Chapter 28
FELORé
My head was spinning as I descended down a spiral set of stairs, encased in huge rectangular bricks of sparkling stone.
Secured to the wall every few paces were torches, which illuminated the deep charcoal stones that glittered so heavily, it was like they’d been crafted from thousands of tiny mirrors.
Leading me down a long, dark helix was the king.
Nausea prickled my stomach. I couldn’t tell if it was the fact that I was following him, or the look I’d left on Alek’s face. Like he was more than worried. Like he was heartbroken.
“Have you enjoyed your stay at the palace?” the king asked without looking back. “Well, at least what you’ve seen of it.”
I glared at the back of his perfect hair, ringed in his spiked crown.
My fingertips twitched at the idea of shoving him from behind with a lifetime of hoarded rage. Sending him toppling stair after stair, like a clot of hair down a drain. But he wasn’t like Alek. He fed so well that whatever minimal damage I caused would heal in seconds.
Not to mention, there would be no recovering from such an offense. I’d witnessed his powers. He could snap my bones without lifting a finger.
“Dare I say, the food must be better than what you’re accustomed to,” he continued, pausing once he stepped onto the landing, white light bleeding onto his face. “More flavor, I presume? Better balanced, no?”
A sour taste budded in my mouth at the smile he dared to show me. Or the hand he held out for me to take.
It wasn’t like I had a choice but to follow him—I’d been without choices for a very long time. But I would be dammed if I took his fucking hand.
Which didn’t matter, because when I met him on the landing, he circled an arm around my waist and pulled me closer to whisper into my ear, “It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to Palace Ser Novithia.”
My breath caught in my chest when he guided me into the light.
I’d been asleep when they brought me here, so I hadn’t seen it. But this. This was…huge.
It was huge. And grand. And extraordinary. A long, cathedral hallway with a hundred windows lining one side and ceilings so high they had to have kissed the clouds.
It was so different from Alek’s room. None of the ebony wood or heavy furniture. It was bright, painted in glimmering silvers and dusky blues. And gods, it was so fucking busy.
It’d been me and Alek alone in his room. I would’ve never imagined that just below us, there would be dozens of bustling servants with their folded white hats upon their heads, zipping down the hallway, and somehow avoiding collisions like a coordinated dance.
They each stilled as we approached, bowing all the way to the floor, their aprons pooling around them until we passed. Then they were up again, carrying loads of linens or baskets of green lettuces in their arms. One was holding a baby goat.
Everything glittered. Even the stone tile of the floor we walked upon had shimmering quartz speckled throughout. I’d heard about the palace’s extravagance, and the extent was beyond anything I could’ve imagined, but the lavishness wasn’t the most jarring part.
That would be the artwork.
Huge, salacious paintings clung to the wall opposite the windows, each one featuring a vultus and a human captured candidly during the throes of passion, as if the painter had the most intimate perspective.
One painting we passed featured a vultus bending a human man over a table set with food, fucking him in the ass while soup spilled down the tablecloth.
Another was from the perspective of an onlooker, with just the back of a woman’s head, her legs hooked over a vultus’s shoulders.
Yet another was a picnic scene with a female vultus sitting on a man’s face as he lay atop squished bunches of purple grapes.
In each one, the vultae were dominant and controlled. The humans were mid-rapture. I’d never seen such artwork in all my years. I was far from priggish, and I could feel my ears heat at the detail of each one.
“Do you like them, my sweet?” the king asked.
My gaze snapped to his.
“Well, it’s okay to stare,” he said, arms pinned behind his back as he stared himself. “They’re beautiful. That’s why we hang them. To celebrate.”
My voice was hoarse when I tried to speak. “Celebrate what, exactly?”
“Taking our first, of course.”
I whipped my head back to the paintings. These were paintings of their first human. The one they killed.
“Each member of the royal family gets their own. Would you like to see mine?” He placed a palm on my lower back. “It’s just up here.”
I wanted to recoil, but I let him lead me further down the hallway where four paintings were clustered together, pressed inside intricate silver frames.
“Ahhh, here we are,” he said, pointing to one of them. “I remember it like it was yesterday. How it felt to take my first sip. It was like being born again.”
My forehead wrinkled as I gazed upon the painting. It looked just like him, only younger. He was completely naked, his body toned and muscular. He was kneeling upon a bed, his cock buried inside the body of a person with cinnamon hair, their lips parted into an O as they gazed upon his face.
Beneath the painting was a plaque inscribed with a date, and elegant swirling letters that read: King Sorlen of Novithia.
I leaned in, squinting at the plaque. Below his name, in much smaller print, the letters plain, was the word: Archamon.
“That is the human’s name,” the king said, pride in his voice as he smiled at the painting. “See, there is great honor in being a royal’s first. Your name is recorded in history. Admired by all for years to come.”
My swallow was dry as I blinked at the painting. This was honor? Here was a person remembered not for who they were or what they accomplished. Rather, for getting fucked by a king.
“Here is my late queen,” he said, opening his palm to the next painting. “The mother of my vultlings.”
My eyes rounded as I gazed upon it.
Oh, my goodness. Alek’s mother. I could see the resemblance in him with her flowing black hair and cat-like eyes—molten copper, the same as his, only lined in black. The painter had chosen to focus only on her such that you barely noticed the thin, balding man whose cock she was riding.
“Wasn’t she lovely?” the king asked, eyes glazing over as he viewed the painting.
Yes, she was lovely. She was gorgeous.
But I couldn’t keep my focus on her, because the next painting stole my attention.
My heart careened as I stepped in front of it.
It was…Alek.
Or at least a healthier version of him, his skin radiant and the dark circles no more, but there was also a severity in his expression that I’d never seen before. There was a malice in his eyes.
I didn’t realize I’d been backing away from the painting when I felt the king’s fingers wrap around my shoulders, holding me in place.
“Isn’t it unnerving?” he asked.
I nodded. Something was wrong with him. Unnamable and yet horrifying. I couldn’t describe it. It was just so very wrong. This wasn’t the Alek I knew.
“They look so much alike, don’t they?” the king said, and realization dawned.
This wasn’t Alek. It was his twin. Prince Tobian of Novithia, read the plaque.
“It used to be impossible to tell them apart, but not anymore,” said the king, a weariness in his tone. “Not since Alekus’s hunger strike.”
Chills scattered down my arms as he guided me forward. I wanted to ask what was wrong with him. Why he looked like that. You couldn’t see the face of the woman whose mouth he took. You could only see his. There was a darkness there.
The king gestured to a blank space on the wall. “Here is where Alek’s painting will go.”
I swallowed as we passed the barren space, perfectly primed for a new painting.
“Soon,” the king said, ushering me along. “Hopefully, very soon.”
There was not a na?ve bone in my body. One didn’t survive an inhospitable orphanage only to survive a cut-throat brothel by anything other than grit and cynicism.
I had no doubt there was a dark, scheming reason the king himself was ushering me through the palace, even if I didn’t know what it was.
But one thing was certain. He was underestimating both of us. He was underestimating Alek. And he was sure-as-fuck underestimating me.
“He doesn’t want me, you know,” I said as he pushed us through clattering double doors, not bothering to acknowledge the three servants who bowed deeply as we passed.
“Does he not?” he asked, eyes fixed straight ahead as he turned us down another long hallway, this one lined with doors on either side.
“Of course, not,” I said, stealing a cold glance at him. “If he wanted to, he would have done it when I was healing his wound. He wasn’t even aroused.”
A smirk twisted his lips. “Yes, why did you do that, human?”
“Because I didn’t see the harm in it. He doesn’t even twitch around me. He never has. Not once.”
He hmphed, like this was news to him.
“And he’s tried to tell you that, if you’d just listen to him. I’m not the one he wants.”
“Ahh. Well, do you know what I think?” he asked, stopping us before one of the doors. One with a label that read, Infirmary. “I think it’s because you’ve not tried to be the one.”
My gaze narrowed. Was he mad? And why the fuck would I do that?
“And I think you’ve not tried because you’ve not been properly incentivized.”
I blinked. It took my brain a moment to comprehend what he’d said. Incentivized.
“Are you ready?” he asked softly, brushing off my shoulders. “Are you ready to see him?”
My heart dropped into my stomach. “Who?”
His grin was wolfish and white as he said, “Your brother.”