Chapter 23 #3
I clench my teeth at the suggestive tone, but Lucan stays utterly silent, as if giving me the choice to react how I want to.
Because the Third Guardian is actually giving me the option to drop myself into his lap and offer him my neck, I realize.
Like it’s a game to him—getting his Chosen Ones to fawn at his feet after a few sultry words.
Unfortunately for him, creepy crimson eyes and cold marble skin aren’t really my type.
Even though I know defying him could very well send me to my grave, I can’t help the words from spilling through my teeth.
“You’re the last monster in the world I’d remove my cloak for,” I say in a low voice that nobody else in the room would be able to hear—besides Lucan himself, who inhales with an emotion I can’t quite name.
The Third Guardian’s pupils burn blood-red, but before he can decide whether to kill me or not, I roll up my sleeve and stick out my arm.
“I’m sure it tastes just as satisfactory from my wrist—but only if I’m alive, right? Might taste a bit stale if I’m dead.”
I’ve got him. I can see by the way his eyes shutter and drop to my wrist, his tongue darting out a few times to wet his lips again. Oh, gross. I squeeze my eyes shut when he reaches out his hand, not wanting to see it happen but feeling every movement anyway.
Long, clammy fingers lock around my wrist. A pair of rock-hard lips press against my skin, even colder than I expected. He’s chosen to keep me alive despite my insolence. For now.
You foolish, brave, stubborn fucking woman, Lucan chastises, finally exhaling. How the hell am I going to survive you?
I don’t have time to wonder what he means. Sounds erupt around me from my fellow Chosen Ones—gasps, whimpers, shouts, even a scream. But contrary to the underlying assumption that a Guardian drinking from you would be more than just honorable, these all sound like noises of pain to me. Only pain.
And when two sharp needles pierce my delicate skin, I can confirm it: there’s no rush of gratification or pleasure. Only a feeling like hot poison leaking into my veins and rooting its way up my arm like snakes of fire.
I stay quiet. I won’t give the Third Guardian the satisfaction.
But his light hum travels up my forearm, like he just can’t help himself.
I’ll make you forget, Lucan promises desperately, his voice mimicking the pain I feel. Every second of this nightmare, I’ll bury it so deep, Saskia, it won’t be able to haunt you.
I nod inside my own head, focusing on Lucan’s words, on his presence. That warmth that stamps out the iciness of everything around me. The muscles in my face relax as I block out my surroundings and the siphoning of my blood goes numb.
Just you and me, baby, Lucan whispers, and I believe him.
In this haze of a nightmare, it’s only the Monster and me.
When the last vampire, the Seventh to be exact, finally unsuctions herself from a man’s neck with a sickening pop next to me, the man tips forward slightly.
Without thinking, I reach out to catch him just as he slams his hands down onto the table so he doesn’t fall right off.
My own movements feel like electric zings through my nervous system.
“Are you okay?” I gasp out as a drop of blood beads from his wound before trickling in a zigzag down to his collarbone.
The man groans in response, his skin paling instantly.
“Are you going to faint?” I rush out.
“He’s fine,” the Seventh Guardian says curtly with a hand on his shoulder.
Her eyes, though, aren’t on me.
They’re on the Third Guardian—who’s wiping my blood from his lips with a fingertip and watching me curiously with a groove between his eyebrows.
A rock weighs my stomach down. Sweeping my head around to assess the room, I find that everyone else seems to be off-kilter, like they’ve been administered general anesthesia at the Healing Center.
One man hangs his head to bury his face in his hands. One woman slumps against the Eleventh Guardian as she clings to his neck and that sickly-looking Adam’s apple.
Lucan, I hurry out, everyone else looks…
Hungover, he finishes, though I don’t know what that means.
…like they’ve lost too much blood. But I don’t feel like that? I say, focusing on my toes. I flex them inside my shoes and a snap echoes up my legs. Every tiny movement shocks me, as if I’m running on electricity, and I blink. Whoa. I can feel the tips of my eyelashes.
So you’re basically high then, Lucan says, worry lining his tone. I suppose it affects everyone differently.
I raise my hand in front of my face, and I swear the venom and blood pulsing there are speaking to me. When my hand falls to my lap, the Third Guardian’s face materializes in front of me, fading slowly into clear view.
Lucan’s concern grows deeper. Saskia, are you okay?
Actually, I feel great, I reply, practically smiling.
The Third Guardian and I stare at each other, both of our eyes narrowing in unison, until my head suddenly fills with air. I almost tip right into his lap, but lurch back just in time.
The laugh that comes out of him isn’t amused or humored—it’s triumphant.
“There it is.” He reaches out a finger as if to stroke a strand of my hair, but even in my current state, I have enough sense to jerk back.
I clamber to my feet, trying to put as much distance between us as I can manage, but bump into the chair beside me.
His laugh deepens, chiseling a cold pit into my stomach. “Don’t worry. It won’t last forever.”
And neither will you, Lucan grits out, and I swear his words must have hardened something in my eyes, because the Third Guardian’s own eyes widen just an infinitesimal amount—as if somehow, Lucan’s threat hangs in the air between us.
Before either of us can respond, the First Guardian commands the room again with a sharp clap.
“Chosen Ones will now be shown to their rooms where you can rest and regain your strength. You will be called upon when needed by your Guardian, but until then, do not leave your room. A servant will be assigned to you. Anything you need, request it from them.”
Lucan’s relief that this is finally over is a tangible thing inside my heart.
Another clap and a handful of side doors in every corner of the room fly open.
Blinking away electric stars, I gape as dozens of servants stream out—human servants.
They rush toward us to clear off the table in a flurry.
I’ve never even given any thought to the possibility of non-Chosen humans living within the palace, serving our Guardians.
Where did they come from? Have they always been here?
Were they assigned to this job or born into it?
One of them approaches me and dips her head, gesturing for me to follow her, but the Third Guardian steps between us like a towering wall.
“You’re relieved of your duty this evening,” he tells her.
Curtsying, her eyes fall quickly to the floor, but I catch a glimpse of relief when she pushes her short, blonde bangs out of her face before she turns and scurries back through the same door she came through.
It’s not until the Third Guardian’s hand is cradling my lower back again to guide me to the door that I realize what he’s done.
The other remaining Chosen Ones are each stumbling away after a servant, but not me. My vampire presses me forward, making sure I’m steady and upright as we step over the dead Chosen One’s bloodstains still smearing the floor.
When we break off from the single file and take a grand staircase lined with gold and red carpet, he finally speaks.
“Saskia, you can call me Arad.”
I snort. “I’d rather not.”
That’s probably something I would have held in before the whole blood-sucking thing made my head feel like it’s floating off my body. I whip around to gauge his reaction and just barely catch the tail-end of his jaw tightening in anger. “It will make it sweeter then, when you change your mind.”
“Excuse me? I won’t.”
The Third Guardian takes a step into me.
I take a step back against the railing, my body now frozen by the intimidating snarl that rises from his throat.
“Mark my words, Saskia, you’re going to end up screaming my name just like the rest of them.
Either from pleasure or pain. To beg for release or mercy.
” He shrugs, as if he’s said this a thousand times before and watched his wishes come to fruition. “I don’t care which.”
For a moment I wonder if it would actually be possible for me to explode from the surge of Lucan’s white-hot rage.
I got it, I tell him. And I do, because with the current coursing through me, I feel as though I could burst through the Wall right about now.
“I feel sorry for you then, because your name will never leave my lips,” I promise, twisting out of his caged presence and resuming our trek up the stairs.
Arad clicks his tongue after we reach the last step like each one progressively helped to reel himself back in.
“That’s the thing about all of you humans though.
You are mine for the next few months, and longer if I so choose.
You’ll fall in line with the rest of them.
” A pause thickens the air. Then his red lips lift into a half-smile that exposes one long fang like he’s imagining me bending to his will. “Eventually.”
I swallow, swallow again. The lump grows like a ball of energy, and I may just vomit on his shoes. But he stays silent, just a moving statue using his fingertips to turn me right and the base of his palm to turn me left when the hallways split.
Finally, he stops in front of a wooden door intricately carved with roses and unlocks it with a large brass key he produces from the folds of his velvet cloak.
My heart leaps, even though I know instinctively that it wouldn’t fit in any of the doors I’m most interested in.
That one’s in the white drawing room in the north wing. Under the glass cloche. That I’ll steal from right under his sharp nose as soon as he’s looking the other way.
Like he knows what I’m thinking, Arad’s nostrils flare.
“Did you know you smell like strawberries and roses?”
Lucan growls. I know you’ve got this, little nightmare, but when it’s my turn, this motherfucker is going to get two spikes up his nose before I kill him for even daring to breathe you in.
A smirk forms on my lips as I imagine that exact scene playing out.
“Something funny?” Arad asks.
I clear my throat. “You’re not the first one to tell me that,” I say before I can think about the logistics of what I’m confessing. “That I smell like strawberries and roses.”
The Third Guardian audibly grinds his teeth, eyeing my neck.
“Too bad you’ll never see your partner again,” he says, and I realize with a relieved jolt he must think I’m talking about Malcolm, “except from a balcony.” He licks his lips like he’s savoring something, and a new sensation washes over me: murderous rage.
Except this time, it’s my own. “And by the way, your blood tastes even better. You’re lucky I have such self-control—unlike the others. ”
I swear the necklace vial jumps against my thigh before Arad’s long fingers wrap around the doorknob and he swings the door open.
“And the thing about me,” he adds above my shoulder, “is I learn my Chosen Ones intimately. Everything you find in here has been handpicked by me.” I sway on my feet before he gives me one good shove across the threshold. “Enjoy. I know I will.”
Then the monster locks me in my room alone with my guardian.