18. Kiss. Marry. Kill.

Chapter 18

Kiss. Marry. Kill.

ELIO

M y bare feet hit the ground outside the wagon with a soft thump , and Sara peels herself from the ground. The wet trail of salt on her cheeks tells me she's been crying, but her voice is steady when she asks, "Is she dead?"

Sara fully expects to bury another body today, and I can't pretend to be insulted by her assumption. Spies, snakes, and liars don't survive for long in my court, and I'm more than comfortable serving as both jury and executioner when the time comes for traitors to be dealt with. But the usual criminals don't quicken my heartbeat or turn my brain to a puddle…

I search the square, but there's only us. "She's alive," I croak.

Freshly fucked, but alive. Did that even happen? The little shards of broken glass embedded in my palms confirm that it wasn't all a fever dream, and I button up my jacket. I should have given it to Lori as a replacement for her shredded shirt, but I couldn't stand the thought of her ogling the distinct scars on my back.

What in the seven hells happened in there? I was so sure she was using magic to alter her appearance that I ended up kneeling in front of her . I lost my grip, I?—

I was cruel, I was crude, I used her body for my pleasure and unveiled parts of me that had been locked away for decades. Broken, secret parts. I went back on my promise not to yield to the beast's demands. It slithered away as I entered her, and yet the blackest shards of my soul yearned to touch her and make her mine anyway. I still can't believe how much she got off on my filthy mouth, each devious word causing her walls to tighten around my cock.

Stop thinking about it.

I pinch the bridge of my nose, at war with myself. "I need you to take her to your room."

"My room?"

"She needs a shower before we return her to Seth." I'd briefly hoped to keep the sex secret from everyone else, but I'd rather tell Sara than let Lori's scent announce what we did to the whole Fae population. "You can say we inspected her for enchantments and glamors and found nothing out of place."

"Elio—"

"I know. I betrayed the sanctity of the pageant again."

"Who cares about the pageant? What about her? Elio, tell me you didn't force yourself on that girl—" Sara chokes on a sob.

Now , I'm insulted.

"Of course not!" The disbelief in her eyes cuts to the bone, and I cup my best friend's cheek. "Have I changed so much that you would accuse me of that?" I say quietly enough for Lori not to hear.

Her voice rises a few octaves. "You're so…withdrawn." Her throat bobs, and she shakes her head, looking to the sky so the tears in her eyes don't spill over. "I swear, sometimes I look at you and I'm not even sure if the Elio I knew is still in there—" she taps my chest with her index and middle fingers, and I want to comfort her, but she's right.

The Elio she used to know is gone, and no matter how much it pains me to disappoint her, he's never coming back.

My demon slithers out of the wagon behind me, interrupting my quiet moment with Sara. "Please, take your time to gossip about this. I'm only freezing in here," she says.

My spine stiffens, and I look everywhere but at her, clamping my mouth shut.

Sara's brow lifts in surprise as she throws her coat over Lori's frame. "Come on, Sixteen. I'll take you to my room."

The women walk off toward Sara's temporary apartments in Snowhaven Inn. The other contestants are all huddled up inside their big tent, and the town's people were instructed to go home, so no one else should have caught a glimpse of us.

I wait for a minute or two before following in their footsteps to reach the royal suite on the third floor, but Lori's scent lures me toward Sara's room, and I rest my head on the door, about ready to trample it down.

I've got half a mind to find my demon in Sara's shower and taste her again… Fuck, I need a shower, too, and a very cold one at that.

I hurry to my bathroom and lock the door behind me as though something as trivial as a piece of wood could actually prevent me from feeling her, one story below, her presence so vivid I can hear her breathe when I close my eyes. I feel the hot water gliding down her skin, and imagine her parted lips as she drags the soap across her stomach to the space between her thighs, desperate to wash me off her.

My soul is in shambles, and she's got the pieces.

But no matter how much I wish I could heal, how much I desire a fresh start, I know I will never be happy. And it's alright, because I don't deserve to be. No matter how badly the gods want Lori to be my next wife, the curse condemned me to never love again, and I would never sentence her to a loveless marriage followed by certain death.

Never.

The modern fixtures they installed in the inn for the tourists take me back to my time at the Royal Academy. With an annoyed huff, I turn off the knobs offering various fragrances of scented water and disable the rain shower jets above my head, looking for nothing more than cold water to drown out the chaos in my brain and distract me from the eerie link I still share with Lori.

The water turns on, but I hiss at the spray, the cold jets stinging my skin. A big frown twists my face as I raise the water temperature to lukewarm, and a full-bodied shiver rakes through me. I haven't tolerated warm water in years, but somehow, it's still not enough.

I grip the handle of the knob and tentatively twist it toward the engraved "hot" in the brass plate. Pushing well past discomfort, I crank up the temperature until it starts to hurt.

Steam fogs the glass as I let the water burn my skin for a second.

For some reason, my heart is beating faster in my chest than it has in a long time. The events of the night melted a bit of the frost that's been waging war on my body for years, and that's scary as fuck.

But I won't let some old, powerful spell control my destiny. Who cares if some otherworldly force wishes for us to mate? I'm not going to let the spindle of the gods have the last word on whom I fuck, marry, and kill.

Iris stole parts of the old Elio forever. I can't let Lori play with the broken pieces and ruin what's left of him.

I need her gone as soon as possible.