Chapter 15 #2
His heart was pounding. I just realized I didn’t have a plan beyond making him stop talking.
I’d not been this close to him—at least not facing him.
It was difficult to function while staring into his peculiar eyes.
They were so strange. So lovely. The exact second a blue ocean wave crested to white.
He whimpered, the sound muffled by my palm, and I nearly fell to my knees.
“Okay, um.” I needed to think clearly, but my fingertips were wrapping so perfectly around the delicate curve of his neck as I held him. “You mustn’t say what you were going to say. You’re better off forgetting you heard anything. You understand, human?”
His odd eyes searched mine, so full of questions.
“You’re smart, my love. I can tell,” I whispered. “Trust me when I say, the less you know, the better off you’ll be.”
That was it. The thing that made him go motionless in my arms.
“I’m going to let you go now. Okay? You’re okay, baby.”
He nodded. Good. Yes. Now, I should do that. I should let go.
The drugs were coursing through my veins, but how much faith was I really going to put in them? If he saw me twitch, even once, he’d know I was lying. He’d realize how much danger he was in.
Steady. I released my hand from his mouth slow and steady.
I did everything in my power to ignore how pink his lips were from the pressure, and how I’d never wanted to kiss anything more. I’d started to back away when a knock sounded at the door.
He jumped, grasping my forearm, his whisper panicked as he asked, “Who’s that?”
My lips parted, but I couldn’t answer. Not when each delicate finger of his was pressing into my skin. Me. Under a perceived threat, his first reaction was to reach for me. The one who threatened him the most.
He must’ve realized he was holding me, because he suddenly yanked his hand away like it’d been burned and said, “Don’t do that.”
My eyebrows lifted as my tongue failed to devise words.
“I’m serious.” He glared, wiping his mouth, as if to wipe the demon off. “Don’t possess me. Ever.”
There was something uncontrollable inside me that suddenly wanted to…laugh.
His eyes widened when I erupted into a chuckle. “It’s not funny.”
“It is, though. That’s why I’m laughing.”
“No, it’s not.” His fingers tightened into fists, and it looked like he might hit me, but he punched them to his sides. “It’s disgusting is what it is. Possessing people against their will is disgusting.”
My chuckling softened to a grin. “I didn’t possess you.”
His glower faltered a little. “Y-yes, you did. Just now, you did—”
“I didn’t, baby,” I whispered, shaking my head and lifting my palms as I backed away toward the door.
He parted his lips like he might try to argue but said nothing.
“Trust me, human,” I winked, “if I was inside you, you would know.”
His expression heated further, and oh, the pretty little snow fox with the pretty little pout. If he only knew how cute he looked all infuriated. I wanted to spool around in his anger like a rollie bug in the dirt.
But then another knock banged on the door, and I had to peel my gaze from him. Whoever was on the other side of this door lacked patience, which meant it was probably—
“Prince Alek, it’s Lucc!” my attendant’s stressed voice bled through the door. “Are you well? Unwell? Alek? Answer me, please.”
I opened the door, and Lucc exhaled loudly in relief. Then he launched himself forward, squeezing me into a tight hug.
“Oh, Prince,” he said, still hugging me. “I’ve been so worried. I heard. I heard what happened between you and your father. How awful. How distressing.”
I couldn’t help but smile against his shoulder as I let him fuss. He was the son of a nobleman, and a sweet kid. He was also the most neurotic vultus I’d ever met, but it fared him fine in the position as my attendant, a role he took very seriously.
He’d turned eighteen a few months ago. He was only a year younger than me, but it felt like a lifetime between us. Probably because he still ate food. He hadn’t awoken yet, but the signs were there and growing. The twitching. The flashes of red in his eyes when he saw certain humans.
“You are feeling well, then?” he asked, stepping back to hold me by my shoulders so he could scan me, his gaze snagging on my side. “Oh, dear gods. This is bad. Oh, no—”
“It’s fine.” I nodded. “It’s a surface wound. It’ll heal.”
He pinched his lips tight as he peered at it. “But Prince. It’s not healing—”
“What do we have here?” I nodded toward the four human servants in the hallway behind him. “A meal for the human?”
They were all dressed the same in matching aprons and frocks with white hats upon their bowed heads, and they each carried a different food-related item. I waved a hand, easing them from their respects, and they shuffled into a single file line behind Lucc.
It wasn’t that all humans looked the same. I could grasp their differences once I made myself notice them, but it was difficult to distinguish the human woman from the human man from the humans that preferred neither of those labels.
It was like they were who they were, and we had the potential to be attracted to all of it, no matter the form it came.
That being said, no one had any clue why some blended into the background like these humans, like every servant I’d ever met.
It wasn’t that they were unattractive, but they were like brown birds in a brown tree.
My eyes could barely track their movements or their bodies unless I focused really hard.
Their presence didn’t demand attention. It didn’t scream, Look at me.
You’ll never taste anything better than ME.
Like the one chained to my fucking room.
“Oh, yes,” Lucc said, shooting the three soldiers at the end of the hall a look. “They didn’t want to let us past, said they’re under orders to limit your number of guests.”
I arched a brow at the soldiers who stood on guard at the end of the hallway, expressions blank like they’d been trained. I would hope that when I was king, I’d remember the ones who did me no favors. But I had a long, long road to becoming king.
“But I have a right to be here,” Lucc continued, “as I’ve been charged with arranging meals for the human as well as reporting back to the king’s commander about any change in your appearance.”
I narrowed my eyes. “King’s commander? Which one? Not Neopal.”
Lucc nodded, then glanced over his shoulder. He beckoned me closer, cupping his hand around my ear to whisper, “But I will report whatever you tell me to report, Prince. I serve you.”
Well, wasn’t this just a poetic slap in the face?
I’d known Neopal my whole life. He was my best friend. Well. Former best friend.
We did everything together—went through the brutal royal sword training, hunted wild boar, swam in the Novithian falls where we caught frogs and fell asleep under the sun. He was the brother I wished I had.