did you like your life in the mortal realm?”
Jesus. We really should have prepped the topics of discussion because this is not a good start for Daddy.
“No. I didn’t.”
He nods like he’s pleased to hear that, which suddenly makes me want to punch him in his obnoxiously square jaw. Emotions shake through me, and it’s only then that I realize I blame this stranger for the life he put me in.
From the moment I was born, I didn’t have a fucking chance at a normal life.
Because of him. Because not a single person who called themselves family ever showed up for me.
Why now?
“Why? Do you feel bad for leaving me in a life where I was constantly afraid? Constantly hurt? Constantly on the verge of breaking down and never getting back up?”
His steps halt instantly, and the man following at the king’s side stops on a dime. There’s a tragic sadness in the king’s glinting gaze when he meets the anger in my features.
“I—”
But then I see him.
From just past the Thorn King’s big black wings, I see the one man I never want to come face-to-face with again in my entire life.
Boris’s smile is spread across his full cheeks, and it feels manic when his smile is pointed my way. Vomit stings up the back of my throat. And then he’s walking toward me.
“Shit,” I whisper so vacantly I don’t even realize I’ve said anything at all. “I have to go!”
“What?”
My heels stagger over the dry dirt. Hard shoulders jar into mine. The smoke grows heavier. A voice calls out over the large crowd, but I don’t stop moving for a single second.
Even when the announcer’s words finally register in my mind:
“The Vampire’s Hunt has just begun!”