Chapter 11
C assia
My head hurt and the room spun. Carefully, I lifted my fingers one by one from Lukas’s arm. They ached. I stretched them, bending them back and forth, feeling the blood rushing back in. I caught Kiam’s eye and he gave me a small smile and a nearly imperceptible nod.
The strength to smile back eluded me, and I turned my attention to the Queen and Lukas. He suddenly had one of his fingernails extended, hovering over the side of her neck while she grinned. She batted it away.
“Cassia, I’ll be in touch.” She canted her head before she strolled away, clutching the hem of her gown and exposing bare feet. Her toenails were painted pink. The sight shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.
Lukas came back, stopping directly in front of me. He scratched his chin. “You do realize she had every right to kill you where you stood, don’t you?”
His mouth moved, but the words weren’t registering.
The lips that had swept me off my feet formed a sentence.
He was probably yelling at me for something, but all I could think about was how they felt against my own.
The kiss should have enraged me. He hadn’t asked for permission. Did I want him to?
Then, he called me his wife.
He was serious about all of this. Deadly serious. Theoretically, I’d feel the heat of his mouth against my own many more times.
But he’s a vampire. I am not. I am going to die. If not soon, then later. Long before he ever does—if he even can.
“I need a minute,” I said, finally taking a look around the room. The noise had heightened as people spilled from their chairs, beginning to stroll around the massive hall and mingle with others.
Lukas held out a hand and I clasped it, wincing at the pressure against my sore limb. He pressed his thumb against my palm and a soothing warmth flowed through my skin, as if I’d been injected with some kind of muscle relaxer or pain killer. The pain subsided.
“We’ll sit in an anteroom for a moment, in privacy,” he informed me.
Patiently, he guided me across the floor, ignoring those who tried to stop him. I kept my head down, letting him lead me to refuge.
A door sprung open before us, and we entered a space filled with a couple soft velvet couches and gleaming tables. A side bar was set against one wall of the windowless room. Lukas didn’t release me until I sank into the cushions.
Resting my head in my hands, I let out a deep breath, relaxing whatever fortitude I’d built and letting it flow away in a wash of tears and gasping breath.
It could have been minutes, or perhaps hours, before my heart rate calmed, and my tears stemmed.
I stared at Lukas’s shiny shoes the entire time while he hovered over me, watching the polished surface bend and twist through the screen of my anguish.
How I was surviving all this, I had no idea.
How I would get through it for however many more years my very fragile life allowed was a mystery.
I was nothing compared to these people. I was an ant on an anthill, and they held the magnifying glass.
At any moment, any one of them could move the lens into direct sunlight and snuff out my existence like I was never here.
I had no magic, no shiny teeth or lava lamp irises. I barely even had muscles, never mind a healing or killing touch. My thoughts couldn’t slay a man where he stood.
“You called me your wife,” I accused the formidable giant standing over me.
From an objective standpoint, I could do a lot worse.
He was as beautiful as a god from a storybook and clearly capable of protecting me as best he could.
And he could certainly kiss. When the thought of what else he could do with his enviable body popped into my head, I shoved it down.
Already, I spent too many a night wondering.
If he could read my thoughts, he’d know about the night I gave into temptation with wandering fingers and a vivid imagination. My cheeks heated and I glanced down at my lap. If he could read minds, I was fucked.
“That’s why I brought you here.”
“I didn’t sign anything and you didn’t ask. Not once have you asked me if I wanted any of this. Why me? Look at you,” I waved vaguely in his direction, “you could have anyone.”
He lowered himself onto the cushions beside me. “You said ‘please.’ In the coffee shop. Everyone else was lost in their own selfish bubble. But not you.”
“My good manners caught your attention? Lots of people have manners, it's not just me.”
He leaned forward, clasping his hands together and resting his elbows on his knees. “Not just that, although that was the first thing. You intrigued me. The way you moved. Your aura. The way you smell. The way you contemplated.”
“You sound insane.” Truth be told, I was flattered. No one had ever said such things about me, or ever really paid that much attention. At least not that they’d told me about.
“I’d rather refer to it as discerning. When you live as long as I, you can separate the wheat from the chaff.”
I took a deep breath and bit my lip. What he was saying made sense. Most of it. “Just how old are you?”
“About two thousand years old. The years blur together a bit, and I slept for a long time.”
A two-thousand-year-old creature, and I’d caught its attention. I couldn’t help it, I laughed. It sounded like a bad joke. “You’re that old and you’re just wanting to get married now?”
The man seemed stumped by my question. “It's more complicated than that. Time loses meaning when you have all of it. I’ve been busy. That’s not to say I haven’t had occasional dalliances. I met a man once, a vampire King named Elijah. He found a human woman and I had to punish him?—”
“You punished him?” What a hypocrite.
“Let me finish. Our laws are set for the safety and security of everyone. There is a very good and immovable reason for each one. At least there is when we set them. However, the relationship between him and the woman was very curious and even I couldn’t deny that the fates ruled in the matter.
So, yes, I punished him. But not in a way from which they couldn’t recover and thrive.
I merely banished the two of them and whoever they could take to another Realm. ”
Not in so many words, but he was basically telling me he could and would punish me if I stepped out of line. Maybe not so much telling me, but the ultimate message was clear.
“I’m afraid of you, but I’m not scared of you.”
“You should be.”
“Well, I’m not. You haven’t hurt me yet. But I know you can and you will if you feel like it.” My hands shook and I clutched my gown, hoping he wouldn’t notice.
He stretched his long limbs and stood. “It's what one does in the face of fear that matters. You keep going no matter what is happening around you. I admire that.”
“Thanks, I guess.” I tried to take solace in his words despite the circumstances. He wasn’t wrong; I did keep going.
But that was the thing. My habitual persistence when ration told me to stop had dogged me my whole life. I just didn’t know when to quit, even when it hurt. Just look at my ex. Look at my art. I was the fool who kept running headlong into oncoming traffic even though I would eventually get creamed.
“I still don’t want to be your wife,” I snapped at him as I heaved my exhausted body from the comfort of the sofa.
Lukas’s face stretched into a deadly and seductive smirk, his eyes sparkling. “Good thing that is not your decision to make.”
He went for my hand, and I tried to snatch it back. He was quicker than a snakebite in a nature documentary, and I found myself grabbed despite my maneuvers. His satisfaction wrapped me like a blanket.
But I wouldn’t let it smother me.
* * *
The festivities were in full swing when we returned to the throne room. Queen Annalise presided over the gathering, nodding and smiling at those who approached her chair.
The young man who had announced her earlier was now clad only in a swinging loincloth which, given the meager nature of the fabric, was essentially useless for coverage.
He buzzed around her like a housefly, trying to run interference on those waiting for her attention while she blatantly fondled his not unimpressive attributes.
I had never seen anything quite like this, other than a single evening at a nudie bar with friends once. But there, no one was allowed to touch the goods.
Topless waitresses bearing heavy gilded trays full of beverages swam between the clusters of people serving what I was certain was blood, in addition to less biologically natured drinks.
I wouldn’t have minded sampling some of the white wine because how many people can say they drank alcohol in another dimension? Or wherever we were.
“You said this is the First Realm. So, what does that mean exactly?”
Lukas must have seen me eyeing the wine because suddenly, he was handing me a glass. “That means this is the First Realm. I’ve told you.”
A hiss of frustration squeezed past my lips as I grabbed the glass. “Is that like another dimension or something? I’ve heard people, including you, mention other numbers. About Realms.”
He held up a hand as someone approached us, only they didn’t drop dead. “Yes, you could say that. I suppose that’s what humans refer to it as. And yes, there are many.”
He grasped my chin lightly and looked me deep in the eye. “Are you planning on leaving? You won’t. Not without me.”
The wine was delicious, honestly. No weird, sharp aftertaste to remind me of the way rubbing alcohol smelled. This stuff was good. “So, you could take me somewhere else?”
His eyes shuttered, an emotion skirting by too fast for me to decipher. “Yes, I could. Perhaps someday I will. When you stop fantasizing your escape.”
“You don’t know what I fantasize about.”
His gaze darkened and dipped to my mouth, setting a fluttering feeling dancing around inside my chest. I held my breath, waiting to see what he would do and wondering if I wanted him to.
The moment was broken by Kalix. “Annalise expects you to marry soon.”